-   VI%
in




I


andommo             - I      -. I-  -- -1 - -                   -11 -

my            I




2I,II1




I




I




BY WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY
THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT. I900
POEMS. 190I
THE FIRE-BRINGER. 1904
THE FAITH HEALER. 1909
POEMS AND PLAYS. Edited with Introduction by John
M. Manly. 1912 (Two volumes)
SOME LETTERS. Edited with Introduction by Daniel
Gregory Mason. I9I3
THE GREAT DIVIDE. In 'Chief Contemporary Dramatists,' edited by Thomas H. Dickinson. I915
SELECTED POEMS. Edited with Introduction by Robert
Morss Lovett. 193I
LETTERS TO HARRIET. Edited with Introduction and
Conclusion by Percy MacKaye. I935




LETTERS TO HARRIET








I




I ' 1/     U
I


'I,




Lettersto Harriet
BY
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY


EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION, BY
PERCY MACKAYE
Boston and New York


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ibe R&ibetribe Prea Cambribge


1935




COPYRIGHT, 1935, BY EDITH S. KELLOGG


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
bte 3ibetrtbe t)rtft
CAMBRIDGE * MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.




TO
THE FRIEND OF ARTS AND LETTERS
WHOSE ANONYMOUS GENEROSITY ESTABLISHED
THE WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY FOUNDATION
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY
DEDICATED




I
I




CONTENTS
PAGN
INTRODUCTION (1893-I909) by P. M-K.                              I
The Letters: Three Elements: Their Major Emphasis, the Theatre -
A Step in the Dark: Dramatic Union of Destinies - Harriet: 'Disengaged from Illusions' -Will: Revelations of the Poet's Mind - Published Works and Biographers - Three Periods of Life and Work -
Third Period: America's First Group of Theatre Poets - Five Poets'
Comradeship in Lyric Arms - The Onset: Poetry Besieges Broadway
-Potential Scope of National Reinforcements - Nestor's 'Long-Ago
Prediction of Dramatic Renaissance' - A Sabine Woman: Shock of the
First Encounter - Re-arming in the Hills: The Great Divide, Road
'Failure'-Broadway 'Success': 'An Impostume to be Lanced' —
Sharing and Assaying a Double Victory -Allied Champions of the
Common Aim    'Alarums and Excursions' of Sudden Reversal - The
Faith Healer: Courageous Tenacity and Stalemate - Metropolitan Fellowship with Players and Artists - Friendship in the Hills: 'Simple,
Free, Open-hearted' - Will and Harriet: Their 'Sacred Day'
LETTERS TO HARRIET (I9oI-1909) by W. V. M.                     73
America. May 20, I901 -April 28, 1902..     75
A History of English Literature
Chicago, Rocky    Mountain   Trip, Boston, New
York, Norfolk, Va., New York, En Voyage
Europe. May 2, 1902 - Nov. 30, I902.              o02
Italy: Naples. Greece: Athens, Delphi, Arachova,
Desphina, Athens, Dionyso, Ikaria, Sparta, Ithoma
(Messina), Andritzena, Olympia, Megaspaelion, Corinth. France: Paris. Tyrol St. Vigil. Justria: Riva,
Lago di Garda. En Voyage
America. Dec. I, I902-March I8, I907         *.     I53
1 903: The Fire-Bringer; Thammuz. 1904: The Death
of Eve (poem); Second Coming; The Fountain; Old
Pourquoi; An Uncompleted Verse-Play. I90o: A
Sabine Woman. I906: The Great Divide
New York: Mackinac Island, Mich. New York: Cambridge, Mass., Arizona Trip, Lake Zurich, Ill., Kramer,
Ind. New   York &    Environs: Charleston, S.C., St.
Augustine, Fla. New York: Chicago, Grand Haven,
Mich. New     York  (Cornish, N.H.) New     York(European Trip canceled for Chicago, April 8, 1906)
[ ix]




CONTENTS


— New York. Cornish, N.H. New York. Cornish,
Lee & Pittsfield, Mass., Cornish. New York, Cornish:
New Mexico. New York: Albany, New Haven, Atlantic City, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, New York:
Washington, Conn. New York. En Voyage
Europe. March 23, I907 - May 29, I907               *      328
Africa: Tangiers. Spain: Seville, Granada. Italy:
Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice. England: London
America. Sept. 20, I907 -April 28, 9go9..      339
The Faith Healer, The Death of Eve (Masque, unfinished)
New York: (Cornish) Newton, Mass. New York:
(Cornish) Boston. New York. (Chicago) New York:
Port Chester, N.Y., Cos Cob, Conn. Monhegan,
Maine. New York: Mackinac, Mich. New York (Maine)
New York: New Mexico, San Dimas, Cal., St. Louis.
New York. (Trip to England with Harriet)
CONCLUSION (1909-1930) by P. M-K...     379
Compensation of 'Clear Living Happiness'-Honeymoon in England,. Channel Islands and Lake Country -Return to America;
Stricken: Toward the Great West - Darkening Vistas: 'Noble Balance
of Self-Control' -'The Grove,' Chicago: Sardonic Epilogue of the
'Poets' Onset' - Mountain Death: The Moment and Enduring Memory
— Last Sea-Rites: Prometheus and the Psalmist- 'From Shutting
Mists, Laughter and Rallying'-Hearth-Fire 'in the Comforting
Shadows of" the Grove"' — Harriet's Poet-Pilgrims from All ClimesThe Home that 'Could not Close its Doors'- Monadnock: Anniversary: 'Faggots of Remembrance'
Notes
For Introduction...     415
For Conclusion...     426
Biographical Data...      435
Bibliography.                                   439
Index..         *.     445
ILLUSTRATIONS
WM. VAUGHN MOODY
From a photograph      0                 '.        Frontispiece
HARRIET MOODY
From an oil-portrait, by L. C. Earle.             Opp. p. 381




INTRODUCTION




I wish I might let you know how the beauty of your life has
been revealed to me, and how the revelation has brought me
near to the centre of all life, to the eternal secret - the Open
Secret which from the beginning every created thing has been
breathless to declare, has been breathlessly declaring.
W. V. M. to HARRIET
There is a shine in all directions that indicates the return of
W. V. M.... The permanence of his place is one of the selfevident things.... Nearly all of his poems are stamped with
genius as with a signature.... Thank God he lived to do his
work - enough of it to place him among the immortals.
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON to HARRIET MOODY




INTRODUCTION


I. THE LETTERS: THREE ELEMENTS: THEIR
MAJOR EMPHASIS -THE THEATRE
THE seventeenth of October, 1935, marks the twentyfifth anniversary of the death of William Vaughn Moody,
at the age of forty-one (July 8, I869 - October 17, 19Io).
During that quarter century since his passing, a world
both substantial and unsubstantial has passed away, rolled
up like an Apocalyptic scroll from the eyes and almost
from the conception of a new generation nurtured upon
the ravages of the Great War -a world here partly
glimpsed again in the large serenities of these 'Letters to
Harriet,' written by an excelling poet to the excellent
friend of his life and art.
Expressed to only one other soul, they lay bare the
quick of sensibility, the wellsprings of courage and the
mystic sources of creative growth in a mind astonishingly
poised, unsullied and self-mastered, at a period of psychology when Psyche was still a Spirit inviolate, before
strange mob-termites had invaded her temple to permeate
its lintels and pillars and crumble her pristine image.
In English speech, volumes of letters by outstanding
poets wherein each communes with one dearest friend are
as exceedingly rare in genus as they are almost obsolete.
Because of ever-accelerating life, this book is perhaps the
last of its kind. Of such by poets in the past, one thinks
of the letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne or of Browning
to Elizabeth Barrett but, even counting them on one
hand, each poet by his nature uniquely creates his own
[3




INTRODUCTION


species. In our time, contrasted with its whirling ephemera
forever tinselly pursuing their mass novelties, this shy
'deep-damasked' being, William Vaughn Moody, may
well be hailed supreme in novelty for the sustained balance and psychic serenity of his homage to Harriet.
Written with no slightest thought of their publication
or even of their survival, that very obliviousness to our
aftertime makes these letters the more appealing to us
and all the more sure of survival. Their appeal, however,
is not as 'love letters' in the usual connotation of that
term, but as many-sided revelations of the poet's mind -
the mind of a poet permanent in literature, whose intrinsic style renders them valid literature in themselves,
and whose sincerity of acute observation makes them
signally important as original source material of an historic period. Commencing in I90o, with almost unbroken
continuity during eight years, they comprise in large
measure a behind-the-scenes commentary, at once factual
and formative, upon the first decade of our century with
respect to American poetry in relation to the theatre,
which has been largely ignored or misconceived by historical scholarship, owing to inadequate published records
of its source material.
According to its main inhering elements, this volume of
letters might be entitled (spiritually) The Story of Will and
Harriet, or (stylistically) New Poems in Prose, by W. V. M.,
or (factually) Historical Sketch of Broadway, by a Poetdramatist: I9po-z9o9. Though these elements, of course,
are interwoven throughout, the dominant motif is the
last.
'The theatre is my grand resource' wrote Moody to
Harriet, in I904, and from then onward at least two thirds
[4




DRAMATIC UNION OF DESTINIES


of his letters express that major emphasis in his life and
art. For that reason the major emphasis of this Introduction is devoted to the sources and the associations of his
work for the theatre in its vital relationship to poetry.
So, likewise, having been asked to make these commentaries as his fellow-worker and friend, I do so in a capacity
as editor which necessarily involves my personal relationship with Moody as participator in those dominant
events and issues of his life during its culminating period.
Dealing with the three inhering elements above mentioned, it is my aim to integrate their spiritual story with
its background and its after-horizons as suggested in this
Introduction and its sequent Conclusion; to appreciate
their poetry through brief citation and comment; to annotate their factual history by supplementing it with new
source material in correlated records. In this undertaking, my incentives spring from my own friendship with
Will Moody, and from my many years' equal friendship
with Harriet herself - the great personality whose name
entitles these letters, now through them first revealed to
the general public as the deepest personal influence upon
Moody's career.
II. A STEP IN THE DARK: DRAMATIC UNION
OF DESTINIES
Sprung from deep soils of Indiana and Ohio, in both
Will and Harriet, at their full soul-stature, our native
America rose to its cosmic plane. In the dramatic juncture with which these letters begin, when at Lakeside near
Chicago, during an outdoor May party at night, Harriet
suddenly mistrod in the dark and di'rely broke her ankle,
thwarting by that fall the supple ease of her glorious car[51




INTRODUCTION


riage for the rest of her life - so it befell that bodily defeat became spiritual destiny to them both, 'the immense
thing of all the years ahead, for it carried her and Will
together with such a rush that they were never again
divided. Their union, the marriage of their souls, was
sealed from that moment.'
These last quoted words were written recently to me by
one of their dearest mutual friends, Prof. Ferdinand
Schevill of the University of Chicago, the 'Ferd' of these
letters. Since there is none living who can speak with
more authority of this crucial incident, I quote further
from his own words in regard to it.
Will and Harriet met occasionally before the year 900o but
developed no particular intimacy. I came back from England
in the spring of I90o and was told by Will that he had a surprise in store for me. I was to meet a Mrs. B --- * and I was
to meet her under happy circumstances. In her very grandiose
way she had taken a house on the North Shore for the spring,
where she planned to meet her friends during the weekends.
It happened that the first week-end I was invited fell on
May I6. The date is unforgettable, for not only did I meet
Harriet for the first time on this occasion, but just past midnight, while the remnant of the large party was still crouching
around the fire, Harriet had the disastrous mischance of
breaking her ankle.*
Often in your friendship with Harriet you must have divined
what this accident meant to her, and what it brought of both
good and ill. - For months she lay on her back on that swinging couch you remember in the front room at 2970 Groveland
Avenue.
There wasn't a day that Will didn't turn up there for talk
and reading aloud. When the hot summer was over, Harriet
* Cf. Notes, at back of this volume, to which all asterisks throughout refer.
[61




HARRIET: DISENGAGED FROM ILLUSIONS


could think of recovery in the country and took a house up on
the charming island of Mackinac. They spent several months
in that little northern paradise, lulled by the peace of an
Indian summer of unforgettable magnificence. I am not moonshining about this chapter of their experience, for I was with
them there for at least part of the time.
Harriet recovered very slowly, and only gradtally awakened
to the fact that her foot was gone and that she would be lame
for the rest of her life. I spoke above of good and ill resulting
from her harrowing fall. The good, of course, was her spiritual
union with Will. The ill was chiefly her mental suffering, for
she had lost the perfection of her Junoesque carriage, her unrivaled dignity. As you recall Harriet after her fall, she will
appear to your mind's eye sufficiently proud of bearing for
any human purpose. That was the pose she forced herself to
take to cover the confusion which threatened almost from moment to moment to overwhelm her in the face of her disability.
But she never did let it overwhelm her. About four
years after this time Schevill records, I first met Harriet
through Will, at her home. So intrinsic were her courage
and imagining tenderness toward the needs of others, that
none who knew her friendship, as I did for twenty-five
years, ever was made to feel for an instant any sense of
pity toward one maimed or in pain, but rather a charmed
admiration for one so surprisingly self-commanding and
irradiant of cheerful wisdom. These qualities indeed set
her superbly apart among those who were merely goodnatured and amiable.
III. HARRIET: 'DISENGAGED FROM         ILLUSIONS'
In her brief diaries, kept chiefly for Will's sake during
his last year of life, I find no introspective reference by
Harriet to herself except in this one passage,* revealing a
117]




INTRODUCTION


profound inward conflict of which she gave no outward
intimations.
I started off this morning in that mood of pagan forgetfulness of the sightless powers of the air which sometimes seizes
me. It must be a mood in which I have passed another life and
is probably temperamental, for it is the state of being that
most comports with joy and love for me. But the astral influences under which I move, and have always moved in this
life, will not permit it to me, and crash their terrible thunder
about me whenever I forget them. So a day into which I
passed with childish and oblivious gayety changed into one of
blind and uncomprehended darkness.
In his earliest letter to her,* Will Moody himself wrote
concerning that subtle apartness from things transitory
which outwardly seemed often to immerse her: 'I only
know your mind and character stand out before me as if
disengaged from the illusions and interruptions of this
world.' And again *: 'I always follow the movement of
your nature with the conviction that whatever else in the
world be illusory or negligible, this at least is very truth
and not to be passed by.'
That 'disengagement from illusions,' that 'very truth'
of her pervades all these letters increasingly throughout
the years as an unworded but sensed reality between their
lines. Although between letter and letter the actual text
of her responses is here lacking, their instigating charm
is none the less felt by the reader, who has intuitively
grown into agreement with Moody's own tributes before
reading them in these two passages *:
Several more letters came today, each one a poem of life.
You quarrel with me for not answering your letters, but to
answer these would be like 'talking back' to sunlight and
brook water.
[8 ]




HARRIET: 'DISENGAGED FROM ILLUSIONS '


Your letters about A- constitute a little masterpiece.
They convince me anew that unless you turn your gifts of expression to some overt use, the world will be the poorer by one
great and delightful talent.
'Delicately walking in most pellucid air,' a phrase of
hers re-echoed by Will through these letters, is a lovely
instance of her blending 'sunlight and brook water' in
effortless expression.
Harriet's own style, indeed, in its swift capture of word
and image to release and interpret her poetic feeling for
life, though less structural than Will's, was as well mated
with his as her mind and heart were. But it was native
to air, not to ink. Sprung from the French Huguenot
heritage of her mother, Harriet Converse, her style took
wing in her conversation with a Gallic ease that - artless but sure, and 'like a slanted gull for motion' - dipped,
careened, floated or gracilely poised, but never floundered
above those 'gulfs of meaning' which Will himself has
imaged atavistically from his own Dutch-English pauses
of reticence on frail footpath-spannings of the infinite -
in this note to her *:
If you and I could ever say Good morning in such a manner
as to really express our meaning, we should go straight on to
glory, towing the astonished universe after us. - 'Is it not
so?' 'Good morning,' - 'Goodnight,' - 'I am happy,''Did you rest well?' -- 'Is it becoming?' - over what gulfs of
meaning we walk on these little bridges, what loads of cosmic
matters we lift and swing into place with these frail levers! I
wish you would make a poem about it
He himself made a poem of it in those words, as doubtless she answered it by another fresh idyll. Back and forth
from roiling metropolis to metropolis their untainted
[91




INTRODUCTION


spirits flew to each other, east and west. A few days
later,' anticipating her coming, he wrote again:
The shop-girls who pass me in the street have heard of it and
offer me their mute congratulations. The newsboys refrain
good-humoredly from offering me their wares, knowing that I
have the only news in the world worth attention. The waiters
as by conspiracy serve me with exquisiteness and unction,
perceiving that I am one of the favored of the earth. For in a
week, or maybe less, you will be here. It would be too good to
be true, if it were not, according to the happier formula, quite
too good not to be true.
But for lack of her personal presence there was compensation at least in the arrival of her' counterpart presentment' as this passage * from one of his letters the following spring illumines:
The little portrait * came yesterday and has made a radiance
in my room ever since. The likeness is not perfect but there is
enough of you in it to make it infinitely precious. I wish you
had sent the old Florentine frame; it will be difficult to find
anything quaint or naive enough to go with it. The hair is a
thing to dream of, and the eyes and all the upper part of the
face - a luscious heritage.
Amid the changing horizons of America, Europe and
Atlantic Ocean, where the starry 'creatures' of constellations were to be his 'tremendous comfort in the summer
nights' these further passages express his profound comradeship with Harriet in varied phases.
Boston; Nov. 25, I901. Out of this, as out of everything
great and generous, my heart turned to you, saying 'See!' or
rather, saying nothing, but looking for the soul's intelligencer,
the speaking light of your eye understanding in secret.
Boston; Dec. 27, I901. Your pictures are a great support to
x Sept. 30, 1904. Cf. Note under 'Acknowledgments' at back.
[ Io]




HARRIET: 'DISENGAGED FROM ILLUSIONS'


me. They remind me that, as Keats said, 'Life is the Valley of
Soul-making.'
En voyage; April 28, I 902. Do you remember? - The
Northern Crown; Arcturus, largest star in Bo6tes; Castor and
Pollux; and Berenice's Hair - the lovely cluster, or rather
tangle, or rather mist of tiny stars at the right and even with
the Great Bear, distant about thirty degrees. These creatures
are going to be a tremendous comfort and delight to me in the
summer nights, and if you pick them out and look at them
nightly, that will be a kind of language between us - a kind
of cosmic- telegraphy.
Athens; May i6, i902. I plucked a handful of poppies for
you yesterday on the slope of Hymettus. Did you get them?.-The many great things I have learned and have to learn
from you, dear.... In four or five hours this mighty moon will
be hanging over your dear head - alas, I fear with unhandsome thrift of silver.... Let us look about us again and yet
again for a way. Meanwhile, of course, you contrive to live
both lives and to send me pussy-willows. The little woolly
rascals kept quite fresh - I mean, quite woolly - and made
me homesick for the American spring, with its myriad life and
stir, in this untenanted majesty of bare mountain and reverberating light on forsaken fanes.
Athens; May 2o, i902. Your words, whatever they are,
never fail to quicken and strengthen me toward the life which
is for both of us the only reality in a world of phantoms coming and going - beautiful and terrible and in their order dear,
but still phantoms.
Athens; May 29, i9Q2. I perceive that it is impossible for
one spirit to glorify another unduly, in descrying and asseverating its nobility, which now we see as in a glass darkly, but
then face to face. 'Who that has ever heard a strain of music,'
said Thoreau, 'willspeak of exaggeration any more ever after?' If
you have caught through me a strain of the eternal music, it is
well. I had meant to scold you for idealizing me, and this is
what it has come to.
[ II ]




INTRODUCTION


New York; Nov. 17, 1903. I enjoyed a meditative and delighted grin over your absurd effectiveness, thus again
signalized.
New York; Sept. 8, 1904. I am glad, for a time, not to be a
disturbing influence, so precious to me is the clear stream of
your individuality, with its eddies of bright whim and its
wave-crests of flashing contradiction... a life-friend, a spirit so
large, and radiant and fruitful, so tender and swift to respond
along all the far-flung lines of our communicating natures.
New York; Jan. 2I, I9oS. I am dreadfully alone without my
gay and disquieting and ever incalculable companion upon
whose shifting moods I have learned to build from hour to hour
my house of life.
Florence; May I, 1907. The total inability to 'see out' of a
mood of discouragement, to remember, to discount, to strike a
rational balance, is one of the most amazing and awful things
in life. It is the suggestress of suicide and the mother of dead
dogs. It lies at the root of all our pitiful bungling and waste
with regard to the issues of our lives. You will know what I
mean by this... you will understand, and understand, and
understand, above pity or forgiveness or regret. You will do
this and you are the only woman on earth who could.
Things merely factual seem hardly of substance to cling
to Harriet's remembrance, yet for their bearing upon
facts of Will Moody's life and his after-memory, I have
recorded some such data concerning her in the Conclusion
and in the Notes at the back.
In his words before quoted, Schevill says: 'Will and
Harriet met occasionally before the year 900o, but developed no particular intimacy.' Will, however, writes in
his poem concerning their 'sacred day' of her accident:
'We had been sweet friends long before.'
Elsewhere he has painted with 'rich and liberal' strokes
[ 2 ]




THE POET'S MIND


such a motion-color portraiture of her, companioning him
on horse-back,* in his poem, A Prairie Ride'When league on league between ripe fields of corn,
Galloping neck and neck, or loitering hand in hand,
We rode across the prairie land
Where I was born '
that, though anonymous, the on-rushing rhythmic lines
declare aloud for all that have known her undaunted self
the withholden name of Harriet, where he portrays her
'Like a slanted gull for motion
And the blown corn like an ocean
For its billows and their rumor and the
tassels snapping free
As whittled foam and brine-scud of the sea-'
or, at pause, where
'On the proud fields and on her proud bent head
The sunlight like a covenant did fall;
Then with a gesture rich and liberal
She raised her hands with laughter to the sun, -
And it was done,
Never in life or death to be gainsaid!'
IV. WILL: REVELATIONS OF THE POET'S MIND
Of Will Moody himself these letters disclose on every
page their own varied revelations of the poet's mind, in
his innate mysticism, moral passion, sensitivity to moods
of wild nature and to human friendship; his heights of
droll humor and Dantesque gulfs of depression; his adora.
tion for 'winged words' and his meticulous choice of them;
his keen five senses aura'd by a sixth of divination; his
Old Testament seerdom; his fresh skill in painting and
worship of noble music; his studious addiction to religious
experience, Christian and pagan, especially the ancient
[ 3 -1




INTRODUCTION


Greek, with excursions into the primitive, Indian and
/ negro; his inward revolts against the academic, while still
clutching Laoko6n coils,. combined strangely with outward
stolidity; his faun-like love of beauty in women and in
/art; his sturdy athletism and fecund scholarship; his
whimsical courtesy to children and playful badinage; his
slothful shyness; his yearning life-search for a home-farm,
brotherly companionship with dogs and horses and tramps;
his selfless consecration to poetry - wondering devotion
to the theatre - unselfish passion for his country, America; his loving honesty toward all his fellow beings. These
brief excerpts express a few instances of such qualities:
Colorado; Aug. 27, 1901. I wish I could give you a conception of these mountain meadows ten or eleven thousand feet
high, set in a cirque of desolate grandeur, flower-starred floors
of richest, softest green, rivulet-enlaced and aspen-fringed,
swept by silver skirts of rain which the sun chases and glorifies.
They are the poetry of these mountains, not to be known save
of him whose strenuous right elbow can buckle a mule-pack in
place.
One tremendous afternoon we had two on the summit of
the divide, with a world of peaks in circle, far as the eye
could reach - an awful Senate. We crawled down the side
of the thing before sunset, with the frost beginning to settle
lightly on the rocks, and camped by a little cold green lake
which was held like a cup on a shelf of granite a thousand
feet high, that again rested on another and another, a stair.
way to make the brain faint as it felt down it for a resting place.
Andritzena; June 12, I902. When man is at rest over the
face of the earth, it is then that the earth spirit seems most
passionately awake and intent upon its own business.
New York; Feb. 4, 1904. The excellent balanced play of the
heart, mind and imagination together, without which there
is no sufficing art.
[ 4]




WORKS AND BIOGRAPHERS


New York; Nov. 8, 1904. This is election day. Portentous
issues for each of us, for the country and the world, are being
decided by that silent snow of white ballots, falling by millions
and millions all over the land. My imagination is strangely
possessed.... Our different destiny may be greater, but the
America that we have known and passionately believed in,
will be no more.
Florence; May I, I907. Yesterday, burst upon us a day of
glorious brightness, of lustre altogether unworldly.... As I
was walking along the street thinking of nothing but the good
feel of the sun and the good taste of the air, suddenly something clicked inside my head, a kaleidoscopic down-rush and
up-thrust and over-tumble of broken pictures and halfthoughts passed before my mind, whirled a minute, settled
into place, and behold! there was the third part of my trilogy.
For an hour, or a quarter of a second, or however long it
lasted, it was as plain as print and as perfect as the atomic
structure of a jewel. This morning it is dim and disjointed
again, but that does not much discourage me, for I have seen
it once, and I shall see it again.
Concerning now certain stages and personal associations of Moody's career it is needful to supply some factual
records as background.
V. PUBLISHED WORKS AND BIOGRAPHERS
A detailed chronological list of seven volumes by Moody
and one play-anthology including his The Great Divide, issued by the present publishers (I90-I1935), is printed at
the front of this book. Only one earlier volume, his earliest, The Masque of 7udgment, was issued by another
publisher (Small Maynard: Boston; 900o), later included
in his collected Poems and Poetic Dramas (Houghton
Mifflin; 1912).
Of his scholarly prose works, his Life of Milton is pub[ Is I




INTRODUCTION


lished as an Introduction to 'The Complete Poetical
Works of John Milton' (Houghton Mifflin; 1899, 1924).
Signed only with the initials, W. V. M., and practically
lost there, it eminently deserves to be reissued as a book
by itself, for its nobly eloquent discernment of one Miltonic mind by another.
The editorships of the volumes published since his death
have sprung from a few profound friendships of his lifetime, expressed - through their Introductions - in the
sensitive scholarship of John M. Manly, the artist insight
of Daniel Gregory Mason, the finely perceptive correlation-power of Robert Morss Lovett,* and the present commentaries by myself. Those Introductions by Manly,
Mason and Lovett contain facts and viewpoints invaluable
to an all-round estimate of Moody and his works, and to
those I refer the reader, as their substance is not duplicated
here.
One recent important volume, concerned with his life
and total creative output, is William Vaughn Moody; A
Study, by David D. Henry (Boston, Bruce Humphries,
1934)- a book which dispenses with any need of presenting here a digest of its large scope. Thoroughly indexed, its 274 pages assemble exhaustively the many
sources of its theme with extraordinary diligence and
sympathy, and lay the foundations for a definitive biography of Moody.
Such final biography must await further publications.
Hopefully it may be based also upon the yet unwritten
reminiscences of Ridgely Torrence and Ferdinand Schevill,,
whose intimate companionship with the poet in high adventures abroad and at home are hinted, but not enlarged
on, in his letters to Harriet, and also upon such still un[ 6]




PERIODS OF LIFE AND WORK


published letters (to Josephine Preston Peabody, E. A.
Robinson, Torrence, MacKaye, Schevill, Lovett and other
friends) as were not included in Professor Mason's slender
collection * as well as upon the letters and memorabilia of
Moody's family, especially the yet unpublished volumes *
compiled during many years with affectionate zeal by his
sister, Julia Moody Schmalz, comprising data about the
poet's ancestry and early life, together with critical essays
on his works, nowhere else collected.
VI. THREE PERIODS OF LIFE AND WORK
Exclusive of his five sojourns abroad in Europe and
England (1892-I893, 1894, 1902, 1907, 1909), Moody's life
in America falls naturally into three periods: his childhood
and youth, largely in the Middle West (1869-I889); his
academic years, at Cambridge and Chicago (I889-I902);
and his unshackled, ripening years (I902-I9Io), in the
main devoted creatively to the drama, in New York and
Cornish, N.H. (interrupted by four trips -  90o, I904,
1906, 1909 - into the Far West).
Concerning the earliest of these western American trips,
Hamlin Garland has written me:
I put into my Companions on the Trail (Chapter Six) a short
account of my trip with Moody in I9go, but I can add some
details. The whole expedition began with a dinner table
meeting, a year or two before, when he said to me: 'I want you
to introduce me to the Rockies. Any time you wire me, I will
come.'
He came, and his delight amounted to ecstasy as we topped
the divide more than I3000 feet above the sea, and saw before
us range after range of other peaks nearly as high. He rode
most of the way with his soft hat rolled and tied to his saddle,
his face uplifted to the sun. I knew that his brain was boiling
[ 7 1




INTRODUCTION


with new imagery. How much this ride had to do with The
Great Divide I do not presume to say.
He was in Colorado Springs, a guest of the Ehrichs (Walter
and Alma), when some news came from Harriet and he left so
precipitantly for Chicago that he forgot to take his favorite
pipe and a number of other belongings.
Moody's letters, of August I9 and 29, 190o, to Harriet
enlarge and clarify these allusions of Garland to 'topping
the divide' and to Colorado Springs.*
Concerning the second western trip, Ferdinand Schevill
records for this Introduction:
Early in April of 1904, Will and I went to Arizona together.
We made the trip across the desert on horseback and stayed
for several weeks among the Hopis, chiefly at Oraibi and
Walpi. Will often declared that this desert trip was the perfect complement to his journey with boy and mule through
the mountains of Peloponnesus. He was deeply struck, too,
by the inner relationship between the dances and religious
ceremonies we shared together and the spirit which gave birth
to the Greek tragedy. However, the literary outcome of this
invasion of our west was not another poem like The FireBringer but the prose drama which he called A Sabine
Woman, later renamed The Great Divide.
Moody's letters from Greece,* June 9, I902 ('I and the
mule-boy left Sparta in bright starlight') to June I8, 1902,
and from Arizona, March 31, 1902, to May I, 1902 (especially April 4th) round out eloquently these references of
Prof. Schevill.*
The first period of Moody's life awaits its full documentation from the memorabilia of his ancestry,* childhood
and early youth, before mentioned.
The second period, as we have seen, has been almost
fully recorded by the memorials of his university friends,
[ I8 ]




PERIODS OF LIFE AND WORK


Manly, Mason and Lovett, whose writings have naturally
given special emphasis to those young-manhood, 'Harvardian' and Chicago University years, which have thus
far tended to impress the public with an academic connotation of Moody, the poet, which Moody, the man, in his
later years, was almost exasperatedly eager to throw off.
The third period receives now, for the first time, its
long-overdue emphasis in these letters, which commence
when the poet was just beginning to throw off his scholastic
'shackles' in real earnest.
With this third period my own intimacy with Moody is
associated both in gala companionship and in fellow-workmanship for the theatre. In the second period, during two
college years (I893-1895), though we were not yet personally acquainted, he and I may often have brushed elbows
along Harvard paths,* for I was then in my Freshman and
Sophomore years when he was a graduate student and then
a graduate-instructor at Cambridge. Anonymously then
he may have corrected some of my themes written for an
English course, attended by me, in which he was assisting
his friend, Prof. Lewis Gates, with whom he travelled in
Europe, during summer vacation. At Harvard also we had
mutual associations with Sanders Theatre and The Harvard
Monthly.
In June of 1893, at Sanders Theatre, on graduation,
Moody delivered his Ode, as Class Poet. In June of 1897,
at Sanders Theatre, on graduation, I delivered my Commencement Part address,* On the Need of Imagination in
the Drama of Today.
In view of our then-future hopes and works in common
for a 'Poets' Theatre' in New York's metropolis, those
Sanders Theatre dates have their pertinence, for when we
[ 19]




INTRODUCTION


were at Harvard, college courses in the modern drama or
theatre were still undreamed of, and Prof. George Pierce
Baker was then teaching 'Argumentation,' as the only prophetic forerunner of his '47 Workshop,' nearly a decade
afterward.
Of The Harvard Monthly as an undergraduate, Moody
was an editor. Concerning that period Norman Hapgood
has written me recently this valuable comment of his own:
The mail for The Harvard Monthly used to come to the
Editor-in-Chief, and in the first half of 1889-90 I was editorin-chief. One day I opened a contribution. It was six lines in
verse, summarizing a poem by Uhland. In my memory they
ran thus:
One touched the hair where yet the soft light played,
And said, 'I should have loved her, had she stayed.'
One turned with passionate sobbing to the wall,
'So long to love, and this the end of all.'
One stooped, and kissed the pale lips with a smile,
'Patience, dear love, 'tis only for a while.'
Greatly excited, I felt a poet had come to Harvard, although up to then I had not seen the name of William V.
Moody. There were these two rules on the Monthly- (i)
No Freshman was to be elected to the board. - (2) Nobody
was to be elected until three contributions had been accepted
for publication.
When I read the little poem at the next meeting the editors
agreed that, in spite of rules, Moody we must have. We abrogated the rule about Freshmen, and I was authorized to call on
Moody and take any other two poems I pleased. They did not
use the words, 'take them out of the waste-basket,' but that
came near to being the meaning. One at least of the editors
had heard of him, through seeing a contribution in the Advocate, and this increased our determination, for we felt that for
[20]




PERIODS OF LIFE AND WORK


anybody worthy of the Monthly to be on the Advocate would
be a sin against literature. - Moody was shy, almost silent,
when I visited his room (rather far down Cambridge street, as
I recall), but he gave me two poems that also were above our
average standard.
The friendship that developed between him and me was
essentially literary and intellectual, rather than temperamental. We took numberless long walks together in the outskirts of Cambridge, spent one summer abroad together, and
for years did not meet, then picked up the friendship again in
New York, and had our last meeting in a walk in Central
Park, where I felt I was breaking further through his shyness
than ever before. - On the trip abroad he was the most earnest of our party of four, wishing to see every beauty, every
spot of historic suggestion, every masterpiece in every gallery.
Of the Harvard Monthly, as a ten-year graduate, I was
elected an honorary member, in 1907. At the time, in the
Harvard Graduates' Magazine (April, I907), an article entitled Recent Harvard Graduates as Men of Letters, by
J. M. Groton, was illustrated by Portraits of Wm. Vaughn
Moody, '93, and Percy MacKaye, '97- Other Harvard
publications indicative of our association as poets and
dramatists are the following: December, 1908 - Harvard
Poets, by William Roscoe Thayer (with portraits of Woodberry, Santayana, Moody, MacKaye), in Harvard Graduates' Magazine. June, 1909 - A Group of Harvard Dramatists, by G. P. Baker (with portraits of Moody, '93, MacKaye, '97, Allan Davis, '03, and Edward Sheldon, 'o8), in
Harvard Graduates' Magazine. April, 1911 - a special
'Harvard Dramatists Number' of the Harvard Monthly.
In I907-I908, at the Sorbonne, Paris, G. P. Baker, as exchange professor, lectured on the American theatre poets,
Moody, J. Peabody, and P. M-K.


[ 21 ]




INTRODUCTION


VII. THIRD PERIOD: AMERICA'S FIRST GROUP
OF THEATRE POETS
Our Harvard days, however, lay seemingly ages behind
us when, in 1904, Moody and I first met face to face in
New York City. There, almost literally hand in hand with
two other poets of that turbulent 'town down the river' -
Edwin Arlington Robinson and Ridgely Torrence - we
plunged into a poets' onset upon the theatre which, both
in its successes and failures, was to influence the afterdevelopment of poetry and drama in America. Another
poet-friend of us all, Josephine Preston Peabody, joining
us at times from Cambridge, made us a phalanx of five.
The annals of that onset have never been written, and
only two of us are now living who could write them from
the knowledge of creative participation- Torrence and
myself. Fully to do so would fill a volume in itself. But
here at least some epitome is needful for the right comprehension of that large portion of these letters concerned
with Moody's championship of the common aims of 'our
little group' (as he himself called it), three of whose
names were first publicly conjoined in these initials of my
Dedication to my first book of collected Poems (Macmil
lan, 1909), as follows:
To W. V. M. - E. A. R. and R. T. - In Fellowship.
An earlier but unpublic conjoining of our names is still
engraved in silver on a loving-cup - presented by us four
to the fifth, Josephine Peabody, on her wedding in Cambridge (June 2I, I906) to Prof. Lionel Marks - inscribed
with a Greek verse of Theocritus, reading in translation:
May there always be concord in the house of the Muses.
Cf. his letter of Oct. i6, 1907.
[22]




GROUP OF THEATRE POETS


Dissimilar though we were in our ways and work, we all
shared in that American heritage of 'pioneers' which Walt
Whitman was first to hymn in poetry - the unstinted zest
of 'comrades.' These brief excerpts of letters, written to
me by the other four, may serve to give hint of that instigating group-comradeship.
From Robinson, in 1907 (April): Thank you very much for
your letter to Frohman. I left the Van Zorn Ms. at the theatre
with your note. Nous verrons, I wish you were here to digest
the scenario of The Porcupine. It ends 'in two keys' like R.
Strauss's Zarathustra. (July): I have just finished the first
draft of The Porcupine.... Have you heard anything from
Moody?... Torrence is in Xenia, fat and hearty since his trip
abroad (with Moody).... What you say about Van Zorn is so
sensible that I shall think no more about it until Mr. Fiske
puts in an appearance. Meantime is there any reason why I
should not send the same product to His Majesty's Theatre,
London?... Don't think from this that I take myself too
seriously - or that my handwriting is worse than your own.
From Josephine Peabody (April, I905): Tell me of things
dramatic and poetic, and what you are doing, and what I
ought to be doing, and what hope - or fear - there is for all of
us who are growing pale and thin watching for signs of American drama.... (Feb., I914): You can't think how sweet to
my ears are your enthusiastic words of my Gubbio!... Glorious
to think of your play playing on to delighted thousands!
From Torrence (Oct., i908): Hurray for the continuation of
Mater! E. A. and I rejoice with you. It is our success as well
as yours, for it doesn't matter who writes what we all want
written. Have you heard from Will (Moody)? Is he coming
east?... What delightful news about your other play on the
road - after such mountainous bumps.
From Moody (Jan. II, i906): I have not had a chance to
talk with Robinson and Torrence yet, but I fancy that they
have no conflicting arrangements. For myself, I am eager to
[231




INTRODUCTION


glimpse the Cornish landscape fascinations your letter suggests, and still more eager for some walks and talks with you,
in which we may get a better mutual understanding of where
we find ourselves.... (Sept. 13, I907): I am crawling along with
the Eve play; but finished? Brass-bowelled man, have pity! It
is just barely so to say begun and before it is finished I shall
be leaner.... Delighted that the rehearsals of Sappho are going
well.... (Sept. 29, 19o8): In New York, 9th of Nov. rehearsals
of The Faith Healer begin. I have rewritten it... substantially
improved.
In 1904, Moody and I had begun to correspond by letter
when on August 5 (from 2970 Groveland Avenue, Chicago), he wrote to me:
Let me thank you very heartily for your generous words
concerning The Fire-Bringer. Such words would be very
pleasant to hear from anyone, and they are trebly so when
that one is a fellow-workman in the poetic drama. It is true
that I am heart and soul dedicated to the conviction that
modern life can be presented on the stage in the poetic mediums, and adequately presented only in that way.' If I am
anywhere near Cornish this summer, as is not improbable, it
will give me genuine pleasure to look you up. In any case you
will find me, from the first of November on, at 51 West ioth
Street, New York; and I hope you will come to see me there.
VIII. FIVE POETS' COMRADESHIP IN LYRIC ARMS
So it was at his Tenth Street Studio, the following autumn, that I first met Moody. I went there with Torrence
1 In such'poetic mediums' for the stage-expression of modern life I had also
been making experiments (afterwards published) and had written to Moody
concerning our mutual interest in them. Cf. his letter to Harriet, Feb. 6, I904: -
'I have jumped into a big piece of work.... I seem to myself to be on the point
of solving the great problem of the application of blank verse to the realistic
treatment of a modern theme in drama.' Cf. also letters Feb. Io, 15, 24, I904.
This 'big piece of work,' which he never completed, is apparently lost.
[ 24 ]




FIVE POETS' COMRADESHIP


whom, shortly before then, I had met through Edmund
Clarence Stedman at another studio, that of Augustus
Franzen, who was exhibiting there his portrait of my little
son. In the Tenth Street building I remember how Torrence and I sprang eagerly up the long, broad stairway of
the dusky hall, mounting to Moody's eyrie on the last
floor where, just before we knocked, the ever-twinkling
Torrence waved a mystic air-charm with one lithe arm,
and murmured: 'Lo, now, the Cloud-Compeller on his
topless tower!'
With that, he struck a loud, hollow clap on the doorpanel, and the wide, dark door swung inward, revealing
against sun-shafted light the firm, stocky figure of the
Cloud-Compeller himself, in ochre jacket and close-clipt,
tawny beard, peering at us - through curved, all quizzical
lashes- eyes of pure-blue quietude. From an amberstemmed pipe in one hand the lately 'compelled' clouds
were still curling upward above a smile of dawning welcome. Near by, on a large, bare table, lay some paper
sheets of manuscript. After a warm handshake, he brushed
the papers back and said, in his musical, low voice, with a
shy sort of shrug, half apology: 'Just some work I'm at -
prose, not our kind of stuff. Sit down. It's mighty good to
meet you - at last.'
He did not speak further of the manuscript, that may
perhaps have been some literary editing for school-texts
in which he was then 'working in slate like a hard-luck
miner,' * but we launched immediately upon a happy voyage of friendship toward horizons which I find myself still
seeking here; for, from that first moment, Moody and I
were drawn together by a telepathy of understanding independent of time and place which even now, after many
[25]




INTRODUCTION


years, makes me eager to construe for a new generation
some of the significances of his life and personality.
The key to his personality was kindness - his innate
capacity for deep friendship. Both as artist and man, his
loving attributes were as imaginatively keen as they were
deeply endearing to his fellows. The same meticulous conscience which made him give to his work: 'that kind of slow
intense scrutiny and testing which constitutes the really
immeasurable difference between a thing done as well as
one can do it, and a thing done almost as well' * made him
as instinctively prodigal of his own best towards those who
shared his companionship. Ridgely Torrence writes me in
a recent letter:
When I think of Moody's personal characteristics, his patience and long-suffering kindness occur first to me. As an
instance of these qualities, I recall a night we spent in a bleak
and primitive Italian hotel. It was in a fourteenth century
castle, its mediaeval discomfort in no wise relieved. About
two o'clock in the morning, as we lay sleepless from the damp,
icy agony of our thin pallets and insufficient covering, Will
suddenly rose and left the room. After a time he returned and
cast some cover on my bed. Too thankful to ask I blessed him
and soon fell asleep. When day came I discovered that he had
groped barefoot down the long flights of stone stairs to the
hall and found in the darkness one small rug which he gave me
and then lay shivering and awake till day.
The story of another midnight occurrence - his assisting a down-and-outer whose lost clothing he sedulously
rescued from various dingy pawnshops - is recorded in
one of these letters to Harriet, whose large nature * was
commensurate with his own.
In Igo4, E. A. Robinson, friend and poet-interpreter of
'poets, rogues and sick physicians,' was himself almost
[26 1




FIVE POETS' COMRADESHIP


down and out in material substance. In that year I first
met him in New York through Moody, to whom I am happily able to accredit here (for the first time publicly) three
acts of imagining friendship towards 'E. A.,' two of which
were of vital import to Robinson's after-career. All three
present Moody as Robinson's unselfish advance-agent behind the scenes. The earliest is revealed by this excerpt of
a letter from Moody to Harriet, April 14, 1902: 'Robinson's book Captain Craig, has been accepted by Houghton
Mifflin, partly at my solicitation, I am proud to say.'
At this time, Robinson was known only to a tiny public
through two slim books of poems, both published at his
own expense, while Moody had already sprung into nation-wide acclaim through his Ode in Time of Hesitation
first printed by Bliss Perry in the Atlantic Monthly, May,
900o, and included in his first collected Poems, published
by Houghton Mifflin (I901). Thus Moody's personal initiative in securing his own publishers for Captain Craig,
was critically helpful in launching the very volume which
first made E. A. known to a national audience through the
personal endorsement of the President of the United
States.* Exactly how that happened is now first revealed
through the following letter from Moody to E. A. himself,
in Boston (incidentally mentioning an 'eloping' interloper
who, just thirty years later, borrowed * twenty-five dollars
from E. A. on his death-bed). It is dated from 5I West
loth St., New York, March 31, I905.
Dear Robinson - I ought to have answered your letter long
ago, and meant to, and live in the world of reality, so here
goes for good measure. I wanted — 's address because he
had eloped with my overcoat - my only one. For three days
I planned bloody plans for getting it back; at the end of that
[ 7 1




INTRODUCTION


time I reflected that he needed it more than I did. The belated telegram doubtless thus contributed to my adoption of
a reasonable line of conduct, so it is all to the good.
It may interest you to know that you have been discovered
by the national administration. Roosevelt is said to stop
cabinet discussion to ask Hay, 'Do you know Robinson?' and
upon receiving a negative reply, to spend the rest of the session
reading Captain Craig aloud. R. W. Gilder, who told me this,
stands in with Teddy, and has promised at my suggestion to
tell him you ought to have a nice lazy berth in the consular
service in England. If this seems to you officious on my part,
write a bad name on a postcard and mail it to me, whereupon
I will call off the genial Gilder.
Do you see anything of Josephine? Write me something
about her, and about yourself. I may be drifting through
Boston before long, if you can make it sound worth while.
Yours, W. V. M.
P.S. -0, he (Gilder) won't say 'lazy' to Teddy!
Moody's 'suggestion' to Gilder led almost immediately
to Robinson's appointment by Roosevelt to a 'berth' in
the office of the special Agent of the Customs Department
in the port of New York.
A third instance of Moody's advocacy of Robinson,
equal in warmth though not in efficacy of results, is recorded in his letter to Harriet wherein he relates how he
bearded the redoubtable Charles Frohman in his den on
behalf of Robinson's play, The Porcupine.
Before I knew it, I was pouring out my heart to him on
what our little group dreamed of trying to do by way of
crusade.... Before I left, he promised to read E. A.'s play at
once, and bade me tell the other crusaders (I mentioned Percy
and Ridgely, too) that whenever they wanted tickets to any of
x Oct. 16, I907.
[ 28]




POETRY BESIEGES BROADWAY


his theatres they were to be had for the asking.... I swore the
daylight black and blue cracking up The Porcupine.
These anecdotes suggest the endearing personality of
Moody in relation to our little group of poets then be.
leaguering the theatre under the aegis of Parnassus.
IX. THE ONSET: POETRY BESIEGES BROADWAY
'Parnassus is no place for a poet to slip!' Moody once
said to me laughingly. Though he told me then of his
accident in Greece,* not till thirty years afterward was I
to read the following words of his to Harriet, written from
Greece, May 28, i902:
Here I am in Athens again, laid up a few days for repairs.
Coming down Parnassus I slipped and strained my hip-joint,
and two days hard walking and riding have irritated it so that
it seems wise to give it a complete rest for a little while....
(June I) -My lame leg is so far restored that I expect to leave,tomorrow for the Peloponnesus.
The import of the above few lines was more ominous
than Moody could then have imagined, for they were
latent with his own death eight years later. Strangely
intuitive, however, far away in Chicago, Harriet was then
writing him words of foreboding whose echo we catch in
these words of his from Paris, July 23, gently remonstrating her 'troubled and troubling pages,' forwarded from
Athens:
I know of nothing in my history which could have affected
your mood disastrously.... You know from my letters that
these were among the greatest days which have ever been
handed down out of Heaven to me.... My accident worried
me a little... a day or two of illness - too light to mention.
I should have known, and helped somehow... your loneliness,
[ 29 1




INTRODUCTION


which touches me more being wholly past than if I had known
of it without delay. I suppose it is because the past is so majestically isolated and fixed apart from any help... it wears
something of the lonely pride which is the feature of all others
that breaks our spirit as we look on the face of the dead.
That slip on Parnassus in 1902 led to a New York Hospital operation in 1905, which then promised complete
recovery, but - aggravated by typhoid and intensified by
his battling endeavors against cruelly adverse conditions
of the theatre to save the integrity of his second play's
production - eventuated in his mortal illness, as recounted further in these commentaries. Thus strangely
two physical missteps affected the destiny of both Will and
Harriet. Will's led to his death; Harriet's to her marriage
with Will. ' Cloud-treaders, both, on the rim of the world'
- Ridgely Torrence has called them.
In her Arts and Letters, America has had her own Trojan Wars, and in the battles of Broadway many an 'unknown soldier' has fallen unrecorded; but of one illustrious
casualty - Moody, the Parnassan - the reasons for his
untimely fall are shadowed forth through the aims and
personnel of that small phalanx of his fellow poets with
whom he was fighting creatively in a common cause. Adequately to portray that historic clash, with its elan of
ardors, hopes, works and endurances, would require a
larger canvas than this Introduction; but here sketchily
I must try my hand, because it still feels the good pressure of Will Moody's.
In 1904 we were all emerging from our apprenticeships.
Our literary catapults in our siege of the theatre were our
plays, both verse and prose. Though our college days *
had influenced our early work, we had put them behind us,
[30




POETRY BESIEGES BROADWAY


out of mind. At the time of my first meeting with Moody
(Harvard, '93) he was thirty-five, six months older than
Robinson (at Harvard, I891-93), while Josephine Peabody 7,
(at Radcliffe, 1894-96) was thirty, Torrence (Princeton, l!
'97) thirty, and I (Harvard, '97) twenty-nine.    C,
Josephine, about 902o, I had met at Boston through
E. H. Sothern, who was then interested in her first two
verse-plays, Fortune and Men's Eyes (900o), and Marlowe
(I901), though he did not produce them. Her charming
play, The Piper ( 909), was first refused as 'too beautiful'
for the famed New Theatre by its director, Winthrop
Ames, who as soon as The Piper had been acted at Shakespeare's birthplace and received there the Stratford-onAvon prize (I9Io), promptly cabled to England for the
American rights and produced it with great success at the
New Theatre and on the road (I9II).
Beginning with our group-onset, Robinson put aside all
his poetry for several years * working incessantly at two
plays, Van Zorn (first entitled Ferguson's Ivory Tower) and
The Porcupine (both afterwards published), only one of
which, Van Zorn, was produced years later by Henry
Stillman, with Wright Kramer as Van Zorn, for a week's
run at the Brooklyn Y.M.C.A., Feb. 26, I9I7.
Torrence won his early literary recognition by his two
verse-plays, Eldorado (1903), and Abelarde and Heloise
(1907). His admirable prose play, The Madstone - sprung
imaginatively from his native soil, Ohio - was then announced for production by the famous Russian actress,
Nazimova, but not till after Moody's death were to appear
his still-unequalled negro plays, Granny Maumee and The
Rider of Dreams, notably produced in New York, witl
settings by Robert Edmond Jones (19i7).
[31




INTRODUCTION


When I first met Moody, I had published only one play,
The Canterbury Pilgrims (Macmillan, 1903), a commission
from Sothern, who had been interested in my earlier play,
A Garland to Sylvia (begun at Harvard, 1897, but not published until go19), which had enlisted an enthusiastic twocolumn review in the New York Commercial Advertiser
(Nov. 30, I90I), from Norman Hapgood, then dramatic
critic of that journal. Having received a second play-commission from Sothern (Fenris, the Wolf), I fled in I904
from New York City to Cornish, in the New Hampshire
hills, my home ever since then. Other early plays of mine
and theatre books are listed in the footnote.'
To these group activities in the drama (all, of course,
individually conceived and executed), Moody contributed
his early masques in verse, The Masque of Judgment (1900)
and The Fire-Bringer (1904), and his two plays in prose,
The Great Divide (1906) and The Faith-Healer (g908).
Here, then, was a nucleus of dramatic literature, ready
for and in part availed by the stage, toward which further
works for a valid Poets' Theatre in America might then
very possibly have been contributed by other American
poets, except in large measure for the critical occurrence of
two commercial failures on the part of plays by Moody
and myself, which turned the managerial interest in our
movement into different channels.: By P. M-K. -published plays: The Canterbury Pilgrims, I903; Fenris, the
Wolf, 1905; Jeanne d'Arc (1906); Sappho and Phaon, 1907; Mater, I908; The
Scarecrow (written 1903), I908; Anti-Matrimony, I9Io; A Garland to Sylvia
(written i897), I9Io; Tomorrow, I912; Yankee Fantasies (5 one-act plays, written
190o-o6), I9I2; The Playhouse and the Play, Essays and Public Addresses, I909;
The Civic Theatre, in Relation to the Redemption of Leisure, I9I2.


[32 1




POTENTIAL REINFORCEMENTS


X. POTENTIAL SCOPE OF NATIONAL
REINFORCEMENTS
Among poets outlying our group, at varying spacial
distances, were notably four-Olive Tilford Dargan;
Vachel Lindsay and Robert Frost (then both unknown);
and Edgar Lee Masters.
Living then in New York, Olive Dargan* published
through Scribner's Semiramis, and Other Plays (I904),
Lords and Lovers, and Other Dramas' ( 906), and The Mortal Gods, and Other Dramas (I9I2), a dozen of her collected
plays in verse and prose which won for her richly imaginative gifts the highest literary acclaim from Stedman,*
Brownell and other critics of America and England. For
one of her plays, The Poet, dealing with Edgar Allen Poe, I
had myself secured an imminent production by Sothern,
when my professional difficulties with Julia Marlowe, alluded to by Moody in his letters, in part resulted at the
time in deflecting her brilliant talents for our stage to
other channels of lyric and novel.
Living also in New York, unacquainted as yet with any
of our group, Vachel Lindsay was even then discouragedly
peddling his artist wares to magazines until Torrence, as
managing editor of The Critic, first detected his qualities
as poet in some verses, appended to some drawings of his,
which Torrence published in The Critic * - nine years before the appearance of Lindsay's General William Booth
Enters Heaven in Harriet Monroe's magazine, Poetry,
I First published in Lords and Lovers, Olive Dargan's play of the Russian
Revolution of I905, The Shepherd, was the first play produced by Alice and
Irene Lewisohn at the Neighborhood Playhouse, New York City, where (directed by Mrs. Sarah Cowell Le Moine) its extraordinary success launched, in
1911, the long career of that significant theatre organization.
[331




INTRODUCTION


which began its career two years after the death of Moody.*
But for the Great War,* which soon after shattered that
earlier cycle, Lindsay's unique genius would have helped
to carry our theatre onset beyond Moody's casualty, as I
know personally, for I interested him in certain danceforms of chanted poetry for a new kind of theatre-ballet
and drama, related to Gordon Craig's art,* for which I had
made experiments with Isadora Duncan, and we were
planning to stage together a dance-poem developed from
the strange caesuras of his own chant: 'Down cellar...
said the cricket.'
Robert Frost was six years younger than Moody, his
first book appearing twelve years after Moody's first book
and three years after Moody's death. During the first
decade, Frost was farming and teaching school in the New
Hampshire hills, remote from all theatres and unknown to
our group. Still unrecognized in his own land, his deeply
indigenous gifts were to be first acclaimed abroad, in England. He is labeled always poet, never dramatist; but
long ago I read plays of his in manuscript (still unpublished) which showed his rich potentiality as a native
dramatist.
Not till seven years after Moody's death was Amy Lowell to launch in I917 her 'new' school of imagists through
her critical volume, Tendencies in Modern iAmerican
Poetry, which holds no reference whatever to the theatre
work of her poet contemporaries, or to their potential
tendencies as dramatists.
To help clarify this background of poetry and drama in
respect to the chronology and correlation of its creative
factors, the poets themselves, I have tabulated the following chart, in which the five italized names indicate the
[34]




POTENTIAL REINFORCEMENTS


New York dramatic group, among whom Moody was the
eldest.
TEN AMERICAN POETS BORN IN ONE DECADE
Year of                                        at date of first
Birth      Name        Birthday   Birthplace  at   e of
I869   W. V. Moody    July 8     Indiana       31   1900
1869   E. L. Masters  Aug. 23    Kansas        33   1902
1869   E. A. Robinson  Dec. 22   Maine         33   1902
1874   Amy Lowell     Feb. 9     Mass.         38   I912
1874   7. P. Peabody  May 30     N. Y. City   26    1900oo
x874   Ridgely Torrence  Nov. 22  Ohio         29   1903
1875   Percy MacKaye  March i6   N. Y. City   28    I903
I875   Robert Frost   March 26   San Francisco  38  I913
1879   Olive Dargan   Jan. o1    Kentucky      25   1904
I879   Vachel Lindsay  Nov. 0o  Illinois       34   1913
These horizon vistas * are needful in glimpsing also the
first decade works of Edgar Lee Masters,* who was then
brunting courageously the sparse conditions of his life in
Chicago. Referring to that time Masters himself has
written me for this Introduction:
I was living in Chicago during the years that Moody was a
teacher and lecturer at the University of Chicago. But he was
away a good deal. In I902 he went to Greece and by 1903 he
was lecturing in Chicago only one quarter of the year. At the
same time I was deeply immersed in the practice of law and
had scarcely any literary associations, though I was reading in
poetry and philosophy, and cherishing the ambition of writing
poetry when I had accumulated a competence at the law.
With all things put together I did not meet Moody. I read his
verse as it appeared; I saw his play A Sabine Woman when
it was produced at Powers theatre in I906. We were similarly
influenced by the times and the events of those days. He
wrote his Ode in Time of Hesitation at about the time that I
[351




INTRODUCTION


wrote my Tyrtaean verses against our conquest of the Philippines,* gathered up at last and published in I9o5 in a book
entitled The Blood of the Prophets, under the pseudonym of
Dexter Wallace. I was then leading an anonymous life as a
writer in order not to harm my business as a lawyer.
In Igoo, I wrote a play in verse entitled Maximilian, by
way of scoring our imperial adventure, then being carried on
by Theodore Roosevelt, Albert J. Beveridge, John C. Spooner,
and the trusts. Maximilian was published in Boston in 1902
with myself boldly announced as the author. I had hopes of
that drama, but though it was well spoken of in reviews it had
no stage bidders. One day in Chicago, Donald Robertson told
me that Moody had spoken enthusiastically of my Maximilian.
I was greatly delighted to win praise from a source as high as
his.
After I915, I met Mrs. Moody and was frequently at her
charming house in Groveland Avenue, where I saw Moody's
paintings, and heard much from her about him. In many
ways he was the most imaginative and creative talent of those
born in America in the last third of the nineteenth century. If
he had lived and retained his strength he would have deepened
and enriched the art which he was developing to handle the
Promethean myth. As the record stands, his best work will
always attract discerning lovers of the art of poetry.
Could Masters' fecund genius have joined forces then
with our eastern group, it would have advantaged greatly
the nationally representative scope of our movement.
Out of the west had come indeed one richly endowed
spirit nurtured upon her 'Amerind' landscape and lore -
Mary Austin, whose all-Indian play, The Arrow Maker,
was the only native work by an American (except The
Piper) produced by the New Theatre,* of New York, for
the dedicatory opening of which I wrote a Choral Ode,
little imagining then that the United States Federal patronage and metropolitan high finance represented there
[36]




POTENTIAL REINFORCEMENTS


by Elihu Root, Secretary of State, and by J. Pierpont
Morgan, presiding there on the stage platform, would
soon afterwards so lightly desert the permanent cause
of an endowed American institution of theatre art by
handing it back to the speculative interests of Broadway.
But Moody was more perceptive of its inhering weakness
when he wrote, three years earlier, concerning its loudly
heralded pretensions to national dignity and permanency
this passage to Harriet (Nov. I2, I90o5):
By telepathic process, New York has got wind of our
Chicago theatre project and this morning puts out a gigantic
counterpart to save its own metropolitan reputation. It appears that the ground has been secured on Central Park West,
a whole block front costing a million, and plans for the National Theatre have been drawn. Building and decorations to
cost two millions are to be raised by the sale of thirty boxstalls, at a hundred thousand dollars each, the owners to possess them in perpetuity - two nights a week to be devoted to
'Opera Comique' (not Comic Opera, thank heaven!) and the
remainder to standard drama, native and foreign - I rather
guess especiallyforeign! Conried,* the man who so successfully
built up the German theatre here and who for two years has
run the Grand Opera is to be Manager. The thing has a rank
money smell and seems built on the presumption that anything earthly or heavenly can be quickly bought for money
down, but it may get into better hands and develop into the
consummation we have been sighing for so long. But I think
our modest plan more hopeful for sound results.'
' On Nov. 20, Igo5, Moody wrote to Harriet: 'There is no time to be lost, for
our fame is spreading. The Editor of the New York Cosmopolitan told me that
some time ago he received an official communication from the Manager of the
theatre in Prague, stating that he had learned there was quite a revival of literary drama in America and asking for some specimens to be sent him. The
editor sent Miss Peabody's Marlowe, Torrence's Eldorado and my Fire-Bringer
and Hovey's Taliessen. The manager said that he expected to have at least
one of those translated into Bohemian and given this winter on the stage.
Ecco!
1371




INTRODUCTION,


With Moody himself, the valid poets of America were
then, as now, vitally potential factors for creating a Poets'
Theatre. But creative potentiality in art is nearly always
the last factor to be understood or recognized by art
patronage, as Moody implies in his comment on the 'New'
Theatre of our century's first decade.
XI. NESTOR'S 'LONG-AGO PREDICTION OF
DRAMATIC RENAISSANCE'
Very different in spirit from  that 'money down'presumption was the creatively critical spirit of Edmund
Clarence Stedman, who was then the acknowledged
Nestor of our native poetry in the New York metropolis.
To his home in Bronxville, N.Y., poets and authors from
England and America made pilgrimage. There, in I900,
Moody had despatched the first advance copy of his first
published book, The Masque of Judgment, writing him
(Oct. 30), 'Doubtless you are overwhelmed with tributes
of this questionable kind, yet I am bold enough to hope
you will read the book, even if it remains in your mind as
a symbol of grotesquely ambitious "first volumes."' In
the spring of I907, Stedman wrote to me concerning the
achievements of our group.
I am glad to have lived far enough into the twentieth century to see the rise of a young, inspired phalanx of American
poets, impelled by instinct and no less by conditions to composition in the highest of poetic forms. Our country has had a
period when poetry went more directly than now to the heart?
of the people at large, but we never have had writers who were
more absolutely poets than Moody, Mrs. Dargan and yourself,
and I think that Torrence is just on the edge of something
very fine.... (Then after favorable comment on my Sappho and
Phaon:)
[381




NESTOR'S 'LONG-AGO PREDICTION'


All the same, and much as I love the glory that was Greece
and the grandeur that was Rome, I look upon this classical
play as I looked upon Fenris the Wolf as upon some superb
gallery piece of a rising painter, after the composition of which
he has attained such mastery of his form that his proper and
predestined work becomes easy for him. To more clearly explain my meaning, let me say that while I do not consider
Moody's The Great Divide as his proper and predestined work,
it does show an adaptability to the handling of any kind of
work pertaining to his own line which he would not have possessed if he had not first composed The Masque of Judgment
and The Fire-Bringer.
In short, I have been recently impressed by two things: first,
the fulfilment of my long-ago prediction of the dramatic
quality which must attach to any renaissance of poetry.
'Wisdom is justified of her children,' and you, Moody, Torrence, Mrs. Dargan, of yourselves, form a school which I have
looked for. But second.... You will not have done your work
at all until you show some evidence in it of the spirit of a New
World.... You only show your own limitations when you profess to show yourselves unable to find American atmosphere
and themes for American dramas.... You fellows are all in
your prime and possess a dramatic market unknown in my
nineteenth century, and I don't want you to disappoint me.
Give me a chance to say nunc dimittis!
On January I5, I908, I spent a long evening with Stedman at his New York apartment where we talked of
Moody, and our dramatic group, and of our future
plans, and he recounted to me his own projected plan for
a critical volume interpreting the first decade of the twentieth century in its tendencies of the new American
poetry. The next day he died suddenly. Had he lived
six months longer, Amy Lowell's volume above mentioned
would have been nine years preceded by an authoritative
critical survey from  Stedman's pen, which would now
[391




INTRODUCTION


have rendered needless these commentaries in respect
to a period of our literature still to be recorded correctly, in which William Vaughn Moody holds his
permanent creative place in our dramatic renaissance of
poetry.
Throughout most of that period there existed as yet in
America no organized dramatic movement, no little theatre, no drama league, no university theatre, no university
course in modern drama (except one, at Harvard, just
beginning), no civic or municipal theatre, no poetry
society, no anthology or critical summation of American
poetry since Stedman's, no poetry journal, or college
course in contemporary poetry and drama. Our group
began its work without any such things existent. Our incentive was to create them, and some of us helped to attain them.
XII. A SABINE WOMAN: SHOCK OF THE FIRST
ENCOUNTER
'The theatre is my grandresource,' Will wrote to Harriet
(Oct. 29, 904), as stated at the outset of this Introduction
and here repeated; for such is the separative pigeon-hole
influence of card-catalogues in our time that poets and
dramatists are classified, studied and collected in anthologies as if they were wholly distinct species of literary
fauna - an inept trick of mechanics which, for his public fame, has already severed the unity of Moody's creative work into two worlds, mutually unknown to each
other: the lyric world of poetry and the dramatic world
of Broadway. The poet in se can never be mechanically
classified, for his spirit focuses the diverse unity of nature.
Moody was no less the lyric author of Gloucester Moors
[40]




SHOCK OF THE FIRST ENCOUNTER


because he dramatically revealed the meanings of The,
Great Divide to Broadway.
With that play indeed he began a new apprenticeship
which his untimely death cut off from full mastership.
With his growth that led up to it I was intimately in
touch. One of its earliest versions * he had read to me and
my wife, during his first visit to us at Cornish with Torrence in February, I906. It was on a long snowy evening
by lamplight, beside a roaring wood-stove in my little
studio at that time, formerly used by George de Forest
Brush. That night, we had a round-robin of each other's
plays, Moody reading aloud his play, then called A Sabine
Woman, Torrence reading his Abelarde and I my Scarecrow, all from our own manuscripts. On the way home
after midnight in our small overloaded family-sleigh, our
old roan nag stumbled in a drift, almost overturning us,
as Moody pulled a taut rein, exclaiming: 'Whoa, Bucephalus! Bury us not in the snows of Ida, or what will
become of the nurslings of American Drama?'
During that stay of his in my Cornish home, while
Moody and I were discussing his play, I suggested Margaret Anglin for the part of the heroine. Returning with
him and Torrence soon afterward to New York, I went to
see Sothern (then on tour) concerning my play, Fenris the
Wolf, completed as a commission for him just before his
co-starship * with Julia Marlowe. On that trip I told him
of my enthusiasm for Moody's play, and he asked to read
it on behalf of his wife, Virginia Harned. On Feb. 13, I906,
Moody wrote to Harriet:
I am just back from Cornish, which turned out to be a most
enchanting spot in its winter dress.... Two days ago came
word from Sothern (whom MacKaye had meanwhile seen and
[ 4I ]




INTRODUCTION


spoken to him about my play) that he wanted to see it at once,
with a view to production by his wife (Virginia Harned) who
needs a new play immediately, so have been working day and
night to get it into presentable shape and typewritten. I shall
send it to him tomorrow.
Virginia Harned, however, sent it back as too much of
'a problem play' for her use, so releasing it to be shown
to Margaret Anglin. Meanwhile Moody had sent a carbon copy to Harriet, who read it to Donald Robertson
in Chicago.
About six weeks later, I was visiting Harriet in Chicago,
where I was delivering some lectures on the theatre of the
future, during a brief theatrical engagement there of
Margaret Anglin. Moody was then in New York, just
on the point of starting with Torrence for Europe. Knowing Margaret Anglin, I joined with Donald Robertson
in urging the play upon the attention of Miss Anglin, who
on reading it was filled with instant enthusiasm which she
communicated by long-distance telephone to her associate,
Henry Miller, in New York, and arranged for an immediate try-out in Powers theatre, Chicago, before her engagement ended there, the next week. Then followed hectic
preparations in Harriet's home - telegrams to Moody,
midnight clickings of typewriters copying out the parts of
actors, and equally hectic preparations at the theatre,
where, knowing the play well, I directed the rehearsals
and attended to the printing of programmes and playbills
until Moody, having given up his trip to Europe, arrived
on the eve of the opening.
That premiere night (April 12, I906) is unforgettable.
Hastening out from the stage door at about 7.45, with a
large last-minute playbill for the outside theatre entrance,
I 42




SHOCK OF THE FIRST ENCOUNTER


I superintended its plastering-up there, watched by a garish young chap, with his derby tilted over one eye and
his best girl's arm tucked under one elbow. Cocking his
other eye at the playbill, he grunted to her:
'Say, what t'hell of a woman is a " Sabbeen Woman"?'
I still have a duplicate of that playbill in memento of
that hallucinatic night, when I sat on a left-hand orchestra
seat between Harriet and Will Moody, in a house packed
by all the notables of Chicago. After the first-act curtain's tumultuous applause, word came by an usher that
Moody was wanted in the box-office inner-sanctum and I
went with him there, to learn from the lips of the local
Shubert representative that a telegram had just come
from 'higher up' in New York, demanding that a contract be signed and sealed with the author before the end
of that performance. Together with this contract of some
two dozen legal Articles already miraculously typewritten and thrust under the author's startled gaze, was presented also a 'verbal' message purporting to be from Miss
Anglin herself then in her back-stage dressing-room, 'requesting the same'-so the lips of the local representative
icily averred. From the audience a lawyer was called into
consultation.
Then followed a fifty-five minute intermission - as awful and world-cleaving as the gap of the Grand Canyon
itself, wherein far roaring waters rise up in evanishing
mists. The distinguished audience and the critics, catching wind of a mystery, discussed it amid groups in the
foyer, sauntered back and gossiped in the aisles, sank
into seats and ever-tensening silence.
Meanwhile I played errand-boy for the desperate poet.
Further performance had been refused until he should
[43]




INTRODUCTION


sign the document. From box-office sanctum to backstage dressing-room, I conveyed his bewildered enquiries
through confused shiftings of far-western sets, amid which
the hero 'lead' took self-consolingly to drink and the
heroine star - transfixed in her orbit by the adroit local
representative's astrology - peered at me through a slit
of her dressing-room door and gasped 'Yes, yes, I must
have it!'
Receding to the front-house inner sanctum, I reported
that final dictum and listened to dulcet dronings from lips
of the local representative, whose icy bands had now
thawed in a springtide purling of 'party of the first part,
party of the second part,' while - glancing an instant at
the red sticking-seals - the poet held his closed eyes with
pressing fingertips and murmured from out his own elegy
of ancient Thammuz:
' 'Crimson stains where the rushes grow...
What is this that I must know?"
It looks like a hold-up. Hand me the pen! - Where do I
sign?'
I watched him sign.
'Curtain up!' sounded the buzzer, and Moody and I
groped back down the darkling aisle to our seats, where
whispered asides to Harriet imparted the cryptic outcome,
while the premiere of the 'Ode in Time of Hesitation'
poet's first-enacted play unrolled its greatly dividing vistas to another curtain-fall - this time, of trickling applause.
The last act, interpreted by harrowed nerves and distraught undiscipline of its lesser roles, dragged to a ghastly
finale. That after premiere midnight, as Will and Harriet
[44]




SHOCK OF THE FIRST ENCOUNTER


and I ducked our heads to enter a hackney coach at
the empty theatre's portico, I heard him murmur again:
'0, for a draught of Lethe!'
The next morning, a messenger boy rang at the door
of Harriet's home and handed in a note from Miss Anglin,
disclosing the happier sequel: It was not at all the crimson-sealed-and-signed, many-articled 'party of parts'
contract of the averring local representative which she
had said she 'must have': it was simply- an option!
In the confusion of the night before, on both sides of the
footlights it had looked like 'a hold-up.' Behind the
scenes, owing to cross-purposes, coolly fomented by the
local representative who had probably hoped thus to advance himself with those 'higher-up' in New York, Miss
Anglin had been as bewildered as the author. She was
naturally as hurt and chagrined while supposing that he
refused merely to give her a signed option on the play (to
which she had devoted her fine gifts so whole-heartedly
in producing it) as Moody, who had just arrived and had
scarcely met her, was hurt and chagrined while supposing
that she was holding the last-act's curtain of his play's
premiere until he was forced to sign a contract whose details would require some weeks of conference to consummate. I myself, as errand-bearer, had had opportunity
only to ask through a door-slit - 'Do you really want it?'
('it' meaning 'complex contract') and I had carried back
the, exasperate answer: 'Yes, yes, I must have it' ('it'
meaning 'simple option'). On that monosyllable, 'it,' had
hung all the misunderstanding, which has passed into
published chronicles.*


[ 45




INTRODUCTION


XIII. RE-ARMING IN THE HILLS: THE GREIT
DIVIDE, ROAD 'FAILURE'
In early May of I906, at New York, Moody first met
Henry Miller, who was then just joining forces as co-star
with Miss Anglin. No sooner did Miller set eyes on the
contract which Moody had signed in Chicago, than he
tore it up in wrath. 'Get your own lawyer and dictate
your own terms,' he said to Moody, and soon preparations
were harmoniously under way for an autumn production
in the east. But the playbill incident of the 'Sabbeen
Woman' title had its weight, and early that summer, at
Cornish, N.H., in the tiny sitting-room of our home,
'The Snuff-box,' Moody, my wife and I sat at a small
table where - like the game of alphabet in Jane Austen's
Emma - lay an assortment of paper slips, on which had
been written various suggested titles. These we proceeded
to pick out and discuss. On one of them, picked out by
my wife, was written The Great Divide. After that, by
acclamation the others were relegated to the waste basket.
'MacKaye is enthusiastic about the new title,' wrote
Moody to Harriet soon after that auspicious shufflegame.
Far from auspicious, however, the next autumn, were
\\ the first three weeks of The Great Divide on the road, from
\Albany to Pittsburgh. So devastating were the reviews,\and the consequent disastrous fall in box-office receipts,
that Lee Shubert himself hastened to Pittsburgh to persuade Miller and Anglin to shelve the play entirely. But
despite their own personal losses, the co-stars stood firm.
'No,' they answered, 'not till we know how New York
takes it. We believe in this play.' Had they weakened
[46]




RE-ARMING: ROAD 'FAILURE'


then and shelved it, Moody's fate as a playwright would
have been sealed, and his plays would not now be studied
in our universities.
The following Tuesday night occurred the New York
dress-rehearsal, commencing quietly at sunset and ceasing cataclysmically at dawn. From far New Mexico
Moody had fetched, a few weeks earlier in his own hands,
a soul-prized vase of antique Indian craft, to splotch with
authentic color and contour the far-west stage-setting of
his play. Moment by moment into the midnight hours the
surcharged rehearsal had been swelling with its omened
thunderbolt, when — flashing one circumferencing eyeglance - Henry Miller lifted the priceless vase aloft in
both hands and crashed it into atoms at the feet of the
petrified poet, as the actor-star reverberated (in a line
from his own part) 'Smashed to hell is smashed to hell!There will be no "Great Divide"!' and rushed out of the
stage door.
That Wednesday evening (October 3, I9o6) at about
eight o'clock, cautious and crestfallen, Moody approached
the Princess Theatre, half incredulous of the electric
beacon blazoning there The Great Divide. Skulking through
the stage-entrance, he tapped shyly at Miller's dressing-room door, which flew open with a burst of genial
hilarity:
'Hello, Moody! Top of the evening to you! House sold
out. Success - success my dear boy! Smell it in the air!
Everything smooth as silk - company in high spirits -
public pouring in - So glad to see you. Got it all primed
- eh? your curtain speech? A perfect night -par excellence! Here's to the famous author!'


1 47 1




INTRODUCTION


XIV. BROADWAY 'SUCCESS': 'AN IMPOSTUME
TO BE LANCED'
The next morning is written large in theatre history.
Miller's tenacious faith and exuberant prophecy were
colossally fulfilled. 'Success' pervaded the air from New
York to San Francisco. Four months later (Feb. 28, 1905),
Moody wrote to Harriet:
The town is plastered with gigantic signs, announcing that
owing to the pressing demands from diplomats, statesmen,
etc.,... to witness the long-awaited GREAT AMERICAN
DRAMA, etc., etc.,... The gorge rises at it! - Miller has sunk
a pile of money in new scenery to fit the larger stage; this will
avail, however, for next year on the road.*
'The gorge rises at it!' Such was the poet's comment
on what he termed his own 'blatancy' of notoriety, from
which - refusing from Charles Frohman fifteen hundred
dollars down on a 'fat' contract for his next play - he
fled to the serene sincerities of his friend Dan Mason's
home, in the hills of Connecticut.
The play which New York extolled was exactly the same
play which Washington and Pittsburgh had vilified -
the deeply brooded work of an uncompromising artist.
The next season, Pittsburgh and Washington out-clamored New York in extollings.
To Moody's charming honor and the illumination of the
gross anilities that encoil every sibilant of the word 'success' in American public acclaim, it is fortunate for his
country that the brave beauty of these letters of his to
Harriet have survived to gladden the credo of- his valid
successors. Concerning a dinner of the American Drama[48 ]




BROADWAY 'SUCCESS'


tists Club, on Jan. 20th, 1907, through which Moody and
I sat together, he wrote to Harriet:
The speeches, taken together, constituted a more naively
blatant mumbo-jumbo ritual before the shrine of 'Success'
than I would have thought possible in a civilized gathering.
The idea that any other standard of judgment existed than
that furnished by the box-office tally-sheet never for one
instant, even by innuendo, lifted its head. All plays and all
playwrights were ranged in a hierarchy of merit according to
cash receipts... an august line, in which even I, God help me,
had for the nonce my quasi-conspicuous place!
'0, fie on't!' why not write a play to show up in its true
colors this success madness? It is certainly a dreadful organic
disease in our society, an impostume that cries to heaven to
be lanced, and lanced deep. I hear you saying that no work of
art with so moralistic an origin ever got anywhere. But I am
not so sure that moral passion (if it be really that) is not as
good a motive-spring of art as any other passion; it may include most others, if it reach the creative tension and the
apocalyptic elevation, as it certainly sometimes does - as in
the Bible.
'Moral passion' assuredly imbued Moody's championship of the aims of our group. On October i6, 1907, he
wrote to Harriet:
Your letter came just in time to inspirit me before I entered
the den of Apollyon, i.e. the private office of 'the Syndicate,'
with Robinson's play in my hand, and terror battling with
disgust in my pericardiacs.... But - shall we ever learn
that... the Devil is not so black as he is painted... and
his sins are due to ignorance and necessity rather than inherent baseness or even essential vulgarity?
In that one text of Moody's are blended both ardent
contempt and tolerance - youth's keen edge and ma1 49 1




INTRODUCTION


turity's ripening insight. He and our group were young.
Our aim was to cleanse our temple of Apollo, the stage,
from the sins of Apollyon, the commercial speculation of
Broadway-'sins due to ignorance and necessity.' To
that cause, however, we dedicated ourselves not as religious, economic, or social reformers, but as poets. It is
no wonder that our aim met its defeat then. The wonder
is that it met at least two outstanding victories, for we
were aiming to 'lance deep' the impostume of success
with which Apollyon infects every age of society. But
even as poets we shared at least one of his sins of ignorance
- blindness to the truth that no one unit of society, such
as the stage, can be healed without cleansing the whole
organism. It was not 'the Syndicate' but Society itself
that required our sharpened 'lances' - not of enmity but
of insight - to be healed. Youth seeks for understanding
friends in every generation, and it is eminently youth
who shall rediscover in Moody a friend of both ardor and
insight in the ever-oncoming 'new age.'
XV. SHARING AND ASSAYING A DOUBLE
VICTORY
In 1906, within a single fortnight of October, Moody and
I won our first stage victories. On October I, I906, he
wrote to me at Philadelphia, where I was then plunged
in last rehearsals of Jeanne d'Arc, produced there by
Sothern and Marlowe, October 15, I906:
Dear Percy: Thanks for your cordial note about the play.
(The Great Divide.) Broadway the formidable has indeed
roared us as any sucking dove for this once. It's like taking
candy from a child. I am making my plans to get down to
Philadelphia for your opening. Save me a ticket!... Will.
[50]




SHARING A DOUBLE VICTORY


I saved him a ticket and a room in the St. James hotel,
where he joined our party of friends who had come from
Cornish for the opening night of Jeanne at the Lyric
theatre, as this excerpt from my wife's diary records:
Will Moody came and Hal (MacKaye)... At the theatre
we forgathered with Stephen and Anne Parrish, Homer
(Saint-Gaudens), Barry (Faulkner) and the Converses....
Fred Converse's music began and we sat tense. Everything
went off without a hitch... enthusiastic applause... flowers...
but too long, lasting till I 1.30.... Went back stage where Percy
introduced Will Moody to Miss Marlowe.... At the hotel, he
had a bite of supper with us, talking it all over.
That night and the next morning, Moody shared our
feelings toward the warm public acclaim of my play's success (continuing prosperously onward for two seasons,
in America and London) -'success' tinctured with hemlock of professional differences and of problems for
poetry's rendition in the theatre. Moody wrote to Harriet
that morning:
Last night the audience was cordial and today's newspapers are very complimentary, though the performance
dragged and the many lovely passages of poetry went for
next to nothing, being badly rendered and lost in the vast
spaces of the theatre.... This has given me to think -I
mean about the problem of the verse-play on our stage.
Such experiences in common served to deepen our
natural fellowship as poets. Again he attended my play,
with Harriet and friends of 'the Grove,' at Chicago,
where he wrote me at Cornish (Dec. 21):
We went en masse to see Jeanne, the second week. The
house was packed and followed the play with absorption.
The shortening process has made the movement brisker, without materially harming the literary effect. They murder your
[ S ]




INTRODUCTION


verse pretty badly, some of them, but enough emerges to
amply make good. The stage is badly lighted... too dark
throughout. How about the Sappho? I see they are advertising it still in their prospective repertory.... Glad you liked the
Eve. You must be having great times up there in the snow.
Nothing here but slush and coal-dirt. Affectionate regards to
Marion.
We had both just experienced the Sturm und Drang of
our first public recognition in loud-resounding 'successes,'
of the theatre - Moody's in prose, mine in verse. The
theatre is especially susceptible to the swift onslaughts
and adulations of white-heat journalism - its creatures
as seasonal as August flies or humming-birds, equally in
the fierce moment's glare oblivious of the all-including
Zodiac. So inevitably there soon rose from the presses
a buzzing of partisan cults, sportily wagering on Moody
and me as 'rivals,' as if we were contending for some illusive prize of mastership. Such comments continued
till Moody's death, and were reechoed even by staider
voices over-seas.* For us, of course, such thoughts of
rivalry were non-existent. We were having our joint
repute; we were soon to have our joint disparagement.
Mine came first, with my play, Sapphlo and Phaon; his
followed shortly after, with his play, The Faith Healer.
Unfortunately, the mutual ties of our loyal small group
were entangled in the thwartive results.
XVI. ALLIED CHAMPIONS OF THE COMMON AIM
Our common hopes for a poets' theatre on Broadway
were centred in two then commanding stage-figures,
both actor-producers, E. H. Sothern and Henry Miller.
Since the days of my father's first Lyceum Theatre in
[52 1




ALLIED CHAMPIONS


the i88o's, I had from my childhood known Sothern, who
had acted there with my elder brother, Will, a gifted
young artist and poet who died soon afterwards. In New
York, while teaching in a private school for boys (I900 -1904), I stayed with Sothern often in his home, where we
planned glowingly a whole decade's repertory of productions by American poets, even before I knew Moody and
our group.* One day, there, the doorbell rang and a newcomer stepped diffidently into Sothern's study - a slight,
dark, youngish man, with whom Sothern was closeted
for several hours. When he had as demurely departed, I
said to Sothern, casually, 'Who was that, Eddy?' 'Oh,'
he answered musingly, 'That's the future, Percy. Our
morning-glories are seeding mandrakes. From now on,
our cloud-capped towers are for rent. In brief, dear boy,
we must join "the Independents" and buck "the Syndicate." Little Charlie Frohman is "the Syndicate."
That was Lee Shubert - of " the Independents." '... That
moment's shadow was forecast far across our country's
landscape.
Intrepid of spirit, Moody's staunch actor-friend, Henry
Miller, was generously lavish of his own talents and shifting fortunes on behalf of the best in the theatre. He first
came to the states from Canada to study with Charles W.
Couldock, then starring in my father's Hazel Kirke, in
which Miller afterwards acted. Though British-born like
Sothern, he was like him whole-hearted in his high aims
for the theatre's art in America. In two commissions for
him I experienced his rare qualities of 'intellect, imagination and kindness,' so gratefully given tribute by Moody.
In 1908 under his management, Edith Wynne Matthison
and Walter Hampden, in acting, and Charles Rann Ken[53




INTRODUCTION


nedy, in authorship, near the start of their careers in
America, were engaged by him for the notably skillful
production of Kennedy's play, The Servant in the House,
in which Hampden acted Manson, 'the Servant,' and
Tyrone Power the Drain-Man. During the San Francisco engagement of that company, on August 9, I908,
Miller produced there my American comedy, Mater, acting in it admirably the part of Cullen, a subtly genial
politician. All these theatre threads are interwoven with
Moody's comments to Harriet in these letters. Miller
was as eager as Sothern to head the repertory of a Poets'
Theatre, but for all 'on the road' to Stratford and Weimar
it was bumpy hard-sledding by route of Medicine Hat and
Kalamazoo. So Miller's many years' investment in
Moody's The Great Divide was for him a salvaging bonanza.*
XVII. 'ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS' OF SUDDEN
REVERSAL
Such in barest hint of background were some of the contemporary theatrical factors involved for Moody and us
all in our stage 'successes' and 'failures.'
'How about the Sappho?' he had written me (Dec.
1I, I906). 'I see they (Sothern & Marlowe) are still advertising it in their prospective repertory.'
In the previous summer, while I was completing at
Cornish my Sappho and Phaon as a commission for
Sothern and Marlowe, they had bought from Mrs. Patrick Campbell her contract with me for yeanne d'crc,
which I wrote for her: a contract which permitted no textual changes in the play without the author's approval.
Differences * on that point between Miss Marlowe and
[54]




'ALARUMS' OF REVERSAL


me were the reason for the transfer of rights in Sappho
and Phaon from the Sothern-Marlowe repertory to the
management of Harrison Grey Fiske who produced it
with Madame Bertha Kalich as Sappho, in Providence,
R.I., Oct. 14, I907, and in New York, a week later.
Published by Macmillan the previous May, the fullversioned play, with its new structure of intermetric
verse-forms and rhythms of interflowing contrasted
scenes, had been welcomed enthusiastically by literary
reviewers, and (in its curtailed stage-version) by its first
'road' theatrical critics and its 'standing room only'
during its first week's run at Providence. Thus the spice
had been perfectly prepared for the New York theatre
critics, who as gleefully thumbed their noses at their
Providence colleagues in reversing the road 'success' of
Sappho as they had thumbed them at those of Pittsburgh
in reversing the road 'failure' of The Great Divide. So
Moody and I were to share our rue, 'with a difference' -
exactly transposed.
Accidentally missent by train to New London instead
of to New York, the stage-sets of Sappho and Phaon
barely arrived at the New York Lyric Theatre on Monday
evening at 8.I5, at the moment when the long-heralded
American premiere of The Merry Widow was opening just
across the street on 44th St., where the critics of both
productions co-fraternized between the acts.
In the Lyric Theatre, splendid special curtains of Greek
design concealed the stage. Seated again with Moody in
the orchestra parquet, as once before at his Sabine Woman
'tragedy' in Chicago, there now began my Aegean Woman
tragedy, but now our roles were reversed and he was to
administer for me the chloral anodyne. Of our party were
155]




INTRODUCTION


also my wife, Robinson, Torrence, George Grey Barnard,
W. D. Howells and Stedman. The last brilliant old veteran, in full dress,* nudged his young poet friends and
spoke glowingly again of his 'long-ago prediction of the
dramatic renaissance of poetry.' - Not till nearly 9.30
did the double Greek curtains part, disclosing a pillared
temple on a cliff of the isle of Lesbos overlooking the
Aegean sea. From then until after midnight, 'unmerciful
disaster followed fast and followed faster,' in an epical
series of accidents which I reserve for my own memoirs.
One only is chronicled by Moody in his letter to Harriet
the next morning.
Old Greek myth tells us that Sappho invented the lyre
by bridging a hollow tortoise-shell with cross-strings - so
providing an incidental theme for my play, in which Phaon
is a dreamy sea-slave. Helping him to mend his fish-net,
Sappho encoils him in subtler meshes. On that New York
opening night at the imminent climax of that love scene,
there entered a dramatis persona not set down in the play's
published text. Moody described to Harriet the fateful
entrance:
A cat strayed on from the right wing, sat down in the middle
of the stage near the footlights, looked meditatively around on
the Leucadean landscape, wiped his nose with reflective paw,
and padded solemnly out on the left.
At that moment, from the seat next to mine, this anodyne was poured in my ear from the lips of Moody:'Never mind, Percy - it's a tortoise-shell cat!'
The Greek tragedy's premiere ended long past midnight.
Across the street the cabmen were all humming the rival
premiere strains of 'The Merry Widow's' Blue Danube.
Such, however, is the glamor of any first night to the author
[56]




COURAGEOUS TENACITY


and his friends, oblivious of critics even then dangling their
Damoclesian swords, that when our little group adjourned
to the Arena restaurant nearby to celebrate the Glory that
was Greece by festively toasting * the 'dead-alive' author,
only Norman Hapgood, who joined us there, uttered ominous morning-edition forebodings from his all-critic-fathoming mind. And Norman's prophetic acumen was amply
confirmed.
The next morning The Merry Widow waltzed her triumphant way through showering petals from the theatrical
columns, snowing-under five fathom deep old StedmanNestor's 'long-ago prediction of America's dramatic renaissance of poetry.' After reading the morning editions,
Moody epitomized for Harriet 'the strange eventful history' of that opening night and closing day of our mutual
hopes:
We are all in the dumps. Last night... we good men in
buckram, together with a large Cornish contingent, kept up
alarums and excursions of applause all through, to the good
end that we dragged Percy before the curtain, more dead than
alive. Today the cynical crowd of newspaper critics are
slaughtering him in good style, with all the cosmopolitan refinements of torture.
XVIII. 'THE FAITH HEALER': COURAGEOUS TENACITY AND STALEMATE
The play was withdrawn at that week's end and has not
since been acted professionally.* The repercussions of its
sounding demise shook the nerves and the creative outlook of
our group for a long while. This may be sensed within these
lines, five weeks later (Nov. 29), from Moody, to Harriet:
After a week of discouragement, I am again feeling hopeful
about it. I feel now that it will surely be interesting to read,
[571




INTRODUCTION


whether any mortal manager will ever have the spunk to
produce it, or any actor to play it.
This passage ushers in a year of doubts, hesitancies,
feverish overwork, sudden serious illness, recuperation too
quickly forced, new high expectations and abrupt stalemate for his play, The Faith Healer, which he had been
meditating off and on during many years.
In the autumn of 1907, within a space of four days (Oct.
i8-22), his faith in our common cause had been sorely
battered by disillusionizing facts.* So it was in present
need of healing, that now, more sadly wise, he continued
patiently to 'file' the too 'crumbling' substance of his
Faith Healer - as these passages to Harriet in the winter
of i908 suggest.
New York; Jan i S. I am still hard at work on the play. I
thought it was as good as done, but it isn't. The first and
second acts have at last stopped crumbling under the file, but
the third act is still full of soft places. In fact I have been on
the point of despair concerning it.
Jan. 22. As for the play I have writtenfinis. I have done for
it all I can do. The verdict is either negative or hostile, with
one exception. If it were not for your conviction about it I
should be greatly cast down.
Jan. 25. I am making very slow progress with The Faith
Healer. It is a vastly more laborious job than writing a wholly
new play would be. It is like building a new house out of the
materials of an old one, plus a lot of quite disparate material,
while a family for whom you care is occupying the premises.
Your scattered comments are of help to me whenever you are
moved to make them.
Towards spring of i908, hopes for his play's early production were mounting high, when he was stricken with
typhoid fever.
[58]




COURAGEOUS TENACITY


Boston, Feb. 6. To the main news: I had an all-night session
with Miller, reading the new play. We started in at midnight
and finished at five-thirty in the morning.
New York, Feb. 19. I shall retreat to The Players Club or
the Harvard Club for a brief season. Thence I shall issue,
under Miller's guidance, with a mask and a dark lantern, to
watch a few actors and actorines at their unconscious gambols,
with a view to sizing them up for the new play.
March 3. I spent the evening with Tyrone Power - the
Ulysses in Stephen Phillips play. There is a taint of melodrama about him... of the magniloquent and seedy tragedian
turned tramp - but Miller thinks that all this could be made
valuable if chastened.
Telegram. March 22. Doctor forbids writing for day or
two. Making good progress.
In the little old apartment, artistic but ramshackle, up
four steep flights, on the top floor of 107 Waverly Place,
he lay severely ill for nearly three months, nursed by his
devoted sister, Charlotte, visited at times by his neighboring friend, Mrs. C. P. Davidge, * and always under the
constant ministrations of Harriet, who came on from
Chicago to look after him. By late May he was well
enough to go, under doctor's care, to the shore of Long
Island Sound, where he wrote again to Harriet on her return to 'the Grove' in Chicago.
Port Chester, N.Y., May 25. It seems a long, long time
since I lost your dear presence, symbol and pledge of the life
which I feel slowly - 0 so slowly - returning. I spend vast
stretches of time - whole existences - sitting in a porch
chair in the tender spring sunshine, looking at the sky and
water, playing with the pup, and thinking about eternal
mysteries.... On your lips seems hovering the answer to the
everlasting riddle, of the world out there and the world within.
Cos Cob., June 15. I think it will be necessary now to let
[59




INTRODUCTION


Miller go on. Before the rehearsals are over, I can get the
third act rewritten to my satisfaction, and can insist on his
making the necessary changes.
During that summer of 90o8, after receiving at Yale the
honorary degree of Litt. D., he made a brief visit with
Torrence to Monhegan Island, Maine, and soon afterward
took a cottage in Michigan on the island of Mackinac *
where with Harriet and Charlotte he spent three months
of recuperation, painting and companioning his dogs on
long walks. In early November he wrote again from
Waverly Place to Harriet in Chicago:
New York (after three months in the west) Nov. 4. Since
I got here I have been distractingly busy, to little purpose,
Miller has done nothing toward assembling a cast.... Since
plunging into this maelstrom, it is 'me for the country!'
Nov. I2. Miller accepts the new version unreservedly.
Great difficulties have beset us in preparing the production.
Things seem to me to be going badly enough. Meanwhile I am
getting The Faith Healer and The Great Divide ready for
press.... This means work, as the Ms. has got badly mixed up.
Nov. 22. These have been and are tremendously busy days.... To stop the clamor of the printers, I hit on a first rate name
for my man - Michaelis. I found it in the New York City
Directory. For first name I will call him Ulrich- Ulrich
Michaelis.... A love and a dream... a ten-year-old girl - is to
play Annie... a gem of child acting. Tyrone Power... in the
title role.. does better than as the Drain-Man... I feel quite
illogically buoyant about the outcome.
Nov. 28. I am in a bushel of trouble about the question of
copyright protection. Our enlightened Congress has refused
to join the Berne Convention, which makes copyright easy
and automatic throughout European countries, and has
ranged itself with Patagonia. The result is a mountain of red
tape to untie... a law compelling plays (for English Copyright)
to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain of England in
[ 60o




COURAGEOUS TENACITY


printedform. This functionary takes his own time... to grant
permission for the play to be performed in England, which
then only acquires copyright standing.
But while all this is being done, here must sit our good
friend, Henry, with an expensive company on his hands, doing
nothing except wait upon my lord's pleasure.... God bless our
Congressmen and those in whose favor these barbaric laws
exist... to provide them ampler forage upon the brains of men
who are misguided enough to write plays. I am writing this in
a restaurant after a day of hurry, perplexity and unconscious
starvation.
Telegram, Dec. 7. Production of play postponed. Am
going west.
The letters in full relate the arduous details of preparing
a production of his play in Boston which our uncivilized
copyright laws brought to naught: an admirably cast
production, which might well have achieved success for his
play and new life and works for himself. Instead, he went
west to California with his painter friend, William Wendt,,
only to be plunged again into hectic labors at St. Louis,
recounted in this letter to me (I935) from Ferdinand
Schevill.
In March, I909, I went from Chicago to St. Louis to attend
the try-out of The Faith Healer and was shocked at the condition in which I found our dear friend. We had to drive to the:
rehearsals and a few hours of remonstrance with the actors left
him a complete wreck. Henry Miller was very gentle with him.
At St. Louis, Harriet was with him for at least a week. Will
was so nervously exhausted with recurring, perhaps perpetual
headache that without her constant care he could not have
gone through the rehearsals. However, he sat in the dark auditorium day after day and stayed for the Opening Night, which
was not an unequivocal success. I went down from Chicago a
day or two before the play opened. The black cloud had
settled so close above Will's head that the whole episode re,
[6I1




INTRODUCTION


mains with me as one of the most tragic I have ever experienced.
Will Moody's own account of this St. Louis experience
is given in the following letter to Charlotte, written just
before his last ocean trip to England. There with Harriet
he sought recovery but too late, for the latency of his fatal
illness had been grimly roused by his final battle with the
forces of Broadway. How in the winter of I9IO, at Santa
Barbara, California, under on-coming blindness, he received the news of his play's New York premiere is recorded in the Conclusion of this book. His letter to Charlotte is dated from The Harvard Club, April 30, 1909.
' My dear sister: I am afraid I have neglected you pretty
badly of late, but if you knew how busy I have been you would
forgive me.... In the first place, I was called back from California, where I was again on the up-hill road to getting my
health and strength back, to St. Louis by news that Miller had
decided to produce the play there. Back I scooted - then
followed two of the most strenuous weeks I have ever lived
through; first a week of rehearsals, and then a week of try-out
performances with the papers shrieking - one half of them
praise and the other half furious condemnation - the latter
chiefly on the score (bless your heart) of sacrilege! Michaelis
if you please, was declared by these latter far-seeing gentlemen
to be intended as a 'Christ figure' (whatever that is), and one
paper ran a standing description of the play throughout the
week thus: 'Weird and absorbing drama but appalling in its
sacrilegious handling of sacred things.' So much for the
critics.
The audiences, so far as I could make out, were simply
flabbergasted and didn't know whether to be pleased, shocked
or merely eternally puzzled. In other words, they didn't
understand the play at all, the real difficulty being - as I very
soon saw clearly-that in my desire for condensation I had
[62




METROPOLITAN FELLOWSHIP


condensed too much and had failed to make the motive and
upshot of the play clear to the average mind. An amusing confirmation of this hypothesis has just reached me from a lady
in Boston who has been giving expository readings of The Faith
Healer at which she says you, Henri * and Julia * were present,
and in the printed outline of which she makes it abundantly
clear that she has totally misconceived the whole matter.
Well, to return: That much being established, I vetoed all
further performances until the play was rewritten. This I
have now done after six or seven weeks of very strenuous labor.
The play - Miller thinks, and I also - has been very much
improved dramatically and at any rate there is now no slightest excuse for misunderstanding.
I have been spending much time with Miller at his Connecticut farm and the relaxation and country air with riding
and driving have kept me from going to pieces again, though I
am on the ragged edge and am about to take an ocean trip to
tone up. With much love - Will.
XIX. METROPOLITAN FELLOWSHIP WITH
PLAYERS AND ARTISTS
But I must not convey an overemphasis of tragedy in
Moody's life. During the years of my own companionship
with him, we shared many happy and zestful experiences.
In New York I was present with him at nearly all the social
functions * described by him in these letters. On the night
of Isadora Duncan's first appearance at the Metropolitan
Opera House, Moody, George Grey Barnard and I sat together there, spellbound as by some vision out of Beethoven's mind become then unbelievably corporeal, and afterward in Isadora's blue-curtained studio at the Windsor
Arcade (East 45th St., and Fifth Ave.), I introduced to
her our group of poets whom her autobiography refers to
as 'young revolutionists': a time that is glimpsed in this
[63 1




INTRODUCTION,passage of Moody's to Harriet: New York, Nov. I8,
I908:
There is a wondrous dancing creature here called Isadora
Duncan, fresh from European triumphs, who dances to a full
symphony orchestra the seventh Symphony of Beethoven and
others. I saw her fill the huge Metropolitan Opera House stage
in a fashion quite incredible. Also I saw her do impromptu
things in her own studio no less than marvellous. I can
imagine nothing which would give you more pleasure.
In these letters there are more gaps than inclusions of
events in our companionship, of which there were more
than a chapterful at his studio; at our clubs and favorite
cafes, (especially at Guffanti's * on Eighth Avenue); at
theatres and theatre-rehearsals; at the Judson, on Washington Square, where Robinson and Torrence and Olivia
Dunbar (afterwards Mrs. Torrence) were then living; and
at the Windsor Arcade studio of George Grey Barnard,
whose early great sculptures towered about us there, some
still in clay. These experiences were shared in the city
where, despite all urban charms, our mutual longing was
embodied in Moody's 'plunged in this maelstrom, "it's
me for the country!"'
XX. FRIENDSHIP IN THE HILLS: 'SIMPLE,
FREE, OPEN-HEARTED'
So it was in the Cornish hills' of New Hampshire (as his
first letter to me had desired) that we 'found ourselves' in
many an exchange of ideas or on rambles together: in first
readings aloud to each other of our lyrics and evolving
' Also in the lower hills of Massachusetts, near Mt. Wachusett, W. V. M.
visited with me my boyhood home at Shirley Center, Mass.,* in the summer of
1906.  -
[64]




FRIENDSHIP IN THE HILLS


plays; in congenial meetings with neighbors, and- companionly with my wife and me - by the fireside of our
home, where still his is a mythic presence endeared to
their childhood memories by his philosophic matchings of
wit with our son, Robin, and by his Provenmal deference
toward Arvia, our little girl, to whom on her birthday (St.
Valentine's Day, I906) he dispatched from New York a
volume of Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses, with this
inscription on the fly-leaf:
To Mistress Arvia MacKaye, on her fourth birthday, from
her servant and well-wisher, desiring he might subscribe himself her Valentine.
A few days afterwards (Feb. 27) he wrote to my wife:
If Cornish is always as delightful as it was during those days
we spent there, it is an awful waste of time to live anywhere
else.... As for the poem to the little lady, Arvia, on the 14th I
was horribly busy getting my play in shape for Mr. Sothern to
look at. When the feast day of her Saint was past both Saint
and Muse refused to look at me. But this only means postponement - not defection.
Of that first trip to Cornish my wife's diary records:
That morning (Feb. 8), we started from New York for Cornish with Will Moody and Ridgely Torrence. Otis Skinner accompanied us as far as New Haven where he was opening in a
new play. We had a delightful journey up, going through the
snow-storm, the poets darting about from side to side of the
nearly empty car for views of the country winter - especially
for a first view of Ascutney as we neared our destination. We
were greatly distressed to find that Arvia had cut her eyebrow, coasting.
We enjoyed their visit very much and they seemed delighted with everything. One evening we took them to dine
[65 ]




INTRODUCTION


with the Saint-Gaudens - going over by the snow-path
through the woods to the studio. Saint-Gaudens had his
latest things all ready to show us in the clay - the $2o coin
with its beautiful figure, the Phillips Brooks and the head of
Christ. He was interested in this first meeting with Moody
and spoke to him pleasantly about his ode.
With his gentle concern for Arvia's hurt brow began
Moody's courtly endearments toward the child, to whose
wide-eyed wonder I recall his reciting in soft, strange
cadences his poem of The Counting Man:
Eeny, meeny, miney mo, -
All the children in a row,
Crackafeeny, who is he,
Counting out so solemnly?
Eeny meeny, look how tall,
Like a shadow on the wall!
When did he come down the street,
Muffled up from head to feet?
Listen! Don't you hear the shiney
Shadow-man count meeny-miney?
Hush! when all the counting's done
May be - I might be The One!
In tingling weather we all took to snowshoes, trailing
the woods and pastures home again to our hedged garden
where Moody assisted the children in packing the walls of
a snow labyrinth of hide-away paths. Of another winter
visit, on a piercing zero twilight of January, I908, I recall
Moody and Torrence - in meagre city-gear, bare-headed,
biting their thumbs, having rejected our country furs -
dashing off down a drifted back-road on a two-mile run to
the village. Concerning this later visit, Henry Hering,
the sculptor (then Saint-Gaudens' assistant) has recalled
[66]




FRIENDSHIP IN THE HILLS


to me his encountering the two poets by black night
on a lower road, doubled over beside a one-horse sleigh
with an oil-lantern, desperately trying to dislodge with
their fingers the icy balls of snow packed in the horse's
hooves.
At Cornish, in those days, Saint-Gaudens' charming,
dynamic personality was the magnet which had drawn
around him there, during many years, a circle of all-theyear-round neighbors diversely gifted in arts and letters.
Having been deeply stirred by his bronze memorial in
Boston, Moody - whose moving ode begins:
Before the solemn bronze Saint-Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe -
And set here in the city's talk and trade
To the good memory of Robert Shawhad long desired to meet the sculptor of that young Civil
War commander of negro troops, whom - also in tribute
to Saint-Gaudens - I had described
Sitting his horse in proud simplicity,
His lifted brow clouded with battle dreams
Where the imagined drum-beats roll in bronze,
in my Prologue to the Saint-Gaudens Masque, about
eight months before Moody's first visit to Cornish. In that
Masque * written and performed to celebrate the twentieth
Anniversary of the founding of the Cornish Colony by
Augustus and Augusta Saint-Gaudens, some sixty artists
and writers of repute took part, to music of Boston Symphony Orchestra Players. On that very spot today —
mecca of thousands of art pilgrims, yearly - the sculptor's
ashes rest in the altar of a small pillared temple - a replica in marble of the stucco temple, in front of which
[67




INTRODUCTION


Saint-Gaudens himself- toward twilight of June 23, 1905
- watched his Cornish neighbors enact
Their frolic Masque of satyr, muse and faun
In honor of their only pagan saint.
The history of the Cornish Colony, significant for its
workers in the arts for half a century, has never been written in its varied ramifications, artistic, literary, social and
governmental. If it ever shall be, the sojournings there
of William Vaughn Moody will contribute to a charming
chapter of its middle period, for which portions of these
letters are important source material. Writing from Cornish (July 2, 1906) to Charlotte Moody, he touches further
on certain allusions of his letters to Harriet in these passages to his sister.
The social life here is charmingly simple and free from
stiffness, the people both open hearted and clever, (not a frequent coincidence of qualities) and I am enjoying this kind of
summer colony existence for the first time in my life.
I see Miss Barrymore * every day and like her immensely.
She is simple, hearty and boyish as can be imagined. She has
a tennis court and a great cement-lined bathing pool, both of
which we indulge in nearly every day, and the combination,
with a high-ball and a cigarette afterwards on the big stoneflagged porch, is difficult to beat.
She is preparing to stage - in the studio of her house here
- a one-act play * of my friend and chum, Percy MacKaye,
and I have been asked to undertake one of the parts - that
of a Maine sea-captain. I don't quite see myself as a Maine
sea-captain, and besides I am far too busy to spend the time
required for rehearsals, but I am tempted nevertheless to go in
for it, for thefun of the thing.
This apparently first and only temptation of Moody's to
turn histrion and appear as Ethel Barrymore's 'leading
[68




WILL AND HARRIET


man,' turned out after all a non-appearance, for both he
and I were 'far too busy' that summer, wrestling with the
writing of plays for early production, to take share in that
projected studio performance, so it never came off. But
that self-glance of Moody anticipating it 'for thefun of the
thing' glimpses a unique moment in his life, 'enjoying
this kind of existence for the first time.'
XXI. WILL AND HARRIET: THEIR 'SACRED DAY'
In this Introduction I have tried to recall and correlate
phases actual and spiritual of my friendship with Will
Moody which - looking back through long years - I
realize are perhaps expressible, if at all, only through the
unpremeditated urge of poetry; so that I think I have far
better than here intimated them in the poem Uriel, which
I wrote to his memory, a year after his death; for today,
even more than then, I feel
his kindling currents run
Quickening within me gladness and new ken
Of life, that I have shared his prime with one
Who wrought large-minded for the love of men.
But not alone to share that large estate
Of work and interchange of communingsThe little human-paths to heavenly things
Were also ours...
and feeling this, I know how sparsely here I have disclosed
those paths, or intimated the heavenly things.
So, too, of Harriet. Now that both are gone, only to return together on compulsive tides of memory, I see how
inexpressibly intertwined her great spirit is with my
thankful share in their mutual largesse of life; and I realize
anew how impossible it has been for me to assume a
[ 69 ]




INTRODUCTION


dispassionate editorial aloofness in commenting here on
our mingled friendship.
Throughout these letters, though from their varied sequence of place and time, Harriet herself is bodily remote
- absent always in her far off 'Grove,' impalpable under
a Chicago 'moon with unhandsome thrift of silver' - yet
we have that bodily absence to thank for her spiritual embodiment in the letters, which else would not have been
written.
From one of them now, in closing this prologue (which
opens again in the letters' epilogue), I return to the theme
of that 'sacred day' which occasioned their commencement, in quoting this passage written by Will to Harriet,
from Cornish, May I7, 1906, six years after his first letter
which begins their sequence.
By some unaccountable lapse of memory I forgot yesterday
that it was the anniversary of our sacred day, forever to be remembered with hymns and trances of the spirit. As some slight
atonement (to myself) I am going to copy out and send you
the little poem which you know. I have given it, provisionally,
the title of The Three Angels.* The only other I can think of is
Dies Zngelica.
Enclosed in the letter was the poem, in which these
stanzas reveal her - as throughout all his communings
with her - 'disengaged from the illusions and interruptions of this world.'
Last night I sat at her right hand:
Though Death upon the left hand stood,
Our hearts were ne'er so light and bland;
As in a moonlit summer wood
Friend unto happy friend we spake,
As swan by swan on a windless lake
We drifted down God's glassy flood.
[70




WILL AND HARRIET


We had been sweet friends long before,
But till this evening's dark mischance,
Aye, never till this deep death-hour
Had such a heart been ours to dance
Childlike upon the hills of glee;
So on those hills she played with me,
Through swooning pain and ether trance.
And yet had not been breathed a sound
Of love, nor a thought of love been thought.
With light of light her brow was wound
When mutely -she made question, 'What
Means this strange light about your brow?'
And I made answer mute, 'You know
It is the love that we have found.'
Like flame afar her life did rise
And from the ends of being came,
Bare as at birth, without disguise,
To meet my spirt's naked flame
Which towered from out the primal mist
To her. -'Her lips lay all unkissed;
We made no sign, we named no name.




I




LETTERS TO HARRIET




I




Letters to Harriet


AMERICA
MAY 20, i90i - APRIL 28, I902
29 NORTH HALL
CHICAGO, May 20, 1901
I do not know whether letters are allowed, but in the
confidence that this will be intercepted if they are not, I
am going to yield to an impulse which I can no longer
resist to speak a word to you. I have thought of you so
much these last days and nights that my desire to write
a line at least has by accumulation outgrown my sense
that you ought not to be disturbed. What is it that I
want to say, you will wonder. I hardly know myself. I
only know that your pain and danger have made your
mind and character stand out before me as if disengaged
from the illusions and interruptions of this world, and
filled me with a sense of deep - bear with me if I say religious - gratitude for the gift of your friendship. I feel
that in knowing you I have had a rich blessing -one
which will enter for good into all that I do or become.
When you are well and strong again, I shall probably not
have the courage to say this; so let me say it now, and
afterwards remember it silently.
If it is any comfort to you in these painful and tedious
days of your convalescence, you should know, as I think
perhaps you do, that any one of us, from Hannah up
(or down), would joyfully have taken your place, if by so
175]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


doing we could have saved from suffering you, our brightest and noblest one.'
En route via Union Pacific Railroad
Outside Denver, Friday Morning
(Postmarked August I6, I901)
The good word reached me before I had got far beyond
the Mississippi. Until it came, rolling the weight off with
that great sentence, I did not realize how heavy my anxiety had been. Now there are only a few weeks more of
patience and then the climb to health and the joy of life
renewed. We shall all go up the slope with you step by
step, sharing in the gain.
These incredible plains! It's hard to believe them as
level as they look, with the car surging like a ship on a lee
shore.
An hour ago I saw a man on foot, crawling God knows
whither antlike over this enormous monotony.
These words have remained with me from my morning
reading, from hour to hour revealing all kinds of good
meanings. Take them.
'Chiedete, e vi sara dato; cercate, e troverete; picchiate e
vi sara aperto.'
W. V. M.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Saturday
(Postmarked August I8, i901)
Garland 2 is at Wagon Wheel Gap, somewhere in the
southwestern corner of the state, and I leave for there, by
train and stage, tonight. I have spent the day getting my
outfit ready. Naturally nothing that I brought would do,
x Cf. first two notes at back, under Introduction Notes, II.
a Hamlin Garland.
[761




AMERICA- 190I


and a mad career of acquisition has been mine - waterproof boots, blankets, corduroy trousers ('pants,' I mean),
'slickers' (which being interpreted is oilskin wrappings)
and leather leggings. I look like a Cripple Creek desperado,
and feel like Buffalo Bill on a spree. The latter simile is
for rhetorical purposes only - in point of fact I feel like a
fellow who has left his best friend behind in sore plight
and who has a mind to go back and try to comfort him.
An hour of golden silence or quiet converse beside a certain sick bed seems more to be desired than the mighty
secret of the mountains for which they are calling me to
wrestle.
Mr. Ehrich, who turns out to be a capital fellow (an intelligent and cultivated Jew, generously helpful and nobly
hospitable), has been immensely kind. He will take care of
my mail and forward it to me as long as I am in reach of a
post-office.
The mountains here are disappointing in a garish light,
but at morning and evening they take on an indescribable
majesty. There will be more to tell when I know their
minds better and am admitted to their privacies. Just
here they seem a little worldly and shabby, from being
photographed and be-circulared and be-tripped. The
camera and the watering-place hotel are among the prime
inventions of the devil to circumvent the glory of God.
The yawning mouth of a packing-case, hungering to be
filled; excuse me while I fill it.
It is filled, but there is only time to say goodbye. Be
of good courage. Throw up the water into the sun.
W. V. M.


1 77 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


WAGON WHEEL GAP, COLO. Aug. 19 (1901)
Here I am on the roof of things. Met Garland yesterday, and today we are getting ready to start on trail.
Shall take mountain ponies to ride and a pack mule for the
camping stuff. We are going up the Rio Grande to its
source, over Marshall Pass into the Ouray region, then
over Trident Mesa and Uncompahgre Peak, returning by
way of Slumgullion Gulch. (God bless the man who imagined these names!) This is the highest part of the Continental Divide, and the crazy little torrents are all destined to great fates. They will not stop short of the Pacific
or the Gulf of Mexico. Even here in the Gap we are
several thousand feet higher than the top of Mt. Washington. The mountain air has already made me feel equal
to- to - well, to Slumgullion Gulch, begad. Can expression farther go?
This morning it has rained, and now that the sun is
breaking through above the savage peaks of sheer stone
and rolling a luminous chaos of cloud through the valleys
and canions, I can only - as a better man than me once
did- 'stand in my shoes and wonder.' They are calling
me to pick out a pony. Goodbye and good cheer.
W. V. M.
ANTELOPE SPRINGS
RIO GRANDE DEL NORTE
COLORADO
Our trailing expedition has been brought to a premature
end by an accident to Garland. In crossing a high meadow,
covered with an almost impenetrable tangle of scrub-willows and made soft by the snow from surrounding peaks,
his horse got into a bog, and in scrambling out fell on the
[78 ]




AMERICA - I90I


slope of the bank, crushing his (Garland's) foot painfully,
though, as it turns out, not dangerously. We were thirtythree miles from the nearest settlement when it happened,
and the way thither lay through what G. declares to be
the wildest piece of country he has seen in the States.
There was nothing for it but to put him on his horse and
push for cover. Fortunately the accident occurred early
in the morning, and by riding hard all day through fallen
timber, bog, 'slide-rock,' and creek-beds, we managed to
get in before it was too dark to see our horses' ears, the last
three hours through drenching and freezing rain.
G.'s foot was badly swollen, but the injury proves to be
not great; and he will be about again in a week. Meanwhile, however, camping on the trail, which has made the
last week an experience long to be remembered, is over.
We tackled the stiffest proposition in reach - a country
of great canions narrowing up to strange green mountain
meadows, overlooked by savage peaks of sheer rock. We
started with a trail, which tradition declared to continue
across the Continental Divide and down again into the
habitable valleys; but before we had gone one day's
journey the said trail became dim and interrupted, and by
the middle of the second day disappeared altogether, except for a dubious and ghostly reappearance at long intervals and in surprising places. Probably it has not been
travelled since the Indians, who made it, left the country.
There was of course much exhausting labor involved, especially as our pack horse and his burden required constant care. Then pitching the tent, unharnessing and
hobbling the horses, getting wood for fire, cooking, fixing
bedding to keep us warm when the sun dropped and the
thermometer with it far below freezing point - all this
1 79 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


meant work, I tell you; so that as yet the physical difficulties of the trip almost obscure the aesthetic impressions
(how I hate that phrase!). But this will not be for long;
already the essentials are fast emerging from the accidents.
I wish I could give you a conception of these mountain
meadows, ten or eleven thousand feet high, set in a cirque
of desolate grandeur, flower-starred floors of richest,
softest green, rivulet-enlaced and aspen-fringed, swept
by silver skirts of rain which the sun chases and glorifies.
They are the poetry of these mountains, not to be known
save of him whose strenuous right elbow can buckle a
mule-pack in place. One tremendous afternoon we had
two on the summit of the divide, with a world of peaks in
circle, far as the eye could reach - an awful Senate. We
crawled down the side of the thing before sunset, with the
frost beginning to settle lightly on the rocks, and camped
by a little cold green lake which was held like a cup on a
shelf of granite a thousand feet high, that again resting
on another and another, a stairway to make the brain
faint as it felt down it for a resting place.
Well, trailing - with its thrilling joys and exhausting
labors - is over for me for this time. I am doing the next
best thing - in some ways even a better thing, since it
leaves me with more energy to enjoy what I see. I have
put Garland in good hands and started out with a single
horse to explore the country around Ouray, a comparatively settled region, so that by figuring ahead pretty
sharply I can be sure of a roof to sleep under at night and
a shed for my horse. Tonight I am staying with a ranchman in the upper Rio Grande, who by grand good luck
owns pen, ink,iand paper. Tomorrow I go over the Divide
[ 8]




AMERICA - I90I
to Lake City; the trail goes very high and I expect to have
a gorgeous day.
You will pardon all this chatter; I don't forget that you
are cooped up in bed, and for all I know suffering weary
pain - certainly suffering the weariest pain of all - that
of confinement and ennui.
This I will not talk about, since it avails not. And after
all you are with me here, and your heart is made strong
with the mountains.
W. V. M.
Please read something of this to Ferd.' It is too late
to write him tonight and I don't know when I shall have
another chance.
I don't understand why I hear nothing from you or
from him. I have had no word at all. - Every now and
then I am seized with anxiety as to the result of the operation, and half suspect you are keeping- back something
from me. Please do not.
Tuesday, Aug. 27.
Thursday, Aug. 29 (i9oi)
The dirty and crumpled condition of these sheets is
due to the fact that I took the wrong trail to Lake City
and found myself at nightfall with eighteen miles and a
mountain between me and a bed; the condition of these
sheets isn't due to that, but to what follows, to wit:
friendly curl of smoke through trees on mountain side; approach by benighted tenderfoot; greeting by band of tramp
miners; deserted cowpuncher's hut (notice that hut not
c.p. was deserted) made festal by a log-fire kindled reck'Ferdinand Schevill.
[SI]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


lessly in the midst thereof; baking of 'dough-gobs' and
boiling of inexpressible coffee; ravenous eating of same;
stories; bed au naturel on dirt floor, with benighted tenderfoot wrapped in his raincoat. The dirt and crumpling
of these sheets is due to their position in an exposed pocket
in too intimate contact with dirt floor, charred logs, and
dough-gobs.
I return to Wagon Wheel Gap tomorrow, and start
at once for Colorado Springs where I shall spend a day or
two. Shall probably be in Chicago by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. I am going to fill up the rest of this
sheet with writing, in hopes that the grime may be in
part concealed. If you knew what good fellows some of
these tramp miners were you would regard more reverently the dirt which is their secular element.
(Postmarked Boston, Mass., Nov. 25, I90I)
Sunday night, and you are gathered about the fire,
warmed also and illuminated by another light, that neverwas on land or sea, shed from some deathless lyric which
someone has just said. The blessed expansion of these
firelit hours, and how we found each other in the wind of
the poetry, and went down it together to the unguessed-at
goal! Here is a night of rain and wild Atlantic wind; inside,
sleepy domestic happiness, and for me tedium vitae. I
think I am still of the unregenerate in whom sleepy domestic happiness induces tedium vitae. Other people's
at any rate; perhaps my own wouldn't, but I doubt it
would. Or perhaps (a happy thought) my own wouldn't
be sleepy. Basta.
I am trying to obey your injunction and think of you as
happy and possessed in soul, but for some reason, some
[8.2




AMERICA - I90I
underworld reason, it is not easy. Both last night and the
night before I wakened several times with the feeling that
you were in distress and that I must go to you at once.
This, in a more shadowy sense, has persisted through the
daylight, filling me with vague uneasiness. Let me know
that you are well, that you rest confidently and joyously
on the larger facts of our mutual life, and that the days
bring you each after its kind their mystic increase. Write
me quite concretely and matter-of-factly about your
daily life - as I mean to do. As an evidence of good faith
I will state that I have a bad cold, caught at the football
game, and a small price to pay for it too, for it was a
glorious spectacle and a great generous excitement. Out
of this, as out of everything great and generous, my heart
turned to you, saying 'See!' or rather, saying nothing,
but looking for the soul's intelligencer, the speaking light
of your eye understanding in secret. You do not know how
I turn to you for that sweet secret understanding.
Good night and good cheer for the morrow.
I think of getting a room in Cambridge, to be near the
library.
W. V. M.
I WILLOW STREET, BOSTON
Wednesday
(Postmarked Dec. 5, 1901)
DEAR HARRIET:
Your first good letter came some days ago, and relieved
my mind much. Here is another, telling of your social dissipations. Don't do it. Peace is not to be found that way.
'Shine inward rather thou, and all the dark
Illumine.'
[83J




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Mason! has just been playing me Beethoven's second
symphony, which we are to hear at this week's concert.
His music is a tremendous resource to me. How I wish
you might share it. Some day you will know him and add
one more noble soul to the number of those whom to have
known in this life is life and to have missed is the great
misfortune.
I am working night and day, trying to push the book 2
through by the first of the year. It looks now like a forlorn hope. Lovett is very good-natured about working
his stuff over, and I am recasting much of mine to approximate it as nearly as possible to some common standard of form and tone. This soul-destroying work makes
me feel like a turnip in the head and a rotten walnut in
the -well, not in the heart, I guess, let me say the
sensorium. I keep boring away in the dark, like a captive
tunnelling his way under the prison flags to daylight and
fresh air. Barring suffocation or a cave-in I shall get away
with my life, I think. Once out and in the woods I shall
lie for a week forgetting, and then -basta, as Signor
G. Mantellini now has the privilege of saying in his debased American accent to one accustomed to the right
Tuscan tang. Which reminds me that I heard yesterday
of a place called Cornish, on the Connecticut River, on
the New Hampshire-Vermont border, said to be a great
region, where there is a small house for sale. It is on a high
hill outside the village, the last house, with a big view of
the river, etc. Does it sound? Has it a flavor?
What you say about Hedda Gabler is very exciting; I
shall read it as soon as I can find an hour not roosted on
I Daniel Gregory Mason.
s The Moody-Lovett History of English Literature.
[841




AMERICA -90I


by the Incubus. The Incubus is discouragingly catholic
and exhaustive as to his roosts. Your account of Herrick's
book is disappointing, but I hardly hoped he could handle
the theme metaphysically. He seems to have pictured
vividly the world of unreality, in which he believes, and
been unable to picture the world of reality because he
doesn't believe in it, at least not with the vital belief
which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen.
For fear you have lost count let me remind you that
today (Wednesday) you should be reading the i3th
chapter of John. Aren't you a little disappointed in John?
He is so anxious to establish the god-head of Christ that
he robs him of a great deal of the humanity which the
simpler Evangelists let us see in him. Already his features have begun to stiffen into those of an idol, under
the freezing touch of theology. Yet it was John that He
loved best - dear me!
Was on the point of sending for the Faith-Healer last
week, when I discovered that Willard was here, but there
was hardly time. When you send it let me know your
last impression, however unfavorable. Also any suggestions that have occurred to you, for rewriting.
It is late, late, and here is a great lot of nothing, meaning merely that I wish to talk to you, and fear if I stop
you will go away.
Yours,               WILL
(Postmarked Boston, Mass., Dec. I6, 190I)
Sunday night
It is eleven o'clock, and I have been writing since nine
this morning, almost uninterruptedly, so that my head is
putty; but I must send you a line. You write of many inI85]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


teresting things, but fail to answer my questions about
your operation and resultant state of health. I begin to
be worried by your reticence, and shall appeal to little
Alice for the truth. Send the programs by all means.
This accursed book has got on my nerve so that I can
think of nothing else awake or asleep except pushing it
through. However, perhaps the knowledge that I am listening to your music will relax the tension and permit me
to hear.
The pictures (of which Dyer sent me rough proofs)
were uniformly base. I sent one or two back to be finished
up, for luck, but if they are as bad as they promise to be
you shall never see them. A kind of rudimentary selfrespect survives, amid the ruin of my faculties, and it
takes the form of wishing to preserve my image in your
breast undisfigured by photographic caricature. If you
notice any incoherences in this letter, forgive them. They
are due only to the fact that I keep thinking of you and
forgetting my pen.
WFriday night
(Postmarked Boston, Mass., Dec. 17, 190I)
DEAR HARRIET:
I am sorry that you worried about my cold. It has
been bothersome, but at no time serious. I was unable
to achieve a temperature of more than a hundred, tho'
I used the thermometer as per directions. What is much
more to the purpose is that they have been butchering
you again and that you are once more in the grip of the
Cocaine devil. Poor dear! I wish I could be there to help
you bear what at last grows, does it not? unbearable.
[86]




AMERICA - 190I


It's really too much, too much! But keep a heart in your
breast, and don't let go the 'forward-looking thoughts.'
I wish I could send you one thing which is a constant
source of vague happiness to me. For days I couldn't fix
on what it was; but each time I stepped out doors my
heart gave a lift - vague, delicious. Last night I went
out for a walk in the frosty starlight before going to bed.
Again the sudden impalpable sweet pang, like a harpstring softly struck in the core of my being. I stopped and
tried to analyze the sensation, and succeeded in tracing
it to the nostrils. All at once it came over me - the Sea!
I had been smelling it for days, and thrilling to it, without
knowing it.
The streets are full of Christmas. I wonder by what
chemistry the very quality of the air changes in festival
time? If the snow holds I shall go up into the mountains
during Christmas week. Be of good cheer; this must be
the last of a bad business.
W.
(Postmarked Boston, Mass., Dec. 27, 19oi)
DEAR HARRIET,
This morning your note of Christmas greeting came,
and started the day for me bravely. Except that you are
ill again, alas! And except that you speak of me in terms
which make the drudging, un-uplifted reality of me wish
to be blotted out and there an end. Think of me as one
who has been human and may in the fullness of time be
so again, but who is at present a maker of textbooks and
an offence to the sunlight. Lovett is not sailing on the
28th and the book is still far from done. The unholy thing
has had to be practically rewritten from start to finish,
[87J




LETTERS TO HARRIET


compressed and recast, to make the parts fit together. It
has been a business! I am working ten hours a day, and
have been doing so since I came East. By good luck I
shall be done in another three weeks. Then? I think I will
tumble into the first train or steamer headed south, travel
until I find a big field with a tree in the middle of it, and
lie under said tree for forty days without moving a finger.
Will you come along? There will be room for two under
the tree, if you promise not to stir or speak for forty days.
If you said Boo! I'm that nervous I should fly to pieces
like a Prince Rupert's drop.
Your pictures are a great support to me. They remind
me, in these days when I need to be reminded, that there
is such a thing as human great-heartedness, and that, as
Keats said, Life is the Valley of Soul-making. Which reminds me that the volume of Keats you speak of has not
reached me. Seymour's book' is very interesting. I am
surprised by the faithfulness of several of his drawings to
the seventeenth century spirit - I mean the spirit of
seventeenth century graphic art. Is this an accident of
temperament, or has he studied the contemporary engravings? At any rate the book is a pious and admirable piece
of work. I read the poem over in a crowded street car
Christmas Eve, going out to Newton, and its majestic
melody, its imagery, for all it is so quaintly elaborate,
always eager and awe-struck, made that bouncing, screaming electric car a fore-court of adoration, and the bundleladen people nothing less than 'star-led wizards' and
shepherds tendings their flocks by night - under the
helmed Cherubim and sworded Seraphim. I here check
my pen with the uncomfortable suspicion that this verges
x Ralph Fletcher Seymour's edition of The Eve of Saint Agnes.
[88]




AMERICA - I 902


on Scenery, and that some lines ago you gave this letter
up and laid it beside the last rhapsody from  -  -
Pick it up again, do. I promise plain russet, and no sarcenet surety for my oaths. And in plain russet, I wish you
a happy New Year, and in plain love I pray God to send
you speedily health and all joy.
W.
I WILLOW STREET, BOSTON
Yan. 13, I902
DEAR HARRIET,
I have neglected you sadly of late, I fear, so far as
writing goes. The fact is I have been straining every
nerve to get this infernal book done, and after each day's
stint was over, have been too fagged and dead to have
anything to say, even to you. It was good of you to send
the little books. The Milton especially is a wonder of bookmaking and almost solves the problem of a library for
people who live in their trunks.
I shall be through with my job in another week or ten
days, and shall then go down to New York with the manuscript, and arrange about having the proof forwarded to
me somewhere. After a day or two in N.Y. recovering
the rudimentary use of my suspended faculties, I shall be
off - somewhere. I want a month or two of absolute rest
and solitude, in a soft country - a soft country. The buds
are pushing out on the laurels below Amalfi, and the blue,
blue water is lapping in the Capri caves. What shall I
do?
We


[ 89 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


(Postmarked Jan. 21, Io92)
I WILLOW ST., BOSTON
Saturday
DEAR HARRIET:
Your letter has just come, and I send a hasty line of
information about my necessary movements without waiting to answer your large-hearted message. I leave for
New York on Monday the 25th. I shall probably have to
be there for a week, in consultation with Scribner about
the book, and in getting the printing under way. I do not
think it would pay you to come to New York. The Virginia Coast is far better, and after a week I can come there
perfectly well. The news of your health alarms and pains
me - but I will not talk about that. When you start
send word to me care -, where you have decided to go,
and I will join you and little Alice as soon as I can.
WSALMAGUNDI CLUB
(Postmarked New York, Feb. II, 1902)
/ \   This unimaginable textbook hangs on. I thought I had
it done two weeks ago, but on looking at the bibliography
I found it had to be done over again, and the result has
been a fortnight of about as strenuous drudgery as the
devil ever meted to a just man. I am still working eight
hours a day, but the end is at last in sight. Gloria in
excelsis and hoop-la! I expect to take the three o'clock
boat on Friday afternoon, and reach Norfolk the next
day, about noon.
Stephen Phillips's Ulysses is out. I bought it this morning but haven't had time to read it. I saw Mrs. P.
Campbell in Beyond Human Power last week, and share
your lack of enthusiasm, both for player and play.
[90]




AMERICA - I902


Have you got books enough? If not telegraph me what
to bring, or write if you think there is time. Also hunt up
that tree - the Nirvana tree.
W. V. M.
(Harriet, accompanied by Alice Corbin and Elizabeth
O'Neill, went to Cape Henry, where the only place she
could find to live in was an old inn. Here they were joined
by W. V. M.)
NORFOLK, VA.
(Postmarked April Io, I902)
I am unable to get out of town tonight after all, and am
wandering like a lost soul in this Gehenna of a hotel.
A certain fireside in a seaside shanty, with the elements
outside, and a loved life inside; Shakespeare, and big
important conversation, and the Little Talk within -
why didn't we know a good thing when we had it? There
is nothing for it but bed, where at least these strident
noises and uninhabited faces will give way to oblivion;
not that oblivion isn't something in my line tonight,
with only an hour's sleep out of last night's allowance in
my shy-a-bed pate. In spite of weariness your spirit is
vividly with me, and thank God it is a glad spirit tonight,
and not sorrowful. Dear spirit, may He keep me true to
you, and through you to the best I have to hope for, and
learn, and attain unto.
WILL.
(Postmarked April 12, I902, New York)
Friday night, i i:3o
I have had a long day on the train, and am correspondingly used up - so much so, that I feel anxious to hear
[9I ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


how you stood your long ride. There is small likelihood
of my getting off tomorrow, as the boat sails at IO A.M.,
instead of two in the afternoon as at first advertised; but
I have heard of another sailing Tuesday, which I shall
probably take. I shall get some word from you before
that. May it be one of good cheer, which I can lay to
heart for comfort on the voyage.
On the train I read the Winter's Tale, rereading the
first act in order to hear your voice on the lines. I did
observance at all our shrines coming along past Cape
Henry this morning. To tell the truth, however, I was
surprised and shocked to find everything there just as if
nothing had happened. The stolid existence of things in
space and time, when all reason for their existence has
disappeared, is among the hardships. The fruit trees in
Maryland were a joy to the heart; I hope you found them
singing all along your route.                 W.
(Postmarked April 13, 1902, New York)
I have taken passage on the Citta di Milano, sailing
Tuesday morning for Naples. She is small and slowish
(fourteen days) but I expect to get a good deal of fun out
of the crew and passengers, who will doubtless all be
Italians. I had a regular love feast with the 'Genovese,
si, Signore, sono da Genova, bella cittd,' who sold me my
ticket. I save twenty-five dollars over the German line,
and gain, I think, more than that in imponderabilia.
W.
(Postmarked New York, April 14, I902)
I have been dining with Robinson ' tonight, and we have
sat late over the coffee and cigars; so I shall take time only
'Edwin Arlington Robinson.
[ 92 ]




AMERICA - 1902


for a word. Robinson's book Captain Craig has been accepted by Houghton and Mifflin, partly at my solicitation, I am proud to say. Get it when it comes out, and
let me know what you think of it. Your judgment of his
work has, I know, hitherto been adverse; I shall be curious
to know whether this volume changes it at all. The mortal day I have been reading proof, finishing the last pages;
I tremble to think how ill they will bear your scrutinizing
eye. Reading them alone was dreary work; thoughts of
my dear comrade came between me and the page more
than once; I longed for the Cape Henry fireplace, the
half-heard boom of the sea, and the sense of glad intimate
understanding.
Tomorrow will be an exceedingly busy day, but I shall
snatch time for a word spoken in secret to the noblest and
tenderest of earthly hearts. Spoken in secret - such
these hasty scrawlings are, as you know, though matters
of fact and things of no moment, except for the unspoken
things beneath.
WILL
NEW YORK, April 14 (1902)
My trunk is packed, and the wind sits in the shoulder
of the sail. Freedom is somewhere near. I feel her as a
presence veiled with light, and her blessed eyes are on me;
but when I turn about to catch her at it she is gone and I
am left still mewed up in my heaviness. Her coyness and
my lack of spirit may be due to the fact that I have not
heard from you after your home-coming, and I have a
vague fear about you. This I know is not according to
our contract, and a night's sleep will give me once more
my happy confidence in the strength and joyousness
1 93 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


which I know uphold you. Goodbye, and may all the
great powers shield you. If possible I will send a line
from Gibraltar. In case we do not touch there, it will be
between three and four weeks before you hear from me.
Meanwhile, the water into the sun!
WILL -
(Postmarked New York, April I5, 1902)
We are going down the harbor, and my mood, which
has been rather low, has been so raised by your letter,
handed me as I left the hotel, that I begin to feel the glory
of the world, and know that it is well for us both that I go.
No man since the first who went down to the sea in ships
ever left behind him a braver or sweeter heart; and I
shall rest confident in your power to take your life and
mine in the largest way, to feed yourself and me from the
eternal cisterns. It is great news about your walking;
but I told you so. Indeed, let it be an omen.
I shall try and send you a line from Gibraltar. Goodbye
once more, and may the Lord make his light to shine upon
you.
WILL
April 16 (90o2)
We are on a halcyon sea, smooth as silk, rippling into
long lazy lines of light. The boat proves, so far, unexpectedly comfortable. When I saw her lying at the pier I
was half-inclined to give her the go-by and forfeit my
passage money. But though small she is clean, and bids
fair not to roll too outrageously. We are about thirty
souls in the first cabin, and some hundred in the steerage.
Most of the cabin passengers are Italians of the middle
[94]




En Voyage- i902
class -a retired sea-captain, a doctor, a lieutenant in
the navy, a musician (member of the Thomas orchestra),
merchants, etc. I sit at table with the sea-captain and his
wife and baby; we are already good friends, thanks to the
baby. The most picturesque members of our company
are a nun of the Order of St. Francis of Assisi, and the
mother superior of the order, who have in charge six or
eight Irish-American girls on their way to Rome to take
the veil. Seen against this gigantic laughing pagan sea,
the black hoods and unbetraying faces of the nuns give
one strange thoughts. I have had a little talk with the
'Madre'- a remarkably intelligent woman, so far as her
absolute devotion to her church allows her to be. There
bids fair to be plenty of diverting humanity here, but for
now I lie curled in my steamer chair, with my warm rug
about me, contemplating all things and luxuriating in
laziness. I am more tired than I supposed. I can think
of nothing so blessed as to lie in a steamer chair in the
sun, and to be borne softly along over sleepy seas, to the
day before Judgment.
It is still too cold to sleep on deck at night, but I hope
that as we make south I shall be able to. I shall jot down
a word or two now and then, to chronicle my course
across the sea. I take it for granted that all the petty
facts as well as the few large ones, that go to make up the
days for me, interest you - a hugeous assumption, I
know.
April I7 (1902)
It is a cold and rainy day off the Banks of Newfoundland. It seems we are taking the northern passage, which
means several days of bad weather. All the passengers
[,95




LETTERS TO HARRIET


have been driven indoors, and all their facile Italian
tongues are going at once, to say nothing of the fog-horn,
the piano, the pounding engines, the shuddering wrench
of the screw as it comes out of the water, and - triumphantly audible above everything - the ship baby. I
remember several rings of Dante's hell which seem by
contrast Elysian. My distresses are added to by the fact
that the old gentleman who shares my stateroom is very
ill; and between pity for his groans and the vain attempt
to relieve them, I don't get much sleep. And you know
what I am without an ox's share of sleep.
All this sounds doleful, no doubt; but I am, as a matter
of fact, enjoying most of it. I forgot to tell you (or did I
tell you after all?) that I finished the last bit of proof
on board, and sent it back by the pilot boat. A pretty
neat fit, it strikes me.
I have read two books of the Odyssey since the ship
started. I intend to read at least a book a day during the
voyage, not attempting the drama until a more strenuous
time. Here is a sentence which I found in Hesiod, about
the rich: 'They know not how the half is more than the
whole, nor the great joy there is in mallow and asphodel.'
Sunday, April 21
For two days we have been in the grip of a tremendous
sea, which has tossed and shaken and pounded our poor
little ship as a cat treats a mouse. Rain and cold, together with the sky-larking of the boat, have made it impossible to do anything but hug one's berth, so that my
'correspondence' has languished along with other things.
Today it is bright again, and the sea after its anger is
glorious - the color of bright iron, roaring and shouting
[96]




En Voyage - 1902
past in mountainous play. The boat is in for the fun too
- standing now on its head and now pirouetting on its
beam-end, ducking its taffrail and covering itself amidships
with crisp green avalanches of brine. Poseidon is a great
god and a merry. I am setting down these remarks on the
weather as I skate past my paper - a word on the starboard roll and a word on the port. How you would glory
in the gigantic mirth of this sea!
/April 22 (1902)
This has been a great Homeric day, and the gods have
been seated again upon the clouds. It has been a great
experience to read Homer against this background of unreclaimed primeval sea. The rhythms especially take on
a new meaning when timed with the swing and swell of
the water, here in mid-Atlantic. The hexameter would
never have arisen except among a race of sailors or coastdwellers. This strikes me as an ornamental variety of
Lautverschieb; I shall embody it in my forthcoming textbook on the subject.
There is an extraordinary complex of human ',life on
board, even more than is usually to be found on these
small steamers, where the passengers, since they travel
the seas not for pleasure but for serious business, are almost always at some crisis of life. I wish hourly that you
might be here, to share my absorption in the curious human stories that are poured into my ear whenever I stop
to listen. The smallness of the boat, the three days of
dreadful weather, the pressing in upon us of the immensities of sky and sea, make everybody eager to share his
heart's inmost secret, an eagerness which these dear
Italians are apt to experience at all times.
[971




LETTERS TO HARRIET


We have among our types a buffoon and a madman.
The latter is a Piedmontese peasant who was refused admission to the United States by the immigration authorities, and who has gone out of his head with the disappointment. For a day or two he roamed the ship, but is
now confined. The buffoon is still at large.
There is a young Englishman on board, an engineer,
whom I knew in Cambridge, and who may go to Greece
with me. He is a capital fellow, and will make a firstrate companion for rough travel, I think.
WApri+l 23 (1902)
Last night and today has been rather a solemn time.
The old gentleman whom I spoke of as being ill in my
cabin, proved to be far more seriously afflicted than anybody dreamed. He got rapidly worse during the three
days of storm. I did what I could for him, which was
very little. For several nights I slept in the smoking
room, (or made a bluff at sleeping) as his condition made
it impossible to sleep in the cabin, and the stewards needed
the room in order to take care of him. Day before yes.
terday he was removed to the hospital and last night at
sunset died. As I stood on deck after everybody was in
bed, and thought of the old man lying there in the majesty of death, it seemed as if he were piloting the ship
toward the unearthly shore where his business now is.
An inventory of his papers and effects revealed the fact
that he was a Catholic priest, with a natural son - a
nice boy who came on board with him and saw him safely
fixed. He will be buried tonight at nine, somewhere off
the Azores. There is another priest on board to read the
[98 1




En Voyage - i9o2
funeral service. This tragedy, and some others, not so
catastrophic but even more affecting, which have come
to light from day to day among the steerage passengers
(they are easy to come at and talk with, in so small a
ship) have cast a pall over the sun, and I shall be relieved
when land is sighted. We shall pass Gibraltar the day
after tomorrow, and be in Naples three days later.
WApril 25, 3 P.M. (1902)
This is dated from my bunk, which- is the only place
I can find steady enough to write in, and it is to be accomplished here only with the aid of an elaborate apparatus of bracing gear, contrived of suit-cases and shawlstrap bundles.
Yesterday I was too depressed by the happenings of
the night before to write. At nine o'clock a little knot
of passengers - as many as had the courage to cross the
open space of howling wind and rain intervening - gathered in the hospital, and clung to the tiers of iron bunks
while the French priest read his Latin over the dead;
the two nuns and the girls who are going to Rome to
enter a convent, muttering the responses. When we came
on deck the storm which had been brewing all day had
broken, and the burial was a thing to remember for
gruesomeness. It was made tolerable only by the sense
of majesty which death seems always to bring, which
no claptrap or hugger-mugger can injure, or even human
callousness much. These good Italians came back to the
saloon afterwards, and gave the whole thing a grand
talking-over, spiced with wit and with nice points of difference, uproariously debated.
[ 99 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


The weather continues vexatiously bad. All day yesterday, last night and today, a gale of wind has been
blowing, and the sea has been getting more and more
angry. The boat plunges and rolls like a crazy thing. One
can cross the deck only by clinging to a safety-rope, and
then at some peril, as we keep shipping seas. At four
o'clock this morning an unusually simple and earnest
business wave struck us, smashing two life boats, flooding
the engine room, and putting out some of the fires. We
have been compelled temporarily to leave our course and
run before the wind, as the ship is hardly powerful enough
to cope with the cross-seas. If the gale holds for twentyfour hours, we shall probably have to put in at Lisbon,
which will mean two days delay at least. The sea is a
glorious sight now, especially from the bow of the boat,
where one moment you see the hills of water slanting
fifteen or twenty feet above you, and the next you hang
poised on the crest, with sliding green abysses round you.
All the same I wish the wind would behave itself and let
us go decently on our course. There isn't the slightest
danger, not even enough to give continued interest to
the situation, and this vague dubbing-about begins to
grow wearisome.
WApril 28 (90o2)
Since day before yesterday, when the storm ceased and
we got back into our course, life has been growing worth
while again at a rapid rate. We came through the Strait
of Gibraltar just before sunset yesterday - a wonderful
hour, with curtains of mist and rain sweeping and lifting
about us, giving glimpses of ethereal mountain slopes,
[ Ioo




En Voyage - I902
nestling white villages, etc. Supply scenic details. The
coast of Africa, which we ran unusually near, was about
the most unearthly thing, the most impalpable and dreamlike in its loveliness, that I ever saw; yet marvelously
distinct in its pencillings. Once in the Mediterranean, the
Italian passengers (who have been dispirited during the
bad weather) new-tricked their brains, and all day the
gay language has gone up and down the boat like a song.
The steerage children are playing London Bridge (or its
old-world equivalent) on the lower deck while their
mothers are hanging out the clothes to dry on improvised
clothes-lines, and screaming good-naturedly at the sailors
when they come too near with the buckets of paint which
are to make us fine for our grand entry into Naples Bay.
A waiter just passing announces confidentially in my ear
that there is champagne for dinner, and 'gelato all'
Americano.' It seems years since that ghostly business
of the burial. Perhaps I dreamed it. Yes, now I remember, I did; but all the same I can't find the old man anywhere. Doubtless the whole thing was a dream from the
beginning.
Ever since we came near these beautiful and tragic
lands, I have wished with an especial longing that you
were here. This is the home of your heart. How much
longer will you bear to live in exile? Chicago? Did I
dream that too? I hope and pray that you may find it
possible very soon to ship the burden of that life, which
you have borne with such quiet heroism, and get away
into a better country. Try, try.
W.




EUROPE
MAY 2, 1902 -Nov. 30, 1902
NAPLES, May 1 (1902)
I have just finished dinner, and over the coffee and cigar
(ah, for a real one, instead of a straw and peach-leaf imitation!) I must follow the example set me by thejeunesse
doree at neighboring tables, and write a letter.
The past two days have been a bewildering whirl of
sensations. First there was a bridal procession of islands,
miraculous shapes and colors, and veiled Vesuvius as
chief paranymph. Then a pandemonium of customhouse, hackmen, crazy-eyed gesticulating screaming facchini, then the thousand-voiced, myriad-vested streets
of this incredible town - soldiers, priests, pastry-venders,
fruit-venders, water-sellers, goats, pigeons, bare-legged
contadini, and the rest of the indescribable jumble. The
first impression is that they are all drunk - including the
goats, donkeys, and pigeons; the next and lasting one is
that they are all stark crazy, as well as the God who made
them. In sober earnest I would inquire if, in view of the
things he creates, the Creator is really at all times strictly
temperate in his habits? Looking out upon the Via Roma,
from the vantage ground of my restaurant table and a
good dinner done, I am forced to answer in the negative.
By great good luck I find a steamer here about to sail
direct to Athens. This saves two weary railway journeys
and much trouble in transferring baggage, etc., which I
had been dreading. The chap I spoke of who thought
something of going on with me doesn't feel up to the trick
[ 102]




EUROPE - 1902


of horseback travel and bad inns. He looked staunch
enough but, like everybody else in the civilized world, has
just had nervous prostration, and has gone to sleep at
Capri for a month. He may follow me later. I have been
making feints at beginning to learn enough modern Greek
to get along with when alone in the interior, but it seems
dreadfully hard. I feel discouraged by the language
difficulty. The whole success of my enterprise will, I
fear, depend altogether on my finding a good guide and
interpreter within my means. There is also the possibility of falling in with some American or English student
in Athens who knows the language and who is bent on
the same kind of jaunting that I want to do.
I sail tomorrow morning, and there will be three days
at sea.
WATHENS May 6 (April 24)
In disembarking on these shores I have tumbled into a
little gold-mine of gratuitous days. Yesterday it was the
fifth of May; today it is the twenty-fourth of April.
Hamlet's quip to Polonius seems to have come true.
The prosaic explanation is that the Greek calendar is
unreformed, and is thirteen days behind that of the rest
of the world.
The sail from Naples to the Piraeus (the port for Athens)
was very repaying. Early yesterday morning, when I
looked out of my porthole we were passing close to
'Sandy Pylos,' where Nestor entertained Telemachus and
Athene, when Telemachus came thither in search of his
father. A few hours later we rounded Cape Matapan into
the Gulf of Sparta, and for a long time had the grand
[ 103 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


snowcapped peak of Taygetos (which marks the site of
old Sparta) as the dominating presence in a world more
magically colored than it is possible for anyone who has
not seen it to conceive. I had retained a vivid recollection of this Greek coloring, so much higher in the scale,
so much more spiritual and intellectual than that in which
Italy is steeped, but I found that my recollection of it was
a very sorry thing compared with the reality. So long as
this atmosphere endures the old gods cannot die, but will
go on 'delicately marching through most pellucid air.'
By great good luck we succeeded in colliding with a Greek
steamer during the afternoon, which detained us two
hours for the ascertaining of damages, and made our approach to Athens fall at the sunset hour, when a, supernatural splendor and hush lay upon Aegina and Salamis,
the mountain ranges above Eleusis, and the dimly discerned Acropolis. (I am afraid all this is scenery, or manners and customs, or phrases, or something else that you
justly dislike and have charged me deeply not to perpetrate; but these are the things which have been in my
mind, and how can I avoid setting them down, wishing
to speak to you as to my other self. I know you are scolding me for this parenthesis, and I deserve it. A momentary
panic seized me. Please tell me that I may be as scenic
and guidebookish as I like.)
As I take my coffee this morning the streets outside are
full of music, soldiers and holiday-makers. It is the feast
of St. George, the king's patron saint. I shall go up to the
American School this afternoon. The school is still open,
I hear, and the Shoreys are doubtless here. I feel that my
fortunes hang pretty much on what they can do for me.
The prices of the professional dragomen and camping
[ 104]




EUROPE - I902


outfitters are hopelessly out of my reach, and the impossibility of mastering modern Greek sufficiently to travel
alone seems to be absolute. I will let you know tomorrow
what they tell me.
WMay 9 (i902)
Yesterday was a day of small disappointments, which
were lost in the light shed by your letter, the first word I
have had from you for nearly a month. I found it waiting
for me at the American School, and read it as I came down
through the cypresses and pepper-trees of the garden.
It cheered and gladdened me much, and I was in need of
such cheer, for I had found the school deserted, all the
students scattered, the annual excursions over, and the
library (which I had hoped to use) in the hands of workmen, who had nailed the books up. Later in the day I
found the Shoreys at their hotel, on the wing for Italy.
So I beheld myself left high and dry, and the problem of
inland travelling unsolved and apparently insoluble. In
this crisis, I rushed off to the Piraeus, and took a berth
in a tiny steamer which by good luck I found just started
for a tour of the islands. All day we have been threading
the marvellous lace-work pattern which the Cyclades
make on the blue surface of the Aegean. It is now halfpast nine at night; we have just left the mountain-locked
harbor of Seriphos and are standing off for Melos. I remember that She of Melos is your patron goddess, that she
is you in some other incarnation, so I shall stay on deck,
wrapped in my rug and bag, and defy the drenching dew
until we pass the sacred earth whence her statue was taken.
I hope you can read this. It is written by a dingy
[ IOS ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


decklamp, and the coil of rope on which I sit is wobbling
badly. I haven't the face to get out my palatial sleepingtogs until the Greek and Armenian peasants round me on
the deck have gone to sleep. I should be shunned for the
rest of the journey as an aristocrat, and should forfeit
the golden opinions I have won by my simplehearted
struggle to pick up from them a few phrases of their outrageous tongue.
WMay Io (I902)
This is Canea, in Crete, on the threshold of the Orient -
white domes and minarets of mosques and latticed seraglio windows against a sky of passionate blue. It is the
last stronghold of Greece toward the East, too, and the
mountains and the sea are all Greek. This meeting of the.
east and west may have given color to a scene which I beheld this morning and which will haunt me for many
days. On the beach at the outskirts of the town a number of fishing boats were drawn up, and the nets drying.
The sailors were lying about asleep in the fierce sun -
except one, who had heaved his boat on her side and was
caulking her. By him stood a man dressed in a long dark
robe of coarse stuff, bareheaded, talking earnestly to the
stooping sailor. I took him for a Greek priest, by reason
of his long hair and spiritual profile. There was something
in the spare frame of the man, the slight stoop of the
shoulders, and the calm intensity of the attitude, which
made my heart stop beating. Presently he turned to look
at me, and it was indeed He. This has happened to me
twice now - once before at Sorrento seven years ago.
W —
[ Io6]




EUROPE - I902


May I I (1902)
We are standing off Melos. As I told you we passed
here before at night, and although I did my devotions in
both our names I had to come and see the home of that
figure of light at a fitter season. The island is bare of trees
(as are most of the Cyclades), but this seems almost to
be an added and last sumptuousness, for the light plays
over the noble forms of shore-rock and upland and peak
more richly thus, as over the naked form of the goddess
herself. Ah, Harriet, Harriet! Share it with me; my heart
aches with its lonesome joy.
W_
ATHENS, May I4 (0902)
Here I am back in Athens, settled down for a week or
two of reading, before trying any of the up-country trips
I have planned. I am pleasantly fixed here. My room has
a balcony which commands a stunning view of the Acropolis and the Gulf of Aegina, the house is clean (for a wonder)
and the food good. There is a flat roof with a parapet, to
which I can retreat when it gets too hot to sleep in bed.
The early morning hours on the roof or the balcony are
delicious. It gets very hot in the middle of the day, and I
fear it is only a question of weeks until I shall be driven
to Switzerland for a breath of cool air. It is also very
dry and dusty here about Athens, but I hope to find the
country less parched.
Dullness and the blues are on me tonight -one of
those times that are so hard to bear because of their
meaninglessness, when one simply feels emptied of power
and purpose, and there is nothing to say about it. A part
[1 07 1




LETTERS To HARRIET


of it I suppose is due to the heat and disappointment at
finding the season so far past the prime, and a part to the
fact that I went to see Colonus this afternoon (where
Sophocles's lovely play Oedipus at Colonus is laid) and
found it a dust-heap, inhabited by goats and dogs. The
attempt to see old Greece through the Greece of today is
not always easy. Really, however, this is silly whining,
and induced by an overmastering desire to be petted and
condoled with as a victim of ill-fortune, when I know perfectly well my luck is shamefully and indecently good. 1
know also that a man who can't find here the things which
the antique spirits found, or something as excellent,
merely because there are smokestacks in the Piraeus, and
a steam-tram to Eleusis, is a fellow of no metal. Basta.
WATHENS, May is (i902)
This has been a festival day. They handed me out at
the bank - where I had previously inquired in vain
twelve letters, ten from you. Two of them I read coming
home through the blinding white streets, and the rest
on my pretty balcony, with Hymettos and the Aegean
isles singing chorals of congratulation. Since then I have
walked in the radiance shed from their pages, not of this
earth, but homely and comfort-bringing with the earthwarmth and earth-fragrance.
In the realm of tangibles the most important news they
bring is your reconquest of the art and mystery of locomotion. The second claim on my heart's attention was made
by the news about Little Alice.' Happy news it is, and
may it prove still happier in the sequel. Dear little girl'Alice Corbin.
E108]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


woman! Give her my love and blessing; I think of her
often, and am the better for it. May all the healing powers
of earth and air, and of the unseen gods that dwell there,
be quick to help her. The good hope of her recovery carries with it the assurance that you will not have that
great weight of care to keep you from winning back to the
glorious health Heaven meant you to walk arrayed in.
Remember your sister of Melos, and see that you keep up
the family tradition. Your cry for the country fills me
with rebellion against the conditions which keep you
cabined there. Is there no way out into the simple life
for which you were made, and which God knows you
have by this time earned five-fold the right to?
May I6 (g902)
I have just had a glorious afternoon walk around the
bay of Phaleron, and back by moonlight. The colors of
this land are unbelievable in their purity and intensity.
I am itching to get my fingers on a palette. My box of
oils I sent with you back to Chicago, as it was too heavy
and bulky to carry, and I can't think of any way to carry
oil sketches without great risk and inconvenience. I
think I shall try what I can do with water colors; perhaps
I can give you a faint suggestion that way of the
cosmic soap-bubble in which I sail through space these
days.
ATHENS, May 17
The weather has been much cooler today and yesterday - perfect May weather in fact. I begin to hope that
the extreme heat of the week past was only a flurry such
as we often have at home in May.
[ I09




EUROPE - 1902
I have got hold of a bicycle, and have been exploring
Attica by means of it. It (not Attica) is rather less picturesque than a donkey, but more effective. Today I went
to Eleusis, the principal seat of the Demeter worship -
a very strange cult, as far as I can make out, involving
many mystical conceptions such as we usually think of
as foreign to the Greek mind. I came home by the old
'Sacred Way' over the Pass of Daphne. It was late when
I reached the top of the pass, and the sun was setting behind me. The Attic plain was a great pool of purple
shadow, out of which Hymettos and Parnes rose up intense with the very spirit of light - living flame, and the
ghost of flame. In the midst of the glory lay Athens, as
white and proud as she must have looked to the ancient
pilgrims to Eleusis who first caught sight of her from this
point, as they came from the south. The City of the Violet Crown, they used to call her; and her brows were
wreathed today as of old.
This bicycle idea is a great one. It has disadvantages
of course, but it gives one vastly more liberty than any
other means of travel which I have been able to hit upon.
For short distances, it solves the problem perfectly; but
one can't travel very far in Greece without colliding with
a mountain over which a wheel can't be dragged. Neverthe-less I expect in a few days to put a dictionary in my
pocket, and a few cakes of Baker's sweet in my rucksack,
and start out to seek my fortune that way. One slight
drawback to bicycling here is that every donkey you pass
goes into hysterics, deposits his rider in a ditch and his
load of water-jars in a neighboring field, and disappears
forever, leaving the solicitous and apologetic bicyclist
to be knifed by the owner of the animal. Another is that
[ Io]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


the dogs, which are larger and fiercer than any dog has a
right to be, are visited by only one deep perplexity in
life, namely, whether to make the necessary daily meal
off the rider of a passing wheel, or off the wheel itself.
Either decision interferes with one's pleasure as a traveller.
Moreover, any injury to the dog (digestive or other) results in an immediate uprising of the community; if it
is the wheel which has gone first, the traveller is fed to the
dog as a requital for his injuries - I mean the former's injuries at the hands of the latter - no, I think I mean the
other thing. Former and Latter, since they were laid up
in Michmash between the covers of a certain epoch-making historical work, both look alike to me.
I return the page which you sent me from Ferd's letter. It was very heartening. You are all far too good to
me, both for what I do and what I am. Perhaps after a
few lives of failure and success and failure again I shall
begin to be worthy of such friends. Something too much
of this, are you thinking?
I was glad to hear that the sketches came through all
right. Today I hope to get a water color outfit, and attempt the impossible task of fixing on paper for you at
least a far-off hint of the miraculous light which lies over
these mountains and seas.
-WATHENS, May 20 (1902)
You must not think that I am indifferent to what you
tell me about people liking my poems and finding themselves touched by them to a keener sense of life. Indeed,
I am not so. Nor is there any danger of my finding what
you say 'fulsome.' Your words, whatever they are, never
[ 'III




LETTERS TO HARRIET


fail to quicken and strengthen me toward the life which is
for both of us the only reality in a world of phantoms coming and going - beautiful and terrible and in their order
dear, but still phantoms.
As for me, I am simply prostrated by the Greek drama,
now that I am beginning to see it as it was and is, in all
its simplicity and grandeur. I have just finished the
Oedipus at Colonus, and am perfectly bowled over by it.
It is, for one thing, so unclassical. A more romantic conception than the coming of Oedipus to Colonus, and his
passing into death in the grove of the Eumenides, does
not exist in poetry. The choruses are inconceivably good.
I haven't yet mastered the intricate metres, and I see the
lyrics therefore through a veil, but even so they are maddening. I sometimes take my book down to the old Dionysiac theatre on the south slope of the Acropolis, and read
there, evoking the chorus and watching them dance while
they chant the tremendous lines. Ah, me!
Tomorrow I go to Delphi on a coasting steamer which
touches at Itea, a little port on the Gulf of Corinth from
which Delphi can be reached easily on foot or by horse.
If it is possible to live there I shall stay for some days,
and take some walks or rides in the mountains - perhaps climb Parnassus, for a sign. Would that you might
be with me there, at that centre of old-world religion.
I only hope they haven't made a dust-heap of it with their
d -  d excavations. Archeology here attacks all human
organisms, as the dry-rot; they would shovel Olympus
into the sea in order to unearth a seventh century stewpan, at least if there was a chance to quarrel over its
date. The people at the American School - the few lingerers I have seen - are as hopelessly pedantic in this
[  12 ]




EUROPE - I902


respect as the rest. I dare say they do some good, though,
and have a place in the cycle.
Some day, and not too distant, you must come here.
There is much in the revelation of life which was made
here, and which is still made in a sense, to thrill you with a
native joy, to make you realize your own nature, as perhaps even you have never yet realized it. I am constantly
reminded of you, and turn to point out to you your affinities.
WILL
DELPHI, May 23 (1902)
I landed at Itea about four this afternoon, and since
then have been climbing through olive orchards, and over
bare rocky ridges, up to the old shrine of Apollo and the
centre of the antique world. It is now eight o'clock, and
the splendor is fast fading from the tremendous valley
below, though the cliffs which cluster above are still dyed
with rose and gold. There is to be a moon, and by her
light I shall go up to the ruins above the town and consult the god. Meanwhile I have been using the last rays
of light to make a sketch of the valley for you. It turns
out a poor thing, for I haven't yet got any skill with water
colors; but it will give you a faint hint at least, so I will
send it.
There is no inn here, but one of the villagers, who rejoices in the name of Alexandros Pappalexandron, has
taken me in and seems disposed to minister to such physical needs as one can be gross enough to retain in such a
place. There is nobody in the town who speaks anything
but Greek, and my having in that is still a younger brother's portion. - Fortunately I have brought a dictionary,
["I I




LETTERS TO HARRIET


and have picked up a few of the essential phrases, so that
I shall get on.
Dear Harriet, noblest of woman souls! would that you
were here, so that we might do together the acts of piety
which are here to be done. You are constantly in my
thoughts, and no day passes but I thank God for the
inspiration, the strength, and the pure desires that flow
from you to me.
W —
May 25 (902)
The donkeys are browsing on the scant grass among the
rocks and snow patches, and my guide is asleep in the sun,
though I can't see how he manages it in this icy wind
which sweeps down from the peak. We are on Parnassus,
just at the snow line, and all Greece is spread out below,
mountains and islands and bays and tiny white towns.
I had hoped to get to the summit, but that means spending the night here and freezing to death. I am going to
hunt a sheltered place in the rocks, wrap myself in my rug,
and follow my guide's example, in the hope that the
Muses will appear in a vision and suggest a way.
ARACHOVA, May 26
The Muses failed to appear, the jades, and there was
nothing for it but to leave the mountain to the stars and
the late moon, and seek shelter in this mountain village.
It is a marvellous little place, hung like a swallow's nest
among the clouds, at the head of the valley above Delphi.
It is noted for its hand-woven carpets and its handsome
women. I haven't seen the carpets, but I'll take oath as
to the women. A group of them drawing water at the
[ I4]




EUROPE- 1902
fountain in the square yonder would serve as caryatids
for a temple of Artemis. Unfortunately the men are handsomer still; the standard is so high that, after a struggle,
I have abandoned the idea of marrying and settling down
here, though I am sure I should have a career in carpets.
DESPHINA, MaY 27
This afternoon I crossed the valley from Arachova, and
climbed up to a village which seemed to invite me to adventure. Nor was adventure lacking. I was met outside
the town by three old men, who shook hands with me
solemnly and gave me a grave welcome. They abandoned
their errand, whatever it was, and turned back to do the
honors of the village for me. The place was in festival,
owing to the marriage of the demarch's daughter; the
boys, dressed in their Sunday best, were dancing under a
great plane-tree in the public square, at the side of an
old church, while the women and girls looked on in dazzling groups. As soon as they heard that a stranger had
come, dropped from Mars or the moon, all other business
was suspended, and I found myself the centre of attraction for the rest of the afternoon. I was never so feted
and toasted and done grace to since I came home from
Crusade with Barbarossa. The demarch (mayor), the
bridegroom, the bride, the priest, the town-clerk, the innkeeper, and other persons whose callings and dignities I
could but dimly guess, plied me with wine, sweetmeats,
and questions, took me from house to house for varying
hospitalities, and finally insisted on my staying all night,
with a promise that I should be conducted back to Delphi
the next day by a delegation of chosen youths. This
sounds like exaggeration, no doubt, but I assure you it is
I II ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


all true. It has been really a touching experience, and has
taught me something about the gentilezza of the human
heart when it is still innocent and primitive. Tonight
there is to be more dancing, by torchlight, and some mysterious solemnities which my very meagre stock of Greek
doesn't enable me to understand, in spite of elaborate
explanations. I wish you were here to kiss the bride, and
to lead the woman's dance - the Xopos 'yvwvalxo - which
is to be danced, while I foot it with the lads.
WATHENS, May 28 (1902)
Here I am in Athens again, laid up a few days for repairs. Coming down Parnassus I slipped and strained my
hip-joint, and two days of hard walking and riding have
irritated it so that it seems wise to give it a complete rest
for a little while. It is nothing to worry about, and will
be all right in a week. My trip to Delphi was a great
experience -quite enough in itself to repay a journey
across wider seas than I have crossed. I have drunk of
Castaly and slept on Parnassus, so that henceforth inspiration is mine by right.
Better than Castaly were the four beautiful letters
which I found awaiting me here. The glimpses you give
of the American spring have made me homesick. If there
were a chance to recapture it I should be sorely tempted
to leave these alien splendors and fly to see those mysteriously budding trees which are making love to you over
there six thousand miles away. The aspect of sap-filled
branches which you describe I have never noticed; but
the budding has all been done by my orders, just as I
thought you would like it.
[ II6




EUROPE - 1902


This morning I read the story of the Shunem woman
and the man of God. I had forgotten how touching it
was. Brand I can remember only very vaguely. It
seemed to me doctrinaire - as you say - and at the same
time misty and undigested - a poor combination of qualities. Fiske is altogether wrong in saying that the Greeks
had no conception of the after life save as a shadowy and
joyless existence. This is indeed true of Homer and the
early poets; but the Orphic poets, the teachers of the
Dionysiac cult and the hierophants of Demeter at Eleusis
seem to have taught something far different - a doctrine
of mystic regeneration, to be achieved however not
through denial of this life but by a complete entering
into it.
ATHENS, May 29 (1902)
The letters which fell to me this morning were a godsend, for confinement to the house and the prince of the
powers of the air had made me very blue. They came
bringing warm life and hope, breathing such tenderness
and courage as I think few men have ever had to fall
back upon at need. Sometimes I cannot bear to have
you make so much of me, knowing how ordinary are the
levels on which most of my life is led, how utterly unheroic I am in all the relations of life. But this morning a
better thought came to me. I perceived that it is impossible for one spirit to glorify another unduly, in descrying
and asservating its nobility, which now we see as in a
glass darkly, but then face to face. 'Who that has ever
heard a strain of music,' said Thoreau, 'will speak of
exaggeration any more ever after?' If you have caught
through me a strain of the eternal music, it is well. I
t  7l




LETTERS TO HARRIET


had meant to scold you for idealizing me, and this is what
it has come to.
My sore hip is better today, and will be all right in a
little while. It is deuced irksome to be cooped up, though,
while it is mending. When I think of your year of it, I
stand in my shoes and wonder.
You must not think, by the way, that the anniversary
of that most sacred night and day at Lakeside went by
me unremembered. I could not write about it, that was
all. Instead, I watched the hours of it away, with many
thoughts.
ATHENS, May 30 ( 902)
I sent you today three little water-color sketches, confiding them to the mail with much trepidation, for although they are very crude and botchy I want you to
see them, and the Greek mails are a by-word for unreliability. If they go through all right I shall be emboldened
to send more. The colors here are a passion and a despair- to try to catch even a suggestion of them with a
ten-franc box of paints is a height of naivete to which
even I rise with difficulty. Shall a cake of ultramarine
ensnare the myriad-minded sea, or a tube of chrome-yellow
mock the insufferable sun? I guess nit.
Today I have been reading, or rather digging out with
pick and hammer, the Prometheus Bound. Doubtless it
is unwise to judge it until I have mastered the text sufficiently to read it currently; but my first impression is one
of disappointment. There is a certain dryness - secheresse - about it, in conception. The language (as I dimly
perceive it through a maze of difficulties) is grand beyond
conception, however, and the choruses will keep me awake
[ II8 ]




EUROPE - 1902


nights when I have got once fully into their musical secrets. They picked out with unerring judgment the least
interesting of Ben Jonson's plays1 for the University
jamboree. Still, I should like to see it.
ATHENS, 7une i (1902)
Is Robinson's book out yet? I am anxious to see it,
and still more anxious to know what you think of it. I
gather from your late silence about the textbook that
Cooley has not been ravished by its charms out of his
official self-possession.
My lame leg is so far restored that I expect to leave
tomorrow or next day for the Peloponnesus. I have been
waiting for Gates, who wrote that he was coming; but
he has failed to appear, and I shall trudge off mutterseelenallein. I should have preferred to have a companion,
to help make light of the discomforts, which sometimes
require a very sturdy sense of humor to reduce to their
proper level of unimportance. But there is a gain, too,
in being alone. It is so hot in the middle of the day that I
shall have to travel in the early morning and late afternoon and night. The mornings and nights are delicious
-still, still as the inmost heart of love, colored (the mornings) like the centre of an opal, and fragrant with all
mysterious sweetness. When I came down from Delphi, I
started at half-past three, with the moon still two hours
high, and dropped down the ridges into the happy valley
of Itea (of which I sent you a feeble sketch in watercolor), as the light was making up over the sacred mountains behind me. It was a morning to remember for a
hundred lives. You were with me, as always when the
X The Case is Altered.
[ 119]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


wonders of life most declare themselves. I seemed often to
be walking, not through those mountain paths, but through
the heights and morning splendors of your divine heart.
W7une 2 (1902)
I have been wrestling all day again with the mighty
lines of the AIgamemnon. It is exceedingly difficult reading
for me, with my very imperfect linguistic equipment, but
I can't rest until I have mastered it. However I managed
to live these thirty-odd years upon the same planet with
it and remain a stranger to its terrible grandeurs, is more
than I can understand. I told you I was much struck with
the 'unclassical' quality of the Oedipus at Colonus. The
Agamemnon, both in conception and execution, is romantic a outrance. I wonder how Messrs. Pope, Boileau and
Co. ever succeeded in foisting into the canons of art that
absurd category of classicism, anyhow? But basta! This
is a letter to you, and not a history of literature. I wish
each day that you were going along with me in this madly
exciting exploration of the Greek drama. But I know well
that as you are situated at present it is out of the question.
Some day, however, you must do it, by which happy time
I shall, I hope, be able to act as mystagogue.
Your perturbation over the misspelled word I was not
able to enter into with intelligent sympathy, because of
the inability to decide which one you referred to. One and
all they give piquancy to your pages, me dear, so let not
your heart be troubled. If I ever objected to them it was
in some unreclaimed pedagogical mood. Now that I am
a free soul, I cherish even the least of them; and some of
them have an ineffable unworldly grace.
[ I20




EUROPE - I1902


I can't get a boat to Gytheion (the port of Sparta)
until Saturday, so that my dash into the Peloponnesus is
delayed until then. Tomorrow I am going to Laurion, and
thence on foot along the coast to Cape Sunion, where
there is a fine ruin of a temple to Poseidon, set high on the
promontory for the Athenian sailors to see on their homeward way. Byron wrote things about it, but that's not
the temple's fault.
WYune 3 (1902)
Several more letters came today, each one a poem of
life. You quarrel with me for not answering your letters,
but to answer these would be like 'talking back' to sunlight and brook water.
I have wreaked myself on the choruses of Agamemnon
today until I haven't a mouthful of music left anywhere
in body or soul, except enough to say good night with. I
have an invitation by today's mail from a college friend
to spend the summer with him in Paris. He has been
there seven years, studying Greek, and has a nice apartment in the Latin Quarter. Perhaps I may go there later,
when I have seen what I want to see, and am looking for a
quiet place to work. The heat, however, gives me pause.
The Lovetts are summering on the Seine, below Paris,
and Ferd and his sister will probably drift along that way
in July. There is something in it.
WDIONYSO, /une 4 (1902)
I have made a pious pilgrimage to the earliest home of
the Greek drama, the old Attic deme of Icaria. It was in
[ 121 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


this valley on the north slope of Mount Pentelicon, that
the rustic worship of Dionysus first flowered out into the
drama, under the hand of Thespis. They have preserved
the name of the god in the village, before the inn-door
of which I am sitting to write to the only person I know
who understands what a gift it was that Dionysus and
Thespis, the god and the god's minstrel together, gave
to mankind. It is a deserted country now, for the blessed
water, after which all this land pants and prays, has
failed it. All day I have not seen a brook of living water,
not even a spring or a well. Still it manages somehow to
keep green and joyous; the trees must manage to find out
water somewhere in the depths of the hills. I have a long
road before me, with small prospect of a bed even then, so
goodbye till tomorrow.
W —
ICARIA, yune 5 (1902)
I feel like taking back what I said in dispraise of this
wonderful valley on the score of its water-supply, for
coming back this way today I have found a fountain, with
world-old mammoth plane-trees keeping guard about it,
and with a gushing stream of water clear and cold. Until
you have ridden for a day in a southern sun, without a
hint of water on a hundred marble hills, you don't know
what that elemental liquid stands for in human and subhuman life. Some pious ancient who knew it well has
carved a word of praise to the god (I daresay) on the
fountain stone, since nearly obliterated by generations of
hands rested here while the owners stooped to drink. I
have been lying all afternoon in the grass, listening to the
gush of the water, the rising and falling of the wind's
I I22 ]




EUROPE - 1902
voice in the trees, and watching the shadows creep around
the mountains. The old sanctuary of Dionysus, near by,
was excavated a few years ago by the American School;
but in the little time which has elapsed since they left
it to the silence of its primeval valley, nature has taken
it once more into her busy mysterious hands, and almost
covered it again with trees and flowering shrubs, so that I
came upon it quite suddenly, and thought for a moment
that I had made a great discovery. You mustn't mind
the dirt on this paper; the most of it is good honest
goat's cheese and black bread, and the rest is Attic dust.
WSPARTA, yune 8 (i902)
I have had a long and hard ride today from the coast,
very hot during the high hours of the sun, but I will write
a word to let you know where I am at least. Sparta proves
to be rather a dull little town, and I doubt if it was ever
much more, even in 'classic' days; but the valley is exceedingly beautiful, rich with orange, olive, and fig, and
mad just now along the streams with oleanders and a kind
of blue daisy-like flower which I never saw before, while
the maize fields are washed with great sweeping tracts
of poppy. You can actually hear the colors clashing and
melting together, in the prodigious brilliance. They reminded me of what you said of the Valkyrie ride - only
in terms of utter sunlight instead of moonlight. Apollo
is by good right the first of the Hellene gods; all this land
is a temple of light builded to him.
I passed an awful night at Gytheion, the port where I
disembarked; and I fear it is a sad presage for the future.
This is to be taken in a purely physical sense; I mean the
1 I231




LETTERS TO HARRIET


bed was awful, the floor worse, and sleeping out impossible because of the mosquitoes. The glories of the day had
erased these memories, but as it draws on to twelve they
recur with force, as the conditions appear to be repeated.
Tomorrow I go through the great Langhada Pass, across
Mount TaOgetos, which dominates the whole Peloponnesus with its snowy dome. An hour or two of sleep would
be a good thing to have with me.
THE LANGHADA, fune 9 (i902)
This morning we (I and the mule-boy, to wit) left
Sparta at four, in the bright starlight; the day broke as we
rode through the orange groves and vineyards, where for
an hour before the tinkle of my mule-bells had been the
only sound. It is now afternoon, and we have reached the
top of the pass. The plain of Messenia lies several thousand feet below, a tapestry of dyes such as Fez nor Samarcand ever knew. It might be a robe that Aphrodite had
dropped from her as she flew to her chosen island of Cythera out yonder in the inexpressible sea. The trail up
here has been exceedingly beautiful, walls of fern and ivy
hundreds of feet high washed with rich green glooms and
played through by showering light, century-old planetrees and pines, innumerable icy springs and waterfalls
chiming together. One of these springs I shall never forget. We had been crossing some barren ridges and rocky
fields which even the goats had given up for lost, and where
the sun smote down intolerably. Suddenly we dipped into
a hollow filled with patriarchal trees and carpeted with
flowers and grass. I left my mule and climbed up the hollow to find the spring which I knew must be the nourishing spirit of all this blessed green life. I found it soon, but
[ I24 ]




EUROPE - 1902


so small and so miraculously clear that I stepped into the
water before I saw that there was water there. It lay
at the foot of a vine covered rock, in a little amphitheatre
open to the sky, so withdrawn and virginal, so happy in
its thoughts and so unconscious, yet the creator and sup.
porter and comforter of its green world, causing trees to
grow wherein all the fowls of the air might be gathered
together. Thus it is. Out of sweetness doth He bring
forth strength. Out of the girl the heroic manchild, savior
of the host and breaker of cities.
WITHOME, M1ESSErNIA
fune IO (1902)
These words come to you from the top of a bare mountain where they used to make human sacrifice to Zeus
Ithomas, in the days before the father of gods and men
had taken to a tamer and more refined diet. These earlier
habits of his were never referred to in the polite circles of
Olympus, but were well known, as were other particulars
of the Thunderer's shady past. Now there is not even a
fragment of the savage altar left, but where it stood there
is a ruined chapel of the prince of peace. I pushed open
the crumbling door of the courtyard, and found an old man
living there as a hermit, the oldest man he seemed who ever
wore grey hairs. He was glad to see me, offered me water
and bread (the only hospitalities he had to offer) and
talked eagerly as he showed me over the ruinous place and
pointed out the towns and mountains of the tremendous
landscape below. He said he had been there thirty-three
years, absolutely alone except for a stray traveller at rare
intervals. He had so much dignity that I did not dare offer
[125]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


him money, though he must have to buy his food, since
the rocky summit of his mountain affords no chance for
things to grow. I am afraid that, in my shamefacedness, I
hid the money I left so effectually that he will never find it.
He spoke a far better Greek than the peasants, and looked
as if he had had a past. As he shook hands in farewell at
the gate, he touched me to the heart by saying simply,
in words which I shall cherish to the end, 'elaso KaXbs
&Gpwrros'- 'Thou art a good man.' Alas, alas, how far
from that; yet if to feel brotherhood with such as he be
a part of goodness, that I can claim without flinching.
Dear woman-heart, I yearn over you today, and over myself, and over all these souls who suffer with us this destiny
of life. What are we? What do we here? Alas, alas!
WANDRITZENA, fune i2 (i902)
This is a little mountain town on the borders of Arcadia,
hung like a bird's nest here whither I have been climbing
for two days, up and on the road by starlight, with a good
piece of the day's journey done before the sun comes
scattering abroad his terrible glories. I am glad, all things
considered, that the season is as far gone into the midpassion of the summer as it is, for it seems to me that these
suns are needed to reveal the central secret of that art and
religion which once was here, and which by virtue of its
truth and beauty is forever here.
This morning I crossed some wild pastures and barren
gorges, then climbed for a long time through oak-woods,
to a temple of Apollo, set on the forehead of a vast slope,
looking over a mighty concourse of mountains, so far from
everywhere that for many centuries (until the end of the
[I261




EUROPE - 1902


i8th, I believe) it remained unknown except to the shepherds who drove their flocks into these upper reaches for
summer pasture. It is a beautiful piece of building, and
almost perfect so far as the columns are concerned. I tried
to get a sketch of it for you, but made nothing of it.
I have seen nothing except Delphi so eloquent as this
temple and the wilderness where it is set. Tomorrow I go
on toward Olympia, by a road which I hear is more than
ordinarily difficult - a fact which worries me a little, as
my beast shows signs of lameness. I shall humor him by
walking most of the way. I have given up sleeping now altogether, but the mountain air is so bracing that I do not
feel the need of it. Knowing my hypnogluttonous disposition you will find it hard to believe that I am quite
contented with an hour in the middle of the day, and devote the night to wandering and contemplation. I made
two trials of the beds, and found them first-class horrors.
If I could get accustomed to the excitement of night out
of doors I could sleep very nicely here in the higher
country in my sleeping-bag, but at present there is far too
much doing between midnight and dawn. When man is at
rest over the face of the earth, it is then that the earthspirit seems most passionately awake and intent upon its
own business.
OLYMPIA, 7une 14 (1902)
The past two days I have spent riding through lonely
valleys of Arcadia and Elis, hardly seeing a human being.
Here and there a shepherd, or a silent wonder-stricken
child watching his goats and amazed at the portent of a
stranger in outlandish clothes. It was in these lonesome
valleys that the god Pan first appeared to men, and after
[ 127




LETTERS TO HARRIET


seeing them one understands better the listening, the
brooding, the lonesome music, the sudden terror ('Panic
terror'), the animal yet mystic mirth, and all the other
attributes of that wonderful god that the Arcadian
peasants dreamed out for themselves.
My beast did not give out, as I feared, but my boy did,
so he has ridden while I walked. I had to leave him here
at Olympia - not because of his fatigue, which he got over
soon, but because he didn't know the road any further.
He has gone back to his mountain hut in Messenia, and I
am left quite desolate, for I had got fond of the silent little
beggar. -Iam drooping tired and ripe for sleep.
we
MEGASPAELION, 7une i6 (i902)
I wrote last from Olympia, one of the three or four great
strongholds of Greek paganism, and with its ruined
temples, altars, palaestras, stadiums, and votive statues
still very eloquent of the older Greece. Two days of travel
through the mountains and valleys of Arcadia have
brought me to a very different place indeed, to the greatest
stronghold of mediaeval and Christian Greece, if you can
imagine such an anomaly. This is one of the most curious
and astounding places it has ever been my lot to behold.
It is a monastery, once vast and still very large (supporting over a hundred monks), built in a cave at the top of a
tremendous cliff of sheer stone. As I approached it last
evening from below it seemed incredible that it should
cling any longer to the face of the precipice. At the gate of
the courtyard I was received by a monk whose business it
is to bestow the hospitality of the monastery on wayfaring
strangers, and was ushered by him into a large guest-room
[ Q8 ]




EUROPE - 1902


where ten or fifteen other persons had already found asylum - Greek farmers, shepherds, and village folk who had
got benighted between Kalavryta and Aigion, and had
turned in here for the night. We were served a primitive
supper - a single great dish of boiled meat and cucumbers,
with cheese, bread, and resined wine, young acolytes with
beautiful masses of uncut hair and dressed in flowing black
robes, serving us. When it was discovered that I was an
American, the pent-up curiosity of the table could no
longer be restrained, even by the stringent rules of
politeness which obtain; a flood of questions was poured
in upon me about friends and relatives who had gone to
America to seek their fortunes- to be 'fruit-merchants'
and 'musicians,' it was proudly explained. I had to confess to a lack of personal acquaintance with one and all
of the persons named, a fact which puzzled and disconcerted some of them visibly. The gift of a cigar (a fabulous
luxury here) to the chief spokesman of the party, reinstated me socially. Two girls thereupon left the room,
and returned soon with some leaves of lettuce and some
green peas which they had evidently got leave to pluck
in the monastery garden. These they gave to me, smiling
and blushing. After a moment of embarrassed ignorance
as to the purport of the gift, I made out that the vegetables
were to be eaten, in a state of nature, and that they were
regarded as a toothsome dainty. Accordingly I divided
and ate. I assure you that lettuce leaves and raw green
peas, without any other salt than that of human kindness,
are a dish for a king. We spent the evening roaming
about the gardens, courtyards, and chapels of the place,
looking out through century-old ilex-trees to the darkening country spread out a thousand feet below. We slept
[ 129




LETTERS TO HARRIET


all in one big room, the men on one side and the women
on the other - on the floor of course; and at dawn we
all went together to the gloomy little Byzantine chapel
and heard mass. No breakfast was offered us except a
tiny cup of black coffee, on the strength of which I should
have had as much as I wanted to do to make my way to
the next town where food is procurable, were it not that
like the provident soul I am, I have a cake of chocolate
in my rucksack and can laugh at fate.
W.
CORINTH,:fune i8 (1902)
It is an intensely hot day, all things on land and sea
being merely varieties and shapes of flame, wonderful to
look upon but not wholly good to be amongst. I shall be
back in Athens in another couple of days.
I think I shall leave Greece shortly for Italy, and thence
north into the Tyrol or the French Alps. It is getting too
hot here for comfort, and I have seen much of what I
came to see, besides much else that I did not dream of,
and these things are always the best. I think my sojourn
here has not been in vain; but that is for the gods to determine.
W.
78 RUE n'ASSAS, PARIS, YULy I3 (1902)
I have not written since I left Greece, three weeks
ago, and if it were not that you will be anxious, I should
not write now, for I have a tale to tell only of wasted -
worse than wasted days, of that failure of will and courage
which is the ultimate affliction, of defeat after defeat by
the dark powers of unrighteousness and divisionof soul.
[ 130 ]




EUROPE -I902


Often I have been tempted to keep all this from you,
seeing that from others you have much of this to bear,
and from me have a right to look for something better.
But though I can wrong you, it seems, I cannot deceive
you by passing over, even in anguished and expiating
silence, a vital passage of my life.
When I left Greece, whether it was by reaction from
the vivid excitement and physical strain I had been under
in the Peloponnesus journey, or whether from some more
mysterious cause, I do not know, but I went down at
once into such a valley and shadow of despair as I have
never, I think, had to pass through before. Feeling round
through my darkened kingdoms I could find no hopeful
thing, no joy, no sovereignty. This is a rather large way
of saying that I was profoundly discouraged at not having
recovered my tone of body and mind, that I felt spiritually deserted, God-forgotten, without power or hope or
purpose, as if some Finger had been laid upon me saying
'Thus far and no farther'; and again 'Why, is it not
simple? We have finished with thee!' and 'Behold, these
many things were ill done, and these few well enough.
This is the Book. Why dost thou tarry?'
I think I went through Italy, and stood in many a holy
and well-beloved place. I know that at Rome I laid two
roses on Keats's grave -and an ivy-leaf on the slab
that covers Shelley's ashes. But none of these things
availed. After a time came rebellion, and reckless grasping after life or what bore the semblance and wore the
red flower of life, careless whether -nay, even glad if
its heart were poisoned. I took-O0 sweet and noble
soul, this will pain you cruelly, but I must tell it - I
took the ring from my finger, for it burnt my flesh with
[ 131 ]




LETTERS To HARRIET


its impossible summons and its intolerable reproach.
The worst of it is that I did this at the moment rather
callously, with a kind of dull satisfaction at the ease with
which a man might slip his soul off his finger and put it
in his pocket, when it got to be a bit too much of a bother.
After that I tried to find the mountains, but there was
nothing there but some piles of rock and dirt on which
hotels were built and over which people were senselessly
swarming, like ants without the ant's dignity of an. end
in view.
Then I came to Paris, simply because it was a place to
come to. Since I have been here I have been sunk in
unfathomable sloth., a torpor more than narcotic. I sit
in the green Luxembourg Gardens or in front of the pleasant caf~s, listening to the music and watching the queer
delightful people as from an interstellar distance; and I
would as soon lift the earth over the moon as lift my hand
from the chair to the table. The struggle of the past
three weeks seems faint and far away, like everything
else. All is silvery-soft and muffled - a haze of colors
that would be bright and sounds that would be gay if
they were not so filmy fine, so filmy fine, a breath would
scatter them.
In the sifting sunlight under the grand old trees I ponder your comment on the parable. You speak for the one
who welcomes back, and how well! But what of him who
is welcomed? What of the robe and ring? How think you
he wears them, and how do the festal wines and the meats
set out in gladness taste to him? Doubtless he neither
truly sees nor feels nor tastes; all is silvery-soft and
muffled, a maze of filmy color and sound, through which
beat the wings of healing. But there will come a time
[1I321I




EUROPE -I902


when in clear day he will stand up healed,, and with the
strength thus given must somehow or other work out his
expiation and establish his soul out of these perils. Then
the implacable coils and swift-playing inescapable fang of
the Serpent - for whom I wait, but childishly, quiet,
soothed, almost amused, by the flutter and flash and
rumor of the world about me. There is my hand widowed
of its circle of light wherein the sworded angel stood and
sang, touching the East and the West with burning plumage of his wing, but just now it does not seem so very
grievous. What can be very grievous in a world so impalpable, so silvery-soft, so ghostly glad, so dreamily griefsmitten! I think after a while I will raise my hand and
break and brush it all away.
I have had no letters from you since I left Greece.
Today or tomorrow they will come, perhaps. How strange!
78 RUE D'ASSAS, PARIS, 7uly i6 (I902)
I am afraid that my last letter may have given you,
by its vagueness, unnecessary anxiety about my physical
welfare. I have not been and am not ill, in any ordinary
sense of the word. Nor am I any longer a prey to the
harpies of the spirit which pursued me for so long. Indeed,
a wonderful peace has settled round me; and though it is
still grey, I know that the light is journeying toward
me, and I know that soon I shall be able to take up my
life again.
Your letters which reached me from London three days
ago, have been an unspeakable help to me, and solace,
though every word has pierced me through with grief,
especially the light and merry words. They broke up the
strange torpor into which I had fallen, and are gradually
I I33 I




LETTERS TO HARRIET


preparing me to go down into the terrible waters of purification. Something tells me that on the other side of the
stream a new life awaits me, a life of stronger faith, of
larger acquiescence in the laws of life and death. I begin
to see that the trouble with me always has been that I
was one of little faith. All along my life I see how a too
quick despair has hurled me out of the path to which I
had to struggle back with punishment and loss. It is this
too which has made my human history incoherent, has
made me take and cast away, claim hearts and deny them,
handle the most precious gifts of time like a fool and a
spendthrift. By God's help, it shall be so no more.
I realize now that, though I did not know it at the time,
I lived at a fierce pace while in Greece. Besides the
excitement and fatigue of travel, I read ten plays (the
equivalent of two college courses), got up enough modern
Greek to travel with, gutted the libraries of the American
and the British school for what they had consonant to
my purpose, and behaved generally like a man who was
to be hanged o' Friday. When I came to Italy, eager to
begin the work for which this had been a preparation,
and called on my soul to arise and spread its wings, it
withered and sank in sick refusal. I was at first astonished,
then terror-stricken, and from that went astray down all
the winds that blow for the confusion of impatient, faithless men. Even you I lost in the tempest of darkness and
then I was lost indeed.
Mi ritrovai per una se/va oscura,
Che la diritta via era smarrita.
The right way - how easy to lose, how hard to find, how
hard to keep when found! But I will say no more of all
['34'




EUROPE - 1902


this. As between me and you there is no need to say so
much. I may not write very often for a while; in this healing silence where I sit, words are not best. But know that
now it is well with me. The news of your steady recovery,
and the signal stages thereof, comes to me just now with a
special sweetness.
WI am staying with a college friend, Joe Stickney,! who
has been here at the Sorbonne seven years, studying
Greek. We are going to read Euripides together, and
then he promises to show me Pindar. He has a very nice
apartment back of the Luxembourg Gardens, with all the
comforts of life as it is lived in Paris. It is a good place
to rest.
78 RUE D'ASSAS, PARIS
(Postmarked July 23, I902)
A batch of letters reached me from Athens today;
evidently they arrived very shortly after I sailed, and as
I had notified my London banker a week before sailing,
of my change of address, it was only by the merest chance
that I sent word to Athens to have mail forwarded. A
happy chance, for I could not have afforded the loss of
these troubled and troubling pages. They were written
in early June. I know of nothing in my own history which
could have affected your mood disastrously. During those
days I was at Delphi, and you know from my letters written there that these were among the greatest days which
have ever been handed down out of Heaven to me. To
be sure, my accident worried me a little, and I had after
I Joseph Trumbull Stickney.
[t 35 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


coming back a day or two of illness - too light to mention
- due doubtless merely to bad food or water, or an overdose of sun. But however that may be, the fact remains
that you were sad and deeply troubled, and felt no support from me. I should have known, and helped somehow
or other. For some reason the knowledge of this difficult
time through which you passed in loneliness touches me
more as being wholly past than if I had known of it without delay. I suppose it is because the past is so majestically isolated and fixed apart from any help, and even
from any of the busy pretenses of help with which we
dissemble our helplessness. It wears something of the
lonely pride which is the feature of all others that breaks
our spirit as we look on the face of the dead. Of course
you must write me out of the heart of the hour, whether
it be dark or bright. That I thought we had agreed upon.
You must not be afraid of depressing me, and above all
you must not think of my 'disapproval.' I never disapprove of you, as you well know; I always follow the
movements of your nature with the conviction that
whatever else in the world be illusory or negligible, this
at least is very truth and not to be passed by.
I was glad to get the clippings about Cuba, and Senator
FHoar's speech. Poor blundering, grudging, generous land!
To free Cuba with one hand, and with the other quietly
remove all possible chance for her to live decently - or
indeed to live at all. Of course I know that the one hand
is that of the whole people, and the other that of a commercial interest, and I don't mean to belittle the magnanimous deed; but why, O why, did it have to be
smutched and spoiled? As for the recent disclosures in
the Philippines (which were doubtless the real occasion
136 ]




EUROPE - 1902


of Hoar's speech) they are too sickening to talk or think
about. Shall we ever be able to hold up our heads again?
The little flag you sent me on the Fourth of July seemed
striped and stained with that innocent blood. I wonder
how we shall wash it out, and let our flag take the air
again like a thing of joy; till then it cannot gladden me
nor any other eyes over the whole earth.
Remember that I am being well taken care of as to the
eating and sleeping man, and that as soon as I recover,
and feel able to take up my work, I shall be saved; I
shan't then have time to bother about myself. But it
is weary waiting!                         WILL
78 RUE D'ASSAS
77UlY 24 (1902)
When I woke this morning, the sky had cleared, both
without and within. I felt the breath of health and joy
in my lungs; life seemed once more the possible and excellent thing it is when unfevered either by over-striving
or by the sickness of weariness which follows over-strife.
(I am not preaching the 'golden mean'; I am not preaching anything; we must be as we are.) The heavens of
poetry, which have been draped so long, were thrown open,
and there were presences plain in the place. The Prometheus,' which has heretofore refused to take shape, had
started up overnight into all sorts of surprising growths,
and though it hangs vague in a vague sky, is surely there.
To celebrate the day I went to a fascinating little paintshop in the Rue du Dragon (Street of the Dragon! - The
names of the streets here are a never-ending delight:
'Street of the Old Dove-House,' 'Street of the Dry Tree,'
The Fire-Bringer.
['37




LETTERS TO HARRIET


'Rue Madame,' 'Rue des Quatre Vents') and bought an
oil sketching kit, one which enables me to carry wet
sketches without bother. Then I took one of the funny
little Seine steamers, and went down to Saint Cloud
through the green summer country, along with a boatload of these friendliest, merriest and most human French
people. I made a sketch for you, of Saint Cloud seen from
the bank, below Sevres. It is really very pretty. I wish
I had some way to send it to you. How I wish you were
here, to enjoy with me this happy country, which has
taken hold of me in quite a new way this time. Life is,
and is made, supremely possible here. When one is open
to it - as I have been today -the pleasantness of it is
intoxicating. We can afford to spend one life here, in
spite of the fact that, as you say, Parisian French is a
tongue which 'does not carry far.'
W.
78 RUE D'ASSAS, PARIS
yuly 30 (I902)
Here are several letters of yours which, in their revelation of the life of practical heroism you are leading, make
me again ashamed of making a fuss about ghosts and
shadows. Besides, I feel my health coming back, the fever
going out of my veins, and with it the phantoms of perplexity and despair out of my brain. In a few days I shall
be myself again, and no longer feel it necessary to make
a great whining about the very simple, universal, and
inescapable fact that the problem of living well is not an
easy one, and that the mysteries and dangers of the
spiritual existence are many, as are its blessed asylums
and sweet assurances.
[ 1381




EUROPE - I902
The weather here is delightful, very bright, and cool
as autumn almost. In a week or two more I shall make
for the mountains, or perhaps join Ferd in Siena. I
should unhesitatingly do the latter, but fear that the heat
which he reports there will keep me from working. If
I don't go, I shall ask him to stop in the Tyrol for a while
with me as he goes through to Vienna to join his sister.
Can't you possibly contrive to get hold of a good
translation of the Bacchantes of Euripides? It is my latest
discovery and rapturously good. I myself know of no
translation which is not worse than a caricature, but
there must be such. Otherwise I shall have to make you
one myself, for you must read it.
You must not interpret the words about 'returning
health,' 'fever,' etc., in any physical or otherwise alarming sense. I have been rather fagged out, but otherwise
master of the machine, and I am getting rested fast, so
that in a week or two I shall be preening and prating with
the best duck in the pond.
W.
78 RUE D'ASSAS, PARIS
Jug. 1 (I902)
I was wakened this morning by the maid putting a
bundle of letters on my pillow. These letters were written
during the days of my silence and defection, and it put a
veil over the sunny morning for me to see the vague suffering emerge from the lines not meant to betray it. Well,
enough of that. Just now I cannot bear to go back over
that path, nor count the stations of it. I want only to
remember that the sky is a keen blue, that the babies
and the gorgeous-capped beribboned bonnes in the Gar[I391




LETTERS TO HARRIET


den are having the time of their lives, while the birds
discuss last night's rain pro and con - the pro's having
by long odds the best of it. This old garden and the
human beings who haunt it are a never-ending delight.
In my present mood it is a piece of pure good fortune to
find not one person or a group of persons, but a whole
city, a whole nation, which does not have to be taken
seriously; and for the whole nation to concentrate and
poetize itself into a queer old garden at your door, full
of happy, careless human life, is more than I had a right
to ask. I sit for hours under the blossomy bushes and
beside the dreamy old fountains adorned with shabby
moss-covered eighteenth century gods, and watch these
gay groups of people who are so miraculously untroubled
by any suspicion of a doctrine that life was not meant to
be enjoyed, who wear the awful gift of being like a ribbon
or a flower, and if they like your beaux yeux, will toss you
their youth like a bon-bon. It's a strange world, Harriet,
a strange world.
W_-.ug. 3 (I902)
The heavens have spoken tonight, after long silence,
as I walked by the Seine in a sunset splendid after rain.
I feel that I can soon put on the ring again, with your
word as my warrant, though it will have to be with a more
human and less ethical conception of its meaning than
before. I am not going to deny my nature, nor cramp it,
for it and the natures of the sisters and brothers whose
lives I see and share, is all that I know of God. I have a
whim about putting it on, which is to go to the mountains
and ask a mountain child to do this service for me, some
[ 401




EUROPE - 1902


brown-legged, merry-eyed, unspoiled little thing, worthy
to be your vicar herein. It sounds sentimental, and I
wouldn't tell another human being under the sun but you
whom it befits to know and who would not blame or question a far more extravagant whim than this, if, as this, it
were born of an instinct such as drives beasts in sickness
to eat of certain herbs of grace.
WPARIS, Aug. 4 (I902)
I am still loafing here with Stickney, reading Plato
and Euripides with him, and chasing down an occasional
Promethean hint in the Bibliotheque Nationale. My impatience is at times great, but I am not going to let impatience defeat me this time, especially as I feel that the
light half-conscious touching and touching of the subject
which this leisure permits me, is moulding it into a good
shape. It is so manifold in its implications, embraces so
much unorganized and perhaps unorganizable matter of
thought and feeling, that it keeps holding me off and
luring me on in a most tantalizing manner. Sometimes
it dissolves and disappears altogether, and then again,
as yesterday in a windy rainy sunset over the Seine, looms
up all but perfect in the clouds, mysteriously turning upon
itself and unfolding new patterns - bothersomely many.
WPARTS, Aug. 8 (1902)
I am going to the Dolomites in the South Austrian
Tyrol. I feel well and strong again, renewed in body and
mind. The great lassitude which weighed me down for a
while, and under which the mere thought of exertion,
[ I4I ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


especially mental exertion, was sickening to me, has
entirely passed away. Without having been really ill, I
am blessed with an exquisite lightness and clarity of
bodily sensation which I remember from periods of convalescence long ago in childhood. It is such an impalpable
joy that I am half-afraid to mention it for fear of scaring
it away, but the mountains will establish it. I shall not
be in any great hurry to get to work; it is this wretched
haste which spoils all. I have written to Ferd to meet me
in the Dolomites for a week's or a fortnight's tramp, and
I earnestly hope he can. I will show him among other
notable things the Valley of Judgment; it lies in the heart
of the business, up by San Martino di Castrozza, and a
terrific old gully it is.
PARIS, Aug. IO (I902)
I leave tonight for Innsbruck, and from there shall
prospect on foot until I find a promising place. I have in
my mind's eye an eagle's nest called St. Vigil, seen once
and remembered forever. Perhaps that is the place.
You may not hear from me for some time.
ST. VIGIL, TYROL
Aug. i6 (I9o2)
This place is all that I hoped to find it - a primitive
but well-to-do Tyrolese village, with a respectable hostelry, near the head of a grand valley, with incredible
peaks climbing heaven on three sides. It is at present
very cold, too cold to sit in one's room with comfort, but
that is said to be a passing phase, as it was at Cape Henry,
absit omen. The inn, a great rambling affair which has
grown by fits and starts to accommodate foot-travellers
between Cortina and San Lorenzo, is conducted in a very
[ I421




EUROPE - 1902


mysterious fashion. The proprietor is invisible and apparently non-existent. The only person in authority is
an old waitress, who seems to be in league with the guests
to 'do' the said nonexistent proprietor. Whatever you
order comes, and no account taken. People come and go,
eat and drink as only Germans can, yet nobody pays nor
does the idea of cash anywhere taint the mountain air.
We toil not neither do we spin. The first day of my stay,
before I had realized into what a four-dimensional economy I had stepped, after giving an order I mentioned the
number of my room. The old waitress looked at me in
vague astonishment, and then said, as with a dawning
perception of my friendly attempt to make conversation,
'Ya, ya, ein schones Zimmer; siecht nach Suiden. I'
wiinsch die Herrschaft glickliche Stunden darin!'
Yesterday a crowd of soldiers bivouacked in the village,
and gutted the inn of all its meat and beer, but I never
saw a coin passed. These hyperborean manners are highly
to my taste, and they moreover fit the present state of
my purse as by a foreordained harmony. I think I will
live and die here. I made a sketch today of some peaks
at the head of the valley; I take it to be my best effort,
but perhaps that is because it is my last. I will send it
for you to judge, thou rhadamanthine mind.  W
ST. VIGIL, Aug. 17 (1902)
It has been raining all day, but tonight cleared a bit,
so that I got a royal walk up the valley, with a plunging
moon and a few careering stars, the mountains twice their
size in the misty light and cloud-drift. If the Lord had
only seen fit not to have created the German race and
language when he created St. Vigil he would have done
[ 143 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


well; or even if he could have spared us the language.
There are some forty (Germans) here, and I'm afraid they'll
drive me to Italy merely by force of excoriating my eardrum. 0 for the ripple and gush and musical fall of that
delicious language! Ferd writes from Siena that he probably can't come to the mountains, because of Lautverschieb and lack of cash. His unpardonable hand-writing
led me to read Vienna for Venice, and I made sure he would
stop here on his way to Vienna, otherwise I should perhaps
have braved the heat and gone to Siena, for I am really
very lonesome to see the boy. The conditions are good
here, however, and I suppose it will be the wise thing to
put my lonesomeness in my pocket. I need the air and the
exercise that this place affords, for I haven't managed
yet to pull my nerves very firmly together. When I
paint or write I get more excited than there is any possible occasion for, and then follow periods of lassitude
when I feel like an old lady I once knew in Maine, who
took boarders in summer and sewed quilts in winter until
she had saved enough to buy an annuity and pay for her
funeral, whereupon she went to bed and has been there
ever since, her fifteen year siesta only interrupted by one
summer spell of work to which she was goaded by the
thought that she had failed to provide silver handles for
her casket. The parallel is perfect except that I have no
hankering for silver handles and am shy the annuity in
every sense financial and spiritual.
ST. VIGIL, TYROL
Aug. i8, i902
I have spent the afternoon down the valley at an old
sawmill, which is run by one of the mad little rivers
that tumble down from the glaciers hid somewhere back
[' 44 1




EUROPE - I902


there in the clouds. If there is any more absorbing and
profitable human occupation than to sit and see a fivefoot saw eat through a cedar log as if it were cheese, then
I have failed to find it. The weather is perfect here now,
just warm enough in the daytime to say it is warm, and
a delicious crisp chill at night. I have taken a room outside the hotel, in one of the houses of the village, so that
I am free from the German terror, except at dinner and
supper. Breakfast I take in the open, wherever I can coax
or bribe the Anna to bring it to me. Die Anna is the marvellous old housemaid I told you of, who runs the hotel
establishment and incidentally the rest of the village and
township. She has only one eye, and a face that seems to
have been carved on a mallet handle by a satiric savage
of the stone age, but she is the salt of the earth. My heart
tells me that she begins to reciprocate my affection. Indeed tonight, when I got in long after dark to supper, she
met me with ill-concealed emotion, and said she had been
worried for fear I had verunglfickt myself. 0 love's young
dream, how fond and fair!
ST. VIGIL, Aug. 20, I902
This morning I awoke with this thought, that I had
nothing to do with the motto of the ring, that that was
wholly yours, your wish and prayer for me thus hinted at
and bodied forth, that it laid me under no constraint,
involved no vow of life other than the knowledge of love
and high thoughts in another heart must involve, that
therefore I could wear it freely, however unable I know
myself, here and now, to lead the life of martial saintliness,
however often I may be forced to find myself neither by
God's side nor of his following.
[ I451




LETTERS TO HARRIET


This seems so clear to me now that I wonder why it
has never struck me just this way before. I turned it over
and over all the morning, and could see no flaw or subterfuge in it. This afternoon I went up to the head of the
valley and climbed the highest sun-steeped peak I could
reach, and there put on the ring, the sun just sinking with
me and standing at noon with you. These harebells I
found under a friendly rock sheltered from the wind, where
I stood. There were awful witnesses around, if one had
been taking a vow; but I declared and protested to them,
as now to you, that I took no vow. Only thus can I wear
the ring. I cannot afford to fall from the height to which
such a vow must lift a man; I cannot live continually in
such an air; it is as much as I can do if here and there
in a good hour, with all the powers consenting, I can rise
into it for a heart-beat or two. Thus it stands with me,
and thus I trust and long that it may seem good to you
to have it                                 W
ST. VIGIL, Aug. 21 (I902)
Another day of grand rolling storm, speaking a mighty
language in the mountains, and lifting for a great golden
sunset. During the height of the storm all the church bells
in the valley rang like mad. This is believed to be efficacious in averting thunder and whirlwind, and so in fact
it proved to be.                           WCORTINA D'AMPEZZO
Aug. 3I (1902)
I have been on tramp through some out-of-the-way
valleys and over some stunning passes of these mountains.
[I46]




EUROPE - I902
The rain has interfered with me somewhat, but the mountains were never so grand as in this crazy summer of storm
and cold, and it is worth an occasional ducking to get the
effects of mist and rainy light on these (old Gray's word)
'monstrous creatures of God.'
Ferd has made the great refusal. Like all the wicked
he gets the righteous man's just reward along with his
own individual punishment appertaining; as for the latter
he loses the mountains, as for the former he will see you
almost as soon as this paper does, and will smooth his
feathers in the comforting shadow of the Grove.'
ST. VIGIL, Sept. 7, 1902
Back again in St. Vigil. This remote little village in
its dreamy valley has got to seem much like home, and
I am glad to get back, although I had some great times
afoot. I have got so used to being in the wilderness that
after a few days I feel cramped if there is any other human
being on the horizon. I shall probably end my days as a
professional tramp, preferably in Central Africa. I found
one valley with a heroic poem all its own, written in the
local dialect, 'Ladinisch,' a variant of Low Latin. From
the verses that I made out with the help of a cultured
barmaid, the poem is really good, and must be several
centuries old. It has never been printed, but some wandering painter had copied a part of it on the walls of the
inn dining-room, and illustrated them with enthusiasm
and talent. The same village had a romantic double
murder to its credit, the recital of which by mine host of
the inn made an exciting evening. Another high point,
Harriet's home at 2970 Groveland (renamed Ellis) Avenue, Chicago, was
called the Grove by W. V. M. and some of Harriet's friends.
[ I471




LETTERS TO HARRIET


humanly, in my journey, was an afternoon spent drawing
'portraits' of the fifteen children of a mountain guide and
inn-keeper. Their joy and wonder over the crude scrawls
was a thing to see. The eldest daughter, a beauty of sixteen, had spent one miraculous week in Innsbruck, and
immediately recognized me as an inhabitant of that place
of dream. Fortunately I knew the names of a few streets
and buildings in the tame little town, and was able to
keep my reputation unsullied, being assisted by the fact
that the family was 'Ladinisch,' and spoke even a worse
German than mine. When my Zaubergesang was gesungen, she brought me her one great earthly treasure, a
pair of earrings, parcel-gilt, bought in that same incredible
Innsbruck, and to be donned at her next birthday. How
absurdly, deliciously, and tearfully human human beings
are!
WST. VIGIL, Sept. IO (1902)
Several letters came today, containing the important
news of your journey to your native village and to Niagara.
I have been wishing I might send you the fragrance of
these mountain meadows now in the last hay-harvest,
early in the morning when the sun begins to dry the hoarfrost or late in the afternoon, when the heat has penetrated
to the middle of the shock. But you have something better. Are there any smells like those of the earth where one
grew up? I remember certain such - even pantry and
kitchen smells - that I would travel round the world to
get again; yet I shall never have the courage to go back
for them, as you have had.
I leave here tomorrow or next day for Riva, a town on
[ I48 ]




EUROPE - I902


Lake Garda, where I shall stay a week or two before settling down in Florence for the rest of my vacation. It
dwindles frightfully. St. Vigil has been a good home to
me and a kind nurse; I am sorry to leave it. To be sure I
haven't done much, but I never can in summer. The Muse
now and then grants me a fleeting favor, just enough to
make me want to call out all the mustachioed blades living
and dead whom the harlotry cares more about. I sha'n't
know for at least a couple of months yet whether anything is coming of the Prometheus. Nine-tenths of the
time I am in despair about it, and the other few minutes
think it's the greatest show on wheels. It will either be
good or nothing, of that I am sure, so that there won't
be that harrowing indecision between the printing-shop
and the waste-basket.
Yesterday was the festival of the Birth of Mary. A
procession carried the crucifix from the little church
through the fields to a shrine of the Virgin. First came
some small bareheaded boys; one of them carried the cross;
then the men, bareheaded, with a red banner; then the
women with a white banner. You cannot imagine the
awfulness of that white figure of pain thus escorted through
sunny fields of hay and barley, and under the shadow of
pine woods, with the shrill voices of the women and the
deep bass of the men answering each other in some kind
of monotonous pleading chant. There is more deep,
old-world piety here than I have ever seen anywhere;
religion, in all its forms and practices, is as much the
living centre of life as it was five centuries ago. To put
comedy cheek by jowl -with tragedy, in his favorite fashion,
the Lord sent us today the Archduke of Austria. This
exalted personage is evidently bent on a foot-tour in the
[ I49 ]




LETTERS To HARRIET


Dolomites, and to add to the joy thereof has brought with
him, by count, nineteen fat functionaries in full uniform.
Our inn was honored with the archducal presence. N.B.
it was raining and there was no other place for him to go to
except a hay shed. We have been crawling round on our
hands and knees all day, except when ordered up by mine
host to drink a health or hurrah. We have a triumphal
arch, and shoot off a cannon whenever it can be persuaded
to shoot. The buttery is open to who will come, and the
village fountain gushes perennial beer.
RIVA, LAGO DI GARDA
AUSTRIA, Sept. 28 (1902)
Did I tell you that I had tried reading Hamlet on the top
of the Nuvolau, to see how he stood it? He stood it to admiration. It seems that when a thing is really big, anything you bring against it for comparison only makes it look
bigger, but its greatness then becomes somewhat haughty
and distant, instead of being as before unassuming and confiding. We have not yet plucked out the heart of Hamlet's
mystery. Doubtless we never shall, and doubtless W. S.
never did; but I know a certain paragraph of brilliantly
borrowed ideas in a certain textbook of English literature,
that must be rewritten in a tone of less confidence.
The beauty of this place is so rich and soft after the
sternness of the mountains that there is nothing to do with
it except to weep or make love. Weep I will not, so make
love I must; I have my eye upon a most appealingly feminine camp-stool; grace and allurement lurk in every line of
it. Would I were a young and dashing garden-chair, and
had not to o'erleap this interval of being!


[ ISO]




En Voyage -    1902


RIVA, LAGO DI GARDA
Sept. 30 (1902)
I have your 'venturesome' letter, urging me to return
to America. It is tenderly and possibly wisely thought, for
there is some truth in what you say about over-stimulation
on the one side and malnutrition on the other. But the
case is not nearly so bad as you picture it. We are both
cursed with the gift of exaggeration, and with me it has
taken the form of omitting to speak of the bread and roastbeef and throwing a lurid light upon the cates and wine, or
at least of making them look balefully bright by isolation
from the solid substance of life's meal. I have described
the mountain climb and omitted to mention the consumption of beer and sausage in the comfortable refuge-hut at
the top - as well as the ordinary human chances and adventures of travel, which, though the touch be not very
deep, keep one from feeling 'disembodied' and have
often a wonderful relish. In other words, there have been
many days - the far greater number - of healthy stolidity and satisfaction in the things known as good by the
homme moyen sensuel. True, I have been very, very restless, but I should have been so anywhere.   W
HOLLAND-AMERICA LINE
T.S.S. RYNDAM
Nov. 2 ist, 1902
I got your letter three days ago in Vienna, and immediately started for Rotterdam, where I was fortunate
enough to catch this boat. It was a case of coming home
now or not at all, and I know that to remain abroad would
have been a fatal mistake.
I caught a severe cold on the train, and several others in
[ ISI ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


process of embarkation in a cold rain. The result is grippe,
with complications like those which I suffered in Genoa five
years ago. I hardly realize yet that I am homeward bound,
and soon to see you; but the happy knowledge will grow as
the good ship makes westward.
WILL
HIOLLAND-AMERICA LINE
T.S.S. R{YNDAM
Nov. 30, I902
We have had a very cold and stormy passage, and my
illness, of which I wrote at starting, has taken a somewhat
ugly turn. There is nothing dangerous in it and nothing to
worr abut but it makes my days and nights a monotony
of pain, like to that which you hav e been suffering so long,
and perhaps are still enduring. Tomorrow or next day we
shall be in, and my good sister Charlotte will have me
sound again in a few days of her skillful care-taking. I
shall stay in New York for a week at any rate, perhaps
longer; if I get on my feet again I want to try and work a
bit, for I have done almost nothing with my time abroad, as
far as tangible results, and I am ashamed to come to you
absolutely'empty-handed. (You will gather the crumb of
truth from this falsehood. Of course, it matters nothing
what I bring -to us.)
A thousand greetings, W



AMERICA
DECEMBER II, 1902-MARCH I8, 1907
NEW YORK, Dec. II (90o2)
This is a hurried word of assurance that I am out of the
clutches of the rheumatic fever, thanks to my sister's care
and skill. I wish I might be sure that you are also restored;
your letter contained no hint as to your health. I am beginning to enjoy New York, after a week of abysmal depression. My sister insists that I shall stay until Christmas is past, and the theatres are offering so much of interest that it seems the thing to do.
Scribner declares that the textbook will have to be
simplified if it is to succeed in the high schools. Ach!
weh! He wants me to leave this book to meet the college
market and recast the text on simpler lines for the high
schools. I am in communication with a reliable anarchist
whom I think competent to blow Scribner and his whole
shooting-match at the moon, in case nothing else avails to
save me.
NEW YORK, Dec. 25 (1902)
Your Christmas greeting met me on waking this morning. I had read the Ode before going to bed last night, but
without being able to hear it or feel it very well. After
your note came I looked for it again and found it lifted up
into its old place.
I take the Friday morning train and shall see you Sunday morning at latest. May you have a Merry Christmas
and may we have together a Happy New Year.
[153]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


MACKINAC ISLAND, May 17, 1903
The arbutus came unwithered-, and is still as bright and
spirit-feeding as she who plucked it and the wish with
which it was plucked and sent. I have it before me as I
work, and it tells of many woodland things, beside itself, of
things in the woodlands of the Lord.
The workI is going well, though slowly. I am not
forcing it, for I feel that upon the success of this portion of
the poem (the return of Prometheus) the success of the
whole will largely depend. I have just received a letter
from one Frederick Palmer, of Andover, Mass., in which,
among other discriminating things which he says of the
Masque,2 he speaks of the 'Prometheus' theme which it
embodies. This pleased me much, for as you know I conceive the piece I am now working at as integral in thought
with the Masque, and have in mind some day to round out
the whole as a trilogy. This afternoon I made a little
study in oils of the meadow. It did not turn out very well,
but I shall try again. I think I can box the pastels so that
they will travel safely; as soon as I can get hold of the
proper sort of tacks I will box them and express them to
you, with a prayer for their safe carriage.
Pup is very lame, and seems dejected over depleted
household.
MACKINAC ISLAND
Date unknown
(Postmarked May 25, I903)
I today packed and shall tomorrow express the three
pastel studies which happened while you were with us,
'At this time and for some months following, W. V. M. was at work on
The Fire-Bringer.
2 The Masque of 7udgment,
[ I54]




AMERICA - 1903


and one new one which was very fetching before it encountered this inexplicable world in the form of a fixatif
bottle. I 'fixed' them all, and they are fixed. Oddly
enough the dark and heavy tones suffered most. However,
the things are still fairly presentable, and they would not
have travelled safely in their first state of innocence.
The meadow sketch in oils, of which I wrote before,
turned out a very tight, stocky little picture. I tried it
first with oils in the usual manner, but it would not go; it
insisted on being and remaining pallid and meaningless.
Then one afternoon I arose in my majesty and my shirtsleeves, squeezed a gallon of paint onto my big palette,
grasped a palette-knife and began to trowel the paint on in
everlasting chunks and shovelled until all of a sudden -
ecco! the thing began to talk. I learned more about painting in that half-hour than in all my previous dabbling. It
is on the little canvas duplicating that of the Cape Henry
waves.
Brother has recovered his spirits. He spends his days
eating my wearing apparel and his nights in chasing
imaginary burglars back and forth over my form. He has
taken to guarding the house furiously, by day and by
night, doubtless in order that his own destruction of it and
its contents may not be interrupted from without, the interruption from within having become intermittent and
despairing. He returns thanks for the dog-cakes, as well as
for the ideal dog-food. Touching the latter, however, he
declares himself no idealist; Plato can have himself; as for
him, Brother Mike Siegfried Limerick Navagesha, he
prefers a plain business diet that can be smelled and
munched. Rather than subsist on an Idea, however beautiful, he will try to put up with his present hard-time diet
[ I55 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


of books, clothing, pictures, sketch boxes, and furniture.
The weather has been very bad here for a week, rainy,
windy, and very cold - though it hasn't yet had the face
to snow. T  -- beseeches me to assure you that she would
write if she had anything to say and knew how to spell.
(Postmarked - Mackinac Island, July 2, I903)
I enjoyed the Howells ghost stories immensely. I can't
quite agree with you in your tender but deprecating judgment. I do not see in them any sign of age; on the contrary
they seem to me wonderfully supple and sure - a triumphant evidence that the artistic mind need know no age.
It is very striking to see, at any rate, how Howells seems
to be drifting back toward the poetic envisagement of life
with which he began years ago. Of course he approaches
his subject nominally under the aegis of Science, but in the
last two stories in the book, 'The Angel of the Lord' and
'Though One Rose from the Dead,' there is a genuine
mystic efflatus. How impressive it is to see how almost all
earnest minds, and exactly by reason of their earnestness,
have sooner or later to abandon the realistic formula, or at
least to so modify it that it ceases to have any meaning qua
realism. I have read Anna Karenina in spite of your warning, and was far less depressed by its human story than I
was inspirited by its artistic grandeur. Besides, the story
itself is twofold, and far more happy than sad when viewed
in the entirety of its thought - at least just as happy as
sad, which is all we can ask of art as of life. We must read
Crime and Punishment and Dead Souls.
I am getting a whole lot out of the flower-book, and
begin to think it isn't as bad as we thought it. I have
identified many flowers new to me, among others the
is561




AMERICA - 1903


Round-leaved Pyrola (a lovely thing), Herb Robert,
Cinquefoil, Golden Ragwort, Philadelphia Fleabane (O
that I might be the bane of the human flea who named it
that!), Blue Vetch, Brook Veronica, and Bush Honeysuckle. The island is covered with red lilies - wood-lilies
the worthy Mrs. Dana calls them, but they all grow in the
open.
During a spell of cold and rainy weather which we had
I got wet and neglected to change my clothes, the result
being a keen pinch of the malady with which I suffered so
many torments last winter. After two disagreeable days
and two sleepless nights I said 'Go to,' ran nine times
round the island, drank nine barrels of Lithia water,
pronounced nine times the word 'Bogan' and was healed.
Brother still scratches dejectedly at your door now and
then, and whenever we meet a carriage in our walks he
prances up to it in the hope of regaining his lost friends.
His nature impresses me anew each day; he is a wonderfully charming little soul.
W(Postmarked July 24, 1903) MACKINAC ISLAND
Today, after a week of denials, the postmistress gave up
your letter, together with various delectable-looking
packages.
Yeats's Shadowy Waters I have read before, but shall
read it again with interest; it is very watery and shadowy.
Both of these epithets are intended to be complimentary.
The prose play I consumed at once, without getting much
nourishment out of it. 'Where There is Nothing in Particular' - would be a juster title. It is remarkable that as
sensitive an artist as Yeats (for he is that, as you say)
[ 157]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


should care to put out anything at once so flat and so hysterical. However, I am glad you did not read it before sending, and condemn it, for I am always glad to know what a
man like Yeats is doing, even when he is foozling the ball.
There was a disappointing dearth of personal news in your
letter. It seems to me that compared with you I am a
regular gazette scandaleuse of gossipy information.
The island has been at her loveliest, and Brother and I
have made many delightful discoveries (chiefly geographical). For instance, there is a road thro' the Cathedral
Woods which no white man has ever trod before we found
it, by means of which a whole new region of the woods, surpassingly fine, is accessible.
Up to today I have not done much with the poem., I
have seen and felt much of it with great vividness, but
somehow it would not flow. Perhaps I did not really feel
it as vividly as I saw it; at any rate it hadn't (perhaps
hasn't yet) reached the melting point. I made two or
three false starts and was a good deal discouraged. But
today I had a glorious morning -I mean it felt glorious, though the concrete results were no such great
potatoes.
(Postmarked Mackinac Island, Aug. 4, I903)
J —  has gone for the mail, and I am hoping for a word
from you; but meanwhile I will scribble one 'for hand in
hand' as Whitman says, for without doors and within I feel
your presence - gentle, gay, and eager for the day's adventure. So it has been ever since you left, and so it shall
always be.
The little meadow sketch I finished; it is quite fetching,
T The Fire-Bringer.
[ 58 ]




AMERICA - 1903
I think. Also made a dash at St. Ignace by sunset, but to
no purpose.
I have thought much about the relationship of the new
poem with the Masque since your wonderfully revealing
voice recited them to me side by side. The idea of a trilogy,
it seems to me now I shall have to give up. The two pieces
are conceived and executed in too different a spirit, and to
add a third would only make the difficulty greater. Your
suggestion, of changing the Masque to fit, I am afraid will
not do. The divergence is too great. They had better
stand as companion poems, breathing different aspects of
the same theme in different moods and with each its
separate 'aura,' and I can add a scene to the Masque which
will at once complete its own inherent idea and serve as a
sufficient link of suggestion between the two. Tell me
what you think of this.
W_
(Postmarked Mackinac Island, Aug. 31, 1903)
The weather has certainly been execrable, and shows no
sign of mending. The roads and woodpaths are so soft
with the everlasting downpour that walking is difficult
even if one has heart to brave the dogged leaden drench.
Under the bann of the rain even painting has ceased -
nearly. I have worked over the St. Ignace sketch, to its
advantage I think. The portrait has thrown off all disguise and become a pretty lady in a loggia.
(Postmarked Mackinac Island, Sept. 23, I903)
For the past three days the old island has been doing
herself proud in the way of weather, having made a complete volte-face into halcyon warmth and sunshine. This is
[ I59 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


the more to rejoice in because one of the passing phases of
the domestic comedy has been that upon the whole island
not a stick of firewood exists and T - and I have been
burning the furniture in order to keep warm. You would
be surprised to find how little real satisfactory heat there is
in a piano; but the sideboard yielded unexpected results.
The Pit is really a good deal of a book; it carries big sail,
but hardly too big for the breeze it invokes and gets, yes,
for the most part gets, though its unequivocal celebration
of the Brute and his worshippers, simply qua Brute, is the
Lord knows young enough, and annoying enough to such
as would fain have comprehended and dismissed him forsooth.
(Postmarked Mackinac Island, Sept. 25, 1903)
I send you Stickney's book,' which will give you some
good hours, I think. It is uneven, but it has much beauty,
much visionary grace, and not seldom he has found the
ultimate, the desirable word. Tell me what you think of
the book, in extenso; I should like, when I get a chance, to
tell him.
(Postmarked Mackinac Island, Oct. 4, I903)
Don't worry about the wood. We are all right again, in
fact have never been wrong. I only mentioned it as an
amusing piece of island shiftlessness. Mike has roused
himself and filled our bin with logs - a bit green to be
sure, but when coaxed emitting a very comfortable blaze.
Great news about Ferd. Bring him up vi et armis.
I enclose the last of the chorals, with which the poem is
to close. There are yet three songs to write.
WDramatic Verses by Joseph Trumbull Stickney.
[ i6o ]




AMERICA -1903


The night-song, going down, is to Dionysus; the dawn
song is to Apollo. Here it is, in the rough.
CHORUS OF YOUNG MEN (ascending)
One large last star, not yet persuaded well,
Expected till the mountains should declare;
But from his hesitant attitude,
From his wild and waiting mood,
Wildly, waitingly there came
Over sea and earth and air
And on our bended hearts there fell
Trembling and expectation of thy name.
Now the East to the West has flung
Sudden hands aloft, and sung
Thy titles and thy certain coming-on;
Wheeling ever to the right hand, wheeling ever to the dawn,
The South has danced before the North,
And the text of her talking feet is the news of thy going-forth,
Apollo! Apollo!
When radiance hid the Titan's face
And all was blind in the altar-place
Then we saw thee, we cried upon thee then,
Apollo! Apollo!
Past thee Dionysus swept,
The wings of Eros stirred and slept,
And we knew not the mist of thy song from the mist of the fire,
As out of the core of the light thy lyre laughed and thundered again!
Eros, how sweet
Is the cup of thy drunkenness.
Dionysus, how our feet
Hasten to the burning cup
Thou liftest up;
But O how sweetest and how most burning it is
To drink of thy lightsome and radiant chalices,
Apollo! Apollo! Today
We say we will follow thee and put all others away.
For we know, we have seen it of thee
That with more frenzy yet thou makest the frenzied free,
[ 161 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


And singing leadest the rapt Spirit on
Where never mortal thought has gone,
Till, by the ultimate stream
Of vision and of dream
She stands
With startled eyes and outstretched hands,
Looking where other suns rise over other lands,
And rends the lonely skies with her prophetic scream.x
MACKINAC ISLAND
Sunday, Oct. 4 (I903)
I am inexpressibly sorry that I seemed to treat your
letter with coldness. I sent the 'choral' in answer to itan answer too vague and indirect, I confess; but I could
think of no better way to express my sympathy for your
great mood, my joy in your radiant nature, and my sense
of our kinship in the blood of beauty.
It is disappointing news that you will not be here for another week yet. I had more than half expected you today,
and T -, infected by my confidence, got up early to
sweep the porches, and put the new cover on the swingbed, intended to give a festival touch to the scene of your
arrival. Even Brother was practically convinced, and
gave the velvet cloak an extra nozzling. I haven't made
a new cover for the swing-bed, but I have been doing some
very pretty work tinting trees and bushes, covering the
wood paths with gold and russet, arranging effects of mellow mist, and even stretching a few preliminary spider
webs. Perhaps though on the whole I am proudest of my
z In this letter was enclosed the above version, 'in the rough,' 'The Chorus
of Young Men' with which The Fire-Bringer closes. See pages 269-70-71,
Poems and Poetic Dramas, by William Vaughn Moody, Houghton Mifflin
Company, I9I2. By comparing the two versions, the reader may note the
significant improvement made by the poet in changing four words and substituting three new lines for three rejected ones.
[ 62




AMERICA - 1903


little effect in odors. The whole island smells like a god's
cider press; it is rare.
I think I understand what you mean about Stickney's
poem, and I think I agree. 'Progress is progress' is what
he has meant to say, achievement is achievement, and the
achievement of each is inscrutably conserved for all, in
spite of the ingratitude and indifference of those who immediately inherit. Then he has softened the crudity of the
immediate rejection (very beautifully I think) by Pyrrha's
confidence and hope in the outcome:
'Tomorrow brings again
The sun he gave us, and the hope - the life.'
I am sorry you are not more impressed with the volume
as a whole, but as you say, your situation is perhaps not
favorable for tasting toward an ultimate decision. I like
the Oneiropolos extremely, though Browning's mood and
accent is too evident. The volume is certainly unevenexasperatingly, maddeningly so, and this unevenness exists
not as between poem and poem alone, where it could be
neglected, but within the body of each piece, or nearly
every one. Still the real stuff is there, and concerning how
many books that come to hand these days can one say
that?
Monna Fanna I have read and saw acted in Munich.
It is rather a good little play, curiously un-Maeterlinckian, dealing with supposedly real people in a historical
setting, and with only a sentence or two (put in the mouth
of a Greek-chorus old man) in the mystic-melancholy
vein. It represents at any rate an odd volte-face from his
previous attempts to express the inexpressible by means of
the inexpressive, and if your analysis of his case is correct,
[ 63]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


it seems rather a regrettable departure. But I read it
hurriedly and saw it acted in a barbarous tongue, so there
may be more of the man's philosophy in it than I gathered.
The weather continues notional; for the last three days
we have had tremendous storm and rain; the thunder
night before last rolled and burst and rolled and burst over
our heads until not the house only but the very island
seemed to rock under it.
I send you a letter just received from one of the tiny
band of the faithful. I don't know why I send it, except
that it came at a moment of depression and cheered me,
so frail is the flesh! I thought everybody but you and
Ferd had forgotten the Masque or never heard or would
hear of it, and here bless my soul is a fellow reading it in
Spain where the castles are, and thinking it's like Wagner!
Well, I don't know who he is, but he's a good man. I only
wish the devil hadn't prompted him to ask for the picture;
it seems foolish to send it and caddish not to. What would
you do?
Too bad Ferd can't come. I'm wearying for a sight of
the lad.
WILL
NEW YORK, Nov. 12, 1903
I woke up this morning in the Blue Ridge mountains of
Pennsylvania. Then, as I lay and watched the light grow
over the russet and amber and olive-purple hills, the
memories of the past few days came back with wonderful
vividness upon me - from the Sunday morning in the
meadow, when I felt the hardness melt within me, to the
never-to-be-forgotten hour by the fire when I seemed to
awaken from a sleep and to find you at last after many
[i64]




AMERICA -I 903


days and know the strong joy of your spirit. All through
the day you have seemed to be at my side, behind me,
across the street, beyond some door just opening, and
always with that inexpressible light of joy upon you, summoning me to the joy for which all my life long I have
hungered and thirsted.
The day's search for rooms has been discouraging.
Tomorrow I shall do better - find some place to live that
isn't either vulgarly pretentious and expensive or sordidly
shabby and dark, as everything I have thus far seen seems
to be.
WILL
THE BENEDICK, NEW YORK
Nov. I3 (1903)
Today began with another series of disappointments
and disillusionments in my search for rooms, but when
flesh and spirit were about exhausted good luck - disguised as a Forlorn Hope - led me into the Studio Building on West ioth Street. I had been told repeatedly that
there wasn't a studio left in New York, and I entered the
manager's office with expectation of the usual reply. The
ravens that fed the prophet in the wilderness dropped into
my arms a man who was going away and wanted to sublet
his studio until the first of May. I hugged him to my
breast and entreated to be led to view the same. It proved
to be a big ramshackle place, looking very dingy in its denuded state, but in spite of all drawbacks the room was
gemuitlich and oddly delightful in an oldfashioned Bohemian way. I closed with him at once, as my telegram about
the furniture has ere this apprised you. The place is a
great ant-hill of artists, and in its arrangements reminds
L I65 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


me much of the old dormitory I lived in on the 'Yard' at
college. Your coal and water is fetched up from unknown
regions by a grumbling humorous old dog of a porter,
every occupant buys his own coal and runs his own little
coal-bin. The walls are stained with the leavings of many
palettes, and by other accidents. There is a skylight and
two windows -one of them looking out on the churchyard of the IIth St. church, with a chance at the sunrise
beyond (I am on the top floor and the building is pretty
high.) All these precious advantages are offset by only
two serious defects - there is no bathroom, and the only
arrangement for heating seems to be by stove. Still, with
an open-grate stove and a hat-tub I shall get on famously.
The main thing is there - the feeling of bien-Ptre and
homeliness, the sense of seclusion from the insistent New
York rush-and-grab, and the atmosphere, subtly diffused
from half-open doors and passing figures in the corridors,
of the artistic life. I count myself immensely fortunate to
have found it, and call upon you to rejoice with me.
I telegraphed without taking very serious thought for
you to ship me my table, chairs, rug and easel. Perhaps it
will cost more money and trouble to send the things on
than to buy them new, but perhaps not. Do as you think
best. I also telegraphed you (perhaps you didn't understand) to let me know by wire if you had anything else
about the house which you wanted to send. I have already
bought a couch-bed, and a stove.
NEW YORK, Nov. I5, 1903
Dan Mason has turned over to me a lot of pretty hangings which he is not using, and we have spent the day
putting these up. I am more and more delighted with my
[ 66]




AMERICA -   903
find; the arrangements are just crude enough to give one
a wholesome feeling and the atmosphere of the place is
friendly and subtly inspiring. John La Farge, Dewing,
Alden Weir, J. G. Brown and several other painters of
name are in the building, and I look forward to some
pleasant acquaintances among them, if the chances fall
that way.
Your spirit is always with me; and I am learning to
share with it every thought and experience that the passing
hours bring - not merely the chosen ones, the high points,
but all the futile, unilluminated, even I think the evil, if
evil ever came near me here where I walk in the glad delicious light which from some unhoped-for mercy of revealment has fallen upon me.              WNEW YORK, Nov. 17, 1903
Your telegram announcing the despatch of the furniture
came bright and early this morning; I enjoyed a meditative and delighted grin over your absurd effectiveness,
thus again signalized. It would have taken any other
woman in the world a week to make up her mind what she
would send, and another to make up her mind to send it.
Dan Mason just here came in with two men whom he
had asked to dine with me, and dragged me off....
After dinner I was taken round to the studio of Arthur
Whiting, a composer, who played me a thing which evoked
your presence uncannily - a dance-suite in free fantasia
form, to be accompanied by dancing and plastic interpretations on the part of some woman - not yet discovered by
the composer - divinely appointed to dance, to glorify
again that discredited heaven of art.
The news about Brother is immensely comforting.
[ 67]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


There was a sore place inside of me which your picture of
him as in good spirits and allowed to run after the carriage,
has put balm upon.
Do write 'the little word' - it will be of immense comfort to me, for New York, with all its brilliance and
variety, is (let me whisper it) rather a howling wilderness.
W_
SI WEST IOTH ST.
NEW YORK, Nov. i9, i903
It is comfortable to think that the things will be here in a
few days, for the romance of living in a bare loft is beginning to wear off, and something to sit on will add to the
meaning of life.
I saw Phillips's Ulysses the other night. It is perhaps a
trifle less weak on the stage, but quite weak enough even
there. As we surmised at the time of reading it the last act
is dramatically far ahead of the rest of the play. It will
doubtless come to Chicago, as it has petered out here by
this time. There was only a handful of spectators.
Tonight I am going to Barrie's new comedy The Admirable Crichton, which is said to be capital. The opera
season begins next week.
NEW YORK, Nov. 2I (1903)
The runaway, by some curious psychologic freak, has
just fairly impinged upon my consciousness, in both its
serious and its humorous aspects. Since no accident resulted the former can happily be dismissed, but it affords
me an incommunicably humorous pleasure to note how all
dogs and horses (at any rate) understand you and respond
instantly to your temperamental demands. So it has been,
apparently, from the beginning -as soon as you are
[ i68 ]




AMERICA -1903
seated behind a horse, every drop of chivalrous blood
whispers 'Escapade' to the equine heart. And the way in
which from the very first instant Brother divined the rollicking boon-fellow in you is enough to put forever to
shame the mole-like lugubrious view of a certain friend of
yours I know, who prides himself upon insight forsooth.
Your note enclosing the pictures did me a world of good.
I had come home tired from a symphony concert, and a
little blue with the exhaustion of feeling which Tschaikowsky's Fifth always induces. Your bright brave words, and
the delightful picture of yourself were like wine to my
spirit. This picture gives as no other I have seen the essential nobility of outline of your head - a thing which you
despise because of a supposed meretricious relationship
which it bears to your back hair, but a thing which I prize
as an adumbration of your inmost self and an accent of the
Holy Ghost.
Herrick's novelette is about as heartless a piece of writing as ever blotted paper, though he tries hard to pump
enough humanity into it at the end to raise it above the
temperature of liquid air. I purchased today the Daskam's
effusions, which I shall report on soon and send you the
book; it is got up regardless with red and gold on the outside, and I dare say the inside has been prepared with
as lavish a disregard of expense. The Admirable Crichton,
when and if it comes to Chi, you must by all means see. It
is a capital skit.
51 WEST IOTH ST.
NEW YORK, Nov. 24 (I903)
There is a most interesting loan-exhibition of portraits
on here, ranging from sixteenth century Flemish masters
[ I69]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


through Van Dyck and Rembrandt, the English i8th
Century School, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Raeburn, etc.,
down to Sargent, Whistler, and even the youngsters of the
passing hour. It is a most wonderful parade of human
masks, and besides the pure artistic pleasure, puts one in
the way of strange thoughts to see the centuries marshalled
this way, in their most human and private aspect. It's odd
to see how nine times out of ten the sitter has fooled the
painter or the painter has fooled himself or perhaps been
frankly indifferent and not tried to go deeper than the
mask, but here and there a soul has been caught and held
up naked, proud, ashamed, trembling, defiant - pilloried
pitilessly (but sometimes so tenderly!) for unborn generations to gape at - on the whole even at the best rather a
shocking business. Some of these poor foolish eighteenthcentury worldlings and court-beauties especially, look as
if they were at last tired of the glare and the crowds, and
would like to taste the privacy and undress of death, but
the colors are as bright as they were two hundred years
ago; those old fellows ground their own colors and knew
what they were using.
I cannot tell you how keenly I longed for your company,
as I went from canvas to canvas fascinated and baffled.
How you would revel in this exhibition, or rather with
what divine insight and sympathy and drollery of view,
with what sweet all-comprehending, all-accepting sisterhood you would walk among these dead who are so
strangely living. Dear friend, dear friend! I wish I might
let you know how the beauty of your life has been revealed
to me, and how the revelation has brought me near to the
centre of all life, to the eternal secret - the Open Secret
which from the beginning every created thing has
[I70]




AMERICA - 1903


been breathless to declare, has been breathlessly declaring.                                       W5I WEST IOTH ST.
NEW YORK, Nov. 28, 1903
I have been a little under the weather for three or four
days. My complaint is trifling. I caught a severe cold (excuse me, I know one can't do that!) with grippe symptoms,
and had a sharp touch of that accursed pain in the hip
which I suppose is rheumatism, but whatever else it is, is
deucedly unpleasant. I took prompt measures, and am
now virtually as good as new.
I saw (or rather heard, for I was a mile from the stage)
the Valkyrie last night. Your dear presence, and the
memories of that evening last spring when we beheld together those shining rivers and cascades, those swinging
seas and cloud-shepherding trade-winds of melody, were
with me all the evening. It is through music that I seem to
come nearest to you, and nearest of all through this elemental welter of Wagner's, this chaos of chords continually
shaping themselves into divine form only to gaze about for
an instant and melt back once more into its primordial
element.
There is nothing of first-rate importance at the theatres
just now, but Mrs. Burnett's Little Sister of Jose (with
Maude Adams). Ethel Barrymore in a play called Cousin
Kate, and Marie Tempest in The Marriage of Kitty I shall
look upon and judge. There is a very interesting Yiddish
play on the East Side, of which I enclose a newspaper account. The students of the School of Dramatic Expression
also give a play of Bj6rnson's next week. These with a
good comedy at the German theatre, three symphony
[ 71 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


concerts to choose from, and the opera, will show I am
not starved for entertainment.
Yeats is here, and is coming West to lecture: you had
better hear him. I have not seen him, but am invited to
meet him at breakfast when he comes back East again.
SI WEST 10TH ST.
NEW YORK, Dec. I, I903
I met yesterday a young chap called Ridgely Torrence,
a very charming and amusing fellow, who has just written
a five-act verse-play entitled Eldorado, dealing with the
Spanish search for the Seven Cities of Gold and other
wonders. He says he is writing one on Abelard and
Heloise for Mrs. Fiske. Robinson is not much use for
purposes of comradeship these days. He is working, at a
very dreary job, poor chap, and is too tired after he gets
through to do much but roll into bed. Mason is also very
busy, but we manage to sandwich in some good hours of
music. I feel like the one loafer in a universe of strenuosity, for I have not been able to settle down to any work
worth the name.
NEW YORK, Dec. 8, I903
I saw Bernard Shaw's Candida this afternoon, given by
a special company, and very impressive. The thing stages
in a way to surprise you. I am hard at work on a new
piece - a queer thing which I think I shall call The Death
of Eve. It is about Eve in old age - blank verse narrative.
The idea of it came on me out of a clear sky the other day,
and almost lifted me out of my skin. I believe you'll like
it, but I'm not sure. Perhaps you'll think it's too queer.
I'm meeting a lot of interesting people; it's a strange place,
is Babylon.
[I72]




AMERICA -     1903
NEW YORK, Dec. 28, 1903
I have been writing like a madman - four lyrics (of the
necessary five) in as many days. I send you one, of which
I feel already pretty sure. If the others stand the coolingoff test successfully I shall forward them also. This one is
sung at the climax of Act II, after Pyrrha says 'The stars,
it is the ancient stars, etc.' Will it do? It seems good to
me, but is still white hot to my fond eyes, and denies to be
seen clearly.
Dec. 29, I903
Here is a thing that I was visited with when (perhaps)
you will think I ought to have been better employed. It
means nothing, and many things, all of which you will
know better than I. If you hate it, chuck it in the wastebasket, and it will be forever chucked; if you like it, lay it
on your heart and think how passion slain renews itself,
and evermore is young.
THAMMUZ
Daughters, daughters, do ye grieve?
Crimson dark the freshes flow.
Were ye violent at eve?
What hath stained the rushes so?
What is this that I must know?
Mourners by the dark red waters,
Met you Thammuz at his play?
Was your mood upon you, daughters?
Had ye drunken? Oh how grey
Looks your hair in the growing day!
Daughters, mourn not over much
That ye slew your lovely one.
Such ye are; and be ye such.
Lift your heads; the waters run
Ruby bright in the climbing sun.
[ 73 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Raven hair and hair of gold,
Look who bendeth over you!
I am not your father old,
I am Thammuz that ye slew,
Radiant Thammuz risen anew.
NEW YORK, Dec. 30, I903
I am afraid the songs I have been sending you have not
been such as to give you any delight, but I am going to risk
another anyhow. The -one I enclose is intended for the end
of the second act, but I don't know yet whether it will
stand - perhaps in the region it attempts to enter words
are an impertinence, or even an impiety. You will know,
unless (as I half suspect) I have failed altogether to say
anything.
NEW YEAR'S DAY, I904
This is for a Happy New Year. The greeting probably
sounds vague to you, overshadowed as you must be by the
awful cloud of bereavement which rests over the city.
When I went out last night at dark, I learned for the first
time of the dreadful theatre catastrophe.' I had a bad
three minutes while I was buying a paper and devouring
the headlines; even when I found that the tragedy had
occurred twenty-eight hours ago, and knew that if it had
touched anyone I loved I should have heard the news long
before, it was a good while before the watery feeling went
out of my knees. The momentary fear was shrewd enough
to leave me wistful about you, and to keep me from being
little short of a kill-joy I suspect, at the small gathering of
choice spirits who watched the old year out at Whiting's
studio, and drank the New Year in in bumpers of October
ale, not without song.
The Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago.
[ I74




AMERICA - I904


Today I wrote the last of the Pandora songs. I have
made some changes in those I sent you, and strengthened
their effect also by some slight changes in their time and
mode of entrance. I think they will stand now, but I am
anxious for your opinion whether they do or not. I am
going to spend a day or two more on strengthening and
smoothing out the last act, which doesn't yet seem to me
organically quite sound - I mean quite crystallinely organized - especially in the latter half. When that has
been gone over, and the whole thing given a final 'ironingout,' I shall have done my darnedest, and the thing will
have to take care of itself, sink or swim. It has been a long
and happy labor, and in every line and accent of it thoughts
of you have been woven.
I send a draft of the aforesaid lyric passage.
Tomorrow morning there will perhaps be a letter from
you, and until then I shall believe that you are dwelling, as
you should be, in the Great Good Place.
A VOICE
Who are these coming down, etc....
ANOTHER VOICE
It is Pandora and the unborn men,
Deukalion's seed, etc...
PANDORA (sings, invisible in the light)
Ye who from the stone and clay
Unto godhead grope your way,
Hastening hither do ye see
Yonder passionate trinity?
THE STONE MEN AND EARTH WOMEN
Save us, flaming Three!
[ I75]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


PANDORA
Dionysus hath the wine,
Eros hath the rose divine,
Lord Apollo hath the lyre:
Three and one is the soul's desire.
THE STONE MEN AND EARTH WOMEN
Save us, sons of fire!
A WOMAN'S VOICE
Listen, they have passed.
They go with singing forward down the light
NEW YORK, 2an. 6 (I904)
After I wrote you last, my exuberant uplift departed as
suddenly as it came, and I was left to crawl between
heaven and earth as a biped of most questionable usefulness and dubious meaning. But your letter has made me a
man again, and opened again the eastern windows which,
when they close, leave me so drearily housed.
That you should like all the lyrics seems too good to be
true; I had braced myself to rejecting one or two of them.
I am not yet satisfied with the one beginning 'Because one
creature'; I think it is good in itself, but not broad and
floating and midnightish enough for the place it occupies;
I think of bringing it in later-shortly before the antiphonal beginning 'Ye who from the stone and clay,' and
writing another for the vacant place. What do you think?
That in general they seem to you to 'swing into their
places' is the best praise. I am finishing the Eve, but it
seems to be getting rather crazy and raucous? I can't
vouch for its turning out well. Also I have an idea for a
'dream-play' -very hazy, but es liebdugelt mich an aus
dem Schatten.
[ 176]




AMERICA - I904
Monday night I saw Barrie's Little Mary - a really
delicious trifle. It has an Irish girl in it - Moira Louie -
whose brogue would put thoughts of poison in your
envious heart; it is very slight, just a little blur as of peatsmoke on a fair sky. The piece is a comic skit with a dash
of farce, very pungent, and with a good deal of human
depth too. I hope it will soon be coming your way.
'Little Mary,' whose identity remains a mystery until the
last five minutes of the play, is a euphemism for the stomach, and the play whimsically purports to be a plea for the
more humane treatment of that organ; not a promising
dramatic theme, one would think, but it suffices. There is
also a rich farce at the German theatre, called Los vom
Manne, the heroine of which, a lady of certain age heading
a movement for the independence of her sex, is hypnotically diverted from her life work whenever a possible
or impossible lover appears on the horizon. These,
with Shaw's Candida going, and another great picture
show, convince me that you'll have to dash on to New
York.
WNEW YORK, Jan. 10, 1904
I am not yet ready to let the poem go. I have spent a
good many weeks in that kind of slow intense scrutiny and
testing which shows such microscopic results to the casual
eye, but which constitutes the really immeasurable difference between a thing done as well as one can do it, and a
thing done almost as well. And there is much - I don't
know how much - of this still to do. I chafe at times to
see the weeks filing by and finding me still at this employment, but I know that in the long run I should be bitterly
[ I771




LETTERS TO HARRIET


sorry not to have done it. Pandora's song at the end of
Act II I have entirely rewritten; it is, I am sure, much
better in its new form. I'm bound to give the tooth of time
as hard a search as possible for soft places where it can
begin its gnawing.
NEW YORK, Jan. 14, 1904
I have been reading a book on Brook Farm by Lindsay
Swift which is wholly fascinating. The history of the place
is rich in humor of the subtlest and sweetest kind, and cries
out for somebody to put the quintessential mingling of
whimsicality and elevation which is distilled from it into a
play. Several of the characters who were at the Farm during the years of first enthusiasm and of hard-pan living -
especially some of the obscurer characters only revealed in
silhouette or 'back-to' are deliciously funny and touching
and grand. The atmosphere that seems to have rested
over the place is just the one in which to steep a work of art
which should reveal the humorous in the unworldly, without any touch of satire or parti pris, and which should
humanize to the materialistic and worldly average
eye the mystic and otherworldly personality. This all
expresses what I see in the subject most blindly, and will
give you a notion that I am contemplating a Tom
Pinch or a Professor's Love Story. I wonder if Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance comes anywhere near doing
what I am trying clumsily to define? I must read it at
once.
Have you noticed how long the days are growing? And
how, on certain late afternoons, the air is recovering
faintly, O so very faintly that it doesn't stand really looking for, the flame-tint of Spring-I mean that powdery
[ 78 ]




AMERICA - I904


diffused supersubtle essence of rosy flame that one sees on
late Spring afternoons, nowhere to be fixed but everywhere
apparent? Of course She is worlds away yet, but I verily
believe - well, it is best not to be arrogant.
WILL
NEW YORK, 7an. 15, I904
The day before I got your letter advising me to read the
Fire-Bringer to Stickney in person, I had sent it to him,
with a mention in the introductory note of what I conceived to be my indebtedness to his poem, and a letter in
which I set this forth more in full, and asked him to tell me
frankly whether the reference to his Prometheus pleased
him, whether he would rather have it made more specific or
more casual. Today I received a letter from him, written
after a first reading of the play. It is a very friendly and
manly letter, imperatively urging me to omit all reference
to my predecessors in the handling of the myth, including
himself, and to print instead a translation of the brief
passages in Hesiod and Apollodorus which represent the
raw material I have drawn upon. He thinks the connection
between his poem and mine of only 'philological interest,'
and finds the divergence in our handling of the characters
and the action so great that - on a first reading at least -
the attempt to adjust his preconceptions to my view makes
my work puzzling and baffling to him. He finds the play
extremely difficult, partly doubtless because of this
difficulty in readjusting the lines of a settled mental
picture. He calls it a 'superb performance,' but finds it less
dramatic in the human than in the symbolic order; the
characters do not as yet seem very real or 'convincing' to
him -a most grievous opinion. He is coming down
[' 79 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


in a week or two, and we shall have a chance to talk
it out.
I am sending you tomorrow a queer play by the new
Russian, Maxim Gorky. It has elements of great beauty
and strength, but doesn't seem drawn together or quite
'floated' - at least on a hasty reading. I have also a new
play by Sudermann, Der Sturmgeselle Sokrates, which I
shall send you when I have finished it.
WNEW YORK, yan. I9, 1904
I didn't meet Yeats after all. He must be a good man, to
have made so strong an impression upon you, and I am
sorry now I didn't take more trouble to get at him. But as
for his thesis about folk-poetry and the folk-spirit, it is just
as strong and just as weak as the weakest of the links which
go to make it up, and that - as you point out yourself -
is very weak indeed. It is this taking up of an artificial
attitude toward folk-poetry that is the undoing of Yeats
and all his 'school.' A self-conscious attempt to assimilate
and reproduce what is itself of the very essence of naivete, is
bound to be a cancelling business; good old Bishop Percy
over his port and his last find in broad-sheets, was nearer
the heart of the matter. However, let me not be stentorian
in the demonstration of the obvious, and of what, moreover, you have already granted me explicitly. In the
matter of the 'tunes,' too, I am inclined not to set much
store by the theory which you report Yeats as holding.
That every good poet has his special music is of course
true; but that is of course a thing made up of elements far
too complex to be denoted by musical signs, and in many
of its elements not denotable at all. Considering, too, the
[ I80]




AMERICA - 1904
single element of rhythm, I should say that all its grander
and more vital beauties, in the case of any poet of power,
were irreducible to notation; and that the recurrence of a
rhythmic theme so frequently as to enable one to pick it
put as a characteristic tune, would by just so much invalidate a poet's claim to greatness in that kind. I feel
like Brother Tolman or the worthy Skeat, and know you
are hating me; so I will stop boring you with these dogmatisms right here. The main thing and the only thing to
care about is that, standing face to face with this young
Irishman, you, miraculous reader of hearts and knower of
souls, accept him as our brother. My brother he shall be,
so longr as I have strength to claim him. In essence he cannot be wrong.
I sent you last night the first draft of Eve, and rather repented me of it afterwards, for it is still rough and thin in
places, and is perhaps as a whole rejectable. It pretty much
went its own way; I am not primarily responsible for it if
you find it raucous and grotesque. I can say of it too that
in essence it is right, but it's got rather a queer envelope, I
guess. You may find the rhythmic movement of Eve's
song difficult; the secret of its music lies in its being read
with strong pauses; I have made them strong by every art I
know, but something is still left to the mercy of the ear that
hears it. After reading it please send it back, as I have
only the one copy.
NEW YORK, fan. 24 (1904)
I saw Parsifal last night - a great show, but less rich
and high-floating in the score than I had hoped. Magical
moments -the Grail music, especially the boys' choir, and
the Good Friday Spell; - but on the whole not in it with
[i8i]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


the Valkyrie or Tristan. Wagner was not religious, at
least not when he thought he was. The 'teaching' of this
opera, so far as it is doctrine and not beauty, is pitiably
false.
Since I wrote you last I have made a most interesting
acquaintanceship, which may prove to be a precious friendship, with one Gutzon Borglum - a Dane of American
birth and tastes - a sculptor and painter of superb
powers. I spent yesterday afternoon and most of the evening in his studio, where he has a half-dozen pictures and
three or four statues underway. One of the latter is a
group of madly plunging horses going over a hill, with
a naked figure clinging to the back of the foremost, and
throwing back his arm to compel the rest to follow. He
calls it 'Hercules Stealing the Horses of Admetus,' but it
might just as well be a stampede of Arizona ponies under
the hypnotic control of an Indian boy. This is still in the
wet clay, and while I smoked and talked, he modelled one
of the horses' heads in a way to make you weep. Another
group only sketched out is a woman turning away from a
prostrate man, and dropping a pair of pipes from her limp
hand as she goes. The rubric is 'I have piped to ye and ye
have not danced!' The expression of the woman is wonderfully imagined. Borglum talks almost as well as he works
- a big sane mind. Altogether he is the most powerful
figure of an artist I have ever encountered. As he seems to
like me and has urged upon me the freedom of his studio,
I expect to get much out of his companionship. He is, I
judge, about forty, perhaps less; and has had a career in
Europe before settling here for his life work.
I suppose you've thrown the Eve down hard, and no
blame to you. I was two or three times on the point of
[ 182 ]1




AMERICA - I904


telegraphing you to send it back unopened; but I decided
at last not to permit that childishness.
WNEW YORK, 7an. 28, 1904
I have been very low in my mind for some days, perhaps
owing to the failure of Eve (for as it stands it is unquestion-.
ably a failure), though I don't like to think so small an inducing cause could bring me down. Whatever the cause,
I 'struck slate,' not for the first time in my life as you
know, but each time it seems as if the heavens had fallen
and buried me, or rather as if the principle of life had been
mysteriously withdrawn from the world ('sucked up the
fire of passion and of will') leaving it inhabited by joyless
automatons, vacantly pursuing their functions under an
automatic sun. Well, it is ungenerous for me even to mention these megrims. I know that I have only to wait, and
the living waters will seep back somehow into the cistern,
as indeed they are even now doing in a very commendable
way.
How is Brother?' You have not mentioned him for
weeks, and a panic fear seized me today that something
had happened to him and that you were sparing me the
knowledge of it. I had a queer dream about him last night,
which may have aroused my uneasiness. Tell me about
him, and do not let him wholly forget that I am in the
world.
NEW YORK, Feb. 2, 1904
I am well and happy, and my little fit of the doldrums
has given place to a mood of exciting or rather excited
aW. V. M.'s pet name for his dog, Sieg.
[i83]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


absorption in a new stunt - of which, if it comes to anything, you shall hear; but I am going to stop sending you
half-cooked dishes to taste.
I have been put up at the Arts Club, and have met there
many interesting and a few engaging people. It is a men's
and women's club, with a charming dining-room, a number
of good pictures, and a membership where Bohemianism is
of the chastened sort. Borglum is a member. I have been
seeing a good deal of him, to my continued satisfaction.
He is a most curious nature, irascible and egotistic, with
a basis of strange childlike solemnity, and a gloomy intensity that is the reverse of childish.
This is only a note to let you know I am riding the
waves again.
WNEW YORK, Feb. 4 (1904)
Your moving vindication of the Eve is so much better
than the exciting cause that I am ashamed to pursue the
subject. Really, though, you mustn't; for if you praise me
thus when I partly fail, what will you have left to do when
I succeed? The fact is that I wrote the part of the poem in
question under too great a strain of excitement. It often
happens that the excitement of 'vision' reaches a point
where it obscures some of the other faculties necessary for
the excellent balanced play of the heart, mind and imagination together, without which there is no sufficing art.
Usually, I am advised of this, and go out and cool my head
in the rain-barrel before proceeding, but this time I didn't,
and the result - though I think with you that it is in
substance good- is perturbed and inultimate. It will
have to settle a good while before I can draw off the pure
[ 84]




AMERICA - 1904
liquor which I feel is there. This you have already done,
by the double alchemy of love and inspired insight; some
day, the Muses willing, I shall be able to do in cold script
what you have done in feeling.
I am hard at a new piece of poetry, and just now the
thing is sliding like sand under my shovel. I can't tell what
dimensions it will take; but as far as I can judge, I shall
need three or four weeks, with luck.
Feb. 6 (1904)
My brief despair was entirely artistic and metaphysical,
and in the happy reaction from it I have jumped into a big
piece of work which makes my waking hours one debauch
of stolid and silent excitement. Perhaps there is nothing in
it, but I seem to myself to be on the point of solving the
great problem of the application of blank verse to the realistic treatment ofa modern theme in drama. This sounds
at once appallingly presumptuous andalso quite acatieme
and theoreticial  I mean that in handling the subject I
have now in hand - one of the modern subjects we have
talked over and for which I am indebted to you, I seem to
myself to have hit upon or to be about to hit upon a type
of blank verse essentiallynew, which has much of the unconventionality and unguided movement of prose, in the
passages where the emotional level is low, and which yet is
capable of gathering itself up, when needed, into the passion and splendor which prose is incapable of. Co-operate
with me in warding off from my head the punishment sent
upon presumption, by letting this be as if it had not been
said, until such time as I shall have pushed the experiment
to consummation, and either proved or disproved its
value.
[ i85




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Feb. IO (1904)
I have been sitting at my desk since morning, and it is
now seven o'clock. I don't know where the day has gone
to, but I know that I am dropping with hunger and brainfag, and that the very sight of pen and paper makes me ill,
so I shall not do more than send you a word of good cheer
and thankfulness.
The new play is going at a good clip, and I am almost
too much in love with it to eat or sleep.
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY (1904)
I had just awakened this morning, and in my still
drowsy head the thought was running: This is St. Valentine's; I wonder what Harriet is doing? when a small
much-uniformed boy knocked at the door and handed to
my pajamed person a box of wonderful lilies, chanting of
far-off spring from two dozen dewy throats. Then I
knew at least what Harriet had been doing, and was
warmed as to the cockles of the heart. They have been
at my elbow all day as I worked, and have whispered of
the divine freshness and fragrance of the heart that sent
them.
I am working hard at the new play, of which I will say
nothing except that I have finished the first act (in nine
days - a genuine feat for a slow-moving mass like methough it will, I fear, not impress the imagination of a lady
who lately suggested that I should put posturing by and
sit down with the sworn design of writing a whole play,
presumably of five acts and seventeen scenes in three
days). I am also well started on the second, after interruption by a stubborn attack of headache, due, I dare say,
to a dearth of exercise and a plethora of coffee. Whether
1I861




AMERICA - I904


the result is going to amount to anything or not it is too
early to say, but I am working with an ease and swiftness
which I have never known before. If only the swiftness
does not prove to be of the kind that hinders the feet, and
the ease of the kind that makes hard reading. There will
be, as far as I can now see, three acts; so that, even at the
present rate of speed (which of course I cannot count on)
it will take me into the second week of March to finish it in
first draft.
(Postmarked February Is, I904)
Thursday
Your last letter took away my lingering uneasiness about
you, for it showed plain enough that you are again on the
large plateaus of life - or I ought not to say again, because I think this is a new one and swept by a bigger wind
of joy and trust in existence than you have known before.
Of course I know that you aren't built for the level career,
in however high and windy a country, and I dare say that
by the time you get this you'll be upbraiding me sotto voce
for taking you at your word. If so, pray understand that I
don't. But all the same I do.
My little job is still keeping me too busy to eat, though
just now the outward and visible signs of my activity are
meagre. I have struck a place which puzzles and disconcerts and allures me, by turns and all at once, and there is
nothing to do but sit down before it with siege guns and
provisions, and wait until it capitulates, a process I am
now employed in, though to the outward and carnal eye
no such matter.
The theatres are looking up more and more here, after a thin winter. The unexpected, the impossible, the
[187]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


inevitable has happened. For five years Frohman and his
gang have been ramming fustian down the good people's
throats, until all at once this fall they rebelled, and the
theatres, with their dramatized historical novels, their
patched-up French farces, their pick-me-up Clydefitcheries
simply stood empty. Frohman scratched his head, and
told his leading ladies to provide gowns of more striking
patterns. Still empty. F. puts his cigar in the other side
of his mouth, and orders seventeen new carloads of scenery
and souvenirs at each performance. Empty as a sucked
egg. F. gives it up and says, Hard times; nothing to do
about it. Then little Arnold Daly and a lank inspired
Irish girl from a cheap subterranean stock-company, took
heart of grace, and advertised a matinee performance of
Candida. The house was packed, and now after seven
weeks it is running yet to admiration. Ada Rehan and Otis
Skinner saw the lay, emerged from retirement, and began
giving Shakespeare and Sheridan; Mrs. Fiske put on
Hedda; and some quixotic revolutionist staged three of
Yeats's small plays; people had to be turned away from the
doors. Mr. Sidney Rosenfeld sees the point, and organizes
the 'Century Players' with Artfor Art emblazoned on the
banner. The Everyman Company, which has been picking
up a living in country towns, hears the glad news and
makes for a regenerated metropolis, offering Twelfth
Night in the original text and with the original meagre
stage-setting, and perhaps other good things to follow.
Meanwhile Frohman has chewed that cigar till it's a sight,
and his remarks upon men and things are said to have the
gloom and force of great tragic literature.
I mark what you say about Yeats. If he comes this way
again, I shall try to see him.
[ I88]




AMERICA - 1904


(Postmarked Feb. 24, 1904)
It is late, and I am dog-tired, having been at the desk all
day, but I must send you a word.
Something tells me that I must push this task through
to completion now while it is fresh and plastic in my mind,
on pain of losing altogether the especial quality that I am
seeking for it. After a day or two of partial discouragement I am in love with it again. How long it will take to
finish, I cannot say; but however long it is, strengthen me
to stay by it. It may or may not turn out to be good, but
at any rate it is something totally new (for me), and
I'm not sure enough of it to drop the threads for a
moment.
Ferd has just written me a letter of most generous and
inspiriting praise of the F-B. It was like meat and drink to
hear from him again.
NEW YORK, Feb. 29 (I904)
I send you by this mail proofs of the new book,2 in
galley, though the differences which this final version exhibits from your copy - labor-costing as they are - are
so small as to be nearly negligible.
CAMBRIDGE, March 6 (I904)
I am on my way to Chicago, and have come on here, to
make the final arrangements about the book. I found myself at the end of last week completely tired out, and have
to loaf and lark a little before going on with my present
job. I am staying with Stickney here and having a mellow
time.
x This modern play in verse seems never to have been finished.
2 The Fire-Bringer.
[ 89]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


KANSAS CITY, Mo., March 29, 1904
I snatch a moment between trains to send back a word of
gratitude and admiration for the brave farewell you gave
me, which put me at once into a fit -mind to welcome the
adventure and big breath of the West. I breakfasted with
Norton and his wife, very pleasantly; she is rather pretty
and quite honest and unaffected. Norton I like better
than ever on more acquaintance; I think he is the sterling
sort; has a touch of rudeness, gaucherie, which is stimulating, and impresses me a~s a creature of much elemental unformed power.
(Postmarked Williams, Ariz., Mar. 31, 1904)
HOLBROOK, March 3I
Yesterday was a day of mild adventure. Our train was
hours behind time, and was kept waiting on side-tracks for
eastbound trains to pass. We utilized the intervals for
hasty climbs to the top of neighboring rocks and mesas,
and once had a wild scramble back as our train pulled unexpectedly out. The air and sunlight here on the Arizona
plateau is the most wonderful I have ever seen except in
Greece, in fact the color and form of the country, as well as
the atmosphere, remind me constantly of Greece. The
russet, umber, and cinnabar plains, the turquoise mountains on the horizon, and patches of sage-brush, yucca, and
juniper dotting the masses of volcanic rock, make a miracle
of color; and I find my fingers itching for a brush. There is
still snow in the shaded places, and this morning we passed
through quite a heavy snow storm, but the middle of the
day is as warm as summer.
Have Ferd bring clothing for both extremes. Also hustle
him off as quickly as possible, as Norton is impatient
190]




AMERICA - I904


to get into the desert, and I fear I can't hold him from
the trail later than Wednesday of next week. I am telegraphing Ferd to start at once, and he will have no time
to lose en route if he is to reach Holbrook by Wednesday.
Tell him to inquire at the telegraph station for, word as
soon as he arrives at Holbrook, so that if necessary he
can take the same train on to Winslow or Ca-non Diablo in
case we find that one of these is a better starting-point.
He had also better telegraph me at Bright Angel Hotel,
Grand Can-on, what train he leaves Chicago by, so that I
can catch him by wire on the way if necessary. We are
just pulling into Williams, where we take the branch line
up to the Ca-non.
(Postmarked Grand Ca-non, Ariz., April 4, I904)
Easter Sunday
We reached the Canion Thursday evening, in time for a
walk along the rim of the ungodly thing, sunset and moonrise. The next morning we went down the trail to a vast
plateau about four miles down, and found lodging in a
camp there - a lovely spot, with white tents bosomed in
clumps of willows and red-brush in glorious flower. The
full moon made such a scandal that it was impossible to
sleep; I spent most of the night outside, listening to what
the little brook in the willows had to tell of you, though it
wasn't much compared with what the mountains and the
moon spoke on the same subject.
The next day was misty and showery; but the Ca-non
was even more beautiful than by sunlight weather. We
took the three mile climb down to the river, and toiled
back up the monstrous precipices to camp again, too sore
and stiff by this time to care for anything but food and
i 9I ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


sleep. Today (Easter morning) horses were brought down
to the camp, and we rode up to the summit in blue flashing
weather; we got our money's worth out of the horses by
holding them for a grand gallop through the woods. Incidentally Mrs. Norton was thrown, and after making sure
she was not injured, there was a mad rush up hill and down
dale for the peccant beast.
Your letter came yesterday.  Yes, to feel the nature
of a beloved friend so deeply that even in the midst of the
most intimate sharing of life there is imminent knowledge
of his strangeness, of the far unadventured places of
his being, this is the secret and the great reward. Out
of this way of love comes the soul's punctual spring
and Easter, and there is no other way which holds the
promise of life. I have often told you how keen this feeling of discovery and adventure always is with me in your
company.
As for the Canion I won't waste any words on it, except
to say that when I saw it I saw the picture I was trying to
realize three years ago, when I was writing the last act
of the Masque. This is the Valley of Judgment. I send
you a sketch, dreadfully inadequate, of a glimpse of
the north wall of the Canon, from the Bright Angel
Trail.
Ferd has-telegraphed that he leaves Chicago Tuesday
night. We leave here tomorrow for Canion Diablo, where
Norton knows a man who has some good horses, and who
is willing to let us ride them while we are waiting for the
laggard. We shall probably outfit and start into the Indian country at a place called Winslow, instead of Holbrook; I shall have to catch Ferd with a telegram to notify
him of the change.
[ 192




AMERICA -- I904
Remember me to the pink pup, and try to believe with
him that I am not as mean as I seem.
My Easter greetings to you.
W —
The Oraibe Trading Post
F. W. Vol. 2
at Oraibe Village, Moque Indian Reservation
Postoffice, Cainon Diablo, Ariz. April 7, I904
We arrived at this trading post Monday night, being
greeted at the station by the German proprietor and a
magnificent Navajo, the latter in full regalia. It was a
shock to find that the splendid creature was there merely
for the purpose of carrying our luggage; but he did it
(under a full moon) with a grandeur which made all good.
It is a queer household into which we have been admitted. The post is owned by two brothers, both married
to Indian wives, and one of them, who spent many years in
Moki-land, himself a thorough Indian in gait, gesture,
manner of speech and even countenance. He sits on the
floor or ground crosslegged, never wears a hat, and gallops
bareback over the stony desert with a sinuous and savage
grace. Besides a solitary station agent and a few Mexican
section hands, there are no white men here, but hour by
hour there straggles in some picturesque devil of a Navajo
on a lean pony and dressed in wonderful colors, to trade off
a blanket or a piece of pottery. I could not resist buying
a couple of old jars and waterbottles, which I shall forward.
I dare say I was cheated, though the prices seemed
ridiculously small.
We decided to await Ferd here rather than at Holbrook
for several reasons. By going in this way we cross a portion
of the Painted Desert; it -is indeed visible from here, a
[193 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


sleeping sea of incredible color, over which the superheated air throbs and quivers at midday. The water is
more plentiful by this route, and the horses cheaper. We
expect Ferd to arrive by the morning train tomorrow, and
shall have all things ready for an immediate start. It will
be a transformation scene such as he has seldom experienced - from a Pullman sleeper to a desert trail. My
only anxiety is concerning his horsemanship.
The ponies here are at best only half-broken, and up to
all sorts of tricks on no notice at all. Yesterday we took a
ten mile ride across the desert to an extinct crater. Owing
to Mrs. Norton's experience at the Canion a pony was provided for her which was loudly acclaimed to be a 'kitten.'
Somebody tightened the back cinch on the kitten too hard,
and in the twinkling of an eye the little beast had jumped
out of a circle of four men (over our heads, it seemed to me),
had bucked the saddle off by a couple of stiff-legged jumps
with bowed back, and was off for the horizon. If- as I
seem to remember - Ferd has never ridden, he may have
a hard time of it at first. However, it will be educative, and
incidentally amusing to anyone except the victim. Probably I myself, in punishment for the boastful comparison
here implied, shall be selected by Providence to provide
the entertainment.
It seems impracticable to take horses for the whole trip,
and we have about decided to hire them from the Indians
for short stages, turning them and their owners back when
we reach places where we want to stay a few days. Our
general plan is to go from here to the first Moki village,
Oraibi, where we shall stay perhaps a week. Then on to
Walpi, the second most interesting Moki town. From there
we shall go east to Keam's Canion, where there is a trading
[ 94




AMERICA- 1904


post. Then northeast to the Canion de Chelley, the site of
some interesting and seldom-visited cliff dwellings. The
last stage of the trip will be to Guado and Gallup, where
we strike the railroad again. I shall get a letter off to you
wherever there is a post-office, but I doubt much whether
any exist on the route marked out; if not, it will be a fortnight or more before you can hear from me again.
I am hoping to hear from you by tomorrow's mail, or at
any rate to find a note in Ferd's pocket. My love and
knowledge of you seems to grow vaster here in the face of
these silences and immensities, and the great drama of our
lives to gain both solemnity and mirthfulness from each
day that it is projected against this landscape of amazing
light, primeval contour, and whimsical barbaric detail. I
am living in the assured trust that you are taking care of
yourself as well in the body as I am taking care of you in
the spirit. Remember your promises to me in this particular, and take time to fulfill them. I shall accept no excuses. I know that it is impossible for you to find time, but
now and always it is the impossible which I expect and demand of you; in all but a few particulars you unfailingly
rise to the impossible, then why not in this one, where my
desires are so strong, and our mutual life so much at
stake.
W —
ORAIBI, APRIL-?
(Tuesday)
(Postmarked April 13, 1904)
The man at the trading post has just told me that a Hopi
runner is to start for Keam's Canion, thirty-five miles
away, and that there is a post-office there. I send a word in
[I951




LETTERS TO HARRIET


the hope that the messenger may succeed in getting it into
official hands.
Ferd turned up all right at Canion Diablo on Friday. He
was nearly five hours late, and the ponies had been
saddled since morning when he at last, about two in the
afternoon, hove in sight. I hustled him into a Wild-West
rig in a jiffy, and had him on a horse and streaking it
across the desert before he had time to catch his breath.
The trip up was great. On account of our heavy baggage
we took two days and a half to make the sixty-three miles,
camping twice - the last time by a well called Big Burro
Springs, to which all evening and next morning Navajos
kept converging to camp or water - and wonderful
creatures many of them are.
Here at Oraibi - officially known as the 'third mesa'
we rented a little adobe house, and have installed our camp
kit most completely. The Hopi village on the cliffs is the
centre of a strangely picturesque life, which keeps us at the
highest pitch of excitement; and the settlement at the foot
of the mesa, where the school and government buildings
are situated, is as full of humors, factions, and 'characters'
as it can stick.
Fortunately for us, there are two men here who each in
his own way know all there is to know about Hopiland.
One is Aiken, a New York painter, who has been living for
six months on the mesa in the native village, and dresses
and looks more like an Indian than if he were the real
thing. He has an entrancing little adobe house, from the
roof of which one can see all over creation... even as far as
Chicago, and into the heart of the dearest and greatest of
women; her 'nobility' as viewed from this place of vantage
appears to such credit that even she would be satisfied.
[i96]




AMERICA -- 1904


Our other helpful friend is one Voth, a German who has
spent twelve years studying the Hopi language and folklore, and is a mine of surprising things. Our company has
today been enlarged by the arrival of a chap named
Sawyer, also ostensibly a painter but really an irreclaimable tramp to whom adventure is as the breath of the
nostrils. He will probably go on with us from here, and
will certainly provide entertainment if he does, for he is
'the West' in little. All this is to give you a few dry bones
of fact into which you can breathe life sufficient.
Write me at Canion Diablo. Ferd and I shall stop there
on the way back to the Grand Canon; and we may fit out
there for a pony-trip south through the Tonto Basin.
WThe newspaper clipping about The Fire-Bringer was
enough to make one forswear the pen forever, wasn't it?
Send me any others that turn up, in order that I may test
my allegiance to my craft.
CANON DIABLO, April 23 (1904)
We are back at Volz's trading post again, having left the
Nortons at Walpi. The two weeks spent in Hopiland have
been among the most absorbing I have ever had. Ferd tells
me he has written you about our great luck in seeing a twodays-long 'katchina dance' at Walpi - a kind of primitive
Feast-of-all-Saints dating from no telling what antiquity,
but as human and amusing as possible.
The other high points of light- from the point of view
of curiosity -were a night spent in an underground
'khiva' (a kind of temple and lodgeroom combined) at
Oraibi, and a race which I alone of our party was lucky
enough to witness while fooling with my sketch pad on the
[I97]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


slope of the Oraibi mesa. We got admission to the khiva
through Aiken, a painter (of whom I told you) who has
lived for six months at Oraibi, wearing the native clothes
and speaking the language. We climbed down the ladder
about nine o'clock, and stayed there, smoking with the old
chiefs and watching the ceremonies carried on by the
young men until early morning. The room was faintly illuminated by a little fire of brushwood, fed on tiny stick
after stick by a priest who looked - and probably wasa couple of centuries old. He was withered and shrunk into
a mere handful of brown parchment, but the old eyes under
the secular hair gleamed out in the excited moments of
the ceremony with an almost shocking vitality. Another
priest crouched before the semicircle of dancers, beating
upon a kind of drum to mark the rhythm, and inciting the
young men with cries, at times warning and admonitory,
and again exultant and encomiastic. There were about
twenty dancers, naked except for moccasins, loincloths,
necklace, bracelets and headdress of feathers and bright
cloth. All sang as they danced - a legend, Aiken said
a song of interminable verses, so old that the meaning of
much of it has been forgotten, and the words are now repeated merely for their hieratic significance. The dancers
remained in position, marking the portentous rhythm by
stamping with the right foot (to which a tortoise-shell
rattle was tied) and by flexions of their shining bronze
bodies.
The race was even more exotic and exciting. One evening after I had been trying to put down an impression of
the pale gold desert with Indian red mesas in the distance,
and had finally thrown away my paper in despair, I
heard strange cries and panting breath below me; then
[I981




AMERICA - 1904
suddenly there appeared a couple of dozen naked runners,
wi:th brilliant loin cloths and headdresses, rushing up the
steep slope of the mesa in two bodies, each set of men
working together to kick forward a little cubic ball of
pitch and horse-hair. They went up the dizzy trail like a
shot, and disappeared over the cliffs on which the town is
built. I was told afterward that they were picked racers
from rival khivas, that the race had started from the
plaza of the village hours before and had led down the
cliffs, out through the heavy sand of the desert in a fivemile circuit, and back again to the plaza; and that the
game combined the religious with the athletic intention in
the same way as the old Greek games. I see I am being
betrayed into description which does not describe.
I wish you could see with your own eyes some of the
patriarchal and primeval pictures which Ferd and I have
seen these two weeks - groups of old women weaving
baskets on the borders of the 'Flute Well,' while waiting
for their water-jars to fill under the slow trickle, files of
girls carrying jugs of water up the rocks, a distant line of
dancers returning from Walpi to their home on the 'second
mesa,' in ceremonial garb, four aged priests sprinkling
sacred corn-meal to mark and hallow the path across the
desert. The photographs which I send (films) will give you
something, and one of these days - before the thing is
spoiled by the missionaries and school teachers (and they
are hard at it), you must go with me and see it for yourself.
The two good letters which I found awaiting me here
were an undreamed-of luxury. They came at the end of a
two-days battle with sand-storms and all the other devices which the desert knows for putting the human invader at a disadvantage, and they made the arrival here
[ 1991




LETTERS TO HARRIET


at this God-forsaken trading post seem like a real homecoming. Ferd and I are now weather-bound - in the grip
pf the worst sand-storm of the season. All the wind in the
world has gathered up all the loose matter in creation, and
is hurling it pulverized in our faces. If it clears tomorrow
we are going with Volz into the mountains south of Flagstaff for perhaps three days, then to the Grand Canion for
perhaps three or four more.                    WTelegram:                      ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.
May I I, 1904
LEAVE HERE TODAY ARRIVE CHICAGO
FRIDAY MORNING TRAIN NO. 2
W V M
(Postmarked Lake Zurich, Ill., May 27, 1904)
I shall stay here until we get the text' hammered into
shape, which may take until Sunday or Monday. I found
Lovett recalcitrant on several points of the revision which
I consider essential, and have had to labor with him mightily; he is by this time silenced, though I fear not convinced.
Still, the work is going forward bravely under the circumstances.
Sieg is in great feather. He is reasonably contented with
our slow program of life during the morning, but immediately after luncheon begins his demand for fun, and
keeps it up until it is met. We had a scamper today in
the rain and mud, in the course of which he covered himself with a large portion of the superficial area of Lake
County.
I The revision of the Moody-Lovett History of Literature - called A First
Vi/jew of English Literature.
[ 200




AMERICA - I904


(Postmarked Kramer, Ind.)
Sunday, Yuly 3 (1904)
This reaches you from a wood on a breezy hilltop some
miles from salubrious Mudlavia and from the midst of one
of the most glorious summer Sunday afternoons you ever
saw. I find the country surprisingly beautiful - surprising, because, although you praised it, I knew your tolerant
affection for anything that haphazard Nature sees fit to do,
and perhaps (unconsciously) minimized your report. It is
a broad, homely, fruitful beauty which speaks home to me
through old and all-but-forgotten associations.
I came in the nick of time (says the doctor, who may be
working me) to save myself an acute attack which would
have laid me up for months. The mark and index of his
truth-speaking is that that wretched sore place on my hip
had begun to be swollen and very painful. The swelling
has almost subsided, and I move with an ease and luxury
which I have not known for more than a year.
My daily regimen is - I am in the bath by six o'clock -
vero! - by eight I am ready for breakfast, and by nine I
am at my little table fiddling with my little job. I have
had as yet but two baths, but feel already immensely
benefited. I am sure they are a good thing.
RIVERHEAD, L.I., Aug. 13, I904
My things I found all intact, nothing of any importance
either broken or lost. Another day's work after I get back
will make all good. The place (Si West ioth St.) is as
charming as ever. I look forward to the winter there with
settled pleasure.


[ '201 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


5I WEST IOTH ST.
NEW YORK, Aug. I7 (I904)
A couple of days' exploration of Long Island resulted in
a complete desire to get back to my good quarters here.
The country is pretty and the ocean-beaches grand, but
the hotels are an abomination of desolation, and there
seems to be no place else to stay. So back I packed, and
here I shall stick - at least until the book is well under
way. Nobody is here except my sister and Robinson. Unless I strike a good vein of invention, and get absorbed in
work, I shall be miserably lonesome. Our months of dear
companionship have spoiled my palate for the solitary life.
Nevertheless I must lead it, and must relearn the lesson
of leading it with contentment and inner exultation.
5I WEST IOTH ST.
NEW YORK, Aug. 22 (I904)
A hot day in the Mercantile Library digging up pictures
for the M & L nuisance, has left me rather dull, and what I
want to do is to sit down beside you on the big sofa, and let
you talk and joke me slowly into possession of the realities
once more. This is the next best thing -with what a
world between! a world of emptiness that multiplies itself
by all the miles that separate me from the light of your
gaiety and fancy and wisdom, and the beloved brightness
of your bodily presence.
The book of R. M. L.'s which you spoke of has not
turned up yet. No more has his manuscript, for which I am
waiting with daily lessening patience. I don't feel like going away before the book is in press, and New York is a
brazier.
Yesterday, to get away from the prostrating heat, I
[ 2o2]




AMERICA -    904
took a boat for Coney Island, and had an afternoon and
evening of solid fun wandering about that miracle of vulgarity. Or really it is not vulgar; it is too perfect of its
kind. I have seen the Parthenon, I have read the Tempest,
I have beheld Coquelin play comedy, I have experienced
not a few of the human grand examples, but anything
more consummate than Coney Island I have never
gazed upon. It is a Wonder. You would like it to the
ground.
NEW YORK, August 28 (I904)
I send you a copy of the new song I have written for the
Eve. It is still a bit rough, and I am not sure that when it,gets cold I shall like it; but I remember your protest when
I said I had better not send you unfinished work, and so I
let you have it with all its imperfections on its head. Just
now, in the heat of composition, it seems to me good. At
least it embodies our great Idea - the Great Idea - that
much you will be willing to grant, whether it seems to you
to have the one thing needful, the 'float' and ecstacy of a
real song, or not. It just spouted out that way, and it will
have to lie a long time perdu before I can make it substantially different.
The city is giving signs of awakening from its dog-day
torpor. Several theatres open this week, and there will be
something doing to shorten the cruelly empty hours between dusk and bed-time. The streets, with their summer
nonchalance and human laissez-faire, are absorbing, and
wonderful. Like old poet Herrick in Devonshire, who
'Ne'er endited such
Ennobled numbers for the press,
As where I loathed so much'
[ 23 i




LETTERS TO HARRIET


it seems to me I never loved and understood this amazing
city as well as now when I am so loathly lonesome in it.
If you see Lovett tell him that Lord, and incidentally I,
would like to know when he is going to show up with his
manuscript.
(Postmarked New York, Sept. 5, I904)
I send you under another cover a piece ' I have just
finished, suggested by an experience I had in Greece of
which I think I wrote you. Don't blame me for sending
these things if they seem to you poor. You know you made
me promise to send whatever I happened to do, and it
gives me a feeling of home and nearness to share them with
you immediately. I have already rewritten the opening
and close, to the thing's advantage.
My life here is absolutely eventless, so far as any external or describable happening is concerned. The city lies
jaded and nerveless under the long heat, only reviving
enough in the evening to show that it still possesses a
latent capacity to be alive. My room, however, with its
northern exposure and two big windows, is usually cool,
and I am enjoying myself in a subterranean sort of way
pretty thoroughly.
The hot weather brings queer types of people out of
their holes, as it brings cockroaches and waterbugs out of
wood-work; I have encountered several such, at pick-meup table d'hotes, who are stranger than caricature could,make them. One of them, a peak-headed advertising
agent, music-hall pianist, and all-round litterateur, just
now dropped in to borrow a dollar, and confided to me incidentally that he had spent so large a portion of his time
Second Coming.
[ 204 1




AMERICA - 1904


in an insane asylum, where library facilities were poor
that he had got permanently rusty, and practically lost his
style. When I politely inquired in what capacity he was
there, he replied, without any embarrassment, and with
even a touch of pride, 'As patient.'
NEW YORK, Sept. 8, I904
Your last two little notes have been a pure delight to me,
so full and fresh seems the happy spirit that they breathe,
so filled with sweet assurance of the goodness of our past
and the loveliness of our future. I love to think of you
living alone in the house, ordering your day and indulging
your mood as you will, without disturbing influences. I
am even glad, for a time, not to be myself a disturbing
influence, so precious to me is the clear stream of your
individuality, with its eddies of bright whim and its wavecrests of flashing contradiction. I seem to see you these
days with a vividness unknown till now, and to love you
therefore with a love that reaches through vision to
divination. My life floats in a golden medium of pleasure
which is the thought and knowledge of you, and thankfulness that there has been given me for a life-friend a spirit
so large and radiant and fruitful, so tender and swift to
respond along all the farflung lines of our communicating
natures. Give me more notes from the workroom. I like
them.
NEW YORK, Sept. 13 (1904)
I have been at work for the past few days on a longish
affair which has kept me going about rather in a trance
than responsibly awake, so that, though never nearer to
you, I seem to have neglected you in the terms of that
[205 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


world where the post-office serves for communication.
Meanwhile two notes from you have floated into my
consciousness, and left a radiance there which surprises me
when I see it by chance, having forgotten the cause.
The play which derives its title from the Duke of Killikrankie is, by the way, a good deal of a joy, though excellently ill-played by the ligneous J. Drew. Pinero has a
new play on here, Letty, which I see tonight. Zangwill's
Serio-comic Governess with Cissy Loftus, also promises
capable entertainment. You must come and see these
while they are fresh.
Lovett's manuscript turned up at last, and I threw it at
Lord without looking at it. In three weeks or so the proof
will begin to roll its world-suffocating folds from the
window of Charles Scribner's Sons.
NEW YORK, Sept. I8 (I904)
I want very much to write to you just now, but I haven't
anything that I want to say. The fact is that our mosreal
communion with each other, and most real significance for
each other, operate in a region where language has not yet
penetrated to create the loose and easy symbols by which
our ordinary empiric life explains itself to itself and others.
Perhaps this is the source of the feeling you often give
voice to, of being about to perceive and make known some
\ beautiful world-secret. If you and I could ever say Goodmorning in such a manner as to really express our meaning,
we should go straight on to glory, towing the astonished
t^t'. universe after us. 'Is it not so?' 'Good-morning,' 'Good
night, 'I am happy,' Did you rest well?' 'Is it becoming?'
- over what gulfs of meaning we walk on these little
bridges, what loads of cosmic matter we lift and swing
[ 206




AMERICA - I904


into place with these frail levers! I wish you would make a j
poem about it.
I have been at work (rather feverishly) for some days on
a blank verse study of the old 'Fountain of Youth' theme,
the idea being (as you perhaps remember my exploiting it
once in conversation) that there actually is such a thing
and that some people find it. I have used the legendary
setting of the old Spanish story. I will send you the new
piece as soon as I have copied it. My chief fear about it is
that it is too 'picturesque,' that the reader will take it at
its face value and feel no uneasiness. Please tell me what
you think. Let the embargo on comment for this time be
raised.
NEW YORK, Sept. 23, I904
I am glad you are to see Aiken. If he is half as good as a
rank and file American as he was as a wild-eyed Navajo,
you will be delighted with him. I hope he is coming on
here afterwards.
Your metaphor about the star-ship is so much better
than the verses which, being still in the grand realm of
possibility, evoked it, that there is no justice in the exchange. I thought the Fountain of Youth piece really good
when I sent it to you, but as usual it has shrunk in the I
wash. Still the idea is good, if that's any comfort! I shall s
be interested in the book about 'insufficient knowing.' Of
course that is all that is the matter with anything, in the
last resort.
It is so dark that I must stop writing or get a new pair of
eyes. A compromise course would be to get a gallon of
coal oil, and this shall be my earliest care.


[ 207 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


NEW YORK, Sept. 25 (1904)
That is indeed very wonderful, the double coincidence of
your mood with mine while I was at work on the Fountain.
As for the verse-form, I tried to write, as you see, from the
point of view of one who had not found, was in fact almost
despairingly far from finding, but who surmised wistfully
from observation. I thought such an approach would be
more poignant, or at least more conceivable and 'convincing.' I dare say I was wrong. At any rate the poem
which you suggest is an entirely different and finer one and
must sometime be written; but even when it is, I think it
will be better for having this one - written from the outside and therefore not 'light' - as a companion, don't you?
I was much out of conceit with it for a day or two, but begin to pluck up a little faith in it again.
I am having fun now with something which you will
have to excuse, and like, as a mere doggerel skit, called
Old Pourquoi. It is a free and easy recital of an experience I once related to you, of meeting an old man on a
Norman road, singing over and over to a weird tune,
'Pourquoi? Pourquoi?'
I know that I am writing too fast, and that much of this
stuff - or all of it - will have to go into the stove: but I
can't seem to do anything about it.
NEW YORK, Sept. 30, 1904
McComas's r report of Thompson's 2 words is very interesting. But if he said that I am doing the same thing
that he is and doing it better, he is doubly wrong. I am not
doing the same thing, and I have never done anything as
good as his Hound of Heaven.
Francis McComas.  ' Francis Thompson.
[ 208 ]




AMERICA- 1904


I have just been reading Maeterlinck's Double Garden,
and I want to say in sackcloth and ashes that all you have
claimed for him is true, and more. I have not been so
stirred and stung by any book for a decade. He is a great,
sincere, prophetic soul; and I envy him with that kind of
envy which between men is the keenest variant of love. 1
could have sworn that no man who had not been blessed
with a knowledge of you could have written the essay
called Portrait of a Lady. Our Friend the Dog, and A Leaf of
Olive are the other two pieces which most completely
bowled me over, unless Sincerity did it to me worse.
There is also a superb piece on the Automobile, and another on the Wrath of the Bee, and still another on the
Temple of Chance at Monte Carlo. An imperishable
book.
NEW YORK, Oct. 26 (1904)
When I telegraphed you I expected to get off today, but
have decided to stay until tomorrow, partly to see dear
old Mrs. Gilbert tonight in a play called Granny, written
especially for her farewell tour, where she finds herself a
'star' for the first time now after sixty years of stage life.
She is eighty-three years old, and a better artist today than
she ever was. Talk about the fountain of youth! Last
night I saw Romeo and 7uliet - on the whole with deep
satisfaction, though it is jolly raw here and there - just for
a moment, however. 'Julia Marlowe has 'grown' remarkably, and while she hasn't got the rich alluvial nature
which breeds the caprice and wild, apt invention of the
true actress, she is often so near the real thing as to make
the spirit groan. Sothern rose astonishingly at the crisis
of the play, I thought. I mean after the news of Juliet's
[ 209 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


death. I took your advice and bought a front seat; it is one
of earth's best luxuries.
I send you Mrs. Toy's letter - partly for the curious
repetition of the Thompson-Meynell legend, partly for her
mention of Joe as he was when she last saw him. She is a
kind of Cambridge Egeria, who was awfully kind to me
when I was an undergraduate, as she was to the rest of us
in our budding greatness.
NEW YORK, Oct. 29 (I904)
The theatre is my grand resource. There are several
things here which you ought to see. One is David Warfield
in a play called The Music-Master, dealing with life on the
East Side. The play is poor enough, but Warfield is an
authentic genius if one ever trod the stage, and he lifts the
thing from moment to moment into greatness. It is the
most richly human piece of acting I have seen in years.
Re'jane comes next week, and will doubtless later penetrate
as far as Chicago. If she comes read the play beforehand,
and sit near; you will have a feast, I think, though she may
not satisfy your demand in comedy: who indeed can do
that? We are to have two Parsifals this winter, one in
German and one in English. This time I shall give myself
a chance to really hear it.
NEw YORK, Nov. 8 (1904)
This is election day, quiet here in my den as a safedeposit vault, but the air is full of subtle excitement.
Portentous issues for each one of us, for the country and
the world, are being decided by that silent snow of white
ballots, falling by millions and millions all over the land.
My imagination is strangely possessed by the continual
[2IO]




AMERICA - I904
downdrift of assent to or negation of the new policies. If
the verdict is one of assent, I believe that the vision in the
light of which our country was created and has grown
great, will soon fade, and one more world-dream will have
been found impossible to live out. Our different destiny
may be greater, but the America that we have known and
passionately believed in, will be no more. This I know you
don't agree to, and think me a bit narrow and vehement
in the spirit with which I contemplate the facts. I pray
God it may be proved to be so, and that all which seems to
me a reversion to discredited ideals in government and
national spirit, may be found to be an advance toward a
new and more generous order. Anyhow it will be good fun
to watch the returns, which, in company with Robinson
and some odd millions of noble Romans, I propose to do
till daylight.
What do you mean by the cryptic allusion to the 'hero
of my potential drama'? The - case'? Be sure and send
me everything you find out about that.
Rejane is here - the most extraordinary creature - all
pure genius except what is pure cocotte.
Write me as often as you can - your letters do me a
world of good; I am working in slate like a hardluck miner
and need all your beautiful lightness of spirit.
W.
(Postmarked Nov. 14, I904)
The 'undertone of restlessness' which you say you
notice in my letters is due to the fact that I find myself
rather low-keyed in energy, rather lazy and sluggish. I am
I The first reference to the occurrence on which his play, The Great Divide,
was based.
[211]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


perfectly well, but the abundance and overplus of vitality
which I need to do the work I want to do, visits me capriciously or not at all. It will return again any day, but I
always find it hard to tide over these low places. Formerly,
when my periods of freedom were hard-earned and strictly
bounded, my impatience magnified a few weeks or even
days of dulness, into Gehennah and the Last Trump.
But now I can afford, humanly speaking, to wait. If I
don't pick up my elasticity by the end of the month, I will
go down to the Gulf and lie around in the sand.
I got hold of the Hauptmann play,' and shall send it to
you tomorrow. It has taken me sometime to read it, for It
is in an almost undecipherable dialect. It is undeniably,strong, and undeniably brutal, though I guess the brutality is versohnt in the end. I hear Rejane tonight in La Robe
Rouge, a Tendenz-play, an attack on French legal procedure.
If you worry about me on account of what I have told
you of my sluggish fit, it will be a very uncomradely return
for frankness. I am perfectly well, and shall any day enter
into a zone of fresh energy somewhere along my orbit.
NEW YORK, Nov. I8 (1904)
I send you the new version of the Fountain. I'm afraid
you won't stand for it even yet, but it is certainly nearer
right than it was before, and the second of the four lyrics is
a beauty, if I do say it.
I have been knocking the caput mortuum of the unfinished play about the mazard with the spade of revision,
but not to much purpose. Still, I think I will work it over
and finish it, just for luck. When I bang it hard enough it
x Die Waber (The Weavers), by Gerhardt Hauptmann.
[2I2]




AMERICA - I 904


wags its mouldy jaws in semblance of life. I await with
immense interest the further facts of the -   case.' But
the kind of play I itch to write is something quite different
from anything that could be made out of that story. I saw
Sothern's Hamlet, and was forced to wonder once more
at your superhuman generosity and tolerance. Our own
Isaiah would do it nearer the modesty of nature. Marlowe's Ophelia, however, I thought astonishingly good,
considering.
I have a letter from Lodge 2 saying that he has found
among Joe Stickney's papers, besides the poems which we
both knew to exist, a prose account of his trip to Greece.
He went the year after I did, and at my urgence. He went
all over much of my line of travel; the account ought to
be wonderfully interesting, as he knew so much about
Greece before he went. He also left a translation of one of
the Hindoo religious books, in French, done in collaboration with his Sanskrit teacher at the University of Paris.
This is to be published in Paris, as a memorial to him, by
his friends there.
This morning Phillips's new play was advertised. I got
it at once and read it, and send it to you in the hope of
forestalling McClurg in his unemotional ministrations.
It is - but I will not tell you what I think of it until you
have read it in peace - then you can tell me.
I think now that I shall go south about the first of
December with the idea of staying down there a month.
On second thought I am keeping the Fountain by me for
a while longer, to ascertain if the flow is permanent and of
standard quality.
z The Great Divide story.
2George Cabot Lodge.
[ 2I3]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


(Postmarked Nov. 24, 1904)
The proof of the His. of Lit. is rolling in day by day in
huge bundles. There are several cart-loads of it stowed
away about the room. I haven't had the courage to investigate closely, but it must be nearly all in type now. I
shall take it south with me when I go, about the end of
next week, but shall not try to do much with it until I get
to Chicago.
(Postmarked Charleston, S.C., Dec. 4, 1904)
SS. APACHE
OFF CHARLESTON, SUNDAY
We have had thus far a dark and stormy passage, and
I should have done better to take the train. Still, my
fellow-passengers have given me a good deal of interesting
information about Florida, which will be of value. From
all that I can hear St. Augustine is not a first-rate place to
stay. The places recommended are much farther south, on
the coast -Palm Beach and Miami. From the latter
place steamers run to the Bahamas and to Cuba.... I feel
very much like a vagabond and a loafer to be knocking
about at this season of the year which is, by all the laws,
dedicated to work; but for some reason I am in poor tone,
and must perforce lie perdu for a while. You must not
worry about me in the least. I am perfectly well, though
quite good for nothing. A couple of weeks loafing in the
sun will taut my strings again and put music in me.
I had to leave some juicy bits of entertainment in New
York: Nance O'Neill is about to give a verse-play by T. B.
Aldrich on the Judith theme, and later an English version
of the Medea of Euripides. I saw her in Sudermann's
yohannisfeuer - a capital thing. She is not as much of an
[214]




AMERICA - I904


actress as I took her to be, when I saw her in Hedda: her
style is rather hard, and her passages of sentiment - where
she forces herself to take the note - excruciatingly falsetto. The night before I left I heard Parsifal sung.
Behind me sat of course -, who smiled and nodded in
evident relish of this new version of the old joke, and kept
a sharp lookout for you under my coat.
Milton Sills going on the stage! One more matinee idol,
and - I fear - one more poor actor. But his great intelligence will help him, perhaps save him. At any rate,
it is a beautiful sign of the times that a youth of his equipment should care to dedicate himself to that career.
I did not think that you treated poor Phillips's play too
harshly, unless to say anything at all is in such a case to be
unkind. Thin it is, and while you may be right in saying it
is honest in intention, it is not honest in result, in effect.
Quite dishonest. 'Good things about it,' of course, but let
us not do him the discourtesy to mention them, since
nothing wounds and impoverishes like such sorry amends
made to failure. I speak who know.
FLORIDA HOUSE
ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA., Dec. 7, 1904
This proves to be a very sympathetic little town, quaint
and mellow, not at all touristy, at least not yet, a month
before the season. I have partly explored the country round
about, and found many rewarding bits. The negroes are a
joy forever. The hotel where I have taken up my quarters
is quiet, comfortable, and clean. Altogether I am well
satisfied, and shall doubtless stay on here.... The weather,
I am grieved to say, is rather cold for out-of-door life, and
is reported so all over. This does not especially affect me,
[ 2I5 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


because when I am out I am exercising.... Though shorn of
some of its strenuousness, winter is still winter here in the
South, and short of Cuba or Bermuda I guess it can't be
persuaded to be anything else, before the end of February
anyhow.
I witnessed last night, at the 'Opera House,' a dramatic
composition entitled.d Daughter of Satan, described as an
'opera' by the local press, but that it appears, is a generic
term for all works produced in the Opera House. It was a
most wondrous piece written and played by romanticists of
the vividest. The audience, which was about one-half
darky, accompanied the action with a commentary the
naive passion and unconsciousness of which I have never
seen approached, even in Italy, and that is saying much.
We dispersed at the end in an exhausted condition but
treading the air and uttering hoarse whispers of exaltation.
If that kind of appreciation could only be got for developed
art, which is lavished upon the primitive! I mean if we
could get the same intensity, the same self-forgetting
generosity and beautiful ardor. Instead of that, comparison and the lack-lustre eye. Basta.
(M. V. M. seems to have returned to New York by way
of Chicago.)
(Postmarked New York, Jan. I7, I905)
Here I am back in my den, which looks a little shabby,
dull, and discouraged, as if it had resigned itself to not being cared for and lived in. I feel immeasurably better than
when I left New York. I shall settle down to my winter's
work with a good heart.
I send back The Bowl at once, to let you see how right
[ 2i6 ]




AMERICA - I905
was your divination as to its outcome. It is a great story.
I got so absorbed in the last chapter that I did not know
when we reached Jersey City, and had to be thrown off by
the porter, my bag on top of me. I don't quite reconcile
myself to the Bowl's being smashed, in spite of the bully
'scene a faire' which it makes - the fascinating Hawthornesque 'lead' seems to end in an inconsequence. But I
remember that you were disdainful of the thing as a mere
symbol, and perhaps its destruction follows a higher logic
than that of mere symbolism. However, as for me, I like
my toys.
I must stop in order to be in time for a ticket to the
Winter's Tale, which is being played tonight, and which I
have never seen.
NEW YORK, oan. 2I (i905)
These last days have been rather uneventful and unprofitable, having been consumed chiefly in chasing down
the pictures for the History of Lit. I have at least the satisfaction of knowing that I have got good ones. There is a
preface to be written and two more proofs (a 'revise' and a
page proof) to be read - then so help me God I will never
touch the blooming business again.
Today, all unexpected and undeserved, the Muse walked
in at my window, and gave me a few blissful hours. With
soiled hands I took her, and she never minded them. Man
is not saved by his works, but by grace.
The Winter's Tale was pretty badly butchered, but as I
had never seen it before I was held spell-bound at the same
time that I was acutely irritated - a sort of combination
of cocktails and black coffee, so far as the nervous wreckage went. The Autolycus was a crime which, in any
[2I7]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


reasonable society, would have had to be expiated at the
whipping post; but Viola Allen's Hermione and Perdita
have elements of charm, of course nothing to hurt.
Torrence turned up the other day, just back from his
native Ohio village where he has been attempting to regain his vagrom faculties. We went to Bossi's, my McDougal Street pirate's, to lunch, and had an amusing afternoon. It will interest you sometime to meet him (Torrence). He told me of an old lady of seventy-five whom he
met in a North-Wisconsin town, who had my immortal
works at her fingers' ends. I should think this a fable but
that flattery is not his lay. He is staying with Stedman
out at Bronxville; I have it in mind to go out there to see
the dear old boy, perhaps tomorrow afternoon. Torrence
tells me that Edwin Markham (The Man with the Hoe) has
written a long poem on the search for the Fountain of
Youth, which is to appear serially in the Century, in five
parts. He was unable to say whether it was written with
the hoe, or with some less strenuous and epic instrument.
Well, here is a deal of words which no woman could be
grateful for, especially one with intolerant views on letters
in general and my letters in especial. There is only one
thing really to say, that I am dreadfully alone without my
gay and disquieting and ever incalculable companion, upon
whose shifting moods I have learned to build from hour to
hour my house of life.
NEW YORK, Yan. 25 (i905)
We are having a very devil of a blizzard here. I have
just floundered out to dinner and back again through
snowdrifts five feet deep, and am trying in vain to keep
warm by a red-hot stove. Gales shake the old house to its
[ 218 ]




AMERICA - 1905
centre, and drive the fine snow through the loose-fitting
windows in most comfortless little heaps. A storm is so
excellent a thing to envelop two, and so dreary when it
howls round a companionless human unit, deprived of his
gumption by insistent memories. The situation cries out
upon you for a supreme bungler in life, that you are not
here, or do not instantly transport yourself hither. Never
set yourself up again as an artist in this province, for it is
the first duty of an actress to take her cue. The stage is
set, the lights are up, the entrance has been delicately led
up to, and Madame L'Etoile is - asleep in the greenroom,
to wit making a rarebit for Henderson or reading German
to Ferd, in blatant negation of her own thesis that life is
short.
Sunday afternoon I journeyed out to Bronxville to pay
my respects to Stedman, and stayed to supper with him.
The old fellow was vastly interesting, especially in his
reminiscences of Whitman, whom he knew for many years.
His excitement over things, his immense flow of spirits and
of talk, in the midst of manifest physical weakness, filled
me with humility before the wonderful little man, which
his pathos and humanity turned into complete surrender.
Next Sunday Torrence is going to take me over to
Staten Island to see Markham - a very different pair of
sleeves. Which reminds me that H. James is probably by
this time in Chicago, certainly is, in fact, and that, as I
suddenly perceive, is the reason why you no longer take
the trouble to write to me.
Aiken called the other day, and left his card, but I have
not seen him yet. Arnold Daly is giving a new Shaw stunt
(new to me) called You Never Can Tell, vastly amusing and
mechant. As you say, he is dangerously intelligent, the
[219]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


danger being of course chiefly to himself, and he'll be
damned if he's afraid.
The Muse seems inclined to give me about one good day
in five. Perhaps that is all one could expect from a person
of her sex, and spoiled as she is by too many lovers.
NEW YORK,.7an. 31 (1905)
What do you think of this, the latest lyric outpouring of
the sweet singer of the Wabash?
E ODE TO A SAW-MILL
'All hail to thee, most terrible invention,
Which chews up trees to any wished dimension,
And when Man doesn't pay attention,
Will chop him up so that a Government pension
Won't do him any good -
0 fell destroyer thou of men and wood!'
I shall write again tomorrow to make up for this scrawl.
Yours,
W(Postmarked Feb. I, 1905)
Joe Stickney's ' papers reached me today, and I have
spent the afternoon with them. Lovely, lovely things are
here, precious above rubies. He left an astonishing amount
of verse, though a large part of it, alas, is fragmentary.
But there is enough for a good volume of perfect work,
thrice refined. His dear spirit has been strangely near me
while I read, and seemed to know, what was apparent to
me as if breathed from angelic trumpets, that his life was
gathered up, completed, and immortally justified. Some of
the love-poems are of a poignancy unequalled in English
'Joseph Trumbull Stickney, who died in October, i904.
[ 220 ]




AMERICA - 1905


verse, I verily believe. I shall copy out some of them to
send to you. Many of the later lyrics seem to show a
premonition of death, but of course it is easy to read the
event back into them.
(Postmarked Feb. Io, I905)
What you say of the 'glorious sleigh-ride' is worth its
weight in gold as an illustration of the divine gift you
have for making over any old situation into happiness and
fun.
Louis Aiken came in at this point to tell me that Fred
Volz, the Indian trader at Canon Diablo who was so kind
to me and Ferd, is in town, and to suggest that we combine forces in making the stock of recollections which he
shall take back to the desert, as large and luscious as
possible. We shall start in at Chinatown and come up the
Bowery, then negotiate as much of Broadway as our heads
and purses permit. You can picture me for some ensuing
days as living on the proceeds of my pawned jewelry, and
wishing that the Croton Aqueduct held nothing but soda
water.
(Postmarked New York, Feb. 15, I905)
Aiken and our wild friend from the bush turned up here
last night, with vineleaves in their hair and saturnalia in
their eyes. I wreathed a few preliminary strands for my
own brows, and forth we sallied on the loose and misty.
Now, at six P.M. of the next day, I am beginning to wonder
whether after all it won't be possible in another twentyfour hours to begin to distinguish between the revolution
of the earth and the revolution of my head on their respective axes, and to calculate with something like accuracy
[221 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


the respective diameters of the same. I already can state
with inexpressible relief that, of the two, head is perceptibly the smaller, and that the cosmic business of revolving cannot therefore be held to rest upon it alone to the
exclusion of the neighboring ball so clearly adapted by its
contour to discharge this simple mission. It was vastly
amusing to watch (so long as watching anything was in
question) the grim and contained delight with which the
old scamp, gnarled and hardened by thirty-odd years of
pioneer life in the hardest country in the world, sat down
to his meal of metropolitan dissipation. He will be in
Chicago from Thursday on for a few days. It would pay
you to have him to dinner, if he would talk, for he is a
mine of thrilling reminiscence. He would probably be too
ill at ease to open his head, but possibly not, and anyhow
you would be interested in him as a type.
Aiken has a very beguiling studio, embracing the whole
attic floor of a house on 20th St., with an open fireplace,
bath, kitchen, and bedroom, for all of which he pays but
five hundred dollars. It has quite put me out of conceit
with my own quarters. He knows he is lucky; it is the sort
of bargain which can be picked up only once in a lifetime,
but I am going to keep my weather eye out for another
such all the same.
Joe Stickney's sister Lucy, his favorite sister and devoted friend, is in New York to study painting. I called on
her Saturday, and she told me a great deal about the last
months of Joe's life. She said he was about to join me out
west (I had written him from Arizona to come) when he
was taken ill. He worked at his poetry almost up to the
very end, in spite of severe pain in his head.
I am re-reading the Vita Nuova with the greatest delight.
[222]




AMERICA -   1905
Have you read it lately? If not, begin it now, and we will
read it by stages together. If the Italian is too hard, use
Rossetti's or Norton's translation.
NEW YORK, Feb. 22 (I905)
You are a complete and wistful brick to have done the
honors for him (Volz) so gloriously. I would have given
my head to be there. He was doubtless no flatterer at all
when he said he had passed the happiest evening in forty
years. You are probably the first real Woman he ever saw,
and he has got nature enough to realize what a portent it
was that had risen upon him.
Yeats's plays are being given here this week - Land of
Heart's Desire, Cathleen ni Houlihan, and The Hour-Glass.
I shall see them Friday, but I know already just how thin
they are - and just how thick, too, mind you, so don't
lecture me. There is something exquisitely false about that
Irish business, and it comes so near being exquisitely true.
There is more strong meat of suggestion for me as to what
the stage ought to be, in one good opera than in all the
plays I have seen this winter put together and raised to
the nth. And I don't care much for the opera as such,
either.
NEW YORK, Feb. 24 (1905)
I heard the Yeats plays this afternoon, and am bound to
say that my opinion of them has been raised not a little by
seeing them on the stage. They had the unspeakable advantage of an actress - Margaret Wycherley- who, besides being enchanting to look at, is wonderfully permeated
with the poetic spirit. Her impersonation of the Fool in
the little morality-play The Hour-Glass was as touching a
[223 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


piece of histrionic lyricism as I ever saw on the stage. The
most ambitious of the three plays - the Land of Heart's
Desire - was much the least effective.
(Postmarked Feb. 28, i905)
Today is springlike and warm here, full of adorable
promise, and amounting, like all promises that are rich
enough, almost to realization, if not quite. Tomorrow
we shall be wading in a foot of snow, but for all
that the secret is out, and spring is irrefutably on the
way.
A man named Keenan' has inaugurated a novel and
promising dramatic enterprise here at the Berkeley
Lyceum, a tiny theatre about the size of a parrot cage, but
just the right size for his scheme. It is to give small plays,
mostly one-acters, in groups of two or three, on the plan of
the TheAtre Antoine at Paris. I saw his opening exhibit
last night - three little plays, one from the French, one
an adaptation of a tale of Poe (capital fun) and the other
a simplehearted but taking melodramatic skit by some
Western newspaper man. Keenan himself proves to be an
accomplished actor. Altogether, there is sap in it.
(Postmarked March I7, 1905)
NEW YORK, Friday
True to its waking promises, the day has given me some
beautiful creative hours - all in the mist, of course, but
darkening and spangling here and there into the semblance
of excellent shapes. As if to set a seal on my renewed hope
and confidence comes in the morning mail a letter from
Richard Watson Gilder, saying all sorts of hyperbolical
Frank Keenan.
[ 224 ]




AMERICA - 1905
things, and enclosing a sonnet made to my poetical eyebrows. It seems that after I left him Sunday evening he
began to read my works (I take it for the first time,
seriously) and was moved before going to bed to record his
feelings. I send the verses, to show you what generous
impulses can survive - in certain human breasts - after
thirty years of magazine editing. As coming from an
elderly and much-immersed man, himself a disappointed
poet and compelled by his profession to hold a gently
skeptical position toward the whole subject, I call that little
copy of verses a remarkable human document, giving all
sorts of pledges for our common human nature.
I am taking my stunning little niece tonight to see
Hamlet, and have half an hour to dress and make the
Waldorf.
(Postmarked March i8, i905)
NEW YORK, Saturday
This is your birthday, and in honor of it the Spring is
here, not grudging or tentative but giving all at once in an
ecstasy of surrender. It is divinely warm, and the people
go 'delicately walking in most pellucid air.'
Everything - town, river, sky, and the multitude of
human faces - shines as with a kind of sacred ointment,
the Biblical oil of joy. I have been wandering about in
a trance, finding myself in the most unexpected places, and
feeling in each case that was the one place on the earth
to be.
I had a delightful evening with my little niece. We
went down to 'Little Hungary,' which proved to have St.
Patrick for its saint and uproar for its creed. We were so
entertained that we stayed all evening, and let Hamlet slide.
[I 225 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


(Postmarked March i9, i905)
By virtue of the jealousy of God, which fears that we
humans, if too favored, might rise up and dispute his
throne, today is as dark, damp, and uncharitable as
yesterday was divinely bright and bestowing. Internal
weather conditions equally poor, absurd barometer that I
am. I have been sulking about all day, picking up and laying down, scratching in and scratching out, doing and undoing with a feverish persistence. Lamplight, and you at
the other end of this sheet of paper, bring again the taste of
life and belief in the reality of things.
I saw Robertson's I Hamlet last night, and am jolly glad
I did. His reading of the character was wonderfully 'highbred,' and that is one of the qualities urgently demanded
and pitiably lacking in the performance of the ordinary
romantic yokel who tackles the part. The subtlety, grace,
controlled and responsive energy, alertness, humor, quick
divining affection and imperial scorn - all these and a
hundred other qualities of the character he gave with
beautiful truth. Where he failed was in the moments of
intense excitement, of volatilized and whirling passion, and
he failed there signally, but there was something about the
failure which made you feel that it was due to a wrong
theory of the character rather than to lack of innate
power. Certainly there has been nothing to touch this
performance since Booth.
(March 2I, 1905)
I am a good deal excited over the prospect of seeing
Richard III tonight, having never seen it. I wish that it
were to be given by some one besides the pig-headed and
IForbes-Robertson.
[.226]




AMERICA - 1905


automatic Mansfield. His engagement here includes
Moliere's Misanthrope for which we must give him
credit.
I have got an idea buzzing in my head which keeps me
awake nights. It looks tremendously good, but whether it
will prove fruitful 'you never can tell, sir, you never can
tell.' I shall keep it to myself until I find out, and then,
if it is really good, for a year and a day after that.
(During this interval W. V. M. was probably in Chicago
some part of the time.)
(Postmarked April I8, I905)
NEW YORK, Tuesday
Charlotte met me with a face set like a flint against taking any steps without consultation with Dr. Janeway.
She has a wholesome dread of surgeons and surgery, and
says she will not consent to an operation until it is pronounced for by a physician - I mean a non-surgical
practitioner. We went at once to see Janeway, who is no
doubt the greatest diagnostician we have, but he had no
hour free until Wednesday morning. At half-past ten
tomorrow we shall know what he says. Our further
action will be determined by his advice. You may have
confidence in its being nothing rash, for Charlotte is a determined little conservative in such matters.
On the train was Faversham and his company, twelve
in all, having just 'broken training' at Cleveland and being
en route for London. They were of all ages and estates,
but all alike in the charming abandon with which they
delivered themselves to the spirit of holiday. A more
beguiling set of great overgrown children I never coped
[227 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


withal. Faversham himself the most boyish and awkwardly frank of celebrities, manifestly a little discomfited
by the overwhelming elegancies of his third-form confederates, who-whether as a customary and diurnal
glory or in celebration of their liberty regained - sported
a collection of shirts, neckties, waistcoats and socks not
matched since Beau Brummel gave the snub to Wales.
The element in which we swam, and in which these rainbow accoutrements displayed themselves to incredible
advantage, was whiskey and soda. Especially native to
this element was the heavy man who played the sheeny
lover to Letty, who so horribly resembled his stage counterfeit that his mildest order to the waiter threw that
functionary into a catalepsy of awe and terror. They
were all good fellows and children of light, though perhaps
a little over-prone to box-office receipts as a theme of
rhapsody, instead of Apollo and the Muses.
I did not misunderstand your praise of my lyrics to
mean any derogation from my dramatic powers. Both the
one and the other you set only too high value on - a
value representing, let me hope, some hint that is in them,
of the not yet attained but attainable beauty.
(Postmarked New York, April 20, i905)
Janeway made a very careful examination. He was unwilling to commit himself to any definite diagnosis, except
that the case was plainly surgical, and that there was
nothing which medicine could do for it; upon my asking
him to recommend a conservative surgeon he sent me to
Dr. Bull. Bull is at the head of his profession here, and
has the reputation for great brilliancy combined with
great caution and unwillingness to operate when less
[ 228 ]




AMERICA - 1905


drastic measures are possible. Bull, though confessing
himself unable to say exactly what the trouble was, pronounced unhesitatingly as to the necessity of operating.
His view was on the whole optimistic. He feels sure that
(unless unforeseen and improbable difficulties arise) I will
be out of the hospital and well on the way to recovery in a
fortnight. The hospital is his own private one, very comfortable and bright.
(An operation was performed April 2i for some kind of
growth on the leg.)
(Postmarked May 2, i905)
The formalities have been longer and more tedious
than usual today, but the wave of hospital routine has at
last rolled by, taking the lunch tray with it.
I tried to pin Dr. Bull down to a date, but he refused to
emerge from the official region of vague optimism. The
visual aspect of the 'wound' gives me little encouragement.
It is as deep as a well and as broad as a church door, and
looks as if it would serve for any end of diabolical and unbearable detention.
I began today and am reading with huge interest Villari's Life qf Savonarola. It contains a good deal of padding
- Italian politics, Florentine constitution, contemporary
systems of philosophy, etc. - which might render the
whole distasteful to you, but the life-story is a most
thrilling one, and I think you agree with me that next to
the highest imaginative writing biography is the best
thing going.


[ 229 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


33 EAST 33RD ST.
NEW YORK, May 5 (1905)
I am sitting up today as large as life, revelling in the
view of an exciting strip of street wherein the children of
men, under their quaint delusion of reality, are hurrying
up and down, fantastically preoccupied with their dreamerrands. Street, house-fronts, and strip of sky are bathed
in a liquid freshness. The roar that comes up from the
city is more buoyant, higher in key, and more suggestive
of musical rhythms than I ever heard it before. It is
wonderful how the diminution of physical energy and of
egotistic purpose which sickness brings, vivifies and
clarifies the finer senses. It seems almost to amount to a
demonstration of the ascetic doctrines which I have spent
a large part of my time detesting as false and mischievous.
Thus by devious ways are we instructed. Thus are we
brought step by step into the Pantheon, and learn to
worship all the gods without dogma or division of heart.
Dr. Bull yesterday evaded my questions as to the probable length of time I shall have to remain in the hospital.
Today, however, he volunteered the opinion that in case
everything goes as well as at present, I ought to get out by
the end of next week - i.e., about the twelfth.
MacKaye called on me yesterday, bearing messages
from Saint-Gaudens and others of the Cornish colony to
the effect that I must without fail visit their neighborhood.
In case I go to Newton I will run up to Cornish for a few
days.
After re-reading MacKaye's poem, I have come to the
conclusion that the great trouble with it is that he really
evades the theme, so splendidly given out in the prologue. Fenris, instead of working out his regeneration and
[ 230




AMERICA - 1905


achieving a new plane of being, through his first fierce appropriation of Frejya's love, never really comes to grapple
with her. The relation between them remains intellectual,
hortatory, and renunciative, therefore barren of vital results, in spite of all that the poet would have us believe.
Then, too, the influence upon Fenris of Baldur, the god of
music, the spirit of beauty, never becomes immediate. I
tried to tell MacKaye something of this yesterday, but I
fear that I only succeeded in damping his spirits, which is
the last thing in the world I wanted to do. Happily I was
able to give praise too in substantial measure. He is
beautifully in earnest, and will go far.
33 EAST 33RD ST.
NEW YORK, May 7
This is a Sunday morning of the brightest, and marks an
epoch for me. I am sitting by the window, clothed and in
my right mind, even to collar and tie, to say nothing of
shoes. It is astonishing what a tower of strength clothes
are, in the world as we have seen fit to constitute it. This
collar and tie have put more iron into my blood than it
seemed would ever bless me again. With the aid of a stout
cane and adventitious articles of furniture I have made a
voyage about my room, and down the corridor to visit
some of my neighbors with whose hypothetical selves I
have been for two weeks exchanging courtesies in the shape
of wine-jelly, tobacco, and newspapers. In some mysterious fashion the news of my state and whereabouts has
reached my New York friends (by way of Cambridge and
Boston, it appears, though bless me if I know how), and
the tedious hours are enlivened by frequent calls. These I
welcome with a childish eagerness, no matter how dull the
[ 231 e




LETTERS TO HARRIET


visitor might - in a state of health - have been judged.
Illness is certainly a very humanizing affair, and gives one
a perception of and relish for the 'low values' in personality as keenly surprising and delightful as is the corresponding insight it brings into the world of beauty in
natural things which lies below the surface of coarse everyday perception. This must have been the source of Stevenson's heroic gladness. I hope to be able to persuade the
doctor to let me leave the hospital Thursday, though I
may have to come back again each day for a while to have
the wound dressed.
Your humorous account of the strike, as it affects you
individually, is excellent copy, but only faintly reassuring
with regard to your personal safety. Under the sway of
these passions men lose their human susceptibilities; even
your power of appeal would not avail. As compared with
Joan of Arc or Penthesilea I would back you with my last
dollar, but these ladies, facing a State Street mob, would
lose much of their historic brilliancy. Be careful.
(Postmarked May i2, i905)
5I WEST IOTH ST. Friday
I left the hospital yesterday. They were rather averse
to letting me out 'so soon' - as they sarcastically phrased
it - but my impatience of the deadly routine and my detestation of the blank walls and hours had reached such a
pitch that I was not to be denied. The drive down town -
especially the sight of Madison Square dressed in unimaginable green, such vital vocal green as I never saw
before - was an experience. I did not know how fond I
was of the old room until I saw it again after this blank
absence. I have been congratulating myself ever since
[ 232 1




AMERICA - 1905


yesterday that it is still in my possession, a quiet citadel of
retreat.
The crutches turned up in due order, and by means of
one of them, supplemented by a cane, I manage to
navigate with tolerable effect to the beholding eye, though
not without a good deal of effort and some pain. Bull
seems to think well of my moving about somewhat, but
indicates (with distressing vagueness) a danger line which
must not be passed. I let my own sensations counsel me,
stopping when the limb begins to feel irritable and rebellious. Last night, with Torrence for escort, I hobbled
over to Guffanti's and renewed my acquaintance with real
food. A bowl of G.'s minestrone seems to have done more
toward establishing the lost nexus with reality than would
be thought decent by the spiritually minded.
(Postmarked May I6, I905)
NEW YORK, Tuesday
Here I am poking away in this muggy town still, with
the prospect of not getting out of it before the end of the
week. My 'wound' is not yet closed, and Dr. B. conspires
with Charlotte in keeping me here until that process is accomplished. It seems that said wound has begun to throw
out 'extra granulations' -a line of conduct which draws
after it an elaborate ritual of burning, scraping, and
clipping with shears, indignities which you would think
self-respecting human flesh would scorn, but which as a
matter of fact it suffers with the nonchalance of so much
india-rubber. Fortunately I get about better each day,
being now able to walk quite well with a single cane; and
this visible sign of progress keeps my impatience from
overleaping all continents.
[ 233 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Your various remembrances have punctuated the days
with bright suggestions of the companionship which awaits
me out there in the west, so soon as I have paid my double
debt to nature, and am free to sleep on the wind which
blows night and day toward those pleasant kingdoms.
Yesterday I got out my pastels and began to tinker
with that crude old painting of my mother. With the help
of a daguerreotype and another photograph, which my
sister had, I corrected the drawing, and in a lucky hour
succeeded in getting an excellent likeness and a charming
old-fashioned effect. I think you will be pleased when you
see it. It represents her as older than the little picture you
know - perhaps twenty-five or six - not much different
from the way I remember her in my childhood.
The Stickneys insist on my visiting them at their
summer place in Dublin, N.H. If I go up to Cornish I may
stop there for a day on my way out of the mountains. Mr.
Gilder has just sent me a nice note from Saint-Gaudens
about me. Saint-Gaudens is a valid reason for going to
Cornish, I think.
NEW YORK, May 22 (I905)
My 'wound' has been acting up a little bit the last few
days - due, the doctor thinks, to too much gallivanting
on my part, but as I well know, to the direct intervention
of the devil. Under the circumstances to go to Newton is
out of the question, where there is no surgeon and only
second-rate country doctors.
Saturday, May 27 (1905)
My leg, after two weeks of the most cantankerous conduct, seems at last to have decided to heal, and unless
[234 ]




AMERICA   I 905


something untoward develops, I shall be able to get off to
Newton in a few days. Henrietta has just returned thither,
after extracting from my helpless breast such deep vows
to follow her that it would be worth my immortal soul to
break them. The fatted calf has already been killed nine
several times in anticipation of my immediate coming.
Last night, at a Social Settlement dinner, I met Markham, of The Man with the Hoe, and of other things vastly
better. He is a splendid leonine head, one of the most
beautiful of men, and I believe - after hearing him recite
a half-dozen of his less-known things - a real poet. He
had recently read my things, and was unstintedly cordial
about them. He said that the Fire-Bringer and the Masque
were the finest things done in the dramatic form since
Shelley. He did not limit his statement to the lyric drama,
but by his selection of Shelley as a terminus de quo he
doubtless meant that. His unworldliness, simplicity, and
more than youthful ardor were a great delight to me, and a
big lesson in life. I also ate the other night my maiden
dinner with the gentlemen of the American Institute of
Arts and Letters, and was decorated with a purple ribbon,
a la the French Institute. It was very dull.
NEW YORK, 7une 4 (1905)
My 'wound' is not yet closed, and still requires close
attention. There has of course been progress, else my impatience would have reached a suicidal pitch; but it has
been desperately slow. The end at last seems to be in
sight, but I knock on all the mahogany trees -of Senegambia
with all the knuckles of the Celestial Empire as I say it.
Barring unforeseen impishness in nature the thing must
be by the end of this week in a state which will allow me
[235




LETTERS TO HARRIET


to leave, with a pot of zinc-oxide, and a roll of bandages,
and work out my further destiny alone. There is a possibility that I can postpone the Newton visit until the late
summer without wounding sensibilities. I think this
would be better in many ways, as I could combine it then
with a week at Cornish, whereas now I am too one-legged
to make the mountains feasible.
What you say about Robertson's I leasing the hall
with a real 'fairy' to foot the bills, is simply smashing. It
looks like a real beginning, and once fairly started the thing
is bound to go. More power be to his elbow; and to yours,
which is more important, more leverage on which to bring
to bear the power already there in abundance. The Progressive Stage Society of this city is going to give the great
Hindoo play Sakuntala two weeks from today. If anything earthly could keep me here so long, it would be that.
But nothing earthly can. The Russian players (here now)
are wonders. You can follow their performance with rap.
ture without knowing a word of the play. I am not sure
that this is a proof of their powers histrionical, but it
constitutes an absorbing characteristic.
(The next letter shows W. V. M. in Chicago, writing
to Harriet, who was visiting her aunt in Parkman, Ohio.
Most of September and October of that year he spent in a
cottage at Highland Park, across the lake from Chicago.)
(Postmarked July 28, i905)
CHICAGO, Friday, II A.M.
Today the gods are taking revenge for divine yesterday by a black and savage rain. I have had to work by
X Donald Robertson.
[236]




AMERICA - 1905
lamplight until a little while ago. Now it is lightening up
a bit, and there is a hint of sun somewhere behind the enormous curtains of darkness which wave across the sky. I
hope this sinister weather is not interfering with your
little glimpse of country.
The cheer of the situation has not been particularly increased by a memorandum which came today from Dr.
Bull. The charge which he makes for his services is less
than he is accustomed to ask, I am sure, and less than
they are worth, but the amount is nevertheless distinctly
appalling. I shall pay what I can, and leave the rest as a
pious obligation to my heirs, as I am in the mind to write
him.
Your note has this minute arrived, with its breath of
healing. I am sorry to have put down the above temporary
discouragements, but I will let them stand, knowing that
you will see how trivial after all they are, and everything
else in comparison with our great happifying permanences.
Sieg defends your couch with augmented jealousy, and
droops in your absence. The play 'Is going fast but rather
leery.
(Postmarked Grand Haven, Mich., Sept. 24, I905)
HIGHLAND PARK, Sunday
Your pup is beseeching me, by all the humanity I retain after persistently disregarding his interests since
morning, to abandon the sedentary life and to accept the
invitation of wind and sun for a royal scamper.... The
weather holds superb, the lake streaked and pied with impossible tints and raced over by great whitecaps which
seem to have no relation to the wind, but to arise out of
Perhaps the play that became The Great Divide.
[ 237 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


their own exultation. The charm of the place takes more
hold on me every day. It will be one of my most blessed
memories later, and now a present joy and recuperation.
I find myself in a golden drowse. Effort, accomplishment,
even the least strenuous entering into one's self to behold
and possess, are far too strident to be thought of. I read a
little and walk a little and drowse the rest of the time, in
a more than lotus-eating abatement of will. If I may
judge by myself these last two days, this place will prove
unexampled as a letter-down of your overspanned nerves.
Come soon, and sink your being into boundless rest.
Be of good cheer, and remember in the midst of your
labors and difficulties that there is peace across the
lake.
(Grand Haven, Sept. 25, I905)
Sieg is in great feather, frolicking like mad after supper in
the manner of his puppy days at Mackinac. One trait of
his conduct since you left is very charming. He always
goes to sleep on your bed, stays there until the loneliness
gets too much for him, and then comes padding in to me.
Several times also each day he goes upstairs as if struck by
a sudden thought, makes an examination of your quarters
and Bessie's, poking into every cranny and closet to make
sure you are not concealed there. That he makes a rigid
inspection, visual and nasal, of all the female passengers
on the trolley cars, goes without saying, as also that no
wheeled vehicle conveying members of your sex passes
without throwing him into absurd antics of expectation.
The weather holds superb, crisp and gay without any
cold.
[238]




AMERICA - 1905


(Postmarked Grand Haven, Oct. 12, I905)
I drove the team back from G. R. yesterday. We left
about noon in cold but clearing weather, but after an hour
the wind shifted to the northwest and blew a sixty mile
gale, the sky darkened portentously, and there followed
during the next five hours of the journey the most disgusting combination of driving rain, sleet, and snow, which I
ever faced. The horses came through the unspeakable
roads at a fast pace and in excellent condition, but Willie
and his pet dog weren't fit to be put in a rummage sale
when they arrived, and I am afraid to look at what remains of that glossy trap. Aside from the physical discomfort (largely-my own fault in not going warmly enough
clad) the ride was exciting and memorable, for the horses,
spurred on and frightened by the storm, ran like demons;
my arms are still lame and numb from the effort of holding
them - or rather of keeping them in the road, for that
was about all my government amounted to. Sieg this
morning walks about stiff-legged and drops asleep whenever and wherever he stops deliberate functioning. He disgraced himself on the journey by running amuck among
chickens and turkeys, two of which he killed outright,
dancing like a mad Apache on their carcasses, and waving
mouthfuls of feathers in the wind as a sign of his everlasting release from superstition. My efforts to restrain
him and punish him drove the horses crazy with fear and
excitement, and after each attempt on my part at discipline they played jackstraws with me and the rig. These
are a few incoherent lines from the Iliad of the day, which
was really magnificent in its way.


1 239]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


(Postmarked New York, Nov. 12, I905)
When I came back I found the plasterers, painters, and
glaziers in possession of my room, and this is the first hour
I have found to sit quiet in an interior even primarily
organized.
The Scribner news was nothing very epoch-making -
merely that the textbook was making its way with all to
be wished for speed, and that in their manager's sober
opinion, its reception by the high school public was certain
to be cordial. They showed me thirty or forty personal
letters from teachers commending the book in very practical terms and promising to work for its adoption in their
classes. At the same time the sales of the previous book
have not fallen off but substantially increased. This is of
course matter of mint and cumin, but it has its value in
the large scheme.
By telepathic process, New York has got wind of our
Chicago theatre project and this morning puts out a gigantic counterpart to save its own metropolitan reputation. It appears that the ground has been secured on Central Park west, a whole block front costing a million, and
plans for the National Theatre have been drawn. Building
and decorations to cost two millions are to be raised by the
sale of thirty box-stalls, at a hundred thousand dollars
each, the owners to possess them in perpetuity - two nights
a week to be devoted to 'Opera Comique' (not Comic
Opera, thank heaven!) and the remainder to standard
drama, native and foreign - I rather guess especiallyforeign! Conried, the man who so successfully built up the German theatre here and who for two years has run the Grand
Opera, is to be Manager. The thing has a rank money
smell and seems built on the presumption that anything
[ 240 ]




AMERICA - I905


earthly or heavenly can be quickly bought for money down,
but it may get into better hands and develop into the consummation we have been sighing for so long. But I think
our modest plan more hopeful for sound results.,
Joe's book I is out - at least I have an advanced copy -
very beautifully printed, and an unspeakable treasure of
the music which is truth and glory and the soul's salvation.
I wish I could send you this copy at once, but I must keep
it until I get my article written. The book will doubtless
be on sale in Chicago in a few days. You will be glad to
hear that Scribner has taken up Robinson, reprinted his
first volume (the one upon which the President practised
criticism by ukase), bought several of his poems, and is
prepared to stand behind him to the editorial nth.
NEW YORK, Thursday, Nov. I6 (i905)
The plastering and calcimining gentry have at last
ceased from their labors, and I have got pretty comfortably settled. I have not found a convenient sleeping room
outside yet, but I am very cosy as it is.
Friday - At this point Mr. Gilder came in, and stayed
until after midnight.
I am writing a review 2 of Joe's book. It is not easy to
say anything, much less the right thing, in the cramped
space at my disposal and for a magazine audience. However, insufficient as it will be, it will do some good in getting
the attention of the public called to the book. Lodge has
a new volume out called The Great Adventure, containing a
series of twenty-six sonnets in Joe's memory. I have not
x The Poems of Trumbull Stickney. Edited by George Cabot Lodge, William
Vaughn Moody, and John Ellerton Lodge. Houghton Mifflin Company, I905.
2 'The Poems of Trumbull Stickney,' by William Vaughn Moody, published
in the North American Review, November I6, I906.
[241 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


yet seen them, but will send you the book when I get it.
The Divine Fire lady I is here, a queer little papery, prim,
cricket-piping yet beguiling old maid. Also the Pawpaw
poet, Madison Cawein. Barrie's Peter Pan is a delicious
trifle; I am saving up my second view of it until the holiday
season.
NEW YORK, Nov. 20 (I905)
MacKaye is in town, and we are to dine together Thursday. I hear he has plays up both sleeves and shakes them
out of his boots when he goes upstairs.
NEW YORK, Nov. 28 (I905)
What with the repairs to my room, my sister's illness
(over now), the writing of the little article on Stickney, and
a picture which I was seized with a perverse impulse to
paint (the Mackinac one - the road to the Cathedral
Woods, and quite a little beauty), I am only just getting
settled down to real work. I have been seeing something
of MacKaye, and like him better all the time. He is a
splendid human being, and he has got the goods to the nth
in alt. A few evenings ago he read to a little gathering of
the elect in my room his new play, on Joan of Arc. It is
superb, far and away ahead of the Fenris - a kind of
miracle-play on an epic scale, full of exquisite poetry and
showing a stage-craft - a 'technique' - which quite
takes the breath away for its audacity and verve. It is
bespoken by Mrs. Pat Campbell; we may have a chance to
see it before the year is out. While the rest of us have been
dawdling and mooning, he has done the thing - or something precious near it. The only criticism that on a first
xMay Sinclair, author of The Divine Fire.
[242]




AMERICA - 1905
hearing I can find to make against it, is that it is a bit overspectacular, a little bit over-ingenious, and that it falls
down rather badly at the end. But all the same it is a
masterly and enviable piece of work. He has got a
magnificent start for the goal toward which we are all
striving, and let us all say God-speed and Heaven be
praised.
The illustration to the Century poem I was an unspeakable horror, wasn't it? Since the first sick glance at the
page I haven't looked at it, but the recollection still
lingers icy in my spinal cord. MacKaye tells of finding the
Thammuz in the hands of an accomplished illustrator of
automobile stories, who was going about with an air of
bewildered injury cursing the assignment, and calling upon
the wayfarer in Zion to tell him who in the name of nonsense Thammuz was. That will be another bad quarter of
a minute to live through, when his belabored brain brings
forth its frult and the same is published to an accepting
world.
(Postmarked Dec. 3, 1905)
I am afraid you spent some anxious hours before the belated arrival of my telegram. The fact is that when I am
absorbed I take no account of time. A week passes like a
day in a kind of trance-like routine without visible
punctuation of incident or hours. Then, to write in such a
state and not to write about the matter which is in my
mind (which is often by the inchoate nature of the matter
perilous or impossible) seems like a kind of disingenuousness -a kind of negation of that absolute intimacy which
is the sweet of friendship. Besides, I have not been so
ISecond Coming, published in the Century magazine of December, i9oS.
[ 243 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


dreadfully absorbed, worse luck, except by external incidents of a more or less meaningless kind, and though I
were drowned forty fathoms deep in the authentic Pierian
flood, I ought to know when you are in need of a word
from me, and speak it.
The theatres have been poor here so far this autumn.
The Russian players and the German are the only ones
that have given me much satisfaction.
I hope by this time you have got Stickney's volume. I
had my copy all done up to send you when I got a note
from the editor of the North American Review, to whom I
had submitted my little article, saying that he would like
to see the volume. I hope the Review will print it; it is the
most dignified organ on this side of the Atlantic, and will
do a good deal for the book by admitting an account of it
to its columns. Did you see Josephine Peabody's group of
child poems in the December Harper?
I have no account of myself to give, except that the
Zona play' seems to be slowly taking on something like
organic form and feature. I am not sure there is enough in
it to justify the time I am putting on it, but it rather seems
necessary to lay the ghost of it anyhow by getting the
thing down on paper. The second act, which I have now
outlined, gives the development a more energetic curve
and the underlying thought more body. At least, I think
so. Aspettiamo!
We have got a man here named Wallace Irwin who
writes stuff as good as the Bab Ballads, and does it again
and again.
I Zona was the name of the heroine in A Sabine Woman - the play that
became The Great Divide. The name 'Zona' was afterwards changed to
'Ruth.'
[244]




AMERICA - I 905


Here is his latest:
0 sailor coming from your cruise,
I represent the Daily News;
What tidings do you bring?O. nothing that the like of youse
Would think was anything.
Our ship was broke in two by squalls,
Our crew was et by can-ni-balls,
Our passengers was drowned;
Oulr capting sank with piteous calls,
And never more was found;
Three months I lived upon a bun,
And thus survived, the only one;
But otherwise we made
A quiet uneventful run
From Tyre to Adelaide.
NEW YORK, Dec. 6 (i9oS)
The only piece of experience I have to relate is that of
dining at the elbow of the Divine Fire lady. She 'is a, drab
and angular little lady, somewhere between thirty and
forty by the almanac but in reality quite undated -'without a single feather to flaunt, meek-spoken, naive, wholly
unworldly and without guile, habitat Cranford. But her
words are full of 'meaning and charm. She says (notice the
logical transition) that she is writing an article for Blackwood's on me, and she volunteered the comment, 'Your
work is like what I imagined Rickman's to be.' You
remember Rickman -the somewhat dubiously starry
youth in her novel. It appears she had written two or
three others, earlier. She said,' They do not reach the level,
of T4he Divine' Fir'ed with a li~ttlle' quavrer of awe at the suggested level, which was really delicious. She has taken
[ 24S I




LETTERS TO HARRIET


tremendously to Robinson, who consents for her sake to
sit in the drawing-rooms of Philistia. There is a story of
their having been seen at 2 A.M. leaning over the railing in
the middle of Brooklyn Bridge, entirely incommunicative
and at one.
The little Zona play is in a state where I don't dare to
leave it. By staying by it now I can probably finish it
the first draft - by the end of the month or the first week
in January, whereas if I drop it I'm afraid I shall never
pick it up again.
NEW YORK, Dec. I2 (I905)
A stupid luncheon which I could not avoid has pied my
day, and I must borrow some hours of lamplight to make
it good. The New York habit of seeing people at luncheon
is ingrained in the manners of the place, and is most
pernicious. I intend to establish an iron rule against it for
my own part, in future. I have just had a note from your
friend Boardman Robinson (the chap who made the little
pencil sketch of me and whose letter you liked so much)
proposing a luncheon for next week. I guess I shall have
to bend the iron of my resolve in his case.
/    The function today was a 'literary luncheon,' and I am.' prepared to subscribe with deepest oaths to Keats's dictum
i that of all 'sets' the literary set is the vulgarest and
i vapidest.
NEW YORK, Dec. 19 (I9o5)
I sent you today a copy of Stickney's book, which you
should have had long ago if I had realized that the
Chicago bookstores did not contain it. The sentence on
the flyleaf is the one which you spoke to me as a message
[246 ]




AMERICA - 1905
for him, and which I gave him on one of the last evenings
we spent together. I shall never forget the strange flush
which overspread his face, and the sudden dilation and
scintillation of his eyes at the words. The book contains
too much imperfect work, but the good things are beyond
price. The North American Review is going to print my
article, which is merely a brief biographical sketch and review of the book. It will probably not appear for a couple
of months, as their columns are very crowded - the editor
tells me - with matter demanding immediate publication.
Still, I am rejoiced that I have got a hearing for the
volume in a quarter so dignified and authoritative.
Lear is being given here now by Robert Mantell. The
company knocks it cold, and whenever they can't, the
orchestra can and does. The heath scenes and the Dover
Cliff scene are impayable, especially - in the latter scene,
the stage-direction 'Exit Lear, running,' is the occasion for
a moment miraculously comic.
I saw Aiken on the Street the other day, as 'like himself' (to borrow your phrase) as it is possible to conceive,
and in glowing spirits.
NEW YORK, Dec. 27 (1905)
The jolly Christmas box came ship-shape and Bristol
fashion, and was the occasion of an impromptu celebration
in which Charlotte, a friend of hers, and myself took part
on Christmas night. We had intended to go out to some
pot-house to dinner, but when the girls saw the box they
would hear of nothing of the sort. Instead they proceeded
to organize a most complete Christmas feast, out of the
contents. With some trifling aid from my permanent
stores the thing was done, beginning with cocktails and
[ 247 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


soup, and ending with bonbons and benedictine. The
only toast of the evening was your name, which Charlotte
proposed and which was drunk standing.
The play is not done by a long shot, but I have reached
a 'node,' where I can drop it for a little while without
danger of loss. On the other hand, I can summon up my
reserves of patience, and push it to completion. I can
probably finish it by the middle of January, but it may
take until the end.
NEW YORK, )7an. 2, I906
The self-denying ordinance which I passed upon myself
Saturday and communicated to you by telegraph, was the
result of a conviction that I had better push the play'
through while it was fluid, and not run the risk of letting it
harden and fade the way the other 2 did when I stopped it
in an inchoate state. I am sure this will be the happiest
course in the long run. I could not frolic yet with a good
conscience. At the rate it is going, it will not be very long
before the job is finished.
Yesterday I ran out with Torrence to Cos Cob, hoping
to find it good prospecting ground for a summer home.
We had a fine time tramping over the hills and along the
sound, but the place itself - I mean the inhabited part -
is disappointing, as it lies back from the water, separated
from it by a four-track railroad.
Have you read Mrs. Wharton's House of Mirth? I know
you have passed Edith up, but you had better give her
one more trial. The thing is worth reading. Everybody
is talking about it here, including the newspapers and the
I The Great Divide, unnamed yet.
a The play of modern theme, in verse, never completed. Cf. his letters of
Feb. 6, IS, 24, I904.
[248]




AMERICA - 1906


pulpits; I read it with my expectations too high pitched and
was disappointed, but I can see in retrospect that if I had
approached it without advertisement I should have carried
away the opposite impression.
I have been re-reading Ibsen's romantic dramas, being
spurred thereto by the recollection of your high regard for
them. The Vikings of Helgeland is superb, but the other
two seem to me much less good, especially Lady Inger of
Ostrdt strikes me as wooden and labored (except the opening scene, which is bully). I fancy your judgment was
based on the Vikings, with perhaps some scenes from the
Pretenders. I think the truth is, it took the old boy a good
while to strike his pace. I have been looking in vain
for Maeterlinck's essay on Immortality. Where did
it appear? What you said about it interested me immensely.
Do not be surprised to hear any day that the props of
my heroism have sunk in the sandy soil of my character,
and that I must see you, play or no play.
NEW YORK, Feb. 6 (I906)
I saw my doctor and had a final examination today.
He reports, as I knew he would, that I am as sound as a
dollar, and all my organs examples of their kind. He says
my 'system' is a bit rundown, needs a little tonic-ing,
exercise, and fresh air, but that it is inherently and essentially a bully system, and only needs knocking about a
little to resume concert pitch. It shall be knocked about,
and more than a little.
Apropos, Percy MacKaye is here, and wants me to go
up to Cornish with him at the end of this week, for some
snowshoeing and a look at the country. I think I will go.
[249 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


It is bitter cold, but I have not tasted the male joys of
a country winter for years, and am keen for them. He
promises to show me places to locate, near enough to Cornish for companionship and far enough away for seclusion
at need. The mountains are much, and there is the rivertwo hundred miles of it - for canoeing.
Miss Jeannette Gilder (Our Own Jen) who, it appears, is
a dramatic entrepreneuse making it her duty and pleasure
to mediate between playwright and manatger, has heard in
some way that I have a play on hand and wants to see it
with an eye severely to business. I don't know whether to
let her loose on it or not. I feel that Robertson's I claim to
it is prior, if he wants it; on the other hand, he can't afford
to load up his first-year's repertory with more than one of
my works, and he already has a possible two. If she took
hold of it she might get it placed for this spring, which
would have advantages. What do you think? The question
is largely metaphysical, for I don't expect her to see anything in it but the reprehensible, or to be willing to push it
with her maiden hands into a censorious publicity.
Josephine Peabody tells me she has arranged to let her
light shine before the Fortnightly 2 this month. I have
been gently hinting that she might use the intervening
period in reading a play or two of Bj6rnson and of
Strindberg, of whom she professes a total ignorance, and
against whose claims to attention she turns a sweetly
stony face. She is to spend this ensuing week visiting upcountry, and will I suppose lift Chicago lighthouse about
the tenth or so - perhaps later. Be sure to give me a full
report of the proceedings.
I Donald Robertson.
2 The Fortnightly of Chicago - a women's club.
[ 250 ]




AMERICA -  906


NEW YORK, Feb. 13 (I906)
I am just back from Cornish, which turned out to be a
most enchanting spot, at least in its winter dress. From
the wooded river wind deeply wooded roads slowly upward
through high-hung pastures to broad acclivities of woodland and rocky open, with wide prospects unfolding on
every side, and across the river the delicately majestic blue
figure of Mount Ascutney- one of the most lovable
mountain-forms it has ever been my lot to behold. The
place combines intimate loveliness with a sense of large
freedom in a remarkable way, and the distinction of the
landscape is carried out with rare harmony in the human
beings which inhabit it. I saw of course only the winter
colony - Maxfield Parrish and Saint-Gaudens being the
chief figures - but I saw also a dozen houses and gardens
belonging to absentees, of such faultless taste and pure
charm that they proclaimed aloud their possessors as
people worth knowing. Torrence and I were given a royal
welcome. The first night there was a snowshoe and
sleighing party in our honor, the supper cooked over bonfires in the woods. The next night there was a small party
and supper at Saint-Gaudens', and the third night brought
forth a larger festivity at the Parrish's. Saint-Gaudens
was a pure delight. MacKaye's little home is a very sweet
place. He has two adorable children, a boy of six and a
girl of four, and a very pretty wife. The weather was
prime, crisp and clear, with an unspeakable moon.
Thursday
I got this far two days ago, when I was interrupted.
Soon after came word from Sothern (whom MacKaye had
meanwhile seen in Baltimore and spoken to him about my
[ 251




LETTERS TO HARRIET


play) that he wanted to see it at once, with a view to
production by his wife (Virginia Harned) who needs a new
play immediately. I thought it worth while to let him see
it anyhow, reserving definite decision, so have been working day and night to get it into presentable shape and
typewritten. I shall send it to him tomorrow, but shall
take no definite action until I hear further from you and
Robertson.
I will write a better letter than this when I have got off
the manuscript to Sothern.
Are they really going to call it the Permanent Theatre?
This is to invite practical jokes at the hands of the sportive
gods and the sportive reporters. Head them off, if possible.
Permanent, please Heaven, but not so nominated on the
bill-boards of a world in flux.
(Postmarked New York, Feb. I7, I906)
I dare say Robertson is right in what he says about
Virginia Harned. The idea of her taking the play has
never appealed to me much, and I should refrain from
showing it to her at all, except that that would mean giving
mortal offence to Sothern. He and Marlowe are going to
put on one of MacKaye's plays (possibly two of them) next
year, and such as he (Sothern) is, he constitutes one of the
few hopes we have of a decent theatre. So I will let him
have the ms. for inspection, though quite confident nothing
will come of it on either side.
NEW YORK, Feb. 22 (I906)
I was glad to get your telegram and note assuring me
that you were serene of mind again, for I have been going
through a period of depression where the thought of your
[252




AMERICA - 1906


distress seemed more than I could endure. This (on my
part) has been nothing to worry about, merely one of my
periodic visitations, causeless, impersonal, and 'cosmic,'
but for just that reason as mean a thing to live through as
ever you saw, since I can no more 'see out' of such a mood
than if I were a frog in a well - with the lid on; nor does
all my philosophy and experience of its evanescence afford
me the least assistance in combating its intangible horrors.
There would be no point in speaking of this except for the
heartening circumstances - of which this is only one of
several examples in my history - that out of the depths I
have brought up a big 'inspiration' - at least it looks big
to me in the first flush of recovery and ecstatic reaction of
spirit and imagination consequent thereon. It is an idea
for a play - but a play of a kind that there never was yet,
I verily believe. However it is the merest floating protoplasm of an idea, if it is even that much, and I don't dare
to talk about it for fear of puffing it out of existence with
my more raw breath.
I shall send you tomorrow - or very soon - a typewritten copy of the play, for Robertson to look at. Perhaps when he reads it in the cold grey light of actuality,
without the rainbow medium of your interpretive genius,
he won't want it himself. The title is tentative (A Sabine
Woman), but I am inclined on reflection to think it will do.
What do you think?
(Postmarked New York)
Tuesday, Feb. 27 (19Q6)
The enclosed letter came this morning from Mrs.
MacKaye. It tells pretty much the whole story, as far as
I know it, except the surpassing beauty of the country
[253




LETTERS TO HARRIET


thereabouts. I haven't seen the house, but understand it is
an old farm house, with open fireplaces, and built in the
solid and distinguished style of the old-fashioned New
England architect. There may be a great deal to say for it
and for Cornish as a place to settle - at least for the
years just ahead. The settlement of city people, which I
dreaded before seeing the place, I don't believe would
prove objectionable even in summer, for the houses are
far apart, and this particular one is especially remote.
In winter of course the few people who stay there would
be a priceless blessing. I don't think I could stand
the loneliness of a country winter without congenial
neighbors.
I have no new developments to report in the Virginia
Harned complication. I wrote her yesterday to ask for
some enlightenment, as she has had the manuscript now
for over a week without so much as acknowledging its
receipt. Did you ever see Margaret Anglin? I never have,
but several persons have recommended her as a likely
creatrix of the role.
This morning comes an enthusiastic telegram from
Robertson, sent after reading the play with you. I'm
afraid from the inebriated tone of it that you hypnotized
him again, and that he hasn't yet seen the poor little work
in its native colors. By poor I don't mean absolutely so,
for I don't think it is quite that, but poor and shabby by
comparison with the glorified poem you made of it.
I am going to hear the Rheingold tonight, having blown
myself in to a ticket for the whole cycle. Ah, if you were
here, and we might wander through these forest aisles and
sea-caverns of melody together. I have much more to say,
but in my capacity of Pig I must knock off so as to get the
[ 254




AMERICA -I 906


Rheingold book read through in preparation for a lazy
debauch tonight with the mere music and pictures.
(Postmarked March 6, i906)
I have been struggling for two days with nervous sick
headache - a most infernal case. Of all the little ills this
is certainly the worst, for it poisons the very sources of
pleasure and even of perception. For about twenty minutes in the middle of it I was really scared, beholding
myself on the Avernian slope.... I am all right again
now, and mention it for posthumous consolation (in my
state of bruised and battered convalescence I crave coddling).
Your account of Robertson's reception of the play gave
me much earnest pleasure, and still more your quiet
ratification of the thing after a third hearing and time for
reflection. Virginia has sent back her copy, protesting that
she finds it very interesting and dramatic, but alas! it is a
problem play, and she is afraid of problem plays. Is it a
problem play? Perhaps. I don't know just what is covered by the term, nowadays. I shall try to get the ear of
Margaret Anglin next, but I understand she is still on
tour. By all means let Ferd hear it, if he really wants
to.
NrVw YORK, March 8 (09o6)
What you say about Kreider and his possible setting of
the Fire-Bringer songs interests me immensely. I have
been feeling of late more than ever that music is an indispensable adjunct of the stage as I hope to live to see it. I
tear my hair (of course very metaphorically, for economic
reasons) at the thought of not having been trained in
[251S




LETTERS TO HARRIET


music myself, at the proper age. If it were not utterly
hopeless, I would undergo any labor even now to equip
myself for musical composition. The next best thing, and
the only thing now possible, is to gather together a little
'school' of young musicians who shall have the sense of
dramatic values and be willing to work in strict and loyal
subordination to the drama itself - for it is almost as easy
for music to do harm, as I see it, as to do good, to the new
stage. The problem is to reverse the Wagnerian proportion, keeping the dialogue as the backbone and nervous
system of the whole, and using music as a heightening and
merging medium, where the action takes on a lyric cast.
(I know you understand this better than I do myself, but
it is such fun to talk about it that I go on now, as often
before, as if I were announcing.a novel and world-shaking
aesthetic, extempore.)
The suggestion you make about Margaret Anglin strikes
me as capital. By all means get hold of her, you and
Robertson. In case you want me to visit you in Chicago, I
could time my coming so as to be present at the seance,
could I not? As I said perhaps in my last letter, the best
time for me to go is between the middle and the end of the
month, as I want to have a full month here, to make a
start on a new job, before I have to break up, the first of
May. (I have practically decided to give up the studio,
though perhaps when we meet you can persuade me
against such a resolution.) Also, I want to talk with you,
and incidentally with Robertson, about this new job before
I begin it, or rather before I decide whether I want to
begin it, in view of the time and labor it will involve. So
retire into yourself, and having taken counsel tell me
what you elect to have me do.
[2S6 ]




.-AMERICA - 1906


I have not gone up to Cornish yet. I think I can judge
the place better when the snow is off the ground and the
spring has made a little more headway.
Scribner has justified, in satisfactory manner, his
prophecies of the autumn. I received today a statement of
half-yearly sales of the two books.
(Postmarked, New York, March 23, I906)
The first person I ran into, when I boarded my train,
was Borglum. He had been out west,' in Nevada, to get up
material for a statue he has a commission for - a statue of
Mackay the mining king (God bless us!) in pioneer duds,
for the state capitol of Nevada, whatever that may be.
He was brown as a berry, and full of music about the time
he'd had and the sights he'd seen. Made me think twice
whether Nevada hasn't attractions to offer over Spain -
this incidentally, his main blessed office to me being to
lighten the dreariness of the journey back.
Since my return I have bought a Spanish grammar and
lexicon, a guidebook, and a history in two volumes, all of
which I am absorbing. Today I wrote to Ferd urging him
to take three months off before tackling his book again,
but I haven't much notion that he will consider himself
able to do so. Torrence is crazy to go - to Spain, Norway,
or the moon - but doesn't yet clearly visualize his necessary source of income (The Cosmopolitan), begging him
to forego his duties in the interests of the higher life.
All this means that I myself feel the Wanderlust mounting
in my veins and the East a-calling, but also that other
voices still call too loudly for me to know for sure what I
am going to do. It does look so colossally hoggish, but we
won't go into that again, will we? I know that your view
[257 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


of this aspect of the question is the only large and right
one, but I could act upon it with more zest and grace if it
didn't seem always to point out to exactly me the flowery
path and to just you (and incidentally one or two others in
a minor sense) the dusty one! There is not so much need
for haste as there would be if the season were not so cold
and backward, and the Atlantic in such a state of temper.
The worst storms of the winter have occurred within the
last few days.
I have been thinking much about the suggestion you
threw out for strengthening the action of the Eve play. I
can't quite see it yet, but I shouldn't wonder if it
were there. It raises a host of difficulties, but of a
kind to pique and challenge. We shall see what we shall
see.
(Postmarked March 29, I906)
Your reckless proposal anent Torrence is characteristic
of you in its impulsiveness and splendor, so much so that it
almost renders itself invulnerable from criticism in the
act of utterance. But it seems now he can't go under any
circumstances without resigning his post on the Cosmopolitan staff, and he is unwilling to do that, as it constitutes the only material future he has in sight. It would
be jolly to have him, but as that is out of the question I
shall go alone with a light heart. At this season there will
be plenty of travelling companions to be picked up on the
road, who can be dropped if they prove to be bores or
cleaved to as brothers in the happier alternative. Besides
I do not intend to stay long, only long enough to get good
and homesick, which can be accomplished to excellent
purpose mutterseelenallein, in case the chances of the road
[ 258 1




AMERICA -I 906


so decree. As for the date of my departure, that will have
to be conditioned by the promptitude with which D
shows up his two hundred. There is a ship sailing on the
seventh, others on the tenth and fourteenth. I should like
to take the first of these if possible.
The Cape Henry clipping wrought its due work of
havoc in my heart. These are among the grimmest of
earth's tragedies. It puts a keen personal sting into the
dull resentment which has been growing in me for a long
time, against some of the more shocking aspects of our
national madness. It will do me good to get away from it
for a while, and cool my jaundiced eye by letting it rest on
the face of a past beautiful and dead. My heart rises up in
dreadful protest against a fate which stays you behind,
your exquisite vital spirit exposed a thousand fold more
than mine has ever been, to the corroding influences of
this acid atmosphere.
Telegram:
April 2, i906
SAILING PROBABLY FOURTEENTH
NEW YORK, April 4 (I 906)
I have at last and this time finally decided to give up my
room here, in case any one wants it, and shall use some of
the spare days in bestowing my effects so as to leave a
clear field for the hypothetical occupant. It is rather a
wrench to part with the old eyrie, but I am sure that for
the few winter months when I want to be here I can find
for less money quarters more comfortable and hygienic,
though hardly so sympathetic.


[259 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Telegram:
April 8, 1906
WHAT ABOUT ANGLIN ROBERTSON TELEGRAPHS
COME WIRE INFORMATION AND ADVICE
W V M
(W. V. M. did not go to Europe at this time, but went to
Chicago where a few performances of A Sabine Woman
were given by Margaret Anglin.)
NEW YORK, May 2, 1906
I arrived this morning in a drizzle, and have spent a
sloppy dark day paddling about with some millions more
aimless human beings, laboriously doing nothing. It is now
a quarter to twelve midnight, and your friend is a rag.
I wrote Margaret this P.M. requesting an audience, if
convenient - very diplomatic phrases, an 'approach' too
soft to sit up on a plate without gelatine.
(Postmarked May 3, 1906)
NEW YORK, Thursday morning
Here is a letter from Margaret, very gracious, asking me
to drink a cup of tea with her and Miller this afternoon.
Manifestly the tone of our encounter is to be high.
I will send you a full report this evening.
Thursday, May 3 (1906)
A headache with which I got up this morning, and
which has grown gradually worse until it has reached the
'blind' stage, makes it impossible for me to give you the
exciting news of the day as I should like to do. The gist
in a nutshell will suffice tonight. I met Miss Anglin by
[260 ]




AMERICA - 1906


appointment at her flat at half-past five, and we talked for
two solid hours about the play. The business end of the
matter did not come up at all, our attention being con.
centrated upon the play itself and its fitness for her use.
The fact is as we have more than suspected: she is still
in love with the play and loath to give it up, but she realizes (as we did) that her role, as it stands now, is unmistakably subordinate to that of the man. As she is a Star, and
makes her daily bread solely by dint of being one, this
settles the matter for her professionally. Two possibilities
still exist: first, to rewrite the play, with an eye to opening
up her role; second, to admit frankly that it is a man's
play - in which case Henry Miller may want to star in it,
and probably, alas! will also want the thing rewritten in
his sense. Ah, well-a-day, I am to lunch with her and
Miller tomorrow, when I shall get his side of the question.
M. A. is very cordial, and I believe on the square.
(Postmarked May 4, I906)
Friday
I am just back from my visit with Henry Miller, and
must snatch the few minutes intervening before a dinner
appointment with Charlotte to send you the gist of the
matter.
I met Miller at lunch, and had several hours' talk with
him afterwards at his rooms. He impressed me in everything most favorably. He is not only a thorough gentleman with the unmistakable and indescribable hall mark of
the species, which sets one at ease at once and makes real
converse possible, but he is alert to the higher aspects of
his profession, and unselfishly devoted to the furtherance
of them, to a degree for which I was totally unprepared.
[ 26 ] -




LETTERS TO HARRIET


His appreciation of the play is whole-souled, and his discussion of it exhibited an understanding both of its strong
points and its weak, far beyond anything Miss A. has ever
shown. He is anxious to play it himself, but declares his
first desire to be to have me make of it a thoroughly wellrounded and self-sufficing piece of dramatic art, without
regard to his own particular role. This is like water in a
thirsty land, after Miss A.'s feverish suggestions yesterday
as to how her role might be made to dominate the whole
play, and herself enabled to snatch the honors of popular
sympathy from the brows of the prospective personator of
'Stephen.' Miller had many flattering and encouraging
things to say about my dramatic endowments and opportunities. He mentioned the business aspect of the present
venture in a way which makes me sure that he intends to
do the square thing when it comes to drawing up the contract. This will all - I am sure - be pleasant news to
you. He goes to Washington tonight, but is to return on
Sunday, when we are to meet for a detailed going-over of
the text. Tonight I am going to Zira, and to supper with
Miss A. and others afterward. Which means I must dress,
which means I must stop talking to you. I wonder if you
like these brief and hasty scribblings? I think it is a very
jolly way to keep the mystic channels open and the red
blood flowing between.
NEW YORK, May 5, I906
Last night I saw Miss A. in Zira - a machine-made
affair which gives her little chance, but unless I was
verstimmt and prone to unliberal judgment she didn't take
what little chance she had. Her 'intensity' was much in
evidence, but was of the same unrelieved and in the end
[ 262 ]




AMERICA- i906
annoying kind which she displayed in the Sabine Woman.
I took supper with her afterward, and there was more and
still more talk of what shall we do with it, much reminiscential reckoning over the number of 'hands' which
this or that speech and situation evoked. Applause is the
actor's currency and abacus by which all is reckoned.
NEW YORK, May 7, I906
Yesterday was so crowded that I put off writing my
little diary letter until I got back to the hotel at nights
and that event found itself postponed until two o'clock
this morning. One of the chief occurrences has been the
annual dinner tendered by the old editors of the Harvard,
Monthly to the undergraduate editors. It was given this
year in New York for the first time, and the occasion was
a gala one. Many old friends, whom I had not seen for
years, were there, and there was a memorable outpouring
of the spirit, much genial reminiscence, and a general casting up of both sweet and sad accounts, to say nothing of
the humorous, a column-full.
Also there has been decided progress in the business arrangements with regard to the play. Miller has showed
himself a perfect brick in the whole delicate negotiation,
standing between me and Shubert at every point. The
net result is that I have a contract being drawn up by
Miss Marbury on entirely equitable lines, to which Miller
has agreed beforehand in the main features. I shall have
a final discussion of it with him tomorrow, and then this
vexatious episode will be fortunately concluded. Miller's
conduct in the matter (and incidentally Miss A.'s as well)
has restored my pristine trust in human kind, somewhat
impaired by the Chicago mix-up.
[ 263 l




LETTERS TO HARRIET


NEW YORK, Tuesday, May 8, I906
I telegraphed you late last night about the contretemps
which has arisen over the clause in the contract granting
Robertson the right to produce the play in Chicago in
the Players Theatre. Miller, it seems, did not know of this
reservation at all until I told him of it last night, after all
the provisions of the agreement had been settled and the
job of drawing up the paper put in Miss Marbury's hands.
I had not spoken of it because I took for granted that he
had seen the paper which Miss A. holds, and that this
clause, not being objected to, was tacitly granted. When
the matter came up, almost by accident, he was terribly
disturbed, saying that the production of the play in
Chicago before the appearance there of his company
would 'kill' for him not only Chicago itself but a large
surrounding territory, that he could not get from Shubert
a good Western route if the clause were enforced, etc.,
etc., and that in the latter event he should be compelled
reluctantly to abandon the entire project. That his balking is due to a genuine and serious difficulty in the business
situation which the clause creates for him I am forced to
believe, because his treatment of the whole matter up to
this point has been most liberal, involving the voluntary
surrender of various points of vantage, and a repeatedly
demonstrated desire to stand between me and the possible
results of my own ignorance and carelessness. On the other
'hand the safeguarding of Robertson's interests is, as
neither he nor you need to be told, a matter which concerns me very deeply. I am quite broken up over the
matter. I have exhausted my powers of persuasion on
Miller. He speaks with great friendliness and admiration
'-Donald Robertson.
[ 264 ]




AMERICA - I906


of Robertson, and is not at all, at least not personally,
inimical to the independent theatre scheme; but he stands
like a stone wall against the prospect of giving up the
Chicago rights, which he says represent, after New York,
the most considerable portion of the 'field,' already much
restricted by the California cataclysm. Of course after the
play has had its run under the star system, it would be
open to the Players Theatre as a 'repertory house'; but
that is small comfort for us. A meliorating circumstance
of course is that Robertson is really more interested in and
has more faith in The Faith-Healer than in the present
play, and he understands that The Faith-Healer is his to
do what he likes with before anybody gets a crack at it.
Nevertheless I hate inexpressibly to bring to his knowledge the impasse in which I now stand with regard to
the Sabine Woman, which would perhaps never have been
written except for his encouragement and suggestion -
and which at any rate owes much to him on both these
scores.
Please show or send this letter to him. I would write
him personally if I knew his address; but at any rate the
whole case is stated here. The negotiations are at a standstill here, and I shall take no further step until I hear from
both of you at length.
NEW YORK, Wednesday, May 9 (i906)
Am anxious to know just how he (Robertson) takes this
matter. Of course, as you say in your telegram and as he
says (with an accent of involuntary grudge, I feel) in his,
he will acquiesce in any arrangement, since his own prospects are so remote. But it is exactly because they are
so remote and precarious that I hate to be a party, even
[ 265 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


passively, to any action which he would view as lessening
by little or much his chance of winning out with the
theatre scheme. Accordingly I have stood out for this
clause of the contract until the last limit of Miller's
patience has, I fear, been reached, and he is ready to chuck
the whole business. The only concession I can wring from
him is that Robertson may have the right to produce the
play in Chicago after Miller's company has played one
full engagement there. Really, leaving the personal
equation aside, this is a liberal arrangement, since it gets
the play into Robertson's hands a good while in advance of
other repertory theatres. I hope he will understand that I
have done everything I could to protect his interests,
short of shipwrecking altogether the present plans, which
in view of Miss Anglin's heroic exertions and Miller's
liberal-minded co-operation would be very hard to justify,
even if Robertson's chance of using the play were substantial instead of being, as it is, very shadowy.
I expect to get away tomorrow or next day to Cornish.
The enclosed note from Percy will give you some notion of
how I shall be housed.
NEW YORK, Thursday, May io (I906)
I was relieved to get your letter and Robertson's
telegram giving his final attitude in the matter of the contract, for it seemed, at the last, to be quite ungrudging and
hearty. I did the very best I could for him, anyhow. The
negotiations still drag on and the historic document will
not be signed before tomorrow or next day. The transfer
of the seat of World Empire from Rome to Byzantium was
an unconsidered trifle in comparison. I am, as you suspect,
a bit jaded by the week long fussing over options, forfeits,
[266]




AMERICA -   906


royalties, 'long-run,' 'tour,' and 'stock' rights, and all the
thousand and one strange considerations which it appears
the vendor of a play, however unpretending it be, must
take into his ken.
(Postmarked New York, May 11, 1906)
I had hoped to get off to the country today, but the
momentous document was not signed, in all its eighteen
imposing clauses, until four o'clock, too late to start. So I
have gathered in Robinson and Torrence for a celebration,
and if I can find a bird and a bottle in the old village
worthy to express my sense of relief and satisfaction at the
conclusion of this matter it shall be theirs. Every toast,
whatever its ostensible purport, will be drunk to your eyebrows by at least one of the company. How I wish you
were here, that we might rejoice together over the situation
as only we could. If there is anything in the philosophy
not dreamed of by Horatio, you will not be absent from the
feast.
They are going to give the Agamemnon of Aeschylus
(in Greek) at Cambridge about the middle of June.
Can't you come to that?
(Postmarked Windsor, Vt., May 14, I906)
CORNISH, Monday
The last two days have gone perdu so far as letters are
concerned. Saturday I spent in a mad rush to get ready for
the country, and I tumbled on to the train at four in the
afternoon with half my errands undone and more dead
than alive from an influenza which had been the unpleasant sequel of the jollification ceremonies of the night before. Yesterday I was in the full grip of it, unable to smell,
[2671




LETTERS TO HARRIET


taste, see, or otherwise perceive, except through a sour
veil of illness, the delicious country, wrapped in a grey
dream of spring. This morning I am much better and
shall be all right in another twenty-four hours.
The place is as lovely as I had remembered it, and everybody vastly hospitable and kind. I am not at all confident,
however, of being able to locate myself in a way advantageous for the job I have on hand. The boarding
facilities of the place seem very meagre. Shall write at
length tomorrow, but will hasten this word off so that
you may not worry at the unexplained lacuna in my correspondence. How I wish you were here this morning,
to look on these delectable hills and drink the virginal
sunshine. The spring is brand-new here - in the pussywillow stage, so that I shall get it da capo, and must send
it to you in assorted parcels by mail.
(Postmarked May i6, i906)
CORNISH, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Postoffice: WINDSOR, VERMONT
Tuesday
This morning finds me measurably restored from the influenza visitation, and able for the first time to receive the
sweet influences of the country through unblurred senses.
The spring is very late, about in the mid-April stage. I
shall be able to see it all from the beginning, as once before
in dear old Mackinac. This is, however, conditional on my
getting a liveable place to stay, which is still a bit doubtful. Today solemn deputations are to be made to various
goodwives and spinsters who have been wavering in their
minds, and a concerted attempt will be made to break
down their hostility toward me as a stranger and a citychap. The country people are as conservative here as if no
[ 268 ]




AMERICA -I 906


'colony' had ever troubled their world-old scheme of life.
Later - At this point Mrs. MacKaye asked me to go
driving with her. We did not get back till two o'clock
lunch-time. The stage had gone long ago, so this can't be
mailed until tomorrow. On our drive we passed through
the village and I bought the children a beautiful little
music-box, which plays three tunes. Arvia, the little girl,
after looking at it and listening to it in rapt silence, murmured to herself, 'Pretty! Pretty!' and a little while
afterward brought it to me and said 'Please make it sing.'
Here is Percy after me to go on our tour of persuasion.
CORNISH, May i6 (i906)
Our prayers (Percy's and mine) to the dames of the
neighborhood were not in vain, and here I am, established
in a big cool room, under the care of a motherly New
England woman, whose dialect and view of life are alone
worth twice per week what in her utmost stretch of thrift
she has had the courage to charge me. I have four windows,
two opening on a leafy road and the sunset, two northward on growing fields, a sheep-pasture, and distant hills,
at this hour of five in the afternoon as blue as the hills of
Beulah. On the other side of the road is a house belonging
to one Harry Fuller, a landscape painter, rented for the
summer to Ethel Barrymore. I expect to enjoy her, but I
rather dread the crowd she will have about her. Still, they
will doubtless be chiefly theatre-folk, and I am new
enough to that world to entertain a lively curiosity concerning each and every denizen thereof. I note with
satisfaction that there is a goodly tennis-court appertaining to her domain, and when one can't talk to her guests
one can doubtless return balls over the net to them. The
[ 269 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


MacKayes are about a mile away, and when they move at
the end of this month they will be still more distant. This
is an advantage, both as ministering to exercise, and as
making our intercourse heartily elective.
As for your own blessed self, the thought of you in the
toil and trouble, the grime and heat, takes the sunlight out
of the day for me, or would if you had not conjured me not
to let it do so. Since I have sat writing here at the window,
a mighty thunderstorm has rolled up from the West, and
now there is a glorious march and counter-march of battalioned clouds, and earthshaking thunderbursts, and
leaping of lightning among the hills. By some curious
freak of psychology, this brings me strangely and suddenly
near to you, and I can hardly persuade myself that if I look
round you will not be standing there at the other window,
watching the elemental uproar, and wondering why I am
so dull as to be writing letters instead of watching - and
so I am. Dull, dull!
CORNISH, May 17 (I906)
By some unaccountable lapse of memory I forgot
yesterday that it was the anniversary of our sacred day,
forever to be remembered with hymns and trances of the
spirit. As some slight atonement (to myself) I am going to
copy out and send you the little poem which you know. I
have given it, provisionally, the title of The Three Angels,
which may be too fantastic and perhaps self-conscious.
The only other I can think of is Dies Angelica, and Latin
titles always seem like a subterfuge, somehow. Tell me
what you think.
(In this letter was enclosed a copy of The Three Angels.)
[ 270 ]




AMERICA -I 906


May I 9 ( I906)
It has leaped here at one bound from timid and chilly
spring to flamboyant summer. The calenture of the past
two days gives me dark suspicions about this being the
cool place MacKaye thinks it is.
I am writing to Cambridge for two tickets to the
/Igamemnon, June i9. I hope you will be the one to sit
beside me and hear Cassandra's prophetic screams.
(Postmarked Windsor, Vt., May 22, i906)
Letter from Ferd today calling loudly for the Fulda,
which I had already mailed. Delighted to hear he has got
to work again on the Siena. Did I tell you that Miss Anglin
wants me to write her a Medea? Here you see the begin-.
ning of my downfall, in that I find myself seriously considering it! I suppose the real reason why I feel tempted is that
I had such a great time at Corinth, the seat of the Medea
legend in its later phases. They were excavating the ancient city when I was there, and had just uncovered, among
other things, the well of Pirene, which Euripides (in his Medea) mentions in one of his wonderful choruses immortally.
Here is a gem notable for its fresh grasp of an old
situation. Let me say in preface that I did not write it,
and suspect the soundness of its point of view.
'Of all the women doubly blest
The sailor's wife's the happiest.
She only has to sit at home
And knit, and knit, and let him roam.
'Of all the husbands on the earth
The sailor has the finest berth,
For in his cabin he can sit
And sail, and sail, and let her knit!'
God forgive the man who wrote it. He was a bad man.
[ 27I ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


CORNISH, May 22 (i906)
The poem I in the Reader was written about nobody in
particular, though I had in mind I forget which one of the
many who have made shipwreck on the 'Art for Art's
sake' fallacy. I thought I had told you about sending the
poem to the Reader.
My arrangements with Miller, about which you ask, fill
some nine pages of foolscap with typewritten clauses, but
I can give you a brief summary. In the first place I agree
to revise the play, and turn it over to him by July isth.
If then it is formally accepted, he agrees to produce it by
Oct. ISt or forfeit $250; if it is not produced by Jan. i he
forfeits $5oo more, by May ist $5oo more; and failing production by Oct. Ist, 1907, he resigns his rights. In case of
production, any or all of these sums count as advance
royalties, reckoned on a basis of from 5 to Io per cent of
gross receipt, according to the weekly business. After a
year's production, he has the privilege of renewing his
rights for another year, by guaranteeing royalty returns of
$iooo for that year, and so on as long as he desires to keep
the play in his control. If he puts the play into the 'stock
houses,' he shares in equal parts whatever it brings in to
him. All rights of publication are reserved to me. No
changes of text can be made without my consent. Robertson has the right to use the play in the Players Theatre
any time after Miller has ended his first Chicago engagement. In case Miller decides to take up the English
rights, he pays me $5oo a year so long as the play is unproduced in London; in case he fails to produce, this money
is mine unconditionally; in case of production it counts as
advance royalties. The same for Canada and Australia.
'Musa Meretrix.
[272 ]




AMERICA -   1906


You probably stopped reading this sometime ago and
have been letting your eye drift ahead for something of
interest. I enjoyed the account of your morning walk
with Bimbles immensely. As I asked once before, did you >
ever think of embracing the profession of literature?
The country here is at this moment wholly divine,
warm sun and crisp breezes, shad-bushes and apple trees
in their glory, more birds with more song in their gullets
than I ever saw in all my life together. Blow-me-down
Brook (that's its real name!) singing through miles of
yellow willow between fresh ploughed fields, pine woods,
and rocky sheep pastures, the whole country rolling into
hill-forms of almost Tuscan grace, from any of which the
climber can command leagues of delicious misty blue
distance! You see I have fallen in love with it.
I am pegging away at revising the play. Have about
finished the first act. It's going to be a whole lot stronger,
but all the same it seems like a waste of time, when I might
be doing something new and really interesting.
It is late, and I am tired from a long ramble in the hills.
I wish you were breathing with me this odorous night air.
CORNISH, May 23 (I906)
About the Agamemnon. It is to be a notable performance, which I don't think I can afford to have you miss.
The performance is on the i9th of June, in the open-air
stone stadium of the Harvard athletic field. The conditions
will approximate more closely than is usual the ancient
ones. The play will be given with tragic masques, cothurni,
choral dancing, and music specially written after the
antique pattern. It ought all to be very impressive and
suggestive. I feel that it will be a thing to remember all
273




LETTERS TO HARRIET


one's life, and I can't bear to think of your missing it. Besides, I want to show you some of my old stampinggrounds about Boston, and above all take you canoeing on
the Charles for a long summer's day. Think about it, and
let me have the benefit of your lucubrations.
Dark moist day here - birds singing small - frogs
crazy with delight. Your little friend rather dark and
moist, inclining to the bird's view of it.
CORNISH, May 25 (i906)
Home late, after an afternoon and evening on the road
with - guess whom? - No other than M      and her
Jeems. About noon she called me up from Windsor on the
telephone. I had no idea she was in this region of the
globe, and was naturally surprised. She explained that
she and James were on a walking tour through New
England, had heard that I was at Cornish, and thought
they would 'demonstrate' me. I walked to meet them on
the Cornish road, and we spent most of the afternoon, which
was showery through sun, in the little MacKaye cottage
and up on the hill watching the great panorama from Maxfield Parrish's porch. M-  was looking well, brown as a
berry, and taking her twenty-five miles a day without a
whimper. James pleased me a good deal more than I expected from your accounts - seems to me vitalized much
above the average of his class and type, and with a temper
genuinely poetic, though cramped into a mould such as
one can buy at any ethical tin-shop. But the temper is
there, I believe - at any rate I found myself attracted
rather than repelled, which is an argument, for the person
affected, unanswerable. We walked together to Windsor,
crossing the river on an old-time cable ferry-barge and
[ 274 1




AMERICA -- 906


down the Vermont side through milking-time, frog-time,
and rainy evening fragrances. I supped with them, they
meanwhile persuading me to walk on with them for two
days to Dorset, the highest village in Vermont, a proposition which I, not without some small heart-burnings,
declined.
CORNISH, May 25 (I906)
I am afraid you are worrying too much over Robertson's
trouble, and taking the dishonesties of his opponents too
much to heart. I seem to detect a flavor of misanthropy in
your comments alien from your customary philosophic
view of such things. This will make you smile - from
choleric me to compassionate you. Smile if you will, but
don't let them put henbane in your cup.
CORNISH, May 26 (1906)
I have been helping the MacKayes to move, all afternoon. They are driven from their little nest by the
choleric Admiral, who wants the house for a Swiss gardener. Fortunately, they only have to flutter a few rods
up the road, and deposit the necessary feathers in the
crotch of a new tree. I am carrying on a tremendous loveaffair with Arvia, aged four. Yesterday she gave me a
cherished green stone, carefully wrapped in the lace-andsatin skirt of her second-besr doll. Today the feather of a
dove which she found in the woods last fall, and had cherished with mystical rites for half a year. She is somewhat
thrifty, even in her downright violence and storm of fortunes, for she ascertained by delicate circumlocutory
questions what I had done with the stone, before she confided the precious feather to my keeping.
[ 75 I




LETTERS TO HARRIET


I am asked to supper at the Hapgoods', so must stop.
They have a wonderful place, hung high in the face of
mountain and river, the landscape, the garden in the foreground, and the house itself, subtly suggestive of Tuscany,
but still with the good Yankee flavor.
CORNISH, May 29 (i906)
I have been spending the night at the Herrick house,
where I was employed until late helping Lovett get Mrs.
H. and young Philip settled. Home now, only a few
minutes before stage-time - hence this scribble. You
need not be afraid that I will compromise with myself in
rewriting the play. I have listened to what Miss A. and
Miller had to say, and to what everybody else had, and
shall of course take from the criticism what ever I can use.
But I shall make no essential changes. What I am trying
to do is to let air into the dialogue - make explicit what
(for the stage) proved to be too implicit; and particularly
to follow a line of reaction in Zona's case which shall keep
the spectator enlisted for her, and make it possible to follow her struggle with understanding. It was certainly a
great weakness of the play as it stood (tho' I think the acting was partly at fault) that she lost the sympathy of the
audience, her final surrender therefore being robbed of its
emotional interest. The dialogue was too suggestive and
elliptical for the stage, and about all I am trying to do is to
remedy this defect. Both Miller and Miss A....
Stage!
CORNISH, May 30 (i906)
As I was saying, when the stage-driver so unceremoniously cut me short yesterday, Miller wanted me to make
[276 ]




AMERICA -1906


some changes in the play which, tho' apparently slight,
would really alter it organically. These I shall not even
consider. I shall rewrite it along the lines I suggested
yesterday, and if he and Miss A. do not want it, they can
let it alone. Ecco! Such an outcome is not unlikely, nor
would it particularly grieve me.
CORNISH, May 31 (1906)
When I get through the play (if ever that time comes) I
am going to do a little spying-out of the land, in accordance with some lines I've got on abandoned farms. Your
friend's remark about the 'discovery' of old age is suggestive, in connection with what has certainly been done
by the modern poets of psychology for youth. The ancients
seem to have studied age more lovingly and closely than
youth: witness Oedipus and Lear. The moderns certainly
the reverse.
CORNISH, June I (1906)
Percy has not been here for some time; he is in New
York getting the elaborate stage-arrangements for his
7oan of Arc ready - stained glass windows that come to
life, and bushes that turn into fairy Ladies of Lorraine, and
what-not. I wish he were not so preoccupied with these
paltry stage-osities. Sothern is just twice as bad as he is,
and they spur one another on. However, it's a kind of
dramatic measles, I guess, which everybody must have
after his kind.
This is a transfigured night. It has been a sultry day,
with huge high-built clouds and Jacob's ladders drifting
' These included new experiments in stage lighting and mechanics conducted
by Abbott H. Thayer, assisted by Rockwell Kent and Barry Faulkner, based
on Thayer's discoveries in protective coloration.
[277 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


over the hills. Just before dark there was a smashing rain,
then clear and cool till the moon came, bringing with her
a wonderful diaphanous silver mist, which began playing
tricks like those Chippewa River Phantasmagoria. My
landlady's meadow is the Land of Heart's Desire, and Mr.
Smoot's woods are Broceliande. And such odors - almost
tangible and visible troops of incantation-weaving presences. Spicy pungencies 'in argosy, transferred from Fez,'
with the chill and homely tang of the New England hillnight.
Since I lit my lamp the June-bugs have been coming
from this and surrounding counties to buzz and bump
their protesting astonishment. It is only a question of
time when they will put out the light, or me. One I have
imprisoned in an empty matchbox, one under a glass, and
one in my waistcoat pocket, where he demands constant
reinsertion.
CORNISH, 7une 2 (I906)
The Barrymore arrived this morning, with a full complement of sensations, including a railroad wreck. My
afternoon walk has intersected at various points her
triumphal progress from villa to villa, as she takes a
preliminary survey of her dominions. I am invited to
meet her at dinner this evening, together with doubtless
the entire male summer population. She is not expected
to stay, by reason of Cornish's 'dulness'; accordingly all
work has been suspended, and the amusement of Ethel
is to be the one great communistic aim. Maxfield Parrish
has laid aside his Dinkey Birds, Norman Hapgood his
reforming ofs the national morals and manners, MacKaye
his dreams, and I my contracts, to swim as goldfish in
[278




AMERICA -   906


Ethel's parlor jar. This is more than a metaphor. Her
premises include a marble swimming pool, under a vinecovered pergola, with Greek pillars from which she is said
to rejoice to dive. Bathing suits are furnished by rotation
of peg, and the fit shall be as God wills.
As a preliminary ingratiation I have been feeding her
cat (hers by virtue of having been left in the lurch by the
owners of the house she is to occupy) with the choicest
morsels from my plate, smuggled out under the very guns
of my landlady's thrift. You will be pleased to learn that
I like the cat, and faintly trust that it likes me. It is
a beautiful tortoise-shell with a wild, wild, waving tail.
Whether from responsive affection or with an eye to the
main chance I don't dare to say, but the creature follows
me about like a dog, and looks at me as it did love. Probably it is always hungry.
CORNISH, June 3 (I906)
The dinner proved to be of the klein and gemiitlich order,
myself and Maxfield Parrish the only male guests. Ethel,
as one might postulate a priori would be the case, is exactly the same person over the soup as over the footlights,
voice between a drawl and a coo, eyes gamin and questing, attitudes free-ish and piquant, no 'conversation' (as
Jane Austen would say) but amusing little jabs at the
passing subject, cigarettes ad lib. - inhaled. On the
whole formidable, I should say, only to the Weltmensch or
the fermenting boy.
What you say of Edith Flint and the little song cannot but touch me. It is worth a good many dark days
and disappointments to know that a word of mine has
x The song beginning, 'Of wounds and sore defeat,' in The Fire-Bringer.
[279]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


entered for solace into that large and greatly afflicted
heart.
CORNISH, 5th fune (1906)
After hammering at the thing in the back regions of my
head for days and weeks, today I had the felicity to see
pop into the front regions the right kind of ending for the
play. It looks right today anyhow, whatever it may look
tomorrow. It seems to me to preserve everything vital in
the first, the violent, ending, and it brings the play to a
close in an upswinging mood of lightness, going towards
comedy - an immense advantage of course. Moreover,
it makes Zona herself and not the brute catastrophe the
Erlisungselement (such a word?) with only a fillip of the
nerves to help her; and it brings in the family again, instead of leaving them hanging in the air with all their yarn
unravelling, as in the makeshift Chicago version. Hoopla!
Also, it makes Zona the active petitioner and pleader for
the thing she has rejected many times from the hands of
her lover, and makes him - through incredulity - the
withholder. This last, though it may not be spotless gallantry on the author's part, is good drama. Supply yodel.
I walk about comparing my fate after the Chicago mixup
with that of a tragedian of the current vaudeville, who
sings:
When I got in a railroad wreck,
An' los' my hat an' los' my check,
Who took dat ingine off my neck?
For instead of the lugubrious answer 'NOBODY!' I say,
'The chap in the little back regions of me headpiecesee? He took that ingine off my neck, bless his heart for a
good little chap in the little back regions!' Yodel. Blessed
[ 280]




AMERICA - i906


is he who rejoiceth while it is called today, for tomorrow
he wakes up and sees what a fool he's been.
Arvia derives a mystic pleasure from contemplating the
candies, which her mother - who is a fanatic on hygiene
- won't let her eat. I told her they came from a pretty
lady who loved her and therefore knew about her just
naturally, without having ever seen her.
CORNISH, fune 7 (I906)
What you suggest in the way of a newer and more vital
presentation of old age in literature gives me, as the French
say, horribly to think. But has not the corresponding
presentation of youth in modern times been based on firsthand subjective knowledge on the writer's part, i.e. on his
own youth as actually lived? What substitute for such
knowledge is there in the other case, since old age has
neither the power nor the desire to express itself. Answer
me, 0 wise Sybil and Utterer of immortal thoughts.
Day before yesterday's jubilant mood, induced by what
seemed to me a successful solution of the closing-scene
problem of the play, has suffered from the inevitable day,
after criticism; but I still believe it will do. The whole
character of the girl has undergone a change as I rewrote,
the soft, ample, and specifically 'feminine' elements gaining on the more robust and salient of my first conception.
Less of the granite rib-rock of the New England hills and
more of the velvety covering thereof. I think of changing
the name to one more suggestive of these two qualities -
I mean the inherited New England Puritanism and the
soft covering which has grown over it. I once met a New
England girl named 'Harmony' -what do you think of
this - with a distinctive New England patronymic?
[ 281 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


'Harmony Wentworth' or so-so? 'Zona' - altho' picturesque enough - carries no associations. As I see it now
the girl's whole struggle is for 'harmony' between her
love-life and that of her inherited codes and girlish
predilections. The association between name and character would not be of course so blatantly obvious as I
make it here. What do you think? But you can't know
very well until you hear the new version.
CORNISH, fune 9 (I906)
Being for some reason restless and sleepless last night I
got up about three, just as the sky was brightening and
the moon paling, and struck off over the hills. The coming
on of day was so divine that I have been trying ever since
to think of some plan of life which would make it possible
to enjoy habitually this sincere and tender miracle of sunrise, and to utilize the more garish hours for rest.
(Postmarked Windsor, Vt., June i2, i906)
CORNISH, Friday
Ethel is installing herself across the road, painting,
polishing, and upholstering with her own fair hands and
those of her volunteer corps, of which I am a humble but
enormously efficient member. She is the best fun in the
world, quite unspoiled, and a first-rate fellow. An exhaustless energy and a thirst for excitement almost comparable to yours, though in her case the limits of excitement are nearly coterminous with those of fun.
What you write as to your revised view of Zona's as the
'star' part in the play pleases me greatly. The rewriting
will tend, I hope, to increase the power of the part to assert
itself on the stage for what it essentially is. I have found
[ 282 ]




AMERICA - 1906


for her, I believe, the 'dissolving word,' by which she
brings her struggle and the man's refusal to see any need
for anything but whole-hearted acceptance of their fate
into a common focus, showing them both to have been
forms of the 'expiation' her nature demanded: hers
traditional, negative, self-conscious, gloomily purgatorial;
his natural, positive, spontaneous, and cleansing through
joy and life instead of through grief and refusal to live.
This sounds very schematic and doctrinal, but of course it
is not so much so when floated out on waves of feeling in
the ebb and flow of dialogue. More of this later, for I see
your face expressing vague disapproval.
(Postmarked June 14, I906)
Wednesday
What you say about the essential meaning of the
Sabine Woman is quite true. It is what I meant, but my
phrasing of it, as usual, was drier, more formal than yours.
Still, your words will help me in the final revision to give
the cutting edge of the play a keener temper. As it takes
ultimate shape I feel more encouraged about it. The
letting-in of air which I have been doing has not, I think,
thinned the thing, but made it a more inhabitable structure, and the recasting of foundations and rebuilding of
arches has certainly made the form more solid and
spacious. The new ending stands the test of time and
criticism better than I hoped. I feel ready now to take a
stand - with Miller - of No-compromise. If he wants it
he must take it without disturbing a hair-line.
MacKaye read his Nereida1 at his house last night to
the small gathering, including Ethel. She was delighted
X Published, as The Cat Boat, in MacKaye's Yankee Fantasies, 1912.
[283 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


with it, and there is a plan for her to stage it - in her
studio - with herself as the boy (Nico), and Percy's sister, Hazel, as Nereida.
I go to Boston day after tomorrow.
Mr. Gilder has asked me again to visit him at his Berkshire farm, and I have decided to go there for a few days
after the Greek play.
FOUR-BROOKS FARM
TYRINGHAM, LEE, MASS. (fune 27, 1906)
Four-Brooks Farm is a beautiful place, rising on
terraces from creek and willow lowlands, through belts of
grain and woodland, up to magnificent rocky pastures
overlooking all, and covered at this moment with mountain
laurel in extravagant flower. The farm is two hundred and
fifty acres; a kingdom. The rich variety and royal extent
of these said acres has made me revise my standards somewhat and hunger after two hundred and fifty myself, as the
minimum with which a country gentleman can content
himself or even contrive to get a good breath in.
I had expected to stay here only a day, or two at most,
but they have made plans for me which will make it impossible to get away before Saturday. They are immensely
kind and I am enjoying myself as well as I can in a state of
impatience about the play.
(June 28, 1906)
They are waiting for me to join in a long drive somewhere - I believe to 'Lost Lake Farm' which Mr. Gilder
owns and wants me to occupy. Life in this unworldly
On Friday, June iS, 1906, Moody and MacKaye - en route to attend the
Harvard Stadium performance of Agamnemnon and the wedding of Josephine
Peabody, at Cambridge - visited MacKaye's boyhood home at Shirley Center,
Mass. Cf. note at back, under XX.
[ 284]




AMERICA -   906


corner of the hills - now that I have resigned myself to
the delay it involves - has a rare sweetness and charm.
Mr. Gilder's character impresses me every day more deeply.
There is something at once heroic and touching in the way
he has conserved his boyish enthusiasms and ideals, the
naive ardencies and bashfulnesses of youth, its swift dartings and awkward stumblings, its obvious gaucheries and
wild timid graces. He is a living confutation of the timeillusion. He has recently been to Cornell and consorted -
to his delight - with your Corson.' Corson - he reports
- is deep in spiritualism, talks daily with Tennyson,
Browning and Milton, and lives on the most intimate
terms of familiarity with his dead wife. You ought to go
back and see Corson.
(Postmarked Pittsfield, Mass., June 30, I906)
I have enjoyed my visit to Four-Brooks Farm, in spite of
my restlessness to finish the play. Yesterday we made an
all-day excursion to a farm which Gilder owns far up in the
hills. It is a most romantic place, with a little old house
reputed to be a hundred and seventy-five years old, and
a hundred acres of woodland and rocky meadows - the
meadows covered with brake and wild thyme, the latter in
incredible quantity, giving a strange spiciness to the air.
Except that the house lies rather low, and that the farm
nowhere overtops the surrounding hills, it would be a fine
place to live. He offers to sell it to me for a thousand, just
what it stood him in for the original purchase money
($2oo) and what he has spent on the house. If it had an
outlook I should be tempted to take up the offer. But there
is no big escape for the eye, and that is fatal.
Professor Hiram Corson, of Cornell University.
[285




LETTERS TO HARRIET


I have seen the illustration for the Death of Eve, and
am on the whole pleased. Perhaps too naturalistic, but
very strong, and without any suspicion of sentimentality.
The poem is to appear in the Christmas number I- why,
0 why?
I have gone over the play in detail, with your criticisms
in mind. Surely you are right. At first I was considerably
discouraged and inclined to chuck the whole enterprise as
an irrevocable failure; but after a closer examination I am
led to believe that I can meet your objections without
great difficulty and without very sweeping change. 'Whining metaphysician' rather sticks in my crop. I don't
think the poor girl is quite as. bad as that, though she
is certainly over-anxious to vindicate herself. Rather a
human failing, you must admit. Well, it will soon be up to
Miller. If he is still dissatisfied, that will settle it, and the
incident be closed.
Read the article 'A  Swimming Pool at Cornish' in
Country Life for July. It (the pool) is the one in which I
am wont to disport myself after tennis on Ethel's court.
There is an article on the Greek play in the Theatre Magazine for July - perhaps worth reading.
(Postmarked July I (?) 1906)
CORNISH, Sunday
I got back last night to find a letter from Miller clamoring for news of the play, and saying that in case everything was all right he wanted to open his season with it in
the middle of September. I have written him asking for
another week in which to finish it. With what there is still
to do, and the recopying, this will be a strenuous week.
x Of the Century Magazine.
*  [286]




AMERICA -i 906


When the manuscript is ready I shall try to get him to
come up here to read it, for I dread a trip to New York in
this weather.
CORNISH, July 2 (I 906)
I am working with teeth and toe-nails to get the play
in shape to show to Miller, for if he carries out his proposed plan to open the season with it the eleventh hour for
its completion has already struck. I have been at my desk
all day and am too pen-fagged to write more than a line.
Cornish is very gay - for Cornish. I am refusing everything but dinner-invitations, of which I have seven at
least to the week. After the day's work in seclusion it is refreshing to meet people in the informal way practiced here,
and to eat a good dinner in witty company. I fear I could
easily contract the dining-out habit, which has killed so
many good poets. Lend me your prayers against the
threatened disintegration.
CORNISH, 7uly 4, I906
I am copying the play -a long tedious job. I expect to
get it off my hands, thank the Lord, this week, and hope I
may never hear tell of it again.
CORNISH, July 6 (i906)
Your letters about A   and her operation constituted
a little masterpiece. They convince me anew that unless
you turn your gifts of expression to some overt use the
world will be the poorer by one great and delightful talent.
Buy a graphophone and talk into it. Hire a stenographer
to follow you about and surreptitiously transcribe you.
Meanwhile write me about all the characters which,
[287]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


coming under your observation and warmed by your benign
presence, expand into something I ought to hear of.
CORNISH, July 7 (I906)
I was overwhelmed last night with a visitation of sickness which has kept me in bed all day. I am now (6:30 P.M.)
-somewhat uncertainly-'up and dressed.' I had
dined at Arthur Whiting's, with music galore afterwards
in a big dark room looking out on moonlit river and mountain, and had enjoyed myself deeply. Miss Barrymore
gave me a lift home in her trap, and I went to bed feeling
as fine as a fiddle, only to awaken in a couple of hours with
the most dreadful headache and deadly nausea I have ever
experienced. From then until the approach of breakfast
time roused the house, was ages of misery, and the daylight hours (nominally such) have been little better, until
an hour ago, when the ptomaines or other intestinal
enemies gave me up as too tough to kill and withdrew discomfited. Now I am all right, or soon shall be. The feeling
of ghostly lightness, insubstantiality, and eerie fecklessness, now that I am sufficiently released from pain to observe it, constitutes a curious charm. Myself, the world,
time, history, memory, are stretched out as fine as tissue
paper around me, and it is odds but I take an idle forefinger and puncture them into absurdity and shred them
down the wind forever. Except that you are flattened and
bleached out there somewhere in the papery expanse, and
by a miracle of patience perhaps recoverable, I would do it.
CORNISH, yuly 8 (1906)
I shall probably have to go to New York tomorrow or
next day to see Miller. He telegraphed me yesterday that
[288]




AMERICA 190)6


he should be unable to come up here, and was writing.
His letter will probably necessitate my making a rapid
slide to the city, where we shall probably have a battle
royal and shake hands over the corpse of my ambition as a
'practical' playwright.
(Postmarked Windsor, Vt., July I2, i906)
CORNISH, Thursday
I have been in a state of (artistic?) irritability over the
finishing of the play, and have let several days go by without writing, so loathly was the sight of pen and paper
after I had finished fussing with my manuscript for the
day.
A letter from Miller yesterday announces that he is unable to come up to Cornish as he had hoped, and wants me
to come down. He says there is considerable interest in the
New York theatrical world about the play, and he seems
sanguine about the prospects. I have followed your advice as to condensing the dialogue at the two critical
points, and it seems to me now to move swiftly enough. I
think Robertson is wrong about the pistol-shot. It is a
matter of nervous reaction on the part of the audience -
almost mathematically calculable. I am sure that the
present ending is better, though I don't believe you thought
so after a hurried reading of it. The third act is weaker
than the other two by the logic of the piece, and must remain so; but perhaps that won't prove disastrous. If it
does, what matter? I am sure the second act is better
without Mexican. He is sufficiently accounted for by the
dialogue and acting.
I leave for New York, either at noon today or midnight.
[289]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


CORNISH, Friday (May 13, 1906)
I wasn't able to get off yesterday, but am going at noon
today. Miller has asked me to be his guest, and I suppose
he will put me up at the Lambs' Club or the Players.
I think Robertson is wrong about retaining the original
title of the play. It is true we shall lose some advance advertising by the change, but this seems to me a small consideration beside the value of a really appropriate and
satisfactory title, which I feel The Great Divide to be.
MacKaye is enthusiastic for it, and also for the new ending. Since you heard it I have pruned and polished to great
purpose, and I feel reasonably satisfied now that it will do.
How long a stay I shall have to make in town I don't
know; Miller is to take me to White Plains, where Miss
Anglin is staying, for a day, and a day or two more ought
to finish it.
THE PLAYERS, NEW YORK, 7Udy IS (i906)
I came down day before yesterday, arriving in time to
dine with Miller and have a drive in the park before I read
him the play. We began at eleven and finished at four in
the morning. I did not get to sleep - what with smoke
and excitement - until eight. He came to breakfast with
me at eleven, then we had a couple of hours in the Princess
Theatre, discussing stage-setting, from which I had to
rush for a White Plains train to reach Miss Anglin's
summer place by four. Reading the play to her, with
dinner and other interruptions, kept me there until ten
thirty, and I got back to N.Y., and tumbled into bed, more
dead than alive, at midnight.
Miller is delighted with the new version, and intends to
open the season with it here. Whether Miss A. will play the
[ 290 ]




AMERICA - 1906


heroine or not is still uncertain. She balks at several points
which are essential to the integrity of the idea, and which I
have refused, unconditionally, to change. She hasn't now,
and I think never has had, any conception of the play as a
whole, or any interest in it. She is solely intent on getting
a 'part,' but is not willing to lend herself'to one when she
gets it - the part must conform itself to her desire to
score once every so often. Like ringing up fares in a
street-car.
I am very pleasantly installed here at the Players Club,
where I shall be for a day or two longer.
THE PLAYERS, NEW YORK, July I6 (I906)
I leave tonight (for Cornish) after a strenuous three
days - so strenuous, plus the terrific heat, that I am a
mere pulp physically and morally. I wrote you yesterday
of Miller's hospitable reception of the play. It looks today
as if Miss Anglin would insist on her right to play the r1le
and there will have to be some more weary argument over
certain points which affect her amour propre. I am determined not to yield anything essential, but I can't
break off negotiations altogether, since the differences between us are small, and she has of course established a
claim upon the play by her initial acceptance of it. Miller
thinks I shall have to be here for a couple of weeks or so
before the opening - that is to say, from about the seventh
of September on.
CORNISH, July I8 (I906)
I got back to the country yesterday, rather the worse for
wear, having hardly closed my eyes in slumber since I left.
I have found a translation of some of the great Greek
[ 29I




LETTERS TO HARRIET


plays which I believe will please and profit you as much as
- on a preliminary examination - they do me. They are
in three volumes (one for each of the great tragedians), the
series is known as The Athenian Drama, and is published
by Longmans, Green & Co., New York. The Euripides is
translated in uncommonly acceptable verse, by Gilbert
Murray; the others I have not examined. You had better
get them to read.
CORNISH, 7uly I9 (1906)
It is blazingly, or rather smotheringly hot here. Hotter
than it was in town. Of course it is unprecedented in the
experience of the oldest inhabitant. MacKaye and I, with
perhaps two other men, are waiting for a cool spell in order
to climb Mount Ascutney. We expect to spend the night
up there in an abandoned stone house, and come back the
next morning. Aside from the prostrating heat the country is lovely. I have never seen such color - in New
England - as these glowing days bring out in hills and
woods and river, and the nights are beyond words wonderful - stars twice as big as they ought to be. Yesterday I
saw a deer in the road near Parrish's. It was a full-grown
doe, nearly as tall as a man. It watched me approach
until I was scarcely fifty feet away, and then, apparently
without fear, merely from a sense of bashfulness, dropped
into the bushes and floated of (literally) across a field of
high grass, moving like a swallow. There has been no
'open season' now for three years, and the gentle creatures
have two more years respite. Then the ghastly business of
extermination will begin again. -, pollon!.pollon!
Imagine me lying on my back in shady places, reading
Euripides.
[292 ]




AMERICA - 1906


CORNISH, yuly 21 (I906)
The weather has been oppressively hot until this morning, when the heat broke in a tremendous thunderstorm
and torrential rains, which still continue, turning the
valleys into lakes, and even the roads into headlong rivers.
The Biblical phrase, used to describe the rains of Noah,
'the heavens were opened,' never appealed to me as
literally descriptive before. For half an hour this morning
the water seemed to descend not in drops nor in sheets, but
in a solid mass, as if the bottom had dropped out of the
sky, and the 'waters which be above the heavens' were
precipitating themselves bodily upon the groaning earth,
loosening the mortised frame of nature with their impact.
Incidentally, the roof over my personal head gave way,
and my room became absorbed in the drowned landscape.
I am writing in the stuffy farmhouse 'parlor,' and wondering where I shall sleep tonight.
I give ear to your advice as to knocking about New
England for a time before beginning another job. MacKaye is very much used up from working - or trying to
work - through the heated term, and I think perhaps I
will drag him away from his inkpot by force, for a walk in
the White Mountains. If so, I shall keep my eyes open for
a mountain home.
(Postmarked, Windsor, Vt.; July 26, I906)
It has just occurred to my dull wit, what it was which
caused you to feel anxious about my condition - the
exaggerated account which I gave of the rainstorm and its
ravages. It was a terrific deluge, and it is true that the
roof of this old farmhouse failed to stand the strain, making my room for a time decidedly damp. But a few
[ 293 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


shingles fixed all that, or will, when the proprietor 'gets
round to it,' a process which has already, I understand,
consumed all his effective energies for some six months.
Meanwhile, the weather has come off dry and clear - and
what is better, cool.
In consequence I have plucked up heart, and begin to
feel within me the stirrings of something which may under
a continued application of the same reviving agency prove
to be a soul. The plan for the Eve drama, fished from the
bottom of my trunk and the refuse-heap of my mind,
takes on allurement. It seems to me, on coming back to it
after giving time for the decomposing process to strip it
bare of its more perishable integuments, that the idea has
dramatic vitality, and is worth fussing with. I fancy you
are a bit sceptical (probably my own reflected scepticism)
and perhaps you are right; but I am going to give it the
benefit of the doubt, and sit on the problematic-looking
egg until convinced that it is addled.
(In August W. V. M. went to New Mexico to get properties for the stage-set of The Great Divide.)
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Thursday
(Late in August, i906)
My train was several hours late, and I have had time for
only a brief survey of the Indian and Mexican goods on exhibition here; but from what I have seen I anticipate no
difficulty in getting together the necessary articles, though
it seems probable that I shall have to make a trip up
country into the reservation, in order to get the loom.
There is no word from Miller yet, which means he has
written instead of telegraphing.
[ 294 ]




AMERICA - 1906
I wish you could have watched with me the light fade on
the mountains just now. This is a great and inspiring
country. Before long we must both know it better.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.
I have time only for a word, as I have heard at the
eleventh hour of an Indian 'harvest dance' tomorrow at
the famous pueblo of Acoma, and am making a rush to see
it. I go to a little hole called Laguna tonight, where I shall
sleep under a cactus bush if I am lucky, if not, on top of
same. Tomorrow morning ride eighteen miles into the
desert - if I am lucky enough to get a pony, for I hear
that the expected crowd will tax and probably exhaust the
resources of Laguna for transportation.
Everything going smoothly here. Probably leave Monday for Chicago. Miller telegraphs that I must positively
be in New York - with my stuff- by Friday.
Telegram:
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Sept. 3 (1906)
REACH CHICAGO WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
MUST BE IN NEW YORK FRIDAY NIGHT
W
(Postmarked New York, Sept. 8, 1906)
Arriving here this morning I found everything in commotion at the Princess, stage-carpenters, scene-painters,
property-men, advance-agents, et al., feverishly struggling
to get ready to go to Albany tonight - the plan being to
open Monday. I came, you see, in the nick of time; in a
few more hours Miller would have given me up and duplicated, the best he could, my bringings. He has attacked the play with magnificent energy, enthusiasm, and
[ 29s I




LETTERS TO HARRIET


understanding; says that in his career of twenty-six years
as an actor he has never been so interested. The changes
he wants me to make are no-way vital, and can be made
with no difficulty or heart-burning on my part. I go up to
Albany at noon tomorrow, to be present at the dressrehearsal Sunday night, and shall travel with the company
until everything is shipshape.
(Postmarked Albany, Sept. o1, I906)
The Miller-Anglin aggregation, with a carload of scenery, hit the town early this afternoon. We are in for a
week of one-night stands between here and New Haven.
I expect to have a good deal of fun watching the humors
of the road. The opening performance, tomorrow night, is
to be given in a vast affair which resembles nothing so
much as a stock exchange except a skating-rink. I shall
see rehearsal tonight and be able to judge of the company;
as Miller himself is in a state of gloom over them, I hardly
anticipate for myself an undiluted rapture.
Monday noon
Dress rehearsal last night from 7 until 5 - ten hours of
horrors. This morning I am ready to swear on a pile of
Bibles as high as Chimborazo that if I emerge from this
venture with a rag of artistic reputation I will never write
another line for the stage as it exists today. The company
is indescribably bad, the vulgarizing process sickeningly
complete. Even Miller, though he understands the part,
cannot play it. The minor parts have been mis-mated to
their would-be interpreters until the unholy cohabitation
cries to heaven. The stage-setting, for all the money and
pains that has been spent on it, isn't within ear-shot to our
[ 296 ]




AMERICA -    906
improvised affair of last spring. 0 te) t) t  tb po.
poidd - Apollon! Apollon! Give me a cave and a cup of
water on the mountain of the muses, and let me die unproduced!
I shall stick at the nauseating business for a few days,
and try to suppress some of the more monstrous features,
then for a place to hide my head until the thing is over
and forgotten, which fortunately will not be long. Your
prayers, your pity, your forgiveness! I don't want to be a
playwright. If I must write plays, buy me a burglar-proof
safe, with a time lock set for A.D. 2006, to keep them in.
Yours in despair
W —
(Postmarked Sept. I, 19o6)
ALBANY, Tuesday
I must sing a palinode and recantation to my jeremiad I
of yesterday. The company pulled itself together for the
first night, which I had dreaded so much, in a most wonderful way. The house was large and enthusiastic, which of
course may have tended to flush my eye-glasses with
couleur de rose; but when-all deduction is made I- believe
even you, who are so much more jealous for me than I am
for myself, would have found matter for approval in the
work of the ccmpany. At any rate it was impossible to
recognize in it the barbarous aggregation of that nightmare dress-rehearsal. I enclose a clipping from the local
newspaper. We go to Amsterdam      today, wherever
Amsterdam may be. There is something, to me, touching
and old-worldly in this strolling players' existence, even
when carried on under the modern methods. I am so
groggy I can hardly see to write, having been up again last
1 297 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


night until four, at an impromptu champagne supper given
by Miss Anglin.
NEW HAVEN, CONN., Sept. 13, i906
The last two days have been a wild scramble of rehearsals, performances, rushing to and from hotels, catching and missing trains, chartering automobiles and trolleycars for cross-country dashes to make good a missed connection, with bickerings over text and 'business' filling
every cranny of time not consumed by more overt violence.
Heigh-ho! But after all it is amusing.
I have been up so late every night and so early every
morning that by now I am quite light-headed, and can't
see the words on the paper. We shall settle down for a
week at Washington, when you may again begin to prize
me as a correspondent. At present I know you can't.,
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., Sept. IS, i906
We came here last night for a fearfully delayed performance, ending somewhere between midnight and morning,
the delay being due to a stalled baggage-car plus a wrecked
passenger train (not ours), to get around which the company had to resort to trolley, team and automobile, in a
crazy scramble cross-country. The theatre, when reached
at last, proved to be on a pier out in the ocean, with breakers thundering a majestic accompaniment to my puny lines
(they were once mine, and even these changelings claim a
vague parentage in me!), dwarfing the little feverish action
on the stage quite comically. But there was a big crowd
('the largest advance sale in the history of Atlantic City,'
the manager grandly announced) and the people seemed
interested. After it was over, I went out on the beach, and
walked in the darkness and booming wind.
[298]




AMERICA - 1906


ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., Sunday
I have just returned from a five-mile tramp up the
beach, and a sail, and feel like a human being again, the
first time in days. We ended our first vagabond week last
night, with a big 'house,' including the Czar of all the
theatrical Russians, the magnipotent Shubert himself, to
whom I was tremblingly presented, receiving some dubious
curt praises and indubitable loquacious warnings not to be
rejoiced before the time, since 'Proadway' was a monster
of great incalculability of taste, wont to eat alive a playwright a day. There was that in the little man's salacious
eye which said he deemed me the merest spoon-food for the
animal in question, salvable but by some quaintest freak
of humor. Still, there was the hard fact that we had
'played to' over six thousand dollars in a week of onenight stands; and that men breathe and walk on
mystery.
We go to Washington tomorrow for a week. I shall stay
with the company probably until the end of it, for there are
still an infinitude of matters in the presentation which try
my very soul. Many of them are ineradicable, but I must
keep busy until what can be done is done. You mustn't
feel that the 'first night' is over. These performances on
the road are regarded by us as mere public rehearsals.
The real opening will be in New York, Oct. 3rd, and you
must be there to see it - that is, if by that time I think
you can stand the performance.
WASHINGTON, D.C., Monday
(Postmarked Sept. I7, I906)
We open tonight for a week's run at the 'Belasco
Theatre,' quite a grand affair opposite the entrance to the
[299]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


White House Grounds. The last two days of strenuous
rehearsals have made some impression upon the crudities
of the company, and the poetry of the play (if you'll admit
it has any of that) begins faintly to emerge. I have some
hope now that by the time we reach New York it won't be
utterly bad. Louis Shipman (one of my Cornish friends)
has his opening tonight - a play of the Civil War from
the southern point of view. - His wife is a Southerner (I
mean Shipman's) and I judge from the rehearsal I saw this
afternoon that she has enabled him to assume the Southern standpoint in a way which will be novel and charming.
She is a daughter of an army officer and a native of Washington, and the whole town is expected to turn out to
whoop it up for Louis. I shall be among them, leaving my
own bantling to scratch worms for itself. I'm afraid it will
be pretty hard scratching; we shall be lucky to get half a
houseful under the circumstances.
WASHINGTON, D.C., Tuesday
(Postmarked Sept. i8, i906)
Today has brought almost a repetition of that ghastly
morning which followed the first night of the play in
Chicago. Last night was our opening here, and everything
seemed auspicious; there was a big audience and hearty
applause. This morning, however, the Washington Star
(the leading - in fact only - morning paper) contained
a most brutal and blackguardly onslaught upon both play
and performers, a thing so shamelessly unfair that we were
at a loss to find a motive for it, until, in the course of the
day, it has come out pretty clearly as the work of the
Syndicate, who hired a wretched scribbler to stab us in the
back. He did his work thoroughly, for it appeared when
[300 ]




AMERICA -I 906


the New York papers arrived that he had telegraphed his
article in extenso to them. There is general indignation
among the other newspaper men in Washington, and they
will do what they can to repair the damage, but our sales
for the week are, Miller thinks, knocked in the head, and
that, together with the prejudice to New York opinion, is a
pretty serious thing. The days of guerilla warfare are not
over, nor is the trade of the bravo obsolete. Will write further particulars tomorrow, with clippings, when the
situation shall have developed further.
(Postmarked Sept. I9, I906)
WASHINGTON, D.C., LVednesday
The delayed letters reached me today. Your buoyancy
of spirit cheers me like a cordial. I am not without need of
such cheer, for the situation here is strained. The blackguardly newspaper onslaught, engineered and carried out
to its legitimate consequences by the 'interests' opposed to
us, has co-operated with the smothering heat to reduce our
audiences to a handful. The expenses even of a modest
company like ours are crushing, when there is practically
no in-take to counter-balance them, and it hangs on a hair
whether or not we will survive the ordeal. Of course, in
the large purview, it matters microscopically little whether
we do or not, but there is a kind of dogged instinct for
'success' in me that clinches my teeth over-hard in this
crisis. Your lovely letters come as an emollient to my
chafed spirit, and admonish me of the realities. My
astonishment and awe grow hourly, that you, immersed
for months and years in this acid bath, nevertheless keep
your instincts keenly true.


[30 I




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Thursday
The force of the Syndicate attack seems to have about
spent itself, but the weather is the most awful I have ever
experienced, and the best the company can do is to drag
listlessly through their parts to practically empty benches,
since none but theatre-maniacs will subject themselves to
three hours' imprisonment. For our sins, there exists under
the stage an establishment of Turkish baths, in full blast;
you may imagine what this means, with the weather conditions given. I enclose a specimen of the kind of criticism
we have been getting, just to show you what the Trust can
do when it tries. The only solace in the situation is that
they should deem us formidable enough to call for such
methods. This little tidbit was telegraphed, by the local
paper which printed it, to the New York Herald, and from
that as a centre has doubtless been sent broadcast. These
are among the amenities of the profession, I suppose, and
to be accepted as such. Mrs. Le Moine (you remember
the lady who did In a Balcony in Chicago, and Blot in the
'Scutcheon in New York) is holding Miss Anglin's hand
through the crisis; she is a homely, vital, eloquent, and
thoroughly crazy person; you would delight in her, unless
you found she talked too much.
We go to Pittsburgh Sunday.
WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 22, I906
I didn't write yesterday, being in a state of profound depression from the weather and the sweeping effects of the
newspaper war which is being waged against us. Our
'business,' which up to the time the cyclone struck us had
been nearly a thousand dollars a night, fell off immediately
to less than three hundred and has not recovered. This of
[302 1




AMERICA -i 906


course means ruin, if very long continued, and the ghastly
and prankish injustice of the thing makes me ill, on the
speculative plane, quite apart from its practical bearing.
If the play were shelved tomorrow I should still feel that I
had found my account in it, and had no cause to repine.
But the fact that an ignorant malicious reporter can carelessly sandbag and throw into a corner an enterprise which
has cost numbers of worthy people endless thought and
labor, is really a thing to make one sick with disgust. Tonight it is a shade cooler, with a blessed hint of rain somewhere within a hundred miles, and I feel my spirits beginning to revive. Miller has been a brick throughout the
trouble. His faith in the play is unshaken, and that is saying a good deal for him, when he is paying for his faith in
hard dollars to the tune of thousands a week. We go to
Pittsburgh tomorrow.
PITTSBURGH, PA., Sunday night
Here we are in Pittsburgh, after a hot day in the cars, to
find it heavenly cool, an inexpressible relief after the awful
heat of Washington. Our experience there was one of
mingled tragedy and comedy. The newspaper which took
a particular aversion to us manhandled us all week, and
pursued us out of town with a column of variegated abuse
in the Sunday edition. We relieved our feelings from time
to time by offering five hundred dollars to any charity if
the managing editor would put us for five minutes in the
same room with the anonymous author of our woes, and
lock the door. The man. ed. was all compassion and condolence, finally declaring that he knew exactly how we
felt, having himself once put thirty thousand dollars into a
burlesque, only to have it sand-bagged into thirty cents,
[303 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


by the papers. We pressed the point of veracity, of critical
probity. It was like climbing a mountain of plate glass.
He understood our feelings and mingled his tears with ours,
and the next morning printed a more outrageous libel than
ever. Basta! I am going to the mountains of Estremadura
and enter a Trappist monastery. I am inclined to think
that the Syndicate had nothing to do with it- that it was
personal righteousness and the moral code, on the part of
some glad-eyed young Southern knight of the pen. Whoever it was, I respect him, for he certainly did do it to us
a plenty.
We have one week here, then go back to New York, to
open at the Princess on Wednesday, Oct. 3rd. We shall
need the two odd days to rehearse with the new set, in the
second act, which is so different that the timing of the cues
will all have to be done over again. I am taking it for
granted that you are coming on, though I tremble too.
PITTSBURGH, PA., Tuesday
(Postmarked Sept. 25, i906)
We opened here last night and woke up this morning to
find ourselves still in the critical storm-belt. All the morning papers except one attack the play savagely, on moral
grounds, seeing only the shell of it and utterly ignoring its
inner sense. To them it means an attempted rape, a revolting case of forced marriage, and the final surrender of
the woman to a moral monster. Eheu! I guess the meat
we are trying to get them to taste is too strong for them. I
feel pretty thoroughly convinced that they won't have the
play on any terms. But we are not going to give up the
fight until we are sure. Sometime or other they have got to
take it. It is right.
[304 ]




AMERICA -I 906


Lend me your prayers. We maybe won't weather the
storm, but we want to go down gallantly. In this time of
misunderstanding my heart turns to your nature and your
mind as a sunflower to the sun.
PITTSBURGH, PA., Wednesday
The newspaper hammering which we got here has not
materially hurt 'the business,' and unless something quite
cataclysmic occurs we shall open as brash as you please in
New York on Wednesday of next week. I am torn between
eagerness to have you there, and fear that the whole thing
will seem to you - and will really be - a dismal failure.
Nothing about play or players satisfies me or gives me any
rest from the fretful desire to make it quite over; but it
may be that I have watched it all too closely and too long,
and have got it on my nerves. I'm not going to accept
your not coming, even as a remote possibility, though
Heaven knows, after you are in New York, I shall probably
lock you up, and prevent your going near the theatre, in
sheer shamefacedness and panic. The things which have
been written about the play -by the guardians of public
morality have given me a vaguely criminal feeling, so that
I begin to skulk and look behind me.
(Harriet did go to New York for the opening night of
The Great Divide. On her way back she stopped at Parkman, Ohio. From there she was called home by the news
of a fire in the workroom of her business.)
NEW YORK, Oct. 7 (i906)
I have been wandering about in rather a daze today,
chewing the cud of recollection, and trying to assemble my
[ 305 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


parts after the late disrupting excitements. Saturday night
I timidly suggested to Miller that I wanted to make a few
trifling changes in the play, but he threw up his hands to
heaven and declared me a Nihilist, a man of no bowels, and
a damn fool who didn't know when he'd got a good thing.
Nevertheless I am going to rewrite the act along the lines
we talked over, and spring it on him by stratagem. The
Bubble, if anything, continues to swell; the house sold last
night seventy dollars above 'capacity,' and tickets have
been put on sale twelve weeks in advance! This last is an unheard-of piece of braggadocio, and ought to be visited by
an avenging Heaven with catastrophe and collapse.
This afternoon I saw Mrs. Le Moine, and told her
something about the Eve. She listened attentively, and
then asked if I couldn't transfer the story to modern life.
I told her that's just where it was already, and I didn't intend to expose it to cobwebs and museum shelves by putting Adam in creased trousers and Eve into glove-fitting
etcetera. She affected to understand the play as outlined, and to like it, but she did neither the one or the other.
I have been seeing you today against the green Parkman
woods, just ripening to autumn. I hope you got a little
heartsease out of your hours there, and a little strength to
take up the battle.
NEW YORK, Oct. 8, I906
Your telegram about the fire gave me a great shock, and
in spite of your reassuring braveries, I fear that the blow
to your worldly prosperity will prove to be serious. Will
you be able to go on with the manufacturing during repairs?
The Great Divide continues its triumphal career. Mrs.
[306 ]




AMERICA -i 906


Davidge - a daughter of Bishop Potter -in a note just
received, says, 'I was there the second night, and it was a
great blessing that I was able to be as orderly as I was in
a moment of such glory and triumph as you have brought
to our time and our country. To feel that stupid common
audience become alive and sentient in spite of itself, groping round for conventional ropes to grasp when puzzled
because it had to face God and Nature, was a great and
grand experience,' etc. etc.
I was marched, at the point of a pistol, to Sarony yesterday, by the business manager of the Princess, and made to
sit for my picture.
(Postmarked Oct. 13, i906)
NEW YORK, Thursday
The play still rides the comb of the wave. I enclose a
couple of fool newspaper clippings; they are not worth
reading, except for the fact that the managing editors of
the respective sheets think the play of sufficient public
interest to waste space on still.
NEW YORK, Oct. I3, i906
The buoyant tone of your letter gave me great pleasure
and relief. You wretched creature, I believe you positively
enjoy being burned and drowned out of existence, for the
zestful excitement those exceptional processes add to the
same.
The large iridescent bubble of our luck here refuses to
burst, and we are beginning to believe that - at the worst
- it is of good tough rubber, guaranteed not to leak for
several weeks anyhow, and to collapse by gentle degrees
when it does. I find managers and dramatic agents waiting
[ 307 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


under every lamp-post with contracts in their hands.
Daniel Frohman offers vague but glittering terms for a
play for his wife - Margaret Illington - now starring in
Pinero's House in Order. Against all this of course in sheer
self-defence - to say nothing of self-respect - I set my
face as a flint. Shubert's 'publicity man' the other day beguiled me by treacherous means into Sarony's studio, and
had me photographed before I knew it. I send two pictures representing the least regrettable results. The one
bending forward is perhaps not so very bad. The other -
and perhaps both - I am afraid you will deplore. However, 'done is done and lost is lost and smashed to hell is
smashed to hell.",
NEW YORK, Oct. I4 (i906)
Here are some clippings which may amuse you. The
(John) Corbin one is interesting and acute, tho' he leaves
the poems little to say for themselves. The 'deadly
parallel' which he established between the play and the
Philippine poems will (I fear) strike a responsive chord in
your imperialistic bosom, though of course the parable will
not hold water, nor are the two cases in the least analogous,
essentially. However, the retort is so neat that I can't help
rejoicing in it, as a stroke of art, as I wrote Corbin after I
read it. It is hard to be told at this late day that one is a
mere echo and ape of former men; but it is all in a day's
work, and I dare say there is a good deal, superficially, to
warrant -the charge. I have been too careless in the matter
of expunging chance traces of 'influence' - a thing which
would have cost me no pains, and wopld have aided the
weaker brothers by removing a stone of stumbling.
Quoted from lines of the hero in The Great DIVide.
[ 308 ].




AMERICA - 1906


If my engagements here are not too pressing, I go to
Philadelphia tomorrow to hear Percy's Jeanne d'Arc.
THE ST. JAMES (Hotel)
PHILADELPHIA (Oct. I6, I908)
Last night the audience was cordial and today's newspapers are very complimentary, though theerformance
dragged and the many lovely passages f poetry went for
next to nothing, being badly rendered and-lost-i the vast
spaces of the theatre. Poor Percy is going about haggard,
listening to a thousand conflicting counsels as to cuts and
changes. I am hoping they will give him time to cut it
properly. Miss Marlowe is enthusiastic over her part and
Sothern is loyal. I send you the morning press notices.
This has given me to think - I mean about the problem
of the verse-play on our stage. I go back to New York this
afternoon, and shall probably stay there another week,
then I join you. Philadelphia wears the same benign aspect we remember. I have saluted our holy places.
Yours -
W(Postmarked New York, Oct. 19, I906)
The last two days have been full of business and turmoil - a mad round of reporters, cartoonists, literary and
dramatic agents, with plans to propose and contracts to
be signed, with Brother Douty (the agent for the studio
building) weaving an embroidery of legal threatenings and
slaughter over all. I shall have to pay for the studio during
the six months it has been vacant. I tried to get it back but
unsuccessfully. I realize now my folly in letting it go, for
it is the only livable place in New York at all within my
I 3o9 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


means, and I suppose I shall want to be here off and on,
shall have to be in fact, if my high dive into theatrics does
not prove a final and fatal header. The town seems to have
gone completely daft about the play, so much so that I
begin to feel concerning it a kind of distressing aversion
and shame.
MacKaye is here today, from Philadelphia, where it appears that his prospects - for which I feared - are good.
His play has been cut and otherwise quickened, and is now
going excellently, according to his own and newspaper reports.
I ran across Nordfelt here today, and expect to dine with
him tonight, in company with some other chosen spirits.
NEW YORK, Oct. 20, i906
Everything is all right here, though I am getting tired of
the round of excitement in which I am kept perforce, day
succeeding day with nothing done, nor even a quiet hour
to think or read. Yesterday I was approached with elaborate diplomacy, by an agent of Charles Frohman (the
main guy of the Syndicate, as you know) offering the most
alluring terms and conditions in case I would give him an
option on my next play. The offer was fifteen hundred
dollars advance payment, and royalty percentages nearly
twice as large as I am getting on The Great Divide. I turned
him down, of course, but I confess to feeling a twinge of
temptation to accept, in view of the fact that everything
(I mean as to time, stars, etc.) was left so alluringly vague.
Still, I know that the feeling of being-under contract would
paralyze my effort, and I did not seriously consider the
proposition even for a moment. The jubilee dinner which
Miller is giving comes off on Tuesday night. After that I
[ 310 ]




AMERICA - i906
want to go up to Dan Mason's joint in the Connecticut
hills and get a sniff of autumn air.
(Postmarked Oct. 22)
I go out this afternoon with Dan Mason to his country
place in Washington, Conn. From what he says I am prepared to like it. It is a thousand feet above sea-level, on
the watershed of the Housatonic River, perfectly countrylike and unspoiled, and only two hours from New York. I
worry a good deal about you these days. I fear that the
complications resulting from the fire, added to those already existing, must be dreadfully wearing.
WASHINGTON, CONN., Tuesday
This country hereabouts is almost almost good enough
to make one exclaim 'I will search no farther' and begin
at last to live. What it lacks is the chance for the spirit to
escape exultingly into vast distances; but it possesses
every intimate beauty and charm. We have just had a
great bonfire of maple-leaves, and how I wish you could
smell the smoke and watch the quivering embers, changing
like watered silk in the crisp evening breeze. The Masons
are hanging on as long as the weather will let them, like
the wise people they are, hoarding every minute, and
dreading the hour which shall knell them to their hundredand-'leventh-street flat.
NEW YORK, Oct. 25, i906
The old studio has slipped through my fingers irrevocably, by virtue of my dilatoriness, but today I found
another which - apart from its comparative expensiveness - is very tempting. It is at the top of a new studio
[31I1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


building just erected by the Arts Club on Twentieth Street.
The building is a very tall one, and from the windows of
the rooms I have an option on you can see all over the city
and the East River, an inspiring view. Besides the studio
there is a bedroom and a bathroom - everything in good
taste and excellently furnished. If the price were less I
should snatch at it, for I could not be better situated at
such recurrent periods as I want to be or have to be in
New York. The studio building is connected with the
club, making the meal problem easy, and it fronts on
Gramercy Park, one of the few quiet corners of the city.
The hotel and lodging-house existence which I have been
leading renders the prospect of a livable place as a pied-cterre in time of need very enticing, but the price (eight
hundred) seems extravagant, for a person of my tastes and
resources.
NEW YORK, Oct. 27, i906
I meant to write you yesterday from Cos Cob, where I
spent the day with Torrence, but I couldn't get away from
people long enough. There is a charming place to stay at
Cos Cob, an old Revolutionary-times house, on a quaint
village street (or rather road), kept by a nice young
couple, gentle folk, in unconventional family style. A
rocky, hilly country is at hand, and the Sound not far off
(walking distance). I believe it will be a great resource as
a place to run to, when I am in New York and want a
breath of country. Upon mature consideration I have
decided not to take the studio. The club aspect of it
threatens to be too pronounced, and the price is high, very
high considering the amount of use I should get out of it.
Saturday night was the long-talked-of dinner at the
[312 1




AMERICA - 1906


Players Club. There were notabilities present, and 'a
good time was had.' I went home by daylight leaving a
few old inveterates still talking theatre over the demolished
table.
NEW YORK, Nov. 2 (I9c6)
Have been struggling with the blue devils all day and
yesterday - perhaps the back-wash of your 'poetryletter,' which sent its first wave by me so innocuously. I
keep starting up in a terror of haste, hearing a dreadful
Voice cry that life is going or gone and nothing done. And
then another, thin and satiric, inquiring in a level tone
what this so important business is which isn't done, and
exactly what my part in it would seem to be, anyhow!
Disturbing gentry, both. Perhaps their hanging-about is
partly due to reading over the proofs of my North American article on Joe, which will now be out soon.
(Postmarked New York, Nov. 4, I906)
I can't shake off the cloud of oppression and quasidespair which hangs over me, but I know perfectly in my
inner mind that it is nothing except the revenge which
Nature is taking for my too long loaf. Don't be alarmed
for me; I have myself in hand and shall be all right soon.
Sunday, Nov.  (1906)
I blew into town last night, after one of the most amusing and exciting four days imaginable spent in the quest
of an abandoned farm. The quaint and world-forgotten
places I found, the delicious types! One of them, for
instance, an old house standing high in rolling hill country
(Iooo feet elevation) overlooking a fine forest-locked lake,
with eighty acres of land attached, all for two thousand
[313 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


dollars. When I asked the owner how old the house was,
he looked up at the roof-tree, and said with unforgettable
dignity and pathos: 'I have lived here for the seventy-six
years of my life, and my great-grandfather left this house,
with his four brothers, to join the forces of General Washington.' The house is staunch and goodly still. It seems a
sacrilege even to think of buying it, and exiling the aged
couple; but they (or at least the old gentleman) is anxious
to sell; the old lady manifested a cold silent hostility toward
me, and there is no doubt a tragic story here, in the divided will of these old friends and lovers, which has kept
me awake nights thinking of it. There is also probably
privation and suffering. I am going to try and smuggle a
little money into their hands, if it can be done without
violence to their pride, which was manifestly great. The
thought of that ancestral pair alone in that mountain
solitude, facing a New England winter with their meager
store of strength and comforts, is one to dwarf the imaginings of Shakespeare and Sophocles.
(Postmarked Nov. iS, i906)
I stumbled yesterday on an apartment which was so
tempting as a permanent pied-ac-terre that I took it, and
am now engaged in fixing it up. It is on Waverly Place,
very near Washington Square; the entire top floor of an
old-fashioned house where you never see a soul or hear one
squeak. There are six rooms, including a kitchen; two of
the rooms have grates, and are very pleasant places, also a
third smaller room with a good light. The two other rooms
are darkish, but will make excellent store-houses, etc. It
has just been painted and papered throughout, and is
clean as a pin. There is a nice janitress, who will take care
[3141




AMERICA - 1906


of the apartment for a consideration. The price is only
ten dollars a month more than I paid for the studio, and
though there is no single room which is as pleasant as that
one, the possession of such realms and islands of space will
be a boon, will it not? There is to me a quaintness and oldworldishness about the whole establishment which I believe you will also feel and prize.
There have been great doings here this week - a sumptuous production of Pippa Passes (which was damned unconditionally by a carping, narrow-minded press) and
Mme. Nazimova in Hedda Gabler, critical opinion being
sharply divided and faction running high. To my mind
she was emphatically not Hedda, though greatly fascinating and artistically consistent. Tomorrow and Friday
Miss Anglin and Lena Ashwell play alternate tragedy and
comedy roles in Mrs. Dane's Defence. Henry Arthur
Jones, the author of the piece, you remember, is here to
serve as arbiter of arbiters upon their performance. I hear
that the New Theatre, having proved its thirst for modernity by producing Engaged, is now demonstrating its zeal
for the high and beautiful by giving a dramatization of
Rex Beach's The Spoilers under the mild patronizing eye
of Daniel Frohman.
(Postmarked New York, Nov. 17, I906)
I am engaged in a struggle similar to yours, trying to get
my rooms in shape for future occupancy. Paper hangers,
carpet-layers, plumbers, et al., are in their immortal conspiracy against even my humble plans, and the days go by
without visible progress made. I am tired in my very soul
of living in hotels, as to the body, and in a no-man's land of
idleness and frivolity as to the mind.
[315 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Thursday night I went to a dinner given by Henry Arthur Jones to 'the Dramatists of America,' as the menu
grandiloquently stated. There were some hundreds of them
(the D's of A), doubtless all known to fame, but with a few
exceptions profoundly unknown to me. Jones himself was
delightful, and some of the old guard, like Bronson Howard, interesting to see and talk to. Sousa was there, and
marched through his dinner at a stirring tempo.
Last night saw the opening of the Lew Field's burlesque
of my play, under title The Great Decide. Parts of it are excruciatingly funny, and it contains a lot of sound criticism
in the guise of travesty. You must see it before the gas is
all out of the champagne.
I send you the long-delayed article on Stickney. The
dreadful syntax of the opening sentence is not my fault.
NEW YORK, Nov. 21, I906
We (Percy and I) went together to The Great Decide, of
which I send a program. The burlesque is not on the
whole good, though Miss Anglin's appearance and manner
are caught to the life in delicious parody.
So the New Theatre is about to join the great majority
of ill-considered ventures of which it was so conspicuous an
example! Absit in pace! Of course I will do anything I can
to help Robertson, even to public speaking, though the
thought of that sends cold chills down my spine.
Telegram:
Nov. 27, 1906
COMING HOME FOR THANKSGIVING ANYHOW
ARRIVE FOUR WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
PENNSYLVANIA                         W
[36 ]




AMERICA -I 907


NEW YORK, 7an. 4, 1907
Since arriving in these blatant regions, homesickness,
dreary weather, and a series of contretemps in connection
with my rooms, have kept me from writing, lest I might
break the bright circle of our understanding with my
peevish distressful mood.
As for the rooms, nothing that I had left orders for had
been done, or if done, so badly done that it were better left
undone. My water-pipes had frozen and burst, as one detail, and as another, my grates today absolutely refused to
draw and concentrated their energies upon filling the
world and my lungs with infernal and unstanchable smoke.
Landlord Smith promises that some revolving contraption
of tin affixed to the chimney-pots will make me wonder
why I ever had a fleeting doubt of him or of his works. I
suspend judgment, but with a fainting heart. My gas was
not turned on (another detail) and thirty-six hours of
pleading and threat have not yet availed to convince the
gentlemen of the gas-monopoly that, having pocketed my
deposit as guarantee of good faith, they have not discharged toward me every earthly duty.
107 WAVERLY PLACE, J7an. 8 (1907)
I have got nearly settled by now, and am beginning to
see a little meaning in life again. The chimney-cap, about
which I was skeptical, seems to be all that the authorities
claim for it. My grate draws like a wheel-horse; I have a
fine fire in it this afternoon, which was kindled three days
ago. I was instructed enough to buy a very high-grade
anthracite, which burns to a white powder and makes
absolutely no clinkers - so far. I have followed your instructions in fitting up the small front room as a bedroom,
[ 3I7]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


and a few nights have so inured my tympanum to the
street noises that I only wake up when they stop, which
is seldom enough in all conscience. The front rooms have
begun to take on a habitable, even a cosy, air; the larger
back room is a limbo into which I rarely venture.
You will be glad to know that the seat-sales at the
Princess have picked up again since the holidays. Miller
was not, as I had feared, discouraged by the falling-off; all
the theatres shared the same fate. To my considerable relief, he has about given up his plan of going to London for
the spring season. He thinks, and I have always thought,
that to interrupt the run here, and hazard the future fortunes of the play on a more than doubtful London success,
with its inevitable bad effect upon the next American
season, in case it didn't pull off, is poor strategy. JHIe plans
now to run here through the entire season, open at Daly's
next fall, and keep it on the boards there as long as the
public wants it, then to tour the country with a solid New
York endorsement back of him, uninvalidated by a possible
'frost' abroad.
I am re-reading Wm. James's wonderful book, Varieties
of Religious Experience, with a view to better understanding my man Schlatka.' Do you know the book? The main
text might not interest you, but you would be carried away
by the 'documents' cited in illustration. These are numerous and amazing; and they range over all history. Already
I feel a sounder grip on my theme from studying them.
James's treatment is masterly. He gives the cynics
and the skeptics all they ask, and then proceeds quietly
to spread out the documents - chiefly autobiographical, until the mind gradually loses its resistance, and is
The name first given to the Faith-Healer in W. V. M.'s play of that name.
[3181




AMERICA - I907


overwhelmed and confounded by the heaped-up evidence.
Not that James has a thesis to prove; he merely investigates and compares, but the conviction which emerges,
that there is a living divine spirit at work in the world,
by excluding which we are lessened and by receiving increased, seems at last inescapable.
I07 WAVERLY PLACE, 7an. I2 (1907)
I had (I use the past tense for self-encouragement) the
devil's own time about my rooms, and after I got comparatively settled, and turned to my work as to a refuge,
there descended upon me the water-spouts of God in the
shape of the black melancholy which always lies in wait
for me at that threshold, after I have been too long
away. Well, you needn't worry about that; it will pass, is
already passing. It is imperative for me not to be anxious,
or in a hurry, for that spoils all. I must take example by
the large generosity with which you treat life, and use myself a little in the same spirit of tolerance. Perhaps I have
been only lonesome and homesick; it is very likely. You
have been continually in my mind, but not as a part of the
distressing foreground, rather a light behind and above.
Torrence and Robinson have the dramatic fever acutely.
Torrence has just finished a three-acter which he is to read
to me tonight. It is called The Madstone - certainly a
striking title, is it not? It seems the 'mad-stone' exists
among the folklore properties of his native Xenia, Ohio.
It is a small porous stone supposed to possess the property
of extracting poison from the human body, when placed
upon an envenomed wound. He uses it as a symbol of
woman. Robinson thinks the play is a big thing. He (R.)
has also one in first draught, called Ferguson's Ivory Tower,
[ 3I9 I




LETTERS TO HARRIET


the ivory tower, I believe, being Art. It would be won'derfully good luck if they both pulled it off. One could begin to
think the American drama, long awaited and devoutly
prayed-for babe, really about to be born.
The Faith-Healer is stodgy and sullen, but I haven't lost
hope of its starting in some day to behave. If it doesn't, I
know exactly what to do with it, to wit, chuck it over the
moon and forget where it falls.
7an. I3 (1907)
Your picture of the benign old madman in the snowy
street, sowing mysterious seeds in the air, gave me the
good shivers. It must have been Old Pourquoi, in a
Christmas mood.
Don't worry about Brother What's-his-name the book
collector. He is an amiable lunatic who has devoted his
life and a large fortune to gathering first editions of living
authors (all of them potentially dead authors) and getting
them to write on the fly-leaves.
Torrence read me his play last night. It is quite a remarkable thing. I have already got Miller interested in it
for Mme. Nazimova. Will tell you more about it later.
Write me whatever occurs to you to say about James's
Religious Experiences - or any part of it.
(Postmarked New York, Jan. i8, 1907)
My not writing has been due to a feeling that the Faith_Healer didn't want me to. You understand. In the
conscious region I suffer from a kind of paralysis and inhibition about him, which prevents my putting pen to
paper (to any purpose), but I feel also that something is
going on 'inside.' It is clearer to me every day that the
[ 320 1




AMERICA -1907


greater part of any real work of the imagination is done in
the subterranean regions of one's personality, and that the
part of wisdom is absolute passivity and patience. This is
a hard lesson to learn, and a thrice hard method to put in
practice, especially for one so impatient and faithless as I,
am. Doubtless the inability to sustain the period of incubation, the heathen yielding to the demand for something to exercise the surface faculties upon, is the secret of
many tragic failures in this way of life.
Tonight I am going to see a Yiddish play in the Bowery,
by one Kramer, pronounced by no less an authority than
Mr. Huneker to be the 'greatest American dramatist.' As
you would say, I do not know my Kramer.
107 WAVERLY PLACE
Monday, Jan. 21 (1907)
I went last night to the annual dinner of the 'American
Dramatists' Club' at Delmonico's. The dinner and the
wines were good, and dear old Bronson Howard presided;
but here the mitigation ended. The guest of honor was
Charles Klein, whose dishwater Lion and Mouse is just
rounding its five-hundredth performance (consecutive
run) in this city, with five road companies going full steam.
This furnished the keynote of all the speeches, which, taken
together, constituted a more naively blatant mumbojumbo ritual before the shrine of 'Success' than I would
have thought possible in a civilized gathering. The idea
that any other standard of judgment existed than that
furnished by the box-office tally-sheet never for one
instant, even by innuendo, lifted its head, throughout two
hours and a half of speech-making. All plays and all playwrights were by tacit consent ranged in a hierarchy of
[321 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET
merit according to the amount of cash receipts they represented, little Klein, with pathetic face and winking
eyes, heading the august line, in which even I, God help
me, had for the nonce my quasi-conspicuous place! 0, fie
on't! Why not write a play to show up in its true colors
this success-madness? It is certainly a dreadful organic
disease in our society, an impostume that cries to heaven
to be lanced, and lanced deep. I hear you saying that no
work of art with so moralistic an origin ever got anywhere.
But I am not so sure that moral passion (if it be really
that) is not as good a motive-spring of art as any other
passion; it may include most others, if it reach the creative
tension and the apocalyptic elevation, as it certainly
sometimes does (as in the Bible).
107 WAVERLY PLACE, N.Y., fan. 25 (I907)
I am making very slow progress with The Faith-Healer.
It is a vastly more laborious job than writing a wholly new
play would be. It is like building a new house out of the
materials of an old one, plus a lot of quite disparate
material, while a family for whom you care is occupying
the premises. This simile is expressly designed to appeal
to you. Your scattered comments are of help to me,
whenever you are moved to make them.
Percy is here and wants to be remembered affectionately to you. He is hovering about unable to make up his
mind whether to wait for the opening night of his play here
or not, on account of the way in which the Marlowe has
treated it. To stop her would make sawdust of his and
Sothern's friendship. Tonight I go to a dinner given by
that august body, the National Institute of Arts and
Letters.
[322]




AMERICA - 1907


107 WAVERLY PLACE, N.Y., Jan. 31 (1907)
I have spent rather a strenuous day, beginning with
a tussle with The Faith-Healer (de novo) and ending with a
lecture by William James, who is exploiting a new philosophy ('Pragmatism') destined, he thinks, to do for metaphysics what the Reformation did for theology, namely,
hand it over to the laity and to practical men. The idealwhich he is working out would interest you, I believe, as
much as it does me. In a nutshell, it is that there is no such
thing as abstract truth, but that truth depends entirely
upon the actual working value, or 'fruits for life' of any
given proposition. Of course we all act upon this hypothesis instinctively, but we do not apply it courageously or
consistently in conduct, nor do we as yet dare to follow out
its vital consequences in thought. It looks to me like a
very high explosive, capable in the right hands of clearing
away pretty much all the century-old lumber by which our
lives are encumbered.                               7
This morning I followed your bidding in jotting down as
many points as I could think of for the new play.
Robinson has written a three-acter called Van Zorn. I
haven't yet read it, but he gave me over the coffee and
cigars a full synopsis of it, and it sounds good to me. I
believe we have got the ball rolling, and that the next ten
years, if nothing happens to interfere, will see something
done.
NEW YORK, Feb. 28 (1907)
I haven't anything encouraging to report about the
Washington affair. Miller has got his teeth set to do it, and
nothing, I'm afraid, will stop him. It is a blatant piece of
advertising, combined with an equally blatant desire to
[323 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


'get even' with the Washington papers for their summary
treatment of us last fall. It will probably bear fruits of a
like nature with the seed from which it springs, but as
nothing can be done about it, the only course is not to
worry over the prospect or repine at the outcome.
Meanwhile another matter has come up, which I want
to submit to you for your advice. Torrence has money for
a Mediterranean trip. Something of the kind he needs, for
the winter is going hard with him, and unless he gets into
a milder climate, his doctor won't answer for his lungs.
He is wild to have me go with him. He proposes to sail
next week either Wednesday or Saturday, and be gone
two and a half to three months. Perhaps this is a chance
which I ought to seize, to get a bracing touch of Europe
with a congenial companion. What do you think? I feel
stale, mentally, and a few weeks in - say - Sicily, North
Africa, and Spain, seem very alluring.
It seems very low and selfish to be thinking of the
Mediterranean with you bound to Chicago. Alas!
107 WAVERLY PLACE
Feb. 28 (1907)
I have been putting Torrence off until your telegram
should arrive, but now that it is here, and sounds as if you
were unequivocally in for the plan, I have told him I
would go, and everything is in train. My heart soars at the
prospect of seeing again those magic lands, and sinks at the
thought that you will not be there to see them with me.
Some day, Heaven send!


[ 324 1




AMERICA - 1907


107 WAVERLY PLACE
March 3, 1907
Torrence has gone to Ohio to see his folks, and won't be
back until Friday.
I met Stickney's younger brother last night at dinner.
His resemblance to Joe, though after all not very great,
was sufficient to throw me into a state of perturbation. I
had seen him once before, when Joe and I spent an evening
in his brother's rooms, and at that time I noticed hardly
any likeness at all, but either it has grown since, or else I
supplied it. Joe was very fond of him, but he seems to have
none of his brother's magical quality beyond the physical
resemblance. I dine tonight at the Fletchers' (Herrick's
brother-in-law) to meet a friend of Joe's, who has expressed
a desire to see me on that score. Nearly every week I encounter a similar example of the hold Joe had taken upon
the affections of the men who knew him, and the tacit
free-masonry which his memory creates among all such.
That is what you call, and what I am willing to call with
you, success in life.
Robertson I writes beseeching me to finish The FaithHealer before I go, for production at Ravinia this spring.
I have tried to show him how impossible that is, but doubtless he will not be convinced. Even if it were completed,
it seems to me that Ravinia would be a main poor place to
launch it, before a lot of summer pleasurelings eating ices.
March 10, 1907
The bay is broadening out majestically, and the Atlantic calls beyond. I shall think 'long thoughts' of you
out here on the ocean.
' Donald Robertson.
[3251




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Our little ship's company looks pretty unpromising, but
I am glad there are so few, for one feels the sea much more
movingly thus than in a big boat crowded with chattering
humans.
My steward warns me that the mail for the pilot boat is
being made up. Goodbye, and God bless you for everything.
ON BOARD SS. ROMANIC
March i8, 1907
Your birthday has dawned refulgent after ten days of
almost uninterrupted cloud, rain, and storm. The first
three or four days out we had a most terrific gale, in the
midst of which our ship, though staunch, rolled and
wallowed herself nearly to pieces, and reduced everybody
on board to a state of pulp. I managed to keep on deck
throughout, though with mingled feelings. Our ship'scompany is a remarkably pleasant one, including several
families of old-fashioned Southerners - Maryland and
Virginia people - and they have mitigated what would
otherwise have been -in view of the bad weather -
rather an unrewarded crossing. They tell great stories of
what is to be found down that way in farms.
We celebrated St. Patrick's Day, and I wore my green
ribbon with a difference, for your sake. I wonder if you
celebrated. I hope so.
We are promised Gibraltar tomorrow afternoon or evening - perhaps too late to disembark until Wednesday
morning. Our plan now is to go at once to Tangier, and
spend perhaps a week or ten days thereabouts. We dream
of an excursion in true Oriental style, with camels and a military escort, back into the desert to the holy city of Fez.
[3261




En Voyage -I 907
I would certainly make it if I were alone, but I am a little
afraid to risk it for Ridgely, in his present state of health.
But we shall see. In case the desert trip doesn't seem
practicable, we shall come back to Spain, by way of Cadiz,
and spend Holy Week in Seville, where there are even
greater goings-on, I hear, than in Rome, with a grand
bull-fight Easter Day as a culminating splendor.
What did the Lord mean by creating the blue of this sea
and sky, and not placing you in the midst to behold them?
There have been porpoises, absurdly mythological, about
the ship this morning, and flying fish, and a whale spouting
off southward, a leviathan by the immense fountain he
flung up into the dazzling air. Soon we shall see the
mountain which Atlas holds on his shoulders, and then the
pillars that Hercules set to mark the end of the world.




EUROPE
MARCH 23, I 907 - MAY 29, I 907
TANGIER, March 23 (1907)
I write this in a native cafe, in the midst of cross-legged,
burnoused Moors, who look every one like an Old Testament figure, and sip coffee with the solemnity of a
prophetic function. We have been only two days in this
extraordinary place, but two days so full of smashing sensations that it seems more like as many years. It is hopeless to attempt to convey what it is like, you will have to
come and see. We have had great luck in getting hold of a
native guide (named Mustapha) who, in addition to being
straight out of the Arabian Nights, speaks enough English
of a weird type to lay the life here open to us, where otherwise it would be all pretty much a sealed book.
Yesterday in the market square there were dervishes
who slashed themselves with knives as they danced to the
sound of goat-skin drums; there was a snake-charmer who
teased a huge reptile with his protruded tongue until it
struck him again and again in the mouth; there was a
story-teller intoning a Tale of the Caliphs to all who would
sit to hear; and a troop of actors disputing popularity with
a band of acrobats, on the equal terms of a flat scrap of
earth innocent of scenic accessories; and gathered about
these and other attractions was such a crowd of personages
as I have never thought to see outside of a dream - on
donkeys, on camels, on Arab ponies (beauties! They can
be bought for a hundred and fifty dollars apiece, and I am
sure would be worth a thousand on the New York dock, if
[ 328 1




EUROPE - I907
they were not certain to be worth more than that on a
farm). Mustapha is imploring us to go with him to Fez,
and we are balancing the attraction of this proposal against
Easter Week in Seville. Probably the latter will capture
us, since the weather is unpropitious for camping, and
caravan travel is so ruinously expensive that we should
very likely have to stay in Fez as prisoners for debt. The
great drawback to our pleasure thus far is the weather,
which persists dark and cold. I haven't been able to get
any photographs yet because of the lack of sunlight - an
irritating circumstance, since alluring subjects beckon
everywhere.
I think of you constantly in connection with this life out
here. It is all so ripely human; the machinery so much less
obvious than with us at home; you would love every inch
of it, and every inch of it would love you.
GRAND H8TEL DE PARIS
SEVILLE (Not dated)
You will see that we had to give up the camping trip in
Morocco, and are started on our pilgrimage through Spain.
The weather remains unpromising, and it is likely that we
shall go on from Gibraltar by the boat which leaves there
on the 8th of April.
Seville has been intensely interesting, chiefly for the
dances, which are all they are cracked up to be, and as
much more as you please. Last night there was a wonderful series of them, twenty-four in all, no two alike, and each
more maddeningly good than the other. I thought of you,
and seemed to understand your passion for the dance, and
the loftiness of the dance as an art form, as never before.
Words cannot describe or even hint at the intoxicating
[ 329 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


quality of the rhythms, mingled yet distinct, each imperiously asserting itself while luxuriously yielding to the
other, of the guitars and the human forms, as they fought
out their amorous and jocund battle.
Ridgely proves to be a capital travelling companion,
self-supporting, good-humored, and sensitive to all the
varied excitements, small and large, which make up the
poetry of travel. His health is good, and there seems to be
no danger that there is anything radically the matter with
him.
ALHAMBRA, GRANADA
April 3, 1907
As you will see by the superscription, we are on our way
south again, after a dash at Madrid and Toledo. These
latter proved rather unprofitable (except for the Velasquez
pictures) and we are kicking ourselves for not having made
directly here from Seville. For in spite of Washington
Irving and tourists and tourist-parasites, this is without
question one of the most lovely places in the world, perhaps more beautiful in its decay and humiliation than it
ever was in its hour of pride. There is a moon, if one stays
up late enough, and everywhere and always many-voiced
rills of running water, and if you are patient you will hear
a nightingale or two for sure.
I have had no word from you yet. I am hoping confidently for a word at Gibraltar, where we go Sunday to
take the boat for Naples. Personally I should be glad to
stay longer in Spain, but Torrence is anxious to see the
worlds ahead which are still to conquer. I can't quite say
that I go unwillingly, for Italy is always Italy, and Spain is
hard in key and a bit barren in comparison. Either that, or
[330]




EUROPE - I907


else I haven't the same voracious appetite for these things
as in the past. I keep thinking of America and homematters even when the sights about me are most absorbing.
I am in fact, I suppose, a little homesick, and certainly a
little restless, and not able to give myself up, as I want to, to
these half-alien beauties and diversions. This I take to be
a symptom, warning me that I have got into a rut, or is it
rather a sign that my centre of curiosity, of excitement, has
permanently shifted from the outer to the inner world, and
from what you call 'scenery' to life, and of course therefore
to life as I know it best, as I know it only, which is at
home? Whichever it is, I am going to go on until I feel the
rejuvenation of which I feel in need, unless the fact of wanting and expecting it keeps it away. All of this is more or
less morbid self-scrutiny, of course, and to be chucked
forthwith. I am reading the Spanish drama assiduously,
chiefly Echegaray and Galdos. It strikes me as awfully
thin. Galdos had a wonderful lead in his Electra (which
get and read if you can find a translation) but he fooled
it away in a most childish fashion. Echegaray's Gran
Galeoto is also stunning in its initial idea, but worked out
in a vein of flabby sentimentality which is hard to bear
in the orotund original and must be quite unbearable in
English. These two plays seem to be about as good things
as they have to show; in the mass, however, the product is
striking, for all the short-comings of each work individually.
We go from here to Ronda, and thence to Gibraltar and
Naples, where we are due on the eleventh. I hope for
quite a harvest of letters there. The stupidity of space and
time are painfully emphasized by the international postal
system.
[ 331]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Le SAVOY
NAPLES, April i6, I 907
The three days sail through the Mediterranean was delightful, but the fiend's own weather reigns in Naples,
storm and cold and rain implacable. It seems I shall never
learn, in spite of many bitter lessons, that Italy in spring is
a delusion.
The rain has ceased, the clouds seem to be breaking, and
Ridgely is at my elbow suggesting his desires as to sightseeing.
R. PALUMBO HOTEL CESARI
ROMA, April 23 (I907)
We are in Rome, after ten days of ineffectual waiting for
winter to recede from the country south of here and allow
us to renourish our shattered illusions. The most relentless
weather, cold, rainy, and dark has held us in its grasp.
You know how dark weather always shuts for me all the
doors of hope, and dark weather in southern Italy is worse
than anywhere else, because more hatefully unnatural.
We traversed the scenes which I had known of old, but
there was nothing in them to recognize, except a bald, forbidding outline. We were in Sorrento, but I refused to go
and see the square where I saw the Good-Friday procession
years ago. That at least I wanted to keep. By one of those
tricks of chance which makes Nature seem at times
possessed of personal favoritisms and grudges, the moment we gave it up for a bad job and boarded the train for
Rome the sun came out in his splendor, and has shone
since with a riotous and exulting brilliancy. I forgive the
spiteful intention for the sake of the resultant thawing-out
of mind, body, and heart, for now as always I arise as from
death and rejoice aloud when the sun consents to shine.
[332 1




EUROPE - 1907


I have a note from M —, inviting me to look in on
them at their cottage near London. Our plans include a
week or two in England before sailing for home. I don't
know why, but I feel - still feel - rather played-out and
sluggish. I keep longing for home and my desk, but know
also that I should do no good there until by the grace of
God I have picked up tone and vitality. There is no excuse that I can see for having lost these desirable adjuncts.
Rome is flooded with glorious sunlight.
FLORENCE, May I, 1907
We reached Florence yesterday, and today I have a
May-Day gift of two beautiful letters from you, one
written before leaving for Parkman, the other from there.
They have given me, as your words always do, new hope
and strength. In return for the white violets I send you an
ivy leaf from Keats's grave in Rome, plucked for you with
many thoughts. The daisies which used to cover the
grave are gone, but the ivy does its vigorous best to make
good the loss.
The weather, with complaints about which I must already have worn you out, continues bad to the point of
distraction and despair. In four weeks we have had hardly
four bright days. I do not know my Italy. Yesterday,
however, along with the letters, as a necessary and preordained accompaniment to their song of life, burst upon
us a day of glorious brightness, of lustre altogether unworldly. I awoke with the intoxication of it in my veins,
and wandered about all day as drunk as a lord, unable to
look at anything but the sunlight, or to feel anything but
the amorous clasp of it on body and soul. My dependence
[333 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


on sunlight - the mere material solar article - seems to
grow greater rather than less with - in spite of - years
and wisdom. In the heightened state of being to which
this visitation raised me, I had a big illumination, handed
out gratis by the inscrutable provider who has been so
stingy of late.
r To speak plainly, as I was walking along the street
thinking of nothing but the good feel of the sun and the
good taste of the air, suddenly something clicked inside, my
head, a kaleidoscopic down-rush and up-thrust and overtumble of broken pictures and half-thoughts passed before
my mind, whirled a minute, settled into place, and behold!
there was the third part of my trilogy. For an hour, or a
quarter of a second, or however long it lasted, it was as
plain as print and asperfect asthetomic structurof a
ewel. This morning it is dim and disjointed again, but
that does not much discourage me, for I have seen it once,
and I shall see it again, according to all the precedents
tin my mental history. Also according to precedent, it is
nothing actually new, but a rushing into organic relation
to each other of several things which I have thought of for
a long time. It is the Eve play, combined with a continuation and culmination of the 'Judgment' theme as it is
left at the end of the Masque. This element of the poem
must lock the whole - I mean all three parts - together,
but it will be brief, for I feel that the subject is one which
won't stand extended handling. Also, your conviction
that the theme of the third part must lie in the words of
the Apocalypse, 'The old earth has passed away, and a
new earth, etc.' finds a place in my present conception; it
is only to be suggested, at the very end, and that too in a
way that may seem to you inadequate, even trivial. But
[334




EUROPE - 1907


you wait and see. Finally, there is something 'big and important' to be done to the last act of The Fire-Bringer, as a
prelude to the development of the theme in the two succeeding parts. This also was handed down to me off the
pantry shelf by the same good grandam in the same
quixotic spasm of generosity, after I had got tired crying
for it.
I had been in the depths, debating whether it were better
to get off the earth altogether or to turn reformer and useful citizen. God save us all for pagans and faithless!
Among them I shall doubtless soon again be numbered.
The total inability to 'see out' of a mood of discouragement, to remember, to discount, to strike a rational balance, is one of the most amazing and awful things in life.
It is the suggestress of suicide and the mother of dead dogs.
It lies at the root of all our pitiful bungling and waste,
with regard to the real issues of our lives. At least it is so
with me. You will know what I mean by this, since you
have had to suffer with me the vital consequences of it;
you will understand, and understand, and understand,
above pity or forgiveness or regret. You will do this, and
you are the only woman on earth who could.
It is quite possible, if I feel moved to work, that I will
stay here, and let Torrence go on to France and England
without me. I should like to get the new piece started before coming home.
HOTEL DE ROME ET SUISSE
VENISE, May I6 (1907)
Your letter with the terrible news about Sieg came
yesterday. I have been trembling all day for fear another
would come telling of a relapse, for it seems absolutely
[335]




LETTERS To HARRIET


i~ncredible that he should have got through without fatal
internal injuries. Your account of the accident was so
meagre that once or twice I have thought you were only
trying to break the blow, and have reread your words in
that sense: only to conclude that I was wrong, chiefly because I know that is not the way you would handle a hard
situation. What a dreadful moment it must have been for
you, when you saw the wheels go over him, and heard his
cry; and still more afterward, except that then I know
your powers were all bound up as in a trance with the act
of succor.
Summer has come in like a lion; the days here in wonderful Venice have been radiant beyond description. I am
glad that Italy relented toward me at the last, 'and rewarded my constant love by investing herself in her proper
glory. The change came on the very day when, as I wrote
you, the fates vouchsafed me a sudden and perfect vision
of the poem I want to write. Let us think 'it an omen.
I wish you could see the lustre that bathes water and sky,
and all the noble works of man between., as I sit here
on a balcony beside the Grand Canal, an hour before
sunset. I know nothing to compare it to, in its generosity
and harmonic fullness.
We leave for Paris tomorrow, where we shall make only
the briefest stay; then London, and (I hope) some quiet
place in the country where I can settle down for a couple
of weeks, long enough to get my poem started, and feel
some beginnings of sureness take the place of the anxieties
and fears which assail me when I bend my thoughts that
way. It is all as clear as day, but can I find the words?
And if the words, can I find the music.? All creation puts
on mocking forms to say No, No! and only the still small
[3361




EUROPE - 1907
voice, says Yes, and that falteringly. M- writes from
her Iffley that the hedges are in blossom, and invites me
to a cup of tea. A cup of tea I think will suffice for Iffley.
I have in mind a place on the Irish Sea, or perhaps in Ireland, where I haven't yet been. I rather dread the primness and decorum of landscape and people in the tight
little isle. More than once I have been tempted to go to
Palestine; but I am deterred by the thought of the added
weeks of absence from home, and also by a feverish impatience to have done with gross locomotion and to revisit
myself. I have found the refreshment which I sought, the
fountains have again been unsealed, if briefly yet with
thrilling promise, and there is not much use in gadding
about longer.
I shall write from Paris. I rather dread going there, on
poor Joe's account.
SAVOY HOTEL, LONDON, May 27 (1907)
I have let too many days go by since my last letter, but
we have been moving rapidly from place to place, and I
have felt nervous and unsettled. To tell the truth I feel so
still. London is a very wonderful place, and sometime or
other I want to spend a long stretch of time here, but at
present the soles of my feet burn. I suppose the cold fact
is that I am homesick.
Yesterday Torrence and I went out to see Swinburne,
being armed with a letter of introduction. S. was invisible, sending excuses by his house-mate Watts-Dunton,
into whose less deaf ear we shouted our names and other
matters till the welkin rang. Not a gleam of humanity
emanated from the pursy, snuffy little man, until we
thundered an inquiry concerning his own works -Jylwin
[337 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


and The Coming of Love. The transformation was miraculous. He held forth for one amazing hour upon himself,
regarding the subject, systematically, from one viewpoint
after another, almost visibly keeping tally of the subdivisions of his theme upon his fat little fingers. We sat
frozen in a kind of ecstasy, compounded of humor and
horror, for the self-concentration of it was really horrible.
This will all strike you as ill-natured and inhuman and
Harvardian, but that is because I cannot convey any impression of the involved and swollen egotism of the thing -
the really ghastly and monstrous lack of proportion in the
brain of the man. At the end he showered upon us copies
of all his works, after we had shouted our names and the
spelling thereof a half-dozen times into his best ear, as well
as the name of poor Stedman, who had given us the introduction with the assurance that both Swinburne and
Watts-Dunton were his life-long intimates.
Let me not close this letter in cynical vein, for my heart
is very full of thoughts and longings that are the reverse of
cynical, and reaches out to you in an appeal which there
are no words to phrase, imploring you to deal rightly with
our common fate, forgetting my imperfections of will, my
sometime lack of trust in life, out of which flow all my
sorrows, and all yours.
W_
Cable message                 LoNDO1, May 29, '07
SAILING TODAY MAJESTIC




AMERICA
SEPTEMBER 20, I907 -APRIL 28, 1909
(On his arrival with Ridgely Torrence in New York,
W. V. M. was met there by Harriet with whom he returned
to Chicago. He spent the summer at 2970 Groveland
Avenue and at Mackinac Island, Mich. From Chicago,
Sept. I3, I907, he wrote to P. M-K.: 'I am scheduled
Cornishwards next week.')
NEW YORK, Sept. 20, 1907
I have spent two days here, very busy doing nothing.
Not even time to get in to see Miller, and now there is no
opportunity, as I have promised Percy to go with him tonight to see the husky old romantic actor, James O'Neill,
do that husky old play Virginius, resurrected from the
ashes wherein our fathers saw it entombed.
Percy gives me the news, clipped from a dramatic paper
that Miss Anglin is to be succeeded in the role of Ruth by
Miss Matthison - you remember, the lady who captured
all our hearts as Everyman.
I go up to Cornish tomorrow with Percy and your
friend, Shipman," you remember, the author of the little
war play whom you saw on the opening night in Chicago.
I shall stay up there only a few days, then to Newton.
NEWTON, MASS., Sept. 27 (1907)
Here I am in Newton, after a visit of four days at Cornish. Cornish was very quiet, and therefore pleasant -
'1 Louis Evan Shipman, of Cornish, N.H., author of D'Arcy of the Guards.
[339,




LETTERS TO HARRIET


there seems to be less social fuss and feathers than last year.
My plans are a good deal in the air. There is the Maine
coast to explore, and there is Gloucester, or Annisquam,
where I feel pretty sure I could work well, and there is New
York, which perhaps in view of the immediate situation is
wisest. I am in the air, and as uneasy as most terrestrial
beings in that situation.
NEW YORK, Sept. 29, 1907
Everybody discourages me on the subject of the Maine
coast in October, declaring that the mountains are the
only thing. To judge by the darkness and rain which I
found at Cornish the mountains are not much more promising. Also New York is wrapped in a London drizzle. I
am keeping my spirits buoyed up with the theory that
these distressful conditions are the fag-end of the equinoctial rumpus. I am not sorry to be in New York, both on
the weather's account, and also because some new plays
are being tried out here now; most of them - of course -
will fail, commercially, and this will be the only chance to
see them. Jones has a new one called The Evangelist. The
title comes painfully near my Faith-Healer, but the character and story are both, I gather, entirely different from
mine. I haven't yet seen Miller, or learned anything about
the prospective fortunes of The Great Divide.
I found my rooms buried beneath a three-months' accumulation of dust, but otherwise in good shape, and not
uninviting. I have tried rearranging the front room after
your suggestion; I believe the table in its new situation
will be more hospitable to the working mood. With curtains, some more rugs, and a few pictures, the place will
begin to look habitable.
[340 1




AMERICA - 1907


Oct. 3 (1907)
During these days in town I have gone back to The
Faith-Healer, and am getting in so deep that it looks as if I
shouldn't be able to tear myself away from it until it is
finished. Perhaps this is not to be regretted, for with this
long-delayed task out of the way I can go at the Eve with a
more single mind. Also, on the side of prudence, I should
like to be able to put the F.-H. on the stage next autumn,
in case it proves playable - as to which I am in much
doubt, though it gets more and more absorbing (to me) as I
go on. Nazimova is playing The Master-Builder- amazingly interesting, or, as Hilda Wangel keeps exclaiming in
the play, 'Dreadfully thrilling!' Do you know The Masteri! Builder? I wonder how Ibsen ever got the name of a realist.
A very debauchee of Romance. And that is really the hold
he has over people.
Miller and Miss A., whom I had a long and very friendly
conference with yesterday, seem to have weathered all
their storms, and to be once more in blissful accord. Miss
A. hinted, though she did not positively state, that she intends to renew her contract (which expires Jan. Ist) and
stick to the play for another year. At first they planned to
go on the road October first, but the 'business' has remained so good that they now expect to stay at Daly's until Christmas, and then to play four weeks downtown at
the Academy of Music. After that there is talk of going
to England before touring the West, apparently on the
theory that a plum pudding cuts richer the longer it is
kept. Do plum puddings ever spoil?
Miller has bought a farm and old colonial house on high
ground in Connecticut, within an hour's run or so of the
city by motor-car. He promises to take me out and show
'  341 i




LETTERS TO HARRIET


me the country. Says there are still bargains to be had,
and a wonderful region. But his idea of a bargain is very
liberal.
NEW YORK, Oct. 13 (1907)
It seems a long time since I've heard from you, but I
dare say that's my fault, for it's been a long time since I
have written. I've been badly tangled up with The FaithHealer, and still am. Heaven preserve me from ever trying
again the experiment against which the holy book gives
warning, of pouring new wine into old bottles. I should
have done better to throw away the first play altogether,
and take a fresh start. I may, indeed, have to do so still,
and would gladly if these scenes hadn't somehow assumed
a control of my mind - established themselves there as
actual- so that I can't annihilate them completely
enough to begin again. Well, we shall see.
Friday night Robinson read me a play he had just finished called The Porcupine. Corking title, isn't it? and a
stunning play. The 'porcupine' is a woman who, fearing
that she is with child (that is, as a girl, ten years before the
play opens) by a boy who has meantime run away from
his torturing New England home and lost himself out
West, marries to protect herself, and naturally becomes a
porcupine to her parson husband, who suspects nothing
and accepts the child as his own, suffers for years from his
wife's venomous quills, and finally runs after the rather
naughty wife of a friend of the family, another case of mismating - her husband pining for liberty to take another
lady to his bosom. A Robinsonian imbroglio, you see.
Appears upon the scene scape-grace lover of first lady
(the Porcupine) who has made a fortune in the West, and
[342]




AMERICA - 1907


who begins immediately and light-heartedly to untangle
things, and give every Jack his Jill. The Porcupine finally
(after his schemes are joyfully under way) tells him of his
fatherhood of the child, who has taken to him and his
fiddle as a duck to water. She does not tell him, however,
until she makes sure that he does not love her and never
has, except in a cursory boy fashion. He accepts the
situation light-heartedly, and plans to make this final
readjustment - a little scheme which is cut short by the
suicide of the Porcupine.
I have told this clumsily, but you can see the possibilities of the plot, which Robinson has abundantly taken advantage of. It is really a very strong play, and handled
with a wonderful deftness and lightness of touch. I am
going tomorrow to beard Charles Frohman in his den, with
it in my hand, and try and hypnotize him into taking it.
Saturday night there was the largest house we have yet
had, by a long shot. Pretty good for the tenth month,
isn't it?
NEW YORK, Oct. I6 (1907)
Your letter came just in time to inspirit me, before I
entered the den of Apollyon, i.e., the private office of the
'Syndicate,' with Robinson's play in my hand and terror
battling with disgust in my pericardiacs. The great Frohman sat at his desk, the very figure of what he should be,
like a fat black spider in his web. But - shall we ever
learn that human beings are always - or nearly always -
human, and the devil not so black as he is painted? No
sooner had the spider opened his mouth, and begun to - I
would say sing if that were in the spider's repertory -
than my charmed eyes closed, to open again upon a very
[343 l




LETTERS TO HARRIET


simple-hearted, kindly, and enthusiastic little man, full of
a sort of shy pathos and unexpected wistfulness in his
attitude toward all that I, by program, was glacially concealing my interest in or knowledge of. Before I knew it I
was pouring out my heart to him on the subject of the
stage, and what our little group dreamed of trying to do by
way of crusade. He is either an actor of the first order, or
else his sins are due to ignorance and necessity rather than
inherent baseness or even essential vulgarity. Before I left
he promised to read E. A.'s play at once, and bade me tell
the other crusaders (I mentioned Percy and Ridgely, too)
that whenever they wanted tickets to any of his theatres
they were to be had for the asking. How was that for
handsome? I swore the daylight black and blue cracking
up The Porcupine. I somehow have a feeling in my bones
that he'll take it. Add your prayers to mine. It would give
the boy just the stimulus and hope he needs to bring out
the best that's in him.
Have you read F. W. H. Myers' Human Personality?
It's an astonishing book, and lives up to its sub-title, And
Its Survival of Bodily Death, with an array of argument
and evidence - especially evidence - which takes the
breath away.
Oct. 1 8 (I 907)
My gushing estimate of Frohman received a shock
yesterday when he sent back poor Robinson's play with a
scribbled line of comment, 'Not available for stage.' It
was one of the hardest things I ever had to do to take it
back to the old boy with this disheartening report.
I have spent two highly amused evenings with Bernard
Shaw's Yohn Bull's Other Island and Major Barbara. The
[ 344 1




AMERICA - I907


second handles the Salvation Army, or rather plays
skittles with it. The Irish play has one delicious passage,
where an unfrocked priest talks to a grasshopper on a hill
at sunset - a beautiful piece of humor and feeling which
shows how sadly Shaw has wasted himself on pamphleteering.- - These plays are indeed only pamphlets, though
funny and human as you could wish when the author for.
gets his pigheadedness.
THE PLAYERS
i6 GRAMERCY PARK
Oct. 22 (I 907)
We are all in the dumps here. Last night Sappho and
Phaon had its New York premiere. I had seen it in dress
rehearsal, and had hopes. The hopelessness of the acting
as it stood forth last night I was not prepared for- the
gloom only relieved by a cat which strayed in from the
right wings, sat down in the middle of the stage near the
footlights, looked meditatively round on the Leucadian
landscape, wiped his nose with a reflective paw, and
padded solemnly out on the left. We good men in buckram, together with a large Cornish contingent, kept up
alarums and excursions of applause all through, to the
good end that we dragged Percy before the curtain, more
dead than alive. Today the cynical crowd of newspaper
critics are slaughtering him in good style, with all the cosmopolitan refinements of torture. Kalich gets her full
share, and really, my dear, though I am willing to take
your word for it, and go to the stake declaring that she can
act when she wants to, last night she was beyond redemption bad. You would have said the same yourself. I am
grieved to hear that your strength and buoyancy are so
slow in coming back.
[.345 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


NEW YORK, Tuesday, Oct. 29 (I907)
I had an experience last night which is so much in your
line that I am moved to relate it, though I can't give any
of its immense 'human' value. I was walking down Fifth
Avenue about midnight, after the theatre, when a shabby
man of about thirty emerged from a dark doorway and
asked for money. I don't usually give, being dominated by
the theories of the professors of this branch of sociology,
but this time something in the fellow's look or voice
prompted me to forego my scientific principles and give
him a small sum. He fell back, but a moment after overtook me again, murmuring confused thanks. There was
a note of such tragic sincerity in these that I stopped and
talked with him. He said he was a clerk, a Canadian who
had come to New York last spring (he did not tell me why,
glozing over his motives shyly and with trepidation), had
spent all his money without finding work and had then
come down with typhoid, being now only a few days out of
hospital. He had gradually pawned all his clothes except
the few poor rags he had on, and now, he couldn't get a
job because of his seedy look. His affecting gratitude was
for money to get a bare meal, for when I asked him what
he expected to do for the night he pointed to a park bench,
with the reflection that it was not so bad when you had
eaten. (By this time a fine cold rain had begun to fall and
the wind to come up.) His voice was of that unmistakable
quality which denotes refinement of nature, and his speech
unexceptionable; still, I have been taken in so often that I
wasn't sure of him.
His persistence in making light of his misfortunes,
though stating them with grim literalness, was the most
persuasive sign. After getting him a bed at the Mills
[ 346 1




AMERICA - I907


Hotel (that poor man's paradise) I agreed to meet him
this afternoon at the shop where his clothes were lying in
pawn. Sure enough he was there, and the clothes (very
good ones) producible. We spent the rest of the afternoon
rescuing shoes, hat, shirts, and underclothes from widely
scattered pawnshops where in the exigency of the moment
he had successively deposited them. It was wonderful and
touching to see his spirits rise, and hope and buoyancy and
firmness present themselves in voice and manner, where
before had been only a stoic uncomplaining patience, a
grim yet gentle acceptance of his miserable situation, without a touch of rebelliousness or spleen, but also without
any spring or grasp, any natural and perhaps salutary
bitterness. The climax of this story - in fact the real
point of it -is why and under what circumstances he left
Montreal. I will tell you when he tells me, but that will
not be yet, for any attempt to probe that subject arouses
in him a kind of breathless and speechless panic, which
would point to dark things if the man were not so palpably
pure of heart. When he gets his job, and gets settled once
more in a not-too-savage world, perhaps he will tell me. I
see I have failed worse than I thought I should in conveying what was dubious and arresting, and at the same time
perfectly everyday, in the man's nature and predicament.
I am working away at The Faith-Healer, one day tremendously encouraged and the next dashed to the nethermost
pit of forlornity. I think of changing the title. Isn't it bad
policy to give the man's vocation away at once, instead of
letting it steal upon the reader or hearer by faint hints and
indirections? What do -you think of The Pool of Bethesda,
if sufficiently supporte4 in the text? Suggest another.
-;;47




LETTERS TO HARRIET


NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 1907
I have been out of town for a couple of days, travelling
- bless your heart - in a fifty horse power touring-car.
Herrick and his sister were of the party, and a Mrs. P —,
now of Cambridge but primitively of Texas, and what you
call a 'free soul,' was hostess - if that's what a lady is who
sets up the gasoline on such occasions. We had a glorious
two-day spin through perfect autumn weather and a
delicious country - up the Hudson to Poughkeepsie, then
northeast over the Connecticut hills to a lovely high-up
village called Sharon, then back the next day by another
route. I thought of you, with a joyful pain, knowing that
of earthly experience this of winged flight through a crisp
Indian-summer hill-world would come near ranking highest in your eyes.
I think your suggestion as to using the man's name as
a title a capital one - Hermann Schlatka. Looks swell,
doesn't it? But perhaps lays too much stress on theforeign
antecedents of the man - do you think? The title, too, is
of the kind usually associated with the German drama.
However, I sha'n't reject it in a hurry, you may be sure.
Nov. 13, I907
I have been hard at Schlatka for a week (I mean hard
for a week), and have finished two acts of him. So far I
almost think he'll do, but the third act is crucial. I sit
staring at the paper, seeing the thing act itself out as plain
as day, almost hearing the words with my bodily ears, but
when I take up a pen, all goes to the bad. I am unable to
write a word, in fact the mere thought of writing is repugnant, paralyzing. I guess I'm a bit off my chop. I will
loaf and read a novel and see then.
[348 ]




AMERICA - I907


Miller closes here this month and goes West, I believe
almost directly to Chicago, where he is to play three
weeks. At the same time two hack companies start out,
one north and (absit omen!) one south. I have exhausted
my eloquence trying to persuade him against this latter
piece of headlong folly. He will not admit for an instant
that there is anything in his role to which an angel could
take exception. Maybe he is right about the angel, but
wait till he hears from Savannah and Mobile! He does not
realize the peculiar conditions down there, and the inflamed state of public feeling on the subject. I expect there
will be lively times, not of the pleasantest.
You give no news of yourself, nor whether you are still
keeping up your regimen of early hours. I hope and pray
that you are, and that you are beginning to get back some
of your precious strength and buoyancy. They are the
greatest treasures we have, and one and all we squander
them as water.
NEW YORK, NOV. 29 (1907)
After a week of discouragement I am again feeling hope.
ful about it (The Faith-Healer). I feel now that it will
surely be interesting to read, whether any mortal manager
will ever have the spunk to produce it or any actor to play
it. At least it is taking onform - a thing it has never before been able to boast among its assortment of qualities.
Augustus Thomas has just produced a 'telepathic play'
here which has had an enthusiastic reception. So far so
good, but I don't know how much of the critical complaisance is due to the 'psychic' theme, and how much to
the melodrama and rather coarse-grained humor with which
it is interlarded. I am torn between pleasure at seeing
[ 349 I




LETTERS TO HARRIET


such a subject eagerly received as legitimate dramatic
material, and wrath at having the public mind mussed-up
with a second-rate handling thereof. There is, however,
one act which is fine and true.
[During some part of this interval W. V. M. was in
Chicago.]
I07 WAVERLY PLACE
Yan. 10 (I908)
You can imagine me camping disconsolately on my coalbox, or next door to it, as Charlotte, in her housekeeping
zeal, has taken all the keys along with her to Newton,
leaving me even towel-less. The flat is unchanged - the
transformation scenes which were scheduled to come off
after my absence not having eventuated, in despite of
Mrs. Davidge's professional threats and Charlotte's own
ill-concealed eagerness to get me gone that she might begin
her deadly work. But everything removable has been
clapped under lock and key, even to the pictures on the
wall and the soap on the washstand.
I gather from Mr. Gilder over the telephone that the
dinner tonight is a large one, and in honor of some worthy
or other.
I07 WAVERLY PLACE
Jan. Is -'o8
The Carnegie dinner was a wonder. There were twentyfour guests, all men, personages of light and leading both
domestic and foreign. There were speeches and drinking
of toasts galore and mutual assurance, in all tones dulcet
and martial, that we were very fine fellows indeed, and the
fussy little laird the. king-pin of creation. An incident of
[359]




AMERICA -   1908
the service that will interest you was this: after coffee, an
indelible pencil was passed around, and each guest wrote
his name on the tablecloth, to be afterwards embroidered
in white on the cloth, as a memorial. There were other
names there already, scores of them, and no few big guns
among them. The cloth ought to be quite a trophy if this
process goes on; and the big guns don't all get hopelessly
forgotten by the world, turning out to be mere pop-guns.
I am still hard at work on the play. I thought it was as
good as done when I left Chicago, but it isn't. The first
and second acts have at last stopped crumbling under the
file, but the third act is still full of soft places. In fact I
have been on the point of despair concerning it, fearful
that I had used too much of the old material and that all
of that was worm-eaten and dust-corroded beyond refurbishment. Faversham, who is I believe now playing in
Chicago, has somehow heard of the play and asked to see
it. Picture Faversham in the part. I shall probably not be
ready to read it to Miller before next week, when he will be
in Washington.
107 WAVERLY PLACE
NEW YORK, 7an. 22 (I908)
As for the play itself, I have written finis. I have done
for it all I can do. The verdict of the friends I have read it
to is either negative or hostile, with one exception. If it
were not for your conviction about it I should be greatly
cast down. Mrs. Davidge, a keen critic and herself an
enthusiast - not to say an active devotee - on the subject of 'divine healing,' repudiates it root and branch, and
mourns over me loudly and in public for a lost soul, a star
gone down in Israel. She declares that she would gladly
[35I ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


lay down her life at the doors of the theatre where it is
presented, if by so doing she could prevent people from
coming to see it; and says if it is widely listened to it will
keep back 'the cause' for decades. Her main objection to
it is in the use which has been made of the love motive;
she talks of Mariolatry, the degradation of the prophetic
character to the uses of sentiment, etc., etc. In other words
she repudiates the 'human' ideal which I have set up
against the ascetic one, declaring that the latter is an indissoluble part of the prophetic character and mission, an
inherent function of the Messianic nature. What she
particularly rages against is the active part which the
woman plays in the man's regeneration; declares that
these two types of emotion belong to disparate worlds,
etc., etc. I don't give her argument as cogently as she
gives it, but you see the line of attack and that the issue is
squarely joined. This might be endured easily, as a difference of philosophical position and of psychological belief,
but when she charges me with degrading a saintly memory
(she means Schlatter himself, the historical person) for
purposes of melodramatic excitement she hits harder.
Hadn't I at least better disguise the name still further? I
hate to do it, and I know you will be sorry to lose the name
with which we have grown familiar; but perhaps it is
necessary, to avoid giving needless offense, possibly (certainly in her case) pain. The passion of her attack amazed
and staggered me. It shows at any rate how vital the whole
field of thought is to our generation.
I expect to run up to Cornish for a few days, for a taste
of country winter. I expect to see Miller in Boston, where
he begins a four-weeks engagement on the 27th. Unless he
is convinced about it I sha'n't let him have it.
[3521




AMERICA - I908


BOSTON, Feb. 6, I908
I left New York ten days ago, and since then have been
involved in such moving accidents by flood and field that I
have neglected writing too long. The second day after arriving at Cornish (with Torrence) the thermometer dropped
out of sight, and the resources of the Davidge 'tavern'
were taxed to the breaking point to keep the breath of life
in our bodies. As soon as the intense cold moderated, the
heavens opened and incredible quantities of snow buried
us out of sight for several days. It was a great experience,
though strenuous; both of us had gone up to Cornish quite
inadequately furnished with winter clothes and wrappings.
She (Miss Anglin) leaves the cast for good (so far as now
appears) at the end of this week, and Miss Matthison
(of Everyman fame) takes her place. After seeing her rehearse I am not encouraged, but she may do better when
she gets into it, and her name is worth something anyhow.
To come to the main news, I had an all-night session
with Miller, reading the new play. We started in at midnight and finished our sitting at five-thirty in the morning.
His understanding of Schlatka's character - and of the
larger meaning of the piece as a whole - was immediate,
and his judgment of both enthusiastic in the extreme. He
thinks it stands a fair chance for commercial success, but
says that whether that comes or not is a matter not to be
seriously considered. He is sure that the play will add to
his prestige as a manager and to mine as a writer sufficiently to make good even for an absolute commercial
failure, which is hardly to be apprehended. He does not
think best to produce it before next fall. In this I heartily
concur. It is an immense satisfaction to deal with a man
of such luminous intelligence and of outlook so broad and
[ 353 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


(to use again the hard driven word) so human. I need not
assure you that Mrs. Davidge's outburst has not caused
me to make any serious changes, though in a few minor
matters I think she has shown me the way to sounder
workmanship - psychologically speaking. We must discuss the advisability of a return to the next-to-the-last
ending, which your last letter advocates. I don't yet feel
that anything will be gained thereby, as over against what
will be lost. It would not satisfy Mrs. D. (I let her stand
for a type of objectors) for according to her view he is
damned anyhow, and he may as well be damned living as
dead. The idea of death, no matter how shadowily suggested, will (in the present state of our feeling about the
matter) tend to lower the spectator's spirits, and (partially
at least) destroy the 'uplift' of the final scene. Will it not?
I go back to New York tomorrow, where I stay long
enough to see the new things at the theatre, and perhaps
long enough to judge whether Miss Matthison is up to her
job.
NEW YORK, Feb. I9, I908
I went last night to see the new Ruth - Miss Matthison
of Everyman fame - and I know you will be curious to
hear how she impressed me. To put it in a word, she impressed me as perfunctory. She is really over here to play
one or two of her husband's things, I imagine. (He is the
manI who played the Herald in Everyman, and has since
commenced playwright.) Though Miller makes a strenuous bluff at pretending that she was imported for
The Great Divide alone, I am sure he banks upon Miss
Anglin's return to the role as soon as she has worked off
x Charles Rann Kennedy.
[354]




AMERICA -   908


some of her humors. She is now on the road with The
Awakening of Helena Ritchie, a rechauffe of the novel.
But in a few places, where Miss Matthison stopped giving
a reproduction of Miss A. d I'anglaise, she showed a sensitiveness and understanding of the nuances of the part
which would have delighted you, I am sure. In justice to
Margaret's power over the crowd, it must be noted that
since she left us the 'business' has fallen away to a quite
disastrous extent. Miller, the great child, is in the depths
of pessimism, ready to sell the play for a song, whereas ten
days ago in Boston he was declaring that it would 'run
strong' for five years, and was a gold-mine which he had
only begun to work. His interest in the new play keeps at
high pitch. He is going to arrange a meeting this week between me and Tyrone Power, so that, under the guise of doing something less offensive, I can give him a looking-over.
As for the play itself I am again convinced that the third
act must be rewritten, to purge it of the cruder matter
which clings to it from the old version, and day by day put
off beginning the task, not feeling any strength or spring in
the muscles of my mind adequate to the same.
My sister Charlotte and my niece are coming toward the
end of the week. I shall give up my quarters to them and
retreat to the Players Club or the Harvard Club for a
brief season. Thence I shall issue, under Miller's guidance,
with a mask and a dark lantern, to watch a few actors and
actorines at their unconscious gambols, with a view to
sizing them up for the new play. He seems inclined to
give me a much more potent voice in the selection of the
cast than I had before - in fact he seems to want to have
me do it all, a responsibility from which I naturally
shrink. It is good to hear that you are yourself again,
[355




LETTERS TO HARRIET


physically, and to catch the old brave and buoyant note
in your letter.
Feb. 24 (1908)
I have taken up my abode here at the Players, in a
pretty old-fashioned room at the top of the house, looking
out on Gramercy Park, where in these last warm days the
buds are beginning visibly to swell, or else my heart gives
promptings to my eyes to deceive me. There are pussywillows for sale on the streets. Where do they come from?
I thought spring was a legend - an invention of the more
fanciful school of poets. In fact, I thought I recollected
inventing it myself, when I was a poet.
NEW YORK, March 3, i908
Miller is arranging meetings for me with actors whom he
regards as possibilities for the new cast. This - in deference to the histrion's susceptibility - has to be done with
elaborate carelessness, so as to avoid the appearance of a
'look-over.' The other night I spent the evening with
Tyrone Power, of whom I spoke to you disparagingly,
on the strength of a recollection of him as Ingomar (God
save the mark) and Ulysses in Stephen Phillips's play. On
closer view I am not so sure that he will not do. He has a
magnetic personality, a powerful and ascetic face, a large
and shambling frame, and a glorious voice - too glorious
in fact; I'm afraid it would swamp him. There is a taint
of melodrama about him -of the old style longing to
'make all split' - of the magniloquent and seedy
tragedian turned tramp - but Miller thinks that all this
could be made valuable if subdued and chastened. Certainly it could, if the man has the requisite fineness of
[3561




AMERICA - 1908


grain; I'm afraid he is coarse in the fibre, and not capable
of taking an edge, but I trust I am wrong.
Miss Matthison has been very generously received, both
by press and public; and there is indeed from point to point
a fineness of perception in her playing and a delicate sense
of values for which one is mighty grateful. On the whole,
however, she is not good, partly - perhaps chiefly - because she is not interested, a state of affairs in which her
essential anaemia asserts itself to the destruction of all joy.
Last night, urged by rumors I had heard of its quality, I
went to see Debussy's operatic setting of Maeterlinck's
Pelleas et Melisande. As a preparation I read the poem, and
arose from it with a vastly increased admiration for your
beloved Maeterlinck. I think I felt his essential quality,
and succumbed to his authentic spell, for the first time. I
am not sure but he is all right, and that this shadow world'is more real than the tangible one with which I have been
laboring. Certainly it is more ductile to the shaping hand
- a powerful fascination to the shaper and perhaps a
source of keenest pleasure to those who look on at the
shaping. I hear that in France high-souled poetical cooks I
make the most marvellous creations out of puff-paste. It
is as good as marble if it looks as good, and while it keeps
its shape - a thing which not marble nor brass will do
forever. This of course is not to liken Maeterlinck to an
artist in march-pane, but there is something essentially
perishable in his method and material, I still think. But
the poem moved me immensely. The opera not so much,
very little in fact. I had heard that Debussy had subordinated the orchestra and the singing parts, and raised
the dramatic equation in something the way I should like
to do if I knew enough to write music. But he has done
[3571




LETTERS TO HARRIET


little or nothing in this direction. It is all recitative, in
which the delicate and spiritual suggestions of the text
find little enough reflection. The orchestral accompaniment, however, is new, and strangely moving. If he
had made of this merely or at any rate chiefly a background for the spoken word, he would have done the trick
perhaps. Let us learn to labor and to wait.
(W. V. M. went to Chicago to see Harriet after the
death of her mother, early in March.)
107 WAVERLY PLACE
NEW YORK, Mch. 20 (i908)
It is late at night, and this is my first chance to get a
word with you. I do not need to tell you how much you
have been in my thoughts all the way East on the creeping
train. (It took a round twenty-four hours to make the
distance.) I was just unwell enough to be in a kind of
physical stupor which left the mind wonderfully clear, and
I thought long thoughts of you - long, long thoughts. My
indisposition is annoying, but you must not worry in the
slightest, for Charlotte, who is very wise in these matters,
says it is only a little thing.
I am dead tired, but you will make a good letter out of
this, knowing that my heart goes with it. I wish I could
help you better in these dark and trying days.
Telegram:            NEW YORK, March 22, 1908
DOCTOR FORBIDS WRITING FOR DAY OR TWO
MAKING GOOD PROGRESS
w.
(Following this, W. V. M. was ill with typhoid fever,
at I07 Waverly Place, New York.)
[ 358 1




AMERICA - I908


PORT CHESTER, N.Y.
May 25 (1908)
I am not allowed to write, but I am going to scribble you
a word (rather wobbly, I fear) and try to get it smuggled
out by the butcher's-boy. It seems a long, long time since
I lost your dear presence, symbol and pledge of the life
which I feel slowly - 0 so slowly! - returning. I hobble
about the purlieus of the tiny island, each day a little further, except when I go too far and have to lay up for certain weary hours to repair the damage. I spend vast
stretches of time - whole existences - sitting in a porchchair in the tender spring sunlight, looking at the sky and
the water, playing with the pup, and thinking about the
eternal mysteries. 'O Love, 0 Life, 0 Time!' You sometimes seem very close to me, and on your lips seems
hovering the answer to the everlasting riddle - the double
riddle, of the world out there and the world within, at
other times so hard to reconcile with itself. I hope and
pray that you are strong of heart, and looking to the
future as to a place where your house is to be builded fair
and joyously inhabited.
Send me a line now and then. I shall soon be able to
write without eluding surveillance, and an occasional word
from you will go far to fill the slow days.
PORT CHESTER, N.Y.
7une 5 (I908)
I have been lying low, after a little set-back, due I suppose to a too-long walk last Sunday. It is nothing serious
- I only mention it as part of the news. I don't seem to
get the miraculous uplift I have been promised (though I
get hints of it now and then of mornings). The doctor says
my mind (my mind, bless your heart!) has been and is too
[359 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


active. I try to keep it in leash, but it will get away, and
once away will wander far. I get greatly discouraged at
the slowness of my progress, but looking back to the day I
came here I can see that I have no just reason for repining.
I am able to get over to the shore now once in a while, and
wander a little bit along the coast and through the adjacent meadows. It is lovely, in a mild way, and the
gardener's collie does her best to make up for Sieg's surprising and ever-regrettable absence. The news you gave
of him warmed my heart.
Miller received the manuscript, as I know from Weller,
who came down the other day on an errand which has
given me - in its implications -a good deal of uneasiness. It seems that Miller, on reading the play, thinks it
has been in some way hurt (for his purpose) by changes
made since he heard it in Boston. Practically no such
changes have been made, and the real state of the case is
that on closer inspection he does not see in it the kind of
obvious actor's medium that he at first imagined. (His
feeling is that certain 'Climaxes' have been weakened or
destroyed - something of the sort.) Of course, he is right
essentially. It is not the kind of play he imagined - never
was and will be less so as I go on with it. I am forced to regret sending him the MS. at all, or even telling him about
it, until it was wholly finished and to be firmly stood by.
I am more than half inclined to ask him to return it.
What do you think? I must do something at once.
It looks as if the doctor would not consent to my leaving
here before the end of the month, and indeed in my soberer
moments I am compelled to acknowledge that to do so
would probably be unwise. The chief point of weakness
seems to be my back, which remains disgustingly sore and
[360 ]




AMERICA - 1908
mucilaginous, collapsing altogether under slight exertion.
The doctor says this is natural. He does not regard it
as in the least an alarming symptom. In fact I think he
secretly welcomes it, as reinforcing his exhortation to go
slow.
A shaky hand warns me to stop now - though I have
not begun to say anything.
PORT CHESTER, N.Y.
yune I4 (1908)
The authorities at Yale College have asked me to come
to the Commencement, June 24th, to receive an honorary
degree. I don't want to go, but I don't see very well how
to get out of it, being so near, and able (by that time) to
undergo the slight exertion involved. Will you send me, as
speedily as possible, my old cap and gown? Or, if that has
disappeared, will you borrow one from Ferd and send it on?
In case neither of these sources prove fruitful, I shall have
to send to New York, which will be a gamble.
I haven't written for too long, but you will understand
that the little strength I have for writing has to be used
partly for discharging my long arrears of correspondence
in directions not quite negligible though at bottom unimportant. As for my condition, it is I am sure satisfactory, though I can't help fretting and fuming a bit at
the slowness with which energy ebbs back again into
nerves and brain. My back remains the point of greatest
weakness, and dilatory beyond excuse in re-establishing
itself in normal conditions.
The prospect of being able to go to California, or even
of getting the play into shape to be rehearsed without me,
seems remote. I have written Miller to this effect, and
suggested that he send back the MS. I have made up my
[36i ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


mind fully not to allow the play to be given until I have
had time to rewrite the third act to my satisfaction, and it
is very doubtful whether I can do that soon enough for
him.
The books which you have sent from time to time have
been a God-send, as the life here is lonely - not quite so
bad now as formerly, for Ridgely is staying nearby - at
Cos Cob - also Mrs. Davidge, who takes Charlotte and
me on auto-rides over this beautiful Connecticut country,
and yachting up and down the Sound. Yesterday she
brought us over to Cos Cob (where I am writing) in an old
fishing-boat, to a charming old inn dating from Revolutionary times, run by the wife of an artist who is delectably installed. Wife's father is a wonder of an old man -
goes to Cuba every winter and collects rare woods which
he works up into furniture - the kind that isn't made any
more - beautiful joiner's work without a nail or a rivet.
I expect to leave here after the Yale commencement and
a few days of recuperation. Unless some better plan occurs, I shall come to Chicago.
Don't blame me for this scrawl, full of matters of mint
and cumin instead of realities. Even this has left me
shaky.
(Postmarked Cos Cob, Conn., June 15, I908)
I think it will be necessary now to let Miller go on.
Before the rehearsals are over I can get the third act rewritten to my satisfaction, and can insist on his making the
necessary changes. I am afraid that to stop Miller now
would work an injustice, as he has probably made definite
arrangements.
We go back to Port Chester today or tomorrow.
[362 ]




AMERICA - I 908


PORT CHESTER, N.Y.
Yune 23 (1908)
I have heard of a place for sale on the Maine coast
which sounds so entrancing that I am in a state of wild excitement about it. The enclosed photograph, for which I
have to thank Miss Sarah Orne Jewett, will give you an
idea. It is owned by the widow of Thomas Bailey Aldrich,
and was his favorite retreat. Rather than risk delay I am
going to make a flying trip up there to see it. Don't worry
or have any fear of my over-exerting myself. I have made
rapid progress of late, and am quite equal to the journey,
for which I have both Charlotte's and the Doctor's consent. I am taking Ridgely along, to carry bags and do all
the heavy work, starting tomorrow or Thursday, from
New Haven, after the ceremonies there. We shall be gone
perhaps five or six days, after which I shall return to New
York, and thence to Chicago.
Post card, MONHEGAN (ME.), rune 30 (i908)
Here we are at this wonderful little island fourteen miles
off the Maine shore. The house I sent you the photograph
of didn't pan out, but I am still hopeful of finding something. Am going slow, and taking things very easy. The
climate is doing me an immense amount of good.
MONHEGAN, Yuly 2 (I908)
Two days on this entrancing island have made me a
captive for life - in fancy. It is Mackinac unspoiled, and
fourteen miles out in the open sea. Am tempted to buy a
piece of ground, to build on in the future sometime. Return to New York tomorrow and thence to Chicago.
Picking up strength fast.
[363 ]




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Telegram:              NEW YORK, /UIY 7, 1908
TAKE MACKINAC PLACE SHALL ARRIVE
THURSDAY AFTERNOON FOUR O CLOCK
PENNSYLVANIA
w
(Postmarked Mackinac Island, Aug. 2i, i908)
MACKINAC - Friday
This is to report that I have taken heart of grace and
pulled the portrait sketch of you together again, so that it
is as good as new and wants only a face to make of it a
handsome lady. This is all I have done since you took
flight, except a little driving with Charlotte, and a good
deal of lying on my back - my accursed back - waiting
for my energies to rejoin me. Charlotte has taken to horseback riding with an amazing zest and success. I have ridden once, without any very encouraging results.
We have had three days of tremendous high winds, the
whole island rocking and groaning on its foundations. It
seems to be the work of a remarkably gifted understanding
of the equinoctial.
Sieg, after twenty-four hours of moping for you, has
patched up some kind of a life on a basis of suspended
judgment, meanwhile getting support out of Charlotte, to
whom he seems already much attached. This will arouse
jealousy in both your breast and Bessie's, but I report the
fact as an impartial observer.
When are you coming back? It is very lonesome here
the whole island mourns you, wringing ten thousand hands.
(Postmarked Mackinac Island, Aug. 25, i908)
I am feeling much better the last two days, having lifted
myself by the scruff of the neck out of a slough of invalid[ 364 ]




AMERICA - 1908


ism:, which was daily increasing, and decided to try a little
faith-cure on myself, with amazing results. There is really
something in it. We are having wonderful golden weather
here. Don't delay too long, for fear it may all be gone. I
am holding on to it with both hands for you.
(Postmarked Mackinac Island, Oct. 11, I908)
Oct. -?
Your telegram was a joy to sore eyes. Since receiving
it your return has seemed so imminent that letter-writing
has assumed a more than ordinarily distant and mythical
character, but here is a word anyhow, at the eleventh hour.
My message is only 'Return!' said in many melodious
keys -'ditties of no tone.'
The island, after a night of sharp frost, is looking her
loveliest. Please, please come back before a catastrophe of
rain or something occurs, to strip these paradisiacal boughs
of their gold and crimson.
I have painted you a new picture, a little one but a good
- at least it looks excellently good to me, in the flush of
completion. It is the other view of the fort hill, with the
church and the old stable - you remember? Painted with
four colors. This matter of usingfew colors is the secret of
painting, and also - I dare say - of writing, if one could
grasp the connection. Effect brown and gold - but not at
all like 'The Pond' (how is that for a title?) - the gold
tones making all the difference. Also I have finished the
Mission church picture- not very good, but has nice points.
107 WAVERLY PLACE, N.Y.
Nov. 4 (I908)
Since I got here I have been distractedly busy, to little
purpose. Miller has done nothing toward assembling a
[ 3651




LETTERS TO HARRIET


cast, and the available material looks slim enough. I told
him about Sills, with proper reservations, and he is in communication with him, trying to get him to join the Miller
forces, with the idea that in case he won't do for The
Faith-Healer he can be worked in somewhere else. It is a
great opportunity for Milton. In all probability, however,
he is tied up by a season's contract with his present company, and to get him released would prove too expensive.
Miller seems to have been rebuffed by the London managers, and has come back hugely disgruntled with all
things English- says he will take out naturalization papers and become in fact as he is in spirit a bona-fide American citizen. The great sweet child! Says he tried to get
Forbes-Robertson to take the play. 0 me, 0 my!
As soon as there is a lull in the present activities I intend to slip up to Maine and look at some of those farms.
I am more convinced than ever (since plunging into this
maelstrom) that it is 'me for the country.'
The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Co.
(Postmarked Nov. 8, i908)
En route
Thursday
Behold me flying Maine-ward, to snatch a look at a
farm or two, during a lull in the preparations here. I told
Miller all about Milton, and he has engaged him. We
have given no promise, however, to put him in the role of
The Faith-Healer. If he proves incompetent he will be
otherwise provided for. The whole thing is a secret -
Milton himself even does not know for what purpose he is
wanted, and will not until he gets here. He will not be free
for two weeks, and this will cause some delay in our plans,
which I will utilize as far as possible in searching for a farm.
[3661




AMERICA - 1908


NEW YORK, Nou. 12 (1908)
My explorations were cut short by the necessity of advising about the stage-set (which has been made in
miniature) and I didn't have time to find anything good -
nothing in fact that I would think of twice. I looked at
almost all the 'shore places' advertised. They are shore
places, to be sure, but being on bays and inlets, and the
banks low, the water running out twice a day leaves miles
of mud flats, the most dismal sight in the world. I saw one
possible place in the hills, a fairly good old house, and a
grand view, but the country lying between this place and
the railroad was not attractive, because almost denuded of
trees. This difficulty exists almost everywhere. It is a
shame and a sorrow to see the way the land has been
stripped of its wooding - and the devastation still goes
on, shockingly. When I have recovered from my disappointment I shall sally forth again.
Miller accepts the new version of the F.-H. unreservedly
- didn't I tell you? - considers the new third act a great
improvement. There is a deal to tell about the difficulties
which beset us in preparing the production; but that I will
reserve for another time. Things are going - he says -
as well as we could hope; but they seem to me to be going
badly enough. Meanwhile I am getting the F.-H. and the
G. D. ready for press. In the latter case this means work,
for the MS. has got badly mixed up in the process of
time.
NEW YORK, Nov. 18 (1908)
Preparations for the production of the F.-H. go on
slowly. Miller's plan at present is to give a trial performance at Boston when he goes there next month with the
[367 1,




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Divide, using as many members of the present cast as he
can work in. Then if the reception of the play by the
Boston public seems encouraging, he will organize a full
separate company and launch it upon its own independent
career. He is manifestly timid about it and fears a rebuff;
nevertheless his personal feeling about the play seems enthusiastic enough. He keeps recurring to Tyrone Power as
a possibility for the leading role. Certainly his performance
as the Drain-man in The Servant in the House is not encouraging, but Miller declares that he has capabilities which
are there unrevealed. Meanwhile Sills has been engaged,
without a specified agreement as to whether he will be
allowed to play the role or not, and will appear on the
scene next week. I am somewhat worried about Frohman's hostility to the play and refusal to share its fortunes,
though he is Miller's partner in all his other operations. I
attribute this to the fact that - as you may remember -
I rejected an extraordinarily liberal offer of his, a year or
so ago, to sign a contract with him. If he cherishes a
personal grudge on this account, the career of the play,
even if initially successful, will be greatly jeopardized.
I have been busy, since getting back from Maine, in
making a fair copy of the Divide for the printer. My own
copy is so imperfect and so many corruptions have crept
into the text which Miller uses, that the task is no light one.
I have had a letter from a German named Freund, who
has married an Englishwoman and lives in England, proposing that he translate both the G. D. and the F.-H., and
exhibiting excellent credentials. If I can make an arrangement with the egregious Marbury, I think I will let him
do the job. He has translated Kennedy's two plays (The
Servant in the House and a new one, coming out here this
[368 ]




AMERICA - I908
winter, called The Winter Feast) and seems to have intimate relations with the German theatrical world.
There is a wondrous dancing creature here called
Isadora Duncan, fresh from European triumphs, who
dances to the accompaniment of a full symphony orchestra
— renders in fact in dance the Seventh Symphony of
Beethoven and other such trifles. I saw her dance a whole
afternoon, while the orchestra played the music (or most of
it) of Glfick's Iphigenia in Aulis, and she filled the huge
Metropolitan Opera House stage in a fashion quite incredible. Also I saw her do impromptu things in her own
studio - no less than marvellous. I hope you will have a
chance to see her. I can imagine nothing which would give
you more pleasure. She is going West, I believe, on tour.
Telegram:
NEW YORK, Nov. 19, i908
MUST CHANGE HEALER'S NAME
TOO MANY PEOPLE REMEMBER
ORIGINAL   CAN YOU SUGGEST
ANYTHING
W VM
107 WAVERLY PLACE
NEW YORK, Nov. 22 (I908)
These have been, and are, tremendously busy days, so
crowded that I hardly know what has happened since I
wrote you last. Your zeal in hunting me up a name for
my man was wasted by the necessity I was under of sending a name at once, to stop the clamor of the printers. I
believe, however, I hit on a first-rate name - Michaelis
(accent on second syllable) - East European and yet not
definitely Russian. How do you like it? It is in use here in
1369 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


America - I found it in the New York City Directory.
For first name I think I will call him Ulrich - suggesting
old German or Gothic associations, but also in contemporary use here in America - Ulrich Michaelis. It rather
pleases me, and I hope it will you.
We have got hold of a love and a dream in the person of
a ten-year-old girl to play Annie. Her performance promises to be a gem of child-acting. She already towers above
the whole company in artistry - without art, at least without Art. Tyrone Power seems to be definitely decided on
for the title-role. He does better too than you would expect from his performance as the Drain-man, and seems
to have real insight into the character. The thing to be
feared in him is melodramatic robustiousness, but Miller
thinks we can keep him toned down. Meanwhile, the arrival of Milton, announced for tomorrow, opens up a new
complication. Miller did nothing to head him off after the
r'le had been otherwise filled, and I can't make out what
he intends to do with him unless it is to hold him in reserve in case Power - for some reason or other - flunks
it. We have got a first-rate woman for Martha. For the
present Rhoda is being played by a Miss Lawton, who is
the latest in the long and melancholy list of Ruths. She
serves fairly well (as Rhoda - I haven't seen her Ruth)
though she lacks lightness - is prone to the intense and
tremulous in action and speech. The other parts are
temporarily - I hope only temporarily - assumed by -
our esteemed friend Wingate (the Philip of the Divide) and
Butler (the Dr. Newbury of ditto). We haven't yet got
hold of anybody who can touch Uncle Abe with a ten-foot
pole, though an amiable young man is struggling dismally
with the rble. All this sounds pretty blue, but in spite of
[370 1




AMERICA- i908


what I say - and as to the badness of the bad ones I have
phrased the case with angelic mildness - I feel, quite illogically, buoyant about the outcome. This is probably
due in large part to Miller's beautiful understanding of the
play in all and sundry of its phases and ramifications. I am
more impressed than ever - much more - with his intellect and imagination. And he has been kindness itself
in mopping my fevered brow and administering anodynes
to ease my tortures.
If nothing intervenes to upset the program, the play will
have its premiere two weeks from next Thursday afternoon, in Boston. Two performances only, both in the
afternoon, are scheduled to be given there. Please consider yourself engaged for the first one - the second may
never be demanded by a distraught public.
It is nearly morning, and I am frightfully tired, though
as usual nowadays - far too wide awake to look forward with any relish to bed.
(Postmarked New York, Nov. 28, i908)
I don't think Michaelis is Jewish -at least not obviously so, since many people to whom I have shown it
have failed to perceive the fact. And even if it is? Was
not Jesus a Jew? And John?
I am in a bushel of trouble about the question of copyright protection. It seems that our enlightened Congress
has refused to join the Berne Convention, which makes
copyright easy and automatic throughout European
countries, and has ranged itself with Patagonia and her
sisters. The result is that there is a mountain of red tape
to untie, with no very sure chance of protection at the end.
Among the details is a law compelling plays (in order to
1 37I 1




LETTERS TO HIARRIET


secure English copyright) to be submitted to the Lord
Chamberlain of England, in printedform (typewriting, it
seems, gives you no safeguard whatever). This functionary takes his own time to pass upon the book and grant
permission for the play to be performed in England, which
then only acquires copyright standing. The performance
is of course a private one, and offers no special impediment
except one of expense; but while all this is being done, here
must sit our good friend Henry, with an expensive company on his hands, doing nothing except wait upon my
lord's pleasure. Of course it is my fault, but the fault only
of my ignorance. In the case of The Great Divide all this
red tape was got through with during the summer before
the definitive production, so that I learned nothing of the
difficulties involved. God bless our Congressmen, and the
book-dealers in whose favor these barbaric laws existunless they exist in favor of Frohman, Shubert, et al., in
order to provide them ampler forage upon the brains of
men who are misguided enough to write plays. I am
writing this in a restaurant whither I have drifted after a
day of hurry, perplexity, and unconscious starvation - at
this moment suddenly horribly conscious. If it is unduly
tart, the conditions will excuse me.
P.S. The Boston production is probably off, for the
reasons here stated.
NEW YORK, Dec. 7 (i908)
I got back to New York last night, after a very strenuous
week in Boston struggling with the copyright tangle.
The days since I wrote have been so crowded with
anxious labor and general confusion that I hardly know
[3721




AMERICA - I908
where to begin to tell you about it. The upshot of the
whole business is that I have succeeded in saving the
foreign rights of the play, though at a considerable
sacrifice. The production has had to be postponed, probably until the middle or last of next month. I have lost
Power, as he has had to be drafted off for The Servant
again. This you will not regret, but I take it hard, for he
made a deep impression upon me as the Faith-Healer.
Worse even, I stand to lose the little girl who, as 'Annie,'
delighted me beyond measure; but it is possible she may
be recaptured. Miller has been kindness itself, and a great
comfort, instead of being - as he had every reason to be -
vexed and angry at the overthrow of his plans.
You will be delighted to hear (and it is almost a valid
offset to the main catastrophe) that the third act (of The
Great Divide) has been restored, in every respect, to its
original integrity, including the final exclamation 'For us'
by which you (rightly) set so much store. The new Ruth
(a Miss Lawton) is in many essential respects wonderfully
good. She gives a performance that comes nearer my conception of the part than has yet been given. She doesn't
draw well, alas. Our people seem to love bad acting.
Telegram:
NEW YORK, Dec. 7, i908
PRODUCTION OF PLAY POSTPONED
AM COMING WEST
W V M
(With the hope of re-establishing his health, which at
this time seemed to be in a very precarious condition,
W. V. M. went to California in February, i909, with
[373 I




LETTERS TO HARRIET


William Wendt, the painter. They were detained in Los
Angeles by heavy rains, but finally got settled in a cabin
in San Dimas, and began to paint. After a week or ten
days W. V. M. was called to St. Louis, where The FaithHealer was to be tried out by Henry Miller.)
(Written on picture post cards, postmarked
Albuquerque & Ashford R.P.O., Feb. 5, I909)
I have had a rather badish night the first out, but this
bracing air (from 5000 to 7000 ft.) is pulling me up wonderfully. I should not be surprised if this country would be a
better place to recuperate than the Pacific coast, especially
as here horseback is one's native element. A puzzling
circumstance is the apathy or even dislike which most of
the passengers seem to feel for the amazing country.
Perhaps it is too strange and unhomelike to appeal to the
general. I take this helter-skelter means of writing, partly
to show you the pictures, which I am sure you will enjoy,
and partly because I can only write during stops, as the
trains wobbles so as to make my communications illegible
except during stops.
The lunch has been a great boon, as well as an astounding new revelation of your powers as a 'provider.' W. and
I get along famously in a quiet way. I found my camera
after all - sorry I worried you.
Here we are in God's country. This morning since sunrise has been a wonderful procession of sights. At 8 o'clock
we crossed the Great Divide, over 7000 feet high. Now we
are on the Arizona plateau, with everything in the world
to see, as witness above for sample. (Picture of San
Francisco Mountains, Arizona.)
[374]




AMERICA - 1909


Telegram:         SAN DIMAS, CALIF., Feb. 21, 1909
FIND OUT MILLER S ADDRESS THIS WEEK AND
WIRE HIM WILL ARRIVE ST LOUIS MARCH
EIGHTH
W V M
SAN DIMAS, Feb. 23, '09
As to the trip East I prefer some other road than the
Santa Fe - say the Rock Island or the so-called Salt Lake
Route. There will not be time for the Canadian or Northern Pacific. The main point is to take some road which
will land me at St. Louis by the shortest route. I shall
leave here Saturday or Sunday.
We are having a good time and a strenuous. The open
air is putting me in shape fast, I think. Wish you could
share it.
Telegram:        ST. Louis, Mo., March 8 (1909)
OUTLOOK    DISCOURAGING
SHALL WRITE PARTICULARS
TOMORROW
W V M
Telegram:
ST. Louis, Mo., March 12, 1909
FAITH HEALER ONLY ONE WEEK TRY-OUT FOR
NEXT FALL PARTIAL CAST   DRESS REHEARSAL
PROBABLY MONDAY MORNING ELEVEN
W V M


13751




LETTERS TO HARRIET


(Postmarked March I2, i909)
MARYLAND HOTEL
SAINT Louis, U.S.A.
Friday afternoon
I have been in such a whirl with the thousand and one
things to be attended to that I have resorted to telegrams
to keep you informed as to the state of affairs. It appears
that Miller is making this production only as a preliminary
experiment, intending to postpone the definitive production until next spring. He and the fair Lawton are taking
the main ro'les, and the rest of the company is partly new,
partly patched up from the old Divide company. I do not
expect much result from this make-shift company, especially as the rehearsals have been exceedingly inadequate
in time and number. The dress rehearsal, it seems now,
will take place Sunday morning (about eleven) but possibly
not till Monday. I doubt if you had better come on for the
rehearsal. Your impression will be calculated to increase
my own dissatisfaction, and raise it to distress. At present I am taking the thing philosophically, and I don't intend to be upset by the result, which is almost certain to
be poor. If, however, you are anxious to see the dress
rehearsal you can come. Whenever you come, you had
better stop at the Jefferson Hotel, i2th and Locust Sts.
The place where I am staying is away out in the suburbs
and not very good, besides being inconvenient to
reach.
Miller seems enthusiastic and there is a good-deal of
miscellaneous interest astir in the city. There is nothing
to do but pray the thing may not be an utter fiasco, and to
care as little as possible if it is. The proofs arrived safely.
The photographs have come out pretty nicely.


[ 376 1




AMERICA - 1909


(Postmarked April 24, 1909)
HARVARD CLUB
27 WEST 44TH Street (N.Y.)
Saturday
I have spent several days at 'Sky Meadows' and am
going there again tonight. When I arrived I found Miller
in a fearful state. It seems that his recent theatrical losses
have compelled him to heavily mortgage his farm, 'Sky
Meadows,' the apple of his eye. For the first day or two
after I came there was nothing to be done with him. Then
he pulled up again, and soon regained his sanguine spirits.
He liked the new version of the third act greatly, and was
enthusiastic about the future of the play. He hopes by
means of it - and the English campaign - to recoup himself for other failures. I devoutly hope he will, for if these
two ventures go wrong he will be down and out. Meanwhile I have rewritten the third act again, and have at last
got it in a shape that I believe will stand. I am going out
to the farm tonight to give it a final reading.
As for our plans, I have not written because I thought
that if I did I should probably open old questions and
dilemmas which the time has come to bury. The less we
talk and the more promptly we act, the better now. I
prefer to sail from Canada, and as soon as I find out the
necessary particulars as to that and where you are to
meet me, I will telegraph, giving you a couple of days, if
possible.
Telegrams will reach me here, unless I inform you of a
change of address. I shall try to get this on the Twentieth
Century, so must hurry.


[ 377 1




LETTERS TO HARRIET


Telegram:                  NEW YORK (date not clear)
NO PRODUCTION THIS FALL
FINISH HERE SATURDAY
SHALL I ENGAGE PASSAGE
W V M
HARVARD CLUB
NEW YORK, April 28, '09
I returned from 'Sky Meadows' yesterday to interview
Milton Sills - at Miller's request. He joins Miller's
forces for the summer as curate in the Servant-in-theHouse company, and Miller now is anxious to put him
into The Faith-Healer next fall, his own prospects as to
London being so hazy. Since he sent for Sills last winter
the young man's prospects have taken a decided leap.
He has been flattered by Belasco and Clyde Fitch. Moreover, he is involved already in a quasi-contrict for next
fall - which, however, he can get out of if it seems worth
his while. These matters cannot be settled for several
days. In view of all this I can't sail before next week.
Good boats sail from Montreal, May 7th - and weekly.
Does this suit you?
Engraved Announcement:
MARRIED
in Quebec, Canada
THE SEVENTH OF MAY
nineteen hundred and nine
HARRIET TILDEN BRAINARD
to
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODT




CONCLUSION












I




CONCLUSION


XXII. COMPENSATION OF 'CLEAR, LIVING
HAPPINESS1'
'We made no sign; we named no name.'
So, from an earlier May eight years before, from mute beginnings, the beneficent disaster of their sacred day had
led on at last to the making of the sign and the naming of
the new name - Harriet Moody. For this strange pragmatic fairy tale was all now to be 'happy ever after'?
'Let none be called happy, till after death has called
him' was the gauge of life invoked by the old Greek dramatist at the close of his mythic tragedy. Tragic indeed were
to be the last fifteen months of Moody's life, ministered to
by Harriet's tremulously buoyant devotions till its end,
not wholly - like Milton's - enwalled with 'spent-light... in this dark world and wide,' but slowly merged in halflight, while the sentient Arcadian mind watched that
gradual submersion with Spartan endurance. Yet after
lapse of long separation, now that death has called them
both, in very truth they may be called happy ever
after, having substantiated for the world's blind and halt
a radiance beyond eyesight and a stature above lameness.
None the less, in their fairy lore of friendship before
death, it is humanly consoling to discover a momentary
sequel less austerely Greek in contour and more gemfithlich
in its compensation for long-withheld desire, in this passage
from Harriet's own diary, written by her during their
[38!]




CONCLUSION


honeymoon, dated at Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, June 23,
1909:
A beautiful, bright morning, warm and quiet. We are entirely secluded here in a bower of greeneries of all kinds that
look out on the sea. I have a dear little room just across the
hall from our large room, with a wonderful great rock rising
up past the window, but with much reflected sunlight coming
in from the rock, and I feel strangely free from anxiety and
exquisitely happy. Not even for the youth which was almost
unbroached when I was here before, would I change this
clear, living happiness.
XXIII. HONEYMOON IN ENGLAND, CHANNEL
ISLANDS AND LAKE COUNTRY
Harriet wrote three diaries,* in 19o9-Ig9o. The first was
written at moments snatched from travel and increasing
anxieties withheld by her from Will - anxieties involved in
his illness and in her own large business project which she
was then initiating with Selfridge in London. Since her
letters to Will Moody have not survived, and her diaries in
England and America comprise the only immediate record
of his last months of life, I have included a few excerpts,
here published for the first time. The following give
glimpses of their sojourn in England and the Channel
Islands in 9gog.
June It, Guernsey. We left London this morning by train
for Weymouth. The approach to Guernsey is very beautiful
and the harbor and castle of Saint Peterport most imposing.
We arrived at half-past six, walked up the Esplanade and
there had our fancy captured by a delicious little garden
which peeped out through a half open door, at the Bel Voir
Hotel, where we found quiet rooms....There is a little maid
here named Bertha, whose white cap-ribbons vibrate and
whose throat trembles and swells like the throat and tail of
[3821




OLD WORLD ISLES


a bobolink, in the very ecstasy and passion of the national
'thank-you.' Being a descendant and country-woman of
our own Thomas Jefferson and therefore 'not to be outdone
in politeness,' I responded in kind, until Will called my attention to the moment of stunned surprise, and the frightened
return to the charge, with which she met my reciprocities.
June 25. Isle of Wight, Bonchurch. Another lowering day.
Will feeling much depressed. After breakfast we went for a
stroll to the old church and the sea. The churchyard graves
were hung with roses. 'As touching a memorial of the old religious feeling as I have ever seen,' said Will. We tried to find
a secluded spot by the sea, but my foot was behaving badly
and suddenly my courage gave out. I tried to conceal it
but did so only indifferently.... After luncheon we drove to
Shanklin, a very beautiful drive over the hills in the falling
mist.
June 27. Winchester. Will feeling better, and we moved
into a little place centuries old, called 'God-Begot-House.'
Our rooms in the top story, and named 'Asser' and 'Queen
Eauswitha,' are heavily cross-beamed with age-eaten oak.
June 28. I left Will at Winchester, and with a great wave
of desolation came to London.
June 30. Will writes the Salisbury Cathedral is more
beautiful than that at Winchester. He went up on Wednesday
to Stonehenge.
July i. I met Will at the Waterloo Station. He has had
so much pain that he felt like getting near to doctors and
other resources in case of need.
July 2. It seems to me Will needs to live in the open air
and I long to go with him to the country. I suggest America
and Mackinac, or any other country place; Sark and the
cottage there, with Dr. T- near at hand; a cart and slow
[383]




CONCLUSION


driving through English by-roads. The truth is I am deeply
anxious and at loss what to do.
July 9. Jersey. To Mount Orgueil. I can give no idea of
the pleasure we had in wandering through the old castle. We
climbed to the top of the ruins, up devious, winding stone
staircases, and in imagination 'flung all the banners on the
outer walls' as we were beset by the hordes of the enemy.
Will gathered flowers for me going up and down, poppies
first, and last the lovely rose-colored climbers for which we
knew no name.
July IO. The pleasantest day of our journey. We drove
over the gently undulating country until we reached the bluff
coast which hangs over Bouley Bay, Will often breaking out
in admiration of a beautiful tree-shaded lane, a handsome old
pile of buildings, the effect of light and cloud-shadows on the
landscape.
Returning to England, they proceeded via Bowness to
the Lakes.
July 22. Windermere. Wonderful views of purple misttopped mountains. Will walked about and reported the
place as the thing he has been looking for.
July 25. Sunday. Ambleside. We went into the kitchen
of a cottage inn and dried our damp garments. The fire was
very snug indeed. Further on we came to the churchyard
where Wordsworth is buried. We stood by his grave for
a while in the rain while all the sorrow of all the world, that
lies between the inert mass and that delicate soul, knocked
at my heart; and I fell to tears for the mighty being by my
side, held in the grasp of inflexible and remorseless sickness
and to prayers for the passing of that sickness.
In those words of Harriet's the 'mighty beings' of great
poets are strangely linked. A century earlier 'that delicate
[384]




OLD WORLD ISLES


soul' Wordsworth himself had stood a pilgrim at another
grave, shivering
'At thought of what I now behold:
As vapours breathed from dungeons cold
Strike pleasure dead,
So sadness comes from out the mould
Where Burns is laid...
But ere
Night fell I heard, or seemed to hear
Music that sorrow comes not near...'
Moody at the grave of Wordsworth left no recording
poem of his own thoughts; but Harriet's diary here records
this moving analogue in the pilgrimage of poets. After
leaving Ambleside, these last brief entries conclude her
transcript of their stay in England.
July 28. London. Hills under heavy storm clouds coming
from Ambleside to Bowness by boat. Will came on with me
part way, but revoked his decision about coming to the city
and went to Dartmoor.
July 29. Telegrams from Will (at Dartmoor).
Three days afterward, from 'Okehampton, Dartmoor,
Aug. I, I909,' Will wrote to me in America:
Dear Percy, this is about the time when The Canterbury
Pilgrims * is to have its great display at Gloucester before
President Taft and the nobility and gentry.... I had hoped to
be there, but we have been detained abroad. The other
member of 'we' refers, of course, to Harriet. The news of
our marriage has doubtless reached you, and you, who know
something of her wonderful gifts of mind and heart, will
have been the first to congratulate me.... English weather
has been at its worst, and my health has suffered. I am looking forward with eagerness to a New England autumn, for
I want to buy a little farm somewhere up there, and settle
[385]




CONCLUSION


down to country life - the only one for me. I admire your
wisdom in having set up your Ebenezer early and permanently on those lines.- Harriet joins with me in love to yourself and to Marion, and to those adorable children (I take
the newest one * on trust as equally good with the two I
know). Always your - W. V. M.
XXIV. RETURN TO AMERICA: STRICKEN:
TOWARD THE GREAT WEST
This perennial yearning to set up his own 'Ebenezer' on
some farm * with Harriet was never to be satisfied. On
their return to America in September, he was too ill to do
more than go back with her to Chicago, where they were
joined by Will's sister, Charlotte. On account of increased
anxiety concerning his eyesight, they went in early October
to Baltimore for consultation with doctors at Johns
Hopkins hospital.* There two explorative operations
were performed on October 28 and November 25. About
the last of November, I received a telegram thus recorded
in my wife' s diary (at Cornish):
Going down to Cambridge to see about the Harvard
Dramatic Club rehearsals of The Scarecrow,* Percy received
at the depot a telegram from Harriet Moody, saying, If
possible come at once to Johns Hopkins hospital, Baltimore.
So he telegraphed he would take the midnight from Boston.
It is about Will Moody and I have since had letters from
Baltimore. They were having a consultation of doctors as to
a third and probably fatal operation on the brain. Percy
saw the doctors and the verdict was no operation. He bought
the railroad tickets and saw Will and Harriet off for California, Will not knowing Percy was there for fear of exciting
him. Percy was often so close that he brushed Will's sleeve,
but Will did not know, as his sight is permanently impaired,
poor tragic fellow.
[3861




DARKENING VISTAS


Those were some of the most poignant hours of my life,
so near to my friend, whom I longed to speak to, yet dared
not lest his quick intuition should sense from my presence
that I had been summoned to confer upon his own mortal
danger. On leaving the hospital, as he, Harriet, Charlotte
and I stood by the elevator doors, Harriet asked him: 'Will
you take the lift down?' He answered: 'No, let's take the
stairway. I think I'd feel nobler to walk down.' I was beside him walking down and in the same cab to the station,
where I helped him into the train and stood watching on
the platform just outside his Pullman-car window, through
which I saw a faint, glad smile light up his face under the
bandaged forehead, as the train moved slowly outward
toward the Great West.
XXV. DARKENING VISTAS: 'NOBLE BALANCE
OF SELF-CONTROL '
About a week later, Harriet's diary begins again her
record of the long, gradual sundown of Will's passing.
Dec. 9, i909. Wed. Riverside, Cal. A rainy day. Will
feeling well. No pain, even encouraged about his sight. Read
in Maeterlinck's The Life of the Bee. Concerning the bees
I said that their organization and purpose seemed almost
terrifying in its completeness and he said that their sacrifice
of all considerations to that of the future of the race appeared
to him a limitation upon their manifestation of intellect.
This, in as much as he is a strong individualist by nature,
and as it went right to the pith of a reasonably abstruse
matter, seemed to me well worthy of note.
Dec. 9. Still rainy. Began reading Ramona. He commented
that Ramona, although charming in style was 'old fashioned,'
and instanced that lack of fidelity to life in drawing the
Scotchman, Angus Phail.
[3871




CONCLUSION


Dec. io. A brighter day. Will wakened quite happy in
the thought of going to Santa Barbara today.... He felt
most encouraged and has spoken of things he could see: the
most remarkable being the water on the coast, seen from the
car-window in heavy twilight at six o'clock.
This new locale of W. V. M. on the sea-coast has been
feelingly. memorialized by Ridgely Torrence in his poem,
Santa Barbara Beach.*
Dec. i S. Santa Barbara. A very natural aspect of the eye
was the most cheering sight of the morning. At five we went
for a short drive with a lazy horse we have hired. Will got
out about half a mile from the house with Charlotte and
walked home.
Dec. 23. Today he began speaking of his new play.* He
asked to have -the manuscript read and made some valuable
suggestions for changes which I noted.... We drove to the
Old Mission where he tested his eyes by looking at its elevation. He was overjoyed to find he saw it quite well and
without 'blurring.' This greatly raised his spirits.
Dec. 24. Went out in cart till five-thirty. He walked with
Charlotte up two long hills because the horse could not pull
us all through the mud. The ravine was full of mist, but he
was greatly disappointed that he did not see as well as he had.
Spoke with affection of Christmas Eve.
Dec. 25. Wakened with many Christmas wishes for us all.
At one-thirty we sat down around our unlighted small Christmas tree. This he enjoyed with all his own sweetness of spirit.
He had taken much interest in having the gifts bought for
him to give, especially for the servants. He also entered into
the spirit of the Christmas dinner and enjoyed it heartily.
He constantly shows his old delicate solicitation for the
welfare and comfort of others, and fills the atmosphere with
his gentle spiritual tenderness.
[ 3881




DARKENING VISTAS


Jan. 3, I910. We were reading a paper concerning the
'Idealism' of different philosophers. In this he took great
interest; and spoke fluently and well to several points.
Jan. 4. Today's period of reading was divided between
philosophical essays, the Bible and a Tale of Two Cities.
Jan. 7. 'I can see you, your face and all with it alone,' he
said. He felt much encouraged and so settled down to our
reading with great interest.
Jan. 8. Read Tale of Two Cities. He called attention to
the point in the story where the play had begun, successfully
played by Henry Miller.
Moody's continuing thoughts of his 'grand resource, the
theatre,' is evidenced throughout these further passages of
Harriet's diary.
Jan. 14. Damp and dark. Read till eleven. Will said he
was going to walk and Charlotte went with him. At twelvethirty, I walked down the road to meet him as I had a telegram for him. As I came near he exclaimed 'Why! I see
your face, clearly.'
The telegram * announced the forthcoming staging of The
Faith Healer, together with Mr. Miller's satisfaction in the
new version. This news involved the sending-off of three
telegrams, one to Mr. Miller, one to Will's publishers, one to
his manuscript copyist, the last two rather complicated.
These he dictated with great firmness, deciding some rather
involved questions entirely for himself.
He proposed to me to go to New York and watch the
early staging of the play and said he could get on well now
for a time. After dictating the telegrams, in response to my
statement that I thought he would be foolish to let this
play occupy his attention at all now, as it was the thing with
which he overtaxed-himself before, and he needed to be free
of it, he" said he guessed that was true and he wouldn't do it.
He then turned on his side, composed himself and slept.
[ 389 ]




CONCLUSION


Jan. 19. Will much interested in the fact that The Faith
Healer is being put on in New York tonight, but is also
very restrained about it. I cannot commend his bearing of
himself too highly, for this play has been the darling of the
last few years. Read till five. About nine o'clock an enthusiastic telegraphic message * came from New York friends
sent after the New York premiere, and gave him great pleasure. But this play has cost him so much in vital force that
I am fearful of his getting excited about it now, just when he
seems to be gaining; so we put this excitement resolutely aside.
Jan. 2I. Will received and personally answered telegrams
relative to performances of Faith Healer to be given soon in
Cambridge and Boston. He spoke of pain in the left eye, and
also that sometimes at night, he would open his eyes and the
room would appear light for a minute.
Jan. 26. Will rested a little but walked about, talking of
The Faith Healer. Went to walk. Felt some anxiety about
Sunday (his dog) who had a sharp attack of sickness.
Jan. 27. I should have mentioned that he had the adverse
New York newspaper clippings concerning The Faith Healer
and that he bore all this with his usual uncomplaining acquiescence, and without allowing himself to be cast down.
His is always the most noble balance of self-control in the
world.
Jan. 29. A telegram came from Henry Miller * including
the statement, 'I believe the play will live.' This gave him
pleasure. But he had much pain before he slept.
Jan. 30. A letter from a friend in Cambridge * (E. K. Rand)
full of understanding of The Faith Healer gave him good cheer.
Feb. I. After breakfast we sat down to correct proof.
I read the printer's page aloud while Charlotte followed with
the typed manuscript and Will listened. He was never surer
of what he wanted done in his life; dictated all the corrections,
[3901




DARKENING VISTAS


some of them involving nice points of judgment. We worked
from nine till twelve-thirty.
Feb. i6. Read till 11.30. Then Will helped wash the dog.
This he enjoyed. He felt he did not see so well today and was
in a most discouraged mood. In the evening a consignment
of proof of The Faith Healer came.
March i. Will awakened feeling very well. During the
breakfast hour we had a memorable and most uplifting talk.
His old personality spoke forth fully and his whole aspect
seemed changed. I went out for an hour. When I came back
he met me with the word that 'something strange had happened' to his eyes. He found he could see to read parts of a
letter written in a reasonably fine hand! Our day was one of
great joy, too great to write of. At night he was well able
to distinguish the stars and even picked out the Pleiades and
described the group.
March 6. Went to drive. On the road Will read again the
long sign-board he read two weeks ago, but with much more
ease at a greater distance. He took out Mr. Mason's letter *
and read nearly half a page of it. He is now fully assured of
his complete recovery and feels himself already cured. He
prefers to go to Colorado rather than to Los Angeles. This
is perhaps what we shall do.
April 9. The new edition of The Faith Healer came. He was
greatly interested, examined it most carefully and had it
read aloud during the evening. His interest was alert and
entirely natural. We talked the play over a bit after finishing. He went to bed with some pain.
April io. Sunday. Talked with much hope of his future
work. I got off letter for him to Macmillan concerning a
typographical error, the only one in the book.
April i. We are reading the Acts of the Apostles in which
he is deeply interested.
1 391 ]




CONCLUSIOIT


April i8. After supper I read his own poems to him, for an
hour. We enjoyed it, but it was too much for both of us, and
though I read till after ten in Sudermann's Song of Songs, he
went to bed sad.
XXVI. 'THE GROVE,' CHICAGO: SARDONIC
EPILOGUE OF THE 'POETS' ONSET'
At the close of the spring, they went home to Chicago,
where they passed the summer and early fall in their old
haunts at 297o Groveland Avenue,* fondly called 'the
Grove' in these letters. In July, igio, I went with my
wife and Margaret Anglin to Berkeley, California, to assist
Miss Anglin in staging the Antigone of Sophocles at the
Greek Theatre there, while writing a play * for her laid in
California. En route through Chicago, between trains, I
visited 'the Grove,' and felt encouraged by an apparent
rally in Will's health. As my wife and I were driving off in
Harriet's carriage to the station, we caught our last glimpse
of Will walking south on Groveland Avenue with his happy
setter dog, Sunday, leaping about him. Of this visit I wrote
a report to E. A. at Chocorua, N.H., where, on July 29th, he
wrote to Harriet this letter from 'one of Will's old haunts.'
Dear Mrs. Moody, I was afraid that Percy, with his oversanguine temperament, might be helping matters a little,
but it is good to know that you bear him out substantially in
your own words. You will see from this that I am in one of
Will's old haunts - up here in the semi-wilderness with old
Bartlett * who wishes to be remembered most violently. He
is just the same as ever -only a little older. His chief
excitement in life consists in killing flies during meals and
swearing in a most piratical manner when he gets one. He
has lost little of his old energy and none of his profanity —
for which one is to be grateful.
[ 392 1




EPILOGUE OF THE 'POETS' ONSET'


In spite of your veiled warning, I regret to report I have
written two chapters of the novel - if it may be called one -
and that I am ass enough to be rather pleased with what I
have done. Of course this means that I have entered the
Valley of the Shadow. If the October book of verse should
by any chance amount to anything, the novel will undoubtedly knock it on the head and serve it right. I ought to be
willing to be a freak forever, and not try to make money.
Won't you tell me something about the third part of W's
trilogy? All I know is that it is more or less about Eve. From
one point of view this is sufficient, but I can't help wishing
that I knew a little more. Yours sincerely, E. A. Robinson.
The 'impossible play' of E. A. was his Van Zorn, and the
'two chapters' of its 'rehashment' in novel form were soon
to be portion of a period of unpublished novelizations
of plays; for a year later (July 17, I9II) Robinson wrote
to me concerning that same Porcupine of his which Moody
had sworn 'the daylight black and blue' cracking up to
Charles Frohman in 'the den of Apollyon': -'I am now
going to try to make the Porcupine eat out of my hand,
keep his quills down and be a novel.' This he did, completing a 75,ooo-word manuscript of the novel.* Thereupon, as he himself told me, he tore up his only copy
of the manuscript and burnt it. So closes for this volume
the sardonic epilogue to E. A.'s part in Moody's gallant
championship of 'what our little group dreamed of trying
to do by way of crusade for the drama.'
In early October, Harriet, Will and his sister, Charlotte,
went to Colorado Springs, where they rented a little cottage, surrounded by the autumn zests and splendors of the
high cedared Rockies. From its porch there was a noble
view of Pike's Peak, which Will's failing sight could still
x Cf. his letter to Harriet, Oct. i6, I907.
[ 393 1




CONCLUSION


faintly descry. There, two or three days before his death,
he received this letter from Robinson (dated, Chocorua,
N.H., Oct. 9, IgIo), seeking to cheer him with early recollections of their old White Mountains pal, Bartlett,* whom
Moody, ten years before, had described as 'magnificent
old goat and man of God':
Dear Moody - I am sending you a copy of my book ('The
Town Down the River'), in the hope that it may not be bad
enough to interfere with your rapid recovery. I say rapid,
hoping and believing that I am using the right word. A
word from you direct or from Mrs. Moody will be very
acceptable.
You can see from my choice of words the state that my
intellect is in today. Perhaps I had better build a fire, and go
down stairs and find out what Pere Bartlett is doing. He is
making a devil of a racket and singing to himself as if he had
caught another rat. He speaks of you often and wishes to
be remembered when I write. You will mention that I have
followed his instructions. Yours always, E. A. R.
From such 'wishes to be remembered' voiced in this
last letter of his life, Will's brooding autumnal thoughts
recalled perhaps that springtime of his young brave Ode
before his 'ark of the year' had been veiled, and may
have murmured aloud his own lines from it-looking off
'where the white Sierras call
Unto the Rockies straightway to arise
And dance before the unveiled ark of the year,
Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms.'
XXVII. MOUNTAIN DEATH: THE MOMENT AND
ENDURING MEMORY
At Colorado Springs, amid those far snow-capped presences, Will and Harriet continued to take their daily
[394]




MOUNTAIN DEATH


walks on paths of wild nature until the seventeenth of
October. On that morning, Will awakened with cerebral
pain which caused him not to rise as usual. Throughout
the day Harriet and Charlotte attended his bedside.
Towards evening his pulse had ceased.
On that same evening, at Cornish, I received a telegram
from Harriet, asking me to inform Will's intimate friends.
I did so, and E. A. wrote again to Harriet, from Chocorua
(Oct. 17):
I have just received Percy MacKaye's telegram about Will.
I cannot possibly say anything now more than to express my
deepest sympathy for you at such a time as this. Thank God
he lived to do his work - or enough of it to place him among
the immortals. But you are not thinking of that now. Please
accept these few clumsy words as you know that I would
have them accepted and forgive my inopportune note of the
other day.
I hope that I may see you again sometime and perhaps
make you understand more clearly how fully I realize what
you, and the world, have lost. Most sincerely yours, E. A.
Robinson.
The day after sending the telegram to E. A., I wrote to
Prof. George Pierce Baker in Cambridge, proposing to him
a plan for a Harvard Theatre in Moody's memory, set
forth in a letter of which this is an excerpt:
Dear George Baker: I wrote you yesterday the news of
Moody's death. It was a shock the more keen to me that I
had seen him so greatly recovered in health last summer in
Chicago. I cannot keep out of mind the thought of him and
his splendid life-work unfinished, not simply because he was
one of my dearest friends but also my intimate fellow-worker.
I know that you also prize his memory well, and so I am
writing you this letter, in which I shall briefly set forth a
plan which came into my mind to-day in my studio, while
[395




CONCLUSION


working on a play of my own: a plan to make perennial the
inspiration of his significant work and life by correlating it
permanently with the forces of dramatic renascence in our
country today and tomorrow.
For the proposed plan * I suggested a committee, which
I then organized. That was a quarter century ago, and
still Harvard has no theatre. Hopefully the record of
Moody's inspiring life and labors furnished in this volume
may lead toward that consummation, newly stirred by the
meanings of this twenty-fifth anniversary * of his passing,
at a time when anew the majestic idea of a National
Theatre is being definitely broached by our Federal Government at Washington.
For the memory of Will Moody is of more lasting stuff
than governments and universities. At Colorado Springs,
on October 17, 19 o, there died a poet as cherishable for his
gentilesse by our own 'Mermaid' of memories in America
as another 'gentle Will' by his fellows of old London's
tavern in 'Merrie England.' And fittingly for the one who
invoked The Fire-Bringer * for his new land, his spirit was
returned in fire, and his body to the elements in ashes.
XXVIII. LAST SEA-RITES; PROMETHEUS AND
THE PSALMIST
The last rites, held by four loving friends beside the old
Homeric 'many-syllabling sea' were imbued with the spirit
elements of all timeless poets, merging the elegies of
Adonais and Lycidas with the last sea-dirging lines of Walt
Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, memorializing those same ocean-dunes of Long Island's shore,* not far
from Walt's birthplace. From the nobly simple statement
of Ferdinand Schevill sent to me for record here, one
[3961




LAST SEA-RITES


catches, as on tones of an ever-blowing sea-wind, the elemental reconcilement of Prometheus and Christ to which
Moody's poet-mind was dedicated, in these lines from his
own Fire-Bringer blending with the Ninety-first song of
the Psalmist:
Here gather they, with mute and doubtful looks
At one-another, waiting till She comes,
Mnemosyne, mother of thought and tears,
Remembrancer, and bringer out of death
Burden of longing and sweet-fruited song...
Then... swifter than the osprey dips
Down the green slide of the sea... upon the shore
Of this our night-bound wretched earth I paused...
And lo, my vase was rended in my hands,
And all the precious substance that it held
Spread, faded, and was gone, - was quenched, was gone!
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty...
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by nightFor the arrow thatflieth by day...
It shall not come nigh thee.
The following is the brief historic statement of Schevill,
based in his diary-notes of that date:
On the morning of Friday, October 28, i9Io, I arrived from
Chicago in New York with Harriet, Charlotte, and Will
Tilden, Harriet's brother, with whom she was going to sail
for Europe the next day. Torrence met us at the station,
and as soon as we had taken Will Tilden (who was a very
sick man in charge of a nurse) to the hotel, Harriet, Charlotte,
Torrence and I departed for Long Island to dispose of Will
Moody's ashes. (These were in an urn, wrapped in Harriet's
chiffon scarf.) It was Harriet who had developed the plan
we four carried out.
It was a beautiful fall day, cool and sparkling. We went
to Far Rockaway beach and walked along the shore eastward
[397 l




CONCLUSION


till we came to an uninhabited section of low sand dunes
declining to a broad stretch of smooth yellow beach, up which
kept coming the great rollers of the sea.
We sat down upon the sand, huddled in blankets, for the
air was fresh, and read aloud, taking turns, the whole of The
Fire-Bringer. Will's ashes were at Harriet's side. When the
reading was over, it was half past four. Then at Harriet's
wish we lit a fire, and a few minutes before five o'clock, just
as the sun dropped to the level of the water, I opened the
urn, which Harriet had given into my hands (as she touched
with flame the scarf that held it), and I scattered the ashes
over the waves. Then we all knelt and Harriet recited the
Ninety-first psalm. The great rollers washed to our feet and,
after a few returns, they had sucked the fragments of white
bone, the last mortal elements of Will, out into the sea.
And so 'here gather they' still. But now She has come -
Mnemosyne,
'Remembrancer, and bringer out of death.'
XXIX. 'FROM    SHUTTING MISTS... LAUGHTER
AND RALLYING'
Harriet was a creature of the elements and drew to herself her fellow creatures - the sudden lightning, the rainreleasing cloud-cap and glancing leaves in the sun-burst,
the clear starshine, and the noon-warm, multitudinous
wing-song of wild nature's self-revealment. Wise in her
prodigal insight, she shared with Will a native humor of
wisdom which, like Shelley's * 'sincerest laughter' akin to
saddest thought, is as brightly elemental and profound as
nature's glitter of leaves after dark cloud-rack.
For Harriet, therefore, there were to be no sombre trailings of widowhood over her remembrance of Will - a remembrance which was always quite simply his familiar
[398




HEARTH-FIRE IN 'THE GROVE'


presence throughout all the teeming devotions and enlarging friendships of her after-life. The old symbol of
'handing on the torch' conveys an image strenuously onrushing, but Harriet held the torch of her poet delicately
and straightly poised, as a quiet candle to be lit ever newly
in the heart of a friend, and hers was a beautiful diversity
of personal friendships. So, the home-circle of her spacious
'Grove' became a 'House of a Hundred Lights' * illuminated by its first familiar presence in the hearts of other
poets, famed and unfamed; for there the welcoming touch
of her hand was a talisman that conjoined all in her own
and Will's 'poem of life':
Of wounds and sore defeat
I made my battle-stay;
Winged sandals for my feet
I wove of my delay...
From the shutting mists of death
And the failure of the breath...
O hearken, where the echoes bring...
Laughter and rallying.
XXX. HEARTH-FIRE 'IN THIE COMFORTING
SHADOWS OF "THE GROVE"'
At her fireside, seated beside her on the ample chainswung couch, many a transcontinental tramp on the trail
to Arcady or Avon has blessed his 'delay' there and, weaving his feet with those winged sandals of Will's song, suddenly he has discovered that he had found his destination.
Such a tramp, in his mid-years, was Nicholas Vachel
Lindsay * who wrote to her there, on a Christmas eve, in
1922:
My dear Cordelia... I know nothing about thee but thy
great kindness of heart, that with thee as with John Ruskin
1 399 ]




CONCLUSION


'every dawn of morning is as the beginning of life.' If I
said one word of thee, it would be that thou art Shakespearean, though whether thy soul is Portia, Miranda, Cordelia,
Viola, Cleopatra- who can tell? Thy literary sense is the
Shakespearean, the events of thy life are Plutarchan and
Shakespearean, and likewise thy conversation... Most fraternally - Vachel.
In long earlier days, another Parnassan tramp at her
fireside was William Butler Yeats, of whom on his first
visit to America in January, 1904, Will wrote to Harriet,
who had reported her welcome of Yeats at 'the Grove':
' The only thing to care about is that, standing face to face
with this young Irishman, you - miraculous reader of hearts
and knower of souls - accept him as our brother. My brother
he shall be, so long as I have strength to claim him.
'Miraculous reader of hearts' Harriet was, on many
planes of human relationship. 'Sister, wife, mother, child'
Will describes her to herself in one of his letters.... For her
ever-resourceful practicality he confesses his own homage
of a 'delighted grin' at her 'absurd effectiveness.' Of her
consoling kindness he writes her concerning their boon
comrade (Schevill), 'Ferd will smooth his feathers in the
comforting shadows of the Grove.'
Will himself first introduced me to Harriet about 1905, at
2970 Groveland Avenue, where after leaving the University
he had always his Chicago headquarters along with a few
other 'perennials' among her friends.
On my first evening there, we had sat up very late in a
fragrant atmosphere of poetry, laughter and midnight regalement, Harriet and Will and I outlasting the others in a
trio, till our candles lit us to a landing of the great staircase
[ 4Q0]




HEARTH-FIRE IN 'THE GROVE'


where we parted - I to enter a spacious bedchamber, undress and blow out my candle.
Shortly after, as I lay in the great four-posted bed,
listening up toward the ceiling's glimmery zenith, the
faintest of ghostly sounds filtered down, like a lost echo
that wandered off into silence, only to return again recurrently and die away into the least of sliding, scuffing, scraping, tinkling murmurs. To my straining senses the semidarkness grew darker. Like Old Scrooge in Dickens's
'Carol,' listening for the ghost of Marley, I awaited the
spectral embodiment of that echo. But still overhead the
scuffing tinkle drew nearer, grew faint and far - but never
corporeal. The next thing I heard was the breakfast-rap
on my door.
At the breakfast table, where I sat down rather nightworn, Harriet was at her presiding place, fresher than the
daffodils beside her. She smiled across them at Will, who
whimsically returned the smile as she greeted me:
'Hope you slept well!... Hear anything - did you?'
My stare was a blank entreaty. Both their smiles met
in a burst of laughter - and the sequel was soon out.
My ' Marley's ghost' - was Harriet's 'Home Delicacies
Association' then in its first swaddling clothes, hidden
away in her ample attic, before that infant industry -
born of her genius for gingerbread - had stretched its
child-giant limbs and gone forth to become the colossus of
Marshall Field's dining emporium and the Pullman Car
Service. But Harriet's night-guests must not be disturbed
in their slumbers, so tiptoe was the watchword overhead for
her chefs and their delicate assistants over whom Harriet
herself often presided till after sunrise, descending to
breakfast to resume her midnight conversazioni.
[ 40I ]




CONCLUSION


Painters and musicians shared with poets that home
where Will Moody's mystically brooding pictures hung on
the walls, with his portrait by Anderson and the landscapes of McComas. Ridgely Torrence has characterized
the rare initiative and growth of these interests.'
To express Harriet Moody's degree of interest in promoting artists with small incomes, as well as in lame ducks with
no incomes at all, fairly substantial resources are obviously
necessary. A young high school teacher in Chicago, she felt
a strong desire to do more for her invalid mother than her
salary permitted. Having a knack for cooking, she made
some irresistible gingerbread, sold it and received orders for
more. Out of this episode developed the 'Home Delicacies
Association' * a catering enterprise which throve mightily
for many years not through petty economy but sheer excellence of its products.
Few guessed how much she did, year after year, for
Chicago's promising young writers. She believed in Glenway
Westcott before he had written a novel. She detached Hart
Crane, at the age of sixteen, from uncongenial environment
and encouraged him to produce poetry. She helped the
sculptor, Alfeo Faggi, among many others, to find his public.
She promoted many such careers as those of the young composers, Henry Cowell and Harold Triggs.
Individual as this home of hers was, she was independent
of it and of all material scenes and conditions. When she
traveled to New York or Europe, or to California, she took
her own atmosphere with her, and, within an hour of arriving anywhere, her characteristic salon, nobody could explain
how, was in full operation.
After her husband's death, in 191o, she retained the
apartment at Io7 Waverly Place, New York, which Moody
had never relinquished, and where he had written portions
of his poems and plays. Her unfulfilled wish was to make
this spot a permanent home for poets and a center of poetic
In The New Republic, March 9, 1932.
[402]




HARRIET'S POET-PILGRIMS


life. As a matter of fact, it was occupied for years by a succession of poet-friends and was intermittently, during her
presence there, the scene of the vivid life that she had the
gift of instantly summoning.
In that succession of friends,* my wife and I and our
children spent a sparsely impecunious winter (I914-I5) at
Harriet's Waverley Place apartment, rent-free by her
bountiful thoughts of us. And whenever I put forth on far
lecture-tours westward, always at Chicago I found welcome in her Groveland Avenue home.
XXXI. HARRIET'S POET-PILGRIMS FROM ALL
CLIMES
There throughout the years till her death in I932, the
distinctive red-brick house, set airily apart, was gradually
surrounded and dingened by an inseeping murky tide of
residential non-descripts. Meanwhile, gaily oblivious of her
altered environment, Harriet dispatched her carriage, and
later her limousine, with Anton of the smiling moustachios
(Marquis of Carabas coachman and chauffeur of 'the
Grove' for twenty-seven years), with the perennial barking red setter blithely haunched at his elbow, to welcome
her pilgrims at the railroad station. Alone, or paired, or in
groups, tarrying by her hearth for days, or weeks, or
months, they descended from far climes in freshets of
poets, artists and authors, among whom these are some
forty * (rostered alphabetically):
Jules Bois, Witter Bynner, Mary and Padraic Colum,
Hart Crane, James Daly, Edward Davison, Robert Frost,
Zona Gale, Wilfrid Gibson, Stephen Graham, Marjorie
Kennedy-Fraser,* Alice Corbin and William Henderson,
DuBose Heyward, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Percy
MacKaye, Edgar Lee Masters, Edwin Markham, John Mase[403 1




CONCLUSION


field, Daniel Gregory Mason, Theodore Maynard, Edna St.
Vincent Millay, Harriet Monroe, Robert Nichols, Yone
Noguchi, Josephine Preston Peabody, O. E. Rolvaag, Carl
Sandburg, Alfredo San Malo, Leonora Speyer, James Stephens, Frank Swinnerton, Rabindranath Tagore (with son,
daughter-in-law and secretary), Eunice Tietjens, Ridgely
Torrence, Willem Van Hoogstraten, William Butler Yeats,
Francis Brett Young.*
Some of them are among the following who dedicated to
Harriet volumes of their own writings: Padraic Colum,
Dr. Eugene Carson, Dr. Martin H. Fischer, Theodore
Maynard, James Stephens, Rabindranath Tagore,* Ridgely
Torrence. And of countless greetings from such pilgrim
friends, these seven are excerpted from letters to Harriet
herself.
James Stephens: I expect to return to the states and I
hope, to Chicago, and to see you. It would be worth going
all them watery miles just for that.
Wilfrid Gibson: I never imagined there was such kindness
in life.
Robert Frost: Come to Franconia and adopt the rest of the
family as you adopted me in Chicago. We can't feed you,
because we haven't learned to feed ourselves in the right
caterer's sense of the word, but we can surround you, the
six of us as I calculate, with one continuous smile of welcome.
Edwin Markham: I wish I was sitting at your hearth again,
listening to your remarkable readings from the pen of the
great soul who was called from you. Those readings are
among my joyous memories.
Yone Noguchi: How often I wish I could fly to your hospitable house and sip tea with you! Of course your house is
more than hospitable, because you are a great personality,
with artistic sympathy - so rare in the world.
Frank Swinnerton: I really don't know how to thank you
[4~4




HARRIET'S POET-PILGRIMS


for all your kindness to me. I am convinced I should have
collapsed if I had not come to your home in Chicago.
Rabindranath Tagore: I do not know if we shall ever meet
again - but we have met - and that meeting can never be
over- and the distances will make it all the deeper and
truer by leaving out all trivialities that tend to overcrowd it....
I am sending you, with the greeting of my love and good
wishes, a translation of my poem, as the gift of one who has
carried home across the seas the memory of your friendship
as one of the best boons that your country has given him.
All these friends and many others came not sought-after
but seeking, as Torrence discerningly states further in his
article before quoted:
It would be a serious mistake to class Harriet Moody as a
deliberate collector of celebrities. The truth is that her own
personality demanded its suitable food, her mind its material
for exchange, her heart the vessels for its overflow. And
she had an amazing flair for perceiving and singling out,
among multitudes of human beings, those who interested
her or who needed her friendship -which among all her
givings was the gift she offered most lavishly. Informality
of dress, manner, speech all that was inconsequential. But
no guest could produce his second-or-third-best intellectual
furnishings without detection and challenge. This woman
would do all for you that one human being could do for
another, but she would not accept your evasions and insincerities.
How deeply Harriet fathomed the spiritual needs of all
'who needed her friendship,' whether publicly known or
unknown, and gave them alike her sustenance both spiritual and actual, is evident in this passage of a letter written
soon after her death by the young poet, James Daly, who
(in 1927) had spent some months at 'the Grove' under her
welcoming hospitality:
[405




CONCLUSION


She was a great friend in every poignant sense of greatness
and of 'friend'... the greatest woman I have ever known.
A soul so dynamic - so 'rammed with life' as Ben Jonson
said of Shakespeare - how empty that soul's going can make
this earth seem! Terrifying darkness where before there was
an unfailing radiance; and, in her case, a radiance that had
fire in it - never a cold, austere radiance. I think of those
lines in comment on Goethe's last words:
'No, not more light: more warmth! For we die of cold and
not of darkness. It is not the night that freezes, but the frost.'
With thoughts of both Will and herself, E. A. Robinson
wrote to her, from Peterborough, N.H., September 29,
I92I:
Dear Harriet... There is a shine in all directions that
indicates the return of W.V. M. from his temporary submersion under mediocrity and flim-flam; and I'll be mighty
glad when his light really shines again with nothing in the
way. It will then have extinguished a host of sputtering and
unsavory tallow dips.... The world is undoubtedly better for
your being in it.... Yours always, E. A. R.
XXXII. THE HOME THAT 'COULD NOT CLOSE
ITS DOORS'
Perhaps most lavish among all Harriet's expressions of
friendship was her hospitality to Rabindranath Tagore.
Of this Sir William Rothenstein wrote her:
I was delighted to see your generous friendship so beautifully acknowledged in Rabindranath's dedication of Chitra
to you. No one could have been more large-hearted and
unselfish than you yourself towards those Indian exiles
whom you found near your door. I shall always think of
your hospitality, so unbounded and spontaneous, as one of
the gracious things of life.
[406]




THE HOME WITH OPEN DOORS
After Will's death, Harriet had been 'seriously occupied'
abroad and in America with solicitous cares.* Of her return
to her Chicago home, in January, I913, the following account * in her own words reveals how her home became the
questing-place of all those who came, like Tagore, 'conferring, after a long separation, about... a common early
home.'
I had been away from home for almost two years, seriously
occupied, and I had just come home to rest, when, fairly in
the hour of my arrival, I received a note from the editor of an
important magazine * saying that she had invited a most
distinguished poet (Tagore) to give an address here: that the
hostess who had offered to entertain him had been forced
to recall her invitation, and that the distracted editor had
turned to me for help. But I was adamant. I had freed
myself, as I thought, by my long absence, from all sense of
duty or obligation, and I declined to undertake this responsibility.
That night I went to bed without regret; but in the early
morning I was better advised. It came to me that my home,
which had been the home of a poet, could not close its doors to
a brother poet. I called my secretary, and asked her to go
and say to my friend, the editor, that I would receive the
poet. In the meantime I got and read his book of verse, most
carefully.
A light powdery snow began to fall just as I was watching
for him, and as he arrived, it fell on his picturesque black
velvet cap and on his flowing white beard, giving a romantic
aspect to his appearance. He was attended by his son with
his son's young wife, and by his secretary. These all settled
themselves in unobtrusive places in the living room, while
the poet came and sat beside me, before going to his room.
I had just come from an ocean journey. The poet's voice
was like the lapping of the waves, quiet, rich, sustained. I
was soothed and heartened as I listened to him. He was one
[ 407 ]




CONCLUSION


who talked straight on, without waiting for a reply. This
did not seem in the least wearisome. Like all significant conversations, it seemed as if he were talking from the depths
of my own being. It was as if we were conferring, after a
long separation, about the fundamental doctrines of a common early home, under the teaching and influence of the
same father and mother. There was never a moment when
he was strange to me, although he commanded my quiet
reverence.
Of the second visit by the Hindu poet to 'the Grove'
a friend of Harriet, her secretary and intimately a member of her household for many years, has written me this
further information concerning an oriental banquet (already grown fabulous in Chicago history) provided offhand by Harriet to scores of Tagore's Hindu compatriots.
In regard to the great Hindu luncheon (or dinner) I should
say it came about quite informally. When Mr. Tagore was
at 2970, all the Hindus in Chicago and surrounding towns
came to see him. There were a great number of them. Some
one suggested they should prepare a dinner of Hindu foods.
This they did at 2970. Several Hindu young men prepared
dishes they liked especially and knew how to make. I remember Mr. Tagore's daughter-in-law prepared a dish of
curried chicken. She was much interested in cooking, and
learned from Harriet how to make many American dishes,
so that she could teach them to girls in the Tagore school
in India.
During many years, both in Chicago and London,
Harriet continued her rare hospitality to Tagore, before
and after he received the Nobel Prize. In May, 1929,
Harriet designed and tendered a special luncheon, at Le
Petit Gourmet (which she owned and directed) in honor
of the aged poet's young friend, Sudhindranath Datta,*
[408 ]




FAGGOTS OF REMEMBRANCE


of Calcutta, and a group of young Chicago poets, among
whom was Kathleen Campbell who writes of the occasion
in recollection.
I remember the party the way one remembers dreamswithout continuity. Rain - firelight between those tree-high
candle-sticks at the Gourmet - daffodils - the great silver
platter passing - grapes, peaches, pears, sculptured from
ice-cream... I remember thinking what an extraordinary
power Harriet had, to be not there at all, and yet so represented by the faultless service, the lavishness, the bounty,
the gaiety of the party, its uncommonness... I want Harriet
to be set down in a book, some part of her anyway, and not
just left to legend.
XXXIII. MONADNOCK: ANNIVERSARY: 'FAGGOTS
OF REMEMBRANCE'
But Harriet herself is the very substance of legend, the
primal Homeric stuff of fable: the same that once bourgeoned Penelope and Helen from the busy local looms and
'home delicacies' of the Achaeans to live on as spirit prototypes of their departed time.
To transplant even 'some part of her' from legend to
'set down in a book,' expecting that slip to stay put there,
is like setting a sprout of wild honeysuckle in a clay pot by
an open south casement and expecting it to refrain from
trailing its intransigent blooms and fragrances beyond
the narrow lattice of its house of retention. This book is
such an earthy retainer and 'slipped' between its shards
are two living stems: wild honeysuckle of Harriet and
Hymettus-flower of Will - not pressed like wan mementoes but twined as in leaves of the old ballad, upflowering,
out-tendriling, forth-reaching toward their own kind.
Of their own kind is the young poet-recorder who recalls,
1 409 1




CONCLUSION


above, Harriet's party for the friend of Tagore. And likewise 'as one remembers in dreams... rain... firelight...
daffodils... and Harriet- not there at all, yet always represented by the faultless service... its uncommonness,'
so in our remembrance of these letters of Will to her, we
feel always 'the lavishness, the bounty, the gaiety' of her
essential presence.
How, then, can I record in a book her 'once-on-a-time'
actuality - which essentially never was? Surely, not at
all! For this is a true record, with a true conclusion. And
so, like Vachel Lindsay, I avow truly of Harriet that 'the
events of her life were Plutarchan and likewise her conversation,' and therefore as in her life-time for her 'every
dawn of morning was as the beginning of life,' so in her
after-time she remains, like the morning, ever legendary -
as Penelope watchful of her returning Odysseus, or as
Helen launching her 'thousand ships' toward battles far
off and strange.
Strangely far off was the last word I ever received from
Harriet in its interchange of our remembrance of Will
two years before her own death.* She was still in their
familiar 'Grove' and I in my home in Cornish, lately returned there from Peterborough, New Hampshire, where I
had spent part of that summer of I930 at the MacDowell
Colony, working in a studio among the woods close by the
studio of E. A. Robinson,* with whom I used often to
pass our nooning lunch-hour, or walk back to our quarters,
evenings, after work.
One such evening toward autumn, having sat awhile by
the wood fire in his studio, we looked off from the porch
toward his fond vista of Monadnock serene in the sunset,
where our thoughts went past the glowing peak westward
[410]




FAGGOTS OF REMEMBRANCE


to Harriet, as we talked of Will, our days and nights with
him in earlier contrasted times when 'our little group'
were all young together. And I reminded him of an anniversary soon to come.
That night, one of those thoughts took form in a sonnet* which soon afterward I sent to Harriet for October
seventeenth, the twentieth anniversary of Will's passing,
when I telegraphed to her for E. A. and myself, and her
swift reply came back in greeting: 'Yes, dear friends.
You and I remembered.'
IN MEMORIAM: W. V. M.
17 October, 1930
Sitting beside old embers of slow fire,
We fed them faggots of remembrance, till
The quickened flames of friendship glowed to fill
Our narrowed hearth with light from a far pyre,
And there - while that strange light became a choir
Of thought -'E. A.,' I wondered, 'how would Will
Confront, today, if he were with us still,
The loud confounders of Apollo's lyre?'
This much we know: He who of old could feel
The Gloucester Moors heave like a staggered ship
That, shuddering, rights herself to beauty's keel,
Would hold, as then, his poet-helmsman's grip
Serene, where Chaos foams the howling bars,
And chart his haven by the Morning Stars.
PERCY MACKAYE
CORNISH, N.H.
1935




.lN




NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS'
NOTES FOR INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION
Biographical Data
Bibliography
Index




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTE.- On Feb. 22, 1932, Harriet Moody died suddenly at her home in
Chicago. Some time before her death, she entrusted the original scripts of
these letters to her secretary, a close friend and a member of her household during many years. After Harriet's death, her secretary (who prefers to remain
anonymous) prepared them carefully in typed form for publication, omitting
some passages and a few whole letters and supplying certain unsigned statements of information (parenthetical in the text), together with occasional footnotes to the text, as here published: a task to which she has given her painstaking zeal and unstinted devotion; and by her authorization the letters are here
presented to the public. Concerning some omitted letters she states: 'Letters
written from time to time by W. V. M. to Harriet, in which he urges that they
"take the step," have not been included.'
At her request and that of a small group of intimate friends of Will and Harriet Moody, including kindred of W. V. M., the present editor has gladly contributed for this volume his portion toward the perpetuation and historical interpretation of these letters by writing the Introduction and Conclusion with
their Notes, appending some correlated data of Biography and Bibliography.
Incidental to this task a few passages of the letters omitted from the text as
here printed have been quoted in these commentaries with specific references
made to their dates in the Notes. Of the 340 letters from W. V. M. to Harriet
here published, twenty have been heretofore printed, as follows: In The PlayBook of March, i9iS (edited by Thomas H. Dickinson, for the Wisconsin Society, Madison, Wis.) - four letters: April 8, 13, 23, 1904, and March 23, i907.
In William Vaughn Moody: X Study, by David D. Henry (Bruce Humphries,
Inc., Boston, I934) - sixteen letters (exclusive of the four therein reprinted
from The Play-Book), viz.: Aug. i9 (postmarked 30th), 29, i90i; May 6, IO,
17, 20, 26, 27, i902; June 5, IO, 12, i6, i902; June 2, 5, 9, i906; May I, I907.
For numerous helpful courtesies the editor extends his sincere
acknowledgments to the Friend of this Book to whom it is dedicated; to Charlotte E. Moody and Julia Moody Schmalz; to
Harriet Moody's secretary; and to the following other mutual
friends of Harriet and W. V. M.: Ridgely Torrence, Ferdinand
Schevill, Robert Morss Lovett, Daniel Gregory Mason, Lionel
Marks, Hamlin Garland, Norman Hapgood, Edgar Lee Masters,
Walter Hampden, Marion Morse MacKaye: to the last his
especial indebtedness for her suggestion of the title 'Letters to
Harriet' and for innumerable insights and labors throughout the
course of his undertaking.




NOTES FOR INTRODUCTION AND
CONCLUSION
The Roman numeral which precedes each of these notes refers to
the corresponding Roman numeral which heads each Section of the
text throughout the Introduction and Conclusion. Each passage thus
referred to is marked with an asterisk (*) and may readily be found
in the text by consulting the number of the Section in which it occurs.
In each case, the word or phrase in italics corresponds to the word or
phrase which is marked in the text with an asterisk (*).
INTRODUCTION NOTES
II. Mrs. B —. The earliest letter of W. V. M. to Harriet, May 20,
I9go, commences, 'Dear Mrs. Brainard,' and ends, 'Believe me, dear
Mrs. Brainard, Always faithfully yours, Wm. Vaughn Moody.' See
Biographical Data (2), under 'Harriet Converse Tilden.' Nearly all of
the other letters have no formal salutation at the beginning or ending
and are signed simply 'V -,' the envelopes being addressed to 2970
Groveland Avenue, Chicago, Ill.
II. Breaking her ankle. In recording this event which occasioned the
writing of these letters, it is needful to understand that Harriet's accident was no ordinary, simple breaking of the ankle. In the darkness,
going with Will to the lake shore, both arms joyously raised in pointing
to the stars, she stepped off an embankment. The plunging fall was so
sudden and severe that the shattered leg-bone was forced through the
leather of her shoe. Informed that her foot must be amputated, she refused. For a year the injury caused her to be bedridden, and afterwards required occasional surgical treatment during many years.
III. This one passage. Written at Keswick, England; July 22, I909.
III. His earliest letter to her. Chicago; May 20, I9OI.
III. And again. Paris; July 23, I902.
III. Two passages. Athens, June 3, 1902; and Cornish, N.H., July
6, 1906.
III. This note to her. Sept. 18, 1904.
III. This passage. March 27, 1905.
III. The little portrait. This may refer to the portrait of Harriet,
signed 'L. C. Earle, '83,' owned (in I935) by her niece, Alice Harriet
Tilden, which is reproduced in this volume. Cf. W, V. M.'s letter to
[45 ]




NOTES


Harriet, Dec. 27, I901; also Nov. 2I, I903, describing a 'delightful
picture' of her. W. V. M. himself painted a portrait head of Harriet.
III. On horse-back. April 4, 1904, three years after her accident, Will
wrote to her from Grand Canyon, Arizona:' My longing to have you here
increased three-fold the moment I felt a horse's sinewy back between
my legs. We must ride! And we must do it in this country where one's
liberty is conterminous with the horizon, and the horizon is farther away
than anywhere else in the world.'
V. Robert Morss Lovett. Moody was especially fortunate in securing
Prof. Lovett to collaborate with him in their volume, A History of
English Literature (Scribners, I902), a delightful work which has held
its high place ever since then. For Moody probably could never have
written it alone. Commenting upon it, in a letter to Harriet (Dec. Io,
9I 5), E. A. Robinson wrote:
'I couldn't have written The Fire-Bringer, but I can understand how
Will could have done it. But I shall never understand how the deuce
he wrote that History of English Literature. I should have worked six
months over the first chapter and then thrown it away.'
'How the deuce' Moody did it is explained by his having found in
Lovett a collaborator exceptionally well-mated in personal friendship
and proficient scholarship.
V. Prof. Mason's slender collection. E. A. Robinson wrote to Harriet
(from Cornwall on Hudson, Nov. 6, I9I3) concerning Mason's volume:
'Will's letters are mighty pleasant reading, but it is a great pity there
are not more of them.' Fourteen still unpublished letters from E. A.
Robinson to Harriet (I9II-30) contain valuable allusions to Moody.
V. Yet unpublished volumes. Supplied with copious bibliographical
data, the volumes still in manuscript are entitled as follows: 'Moody
the Mystic, and Other Papers'; 'Early Years of William Vaughn
Moody'; 'Later Years of William Vaughn Moody.'
VI. Colorado Springs. Prof. Schevill writes (to P. M-K., July I5,
1935): 'Harriet suffered her compound fracture of the ankle on May I6,
I901. W. V. M., Bessie O'Neill, Alice Corbin and myself were present.
Will watched over Harriet's recovery till early August when he went
west to have his Rocky Mt. trip with Hamlin Garland. Harriet by that
time was considerably improved. By late August she was well enough
to be moved and had taken a house for September on Mackinac Island,
which was doubtless a strong reason for Will's returning. He had hardly
returned when the removal to Mackinac proceeded, probably on or
near September i.'
VI. Letterfrom Greece. June 9, I902. From Athens, W. V. M. wrote
[416]




INTRODUCTION NOTES


to Harriet: 'I have been wrestling all day with the mighty lines of the
Agamemnon.' These recurred to him four years later, when he and
P. M-K. (after attending Josephine Peabody's wedding in Cambridge,
June 21, 1906) attended the Harvard Stadium production, in Greek,
of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, from which the remembered poignant cry
of 0 tb, ta-t6 ta - Apollon, Apollon! reverberates in his letter of Sept.
12, I906.
VI. Prof. Schevill. He comments further: 'In the winter of I902,
Harriet took a cottage near Cape Henry, Virginia. Alice Corbin and
Bessie O'Neill went with her, and Will and they stayed on together till
the coming Spring. From Cape Henry, Will went (via New York)
straight to Greece, where he steeped himself in the atmosphere which
he required to bring his Promethean poem to its goal.' - Cf. note after
letter of Feb. II, I902, and two sequent letters.
VI. Ancestry. According to the family records collected by W. V. M.'s
sister, Mrs. Julia Moody Schmalz, his middle name, Vaughn (originally Von, as used by certain of his forbears) had its origin in his maternal Pennsylvania Dutch lineage.
VI. Harvard paths. 'In Cambridge, Will Moody lived at 45 Mt.
Auburn St. in his Freshman year, at Stoughton 28 during the next two
years, and after his return from Europe, at Hilton 23 (in 1893-94) and
at Gray's 43 (in 1894-95).' -Statement of Robert Morss Lovett to
P. M-K., in a letter, June I6, 1935. During his first three college years
(I893-96) P. M-K. roomed at 35 Divinity Hall (not then limited to
Divinity students) and during his senior year (I896-97) at Weld, next
to Gray's, in the Yard.
VI. Commencement Part address. 1897. On the same platform there,
President Eliot was then conferring an honorary degree upon Augustus
Saint-Gaudens, who - years later, in Cornish (where MacKaye took
Moody to meet him at his studio, in February, 1906) -gaily hailed
P. M-K. as his '97 Classmate,' in virtue of their mutual sheep-skins. In
1909, P. M-K. was instrumental in arranging the Henry Miller performance of Moody's Faith Healer given by Henry Miller at Sanders
Theatre, Jan. 24, 1910. Cf. note under XXV.
VIJ. Josephine Preston Peabody. Born in New York City, May 30,
1874, she died in Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 4, 1922.
VII. Conjoining of our names. The names are again associated in
friendship in the Dedications by E. A. Robinson of three of his own
books: - 1923, Roman Bartholow, dedicated to Percy MacKaye.I929 Cavender's House, to the memory of William Vaughn Moody. -
1931, Matthias at the Door, to Ridgely Torrence.
[417]




NOTES


VIII. Like a hard-luck miner. Cf. W. V. M.'s letter to Harriet, Nov.
8, 1904.
VIII. Almost as well. Cf. W. V. M.'s letter to Harriet; Jan. Io,
1904.
VIII. Harriet's large nature. Of Will and Harriet, Prof. Schevill
wrote P. M-K. concerning this volume: 'I believe you are erecting a
monument aere perennius to the two greatest souls I have known or
shall ever know.'
VIII. President of the United States. Theodore Roosevelt's review
of E. A. Robinson's Captain Craig appeared in 'The Outlook' in August,
1905.
VIII. Borrowed. Concerning another incident of borrowing from
W. V. M. and E. A. R. by the same overcoat borrower, cf. third note
under XVII.
IX. Moody's accident in Greece, I902. Ridgely Torrence recalls
(I935) that during his European trip with Moody, in I907, while they
were climbing together Mt. Posilippo, near Naples, Moody - feeling
the old pain in his leg again - described to him in detail his fall on
Mt. Parnassus, in I902. Moody said that he had climbed within a few
feet of the very summit of the peak and was reaching upward, clutching
the rock with both hands, his eyes fixed on the top just beyond, when he
suddenly slipped and fell about fifteen feet into a crevice, where his fall
was broken by a sharp projection which struck into his thigh on the
very spot operated upon three years later by Dr. Bull, in New York,
leaving there a wound described by Moody to Harriet (in Mercutio's
gay words for his own death-wound) as 'not so deep as a well nor so
wide as a church door, but 'twill serve.'
IX. Our college days. Though Moody (at Harvard) and P. M-K. (at
Leipzig, where he wrote an early play, Beowulf, 1899) had made special
studies in medieval philology, these studies did not enter into their
mutual associations and discussions.
IX. For several years. Robinson's plays, Van Zorn and The Porcupine, respectively first published in 1914 and 1915, were written in I906
and 1907; but as late as I91 i-I2 he was at work upon a third play. On
Dec. 26, I9I1, he wrote to little Arvia MacKaye, at Cornish, N.H.:'Tell your father that E. A. has gone crazy again and is writing another
bad play.' (Cf. note at top of page 43I.)
X. Olive Tilford Dargan. In addition to her dramatic works, Olive
Dargan - hon. Litt.D., Univ. of N. Carolina, 1924 - is the author of
five volumes of poems (I914-22), and of Highland Annals, I925.
X. Acclaim of Stedman. 'Compact of noble diction and imaginative
[418]




INTRODUCTION NOTES


fire,' wrote Stedman of Olive Dargan's work in 1904. In I916, she won
the prize of the Southern Society of New York, and in 1924, the Belmont-Ward Fugitive prize. Under her pseudonym, Fielding Burke, she
won, in 1932, the Gorky Award, by her novel, Call Home the Heart. In
1935 appeared her novel, A Stone Came Rolling.
X. Published in 'The Critic.' One of these poems by Lindsay was
The Queen of the Bubbles (now in Lindsay's Collected Poems), accepted
by Torrence in November, 1903, and published shortly afterward in
The Critic, together with Lindsay's drawing for the poem.
X. Two years after the death of Moody. Harriet Monroe, editor of
'Poetry' wrote (from Chicago, Dec. I912), two months after the founding of that journal: 'My dear Mr. MacKaye: I am so glad you approve
of our venture, and so grateful for your help. Also I am glad you liked
my review of Moody. Your poem to him, The Fire-Bringer, is a fine
tribute.'
X. Butfor the Great War. On August I, 1914, the great War opened
its planetary drama. On that same day, in Berlin, Max Reinhardt
gave the opening performance of an American play, The Scarecrow, by P. M-K., which was closed down at once by the cataclysm.
Twelve days earlier, July 19, 1914, from W. V. M's old apartment at
107 Waverly Place, New York, Lindsay wrote: 'Percy MacKayeDear Friend... Thank you for your letter to Winthrop Ames... I want
to keep your interest... My best love and reverence to Poet Arvia.'
Lindsay and P. M-K., planned together a chanted ballet-poem for
staging which they hoped to secure the Little Theatre of Winthrop
Ames, previously director of the New Theatre; but increasing war
dementia submerged all such plans.
X. Gordon Craig's Art. Cf. The Sibyl. Poem, by P. M-K., 'To
Edward Gordon Craig upon the publication of his volume, "On the Art
of the Theatre."' pp. I4-I7, Uriel and Other Poems, Houghton Mifflin;
I912. Also, Three Dance Motives, Poems for dances of Isadora Duncan,
I9Io; I. Lethe; II. Dionysus; III. The Chase; in Collected Poems (Macmillan, I916), under 'New Poems,' pp. II17-I2I.
X. First book. In this chart, those books are classified asfirst which
first brought their poet authors into marked recognition. For that
reason the chart does not tabulate references to these earliest dates of
first published books by the following poets: 1895, A Legend of Hollis
Hall, long poem by Percy MacKaye; 1896, The Torrent and the Night
Before, and 1897, The Children of the Night, by E. A. Robinson (both
printed at his own expense, the first without publisher, the second by an
obscure publisher of Boston); 1898, The Wayfarers, verses by Josephine
[419]




NOTES


Peabody; 1898, A Book of Verses, by E. L. Masters; 9oo00, A House
of a Hundred Lights, aphoristic poems, by Ridgely Torrence.
X. These horizon vistas. The vistas should certainly include the admirable work initiated by Anna Hempstead Branch at Christodora
House (Thompson Square, New York City) where, under her sympathetic, creative leadership, as poet-friend of poets, The Wings, by
Josephine Peabody, was given its first New York performance; the
early plays of Stuart Walker were first produced, as well as dramatic
rituals by Anna Branch herself; and the significant career of The
Poets' Guild was first launched. These, however, were chiefly afterdevelopments not associated with Moody and his group during the
first decade.
X. Works of Edgar Lee Masters. Besides Maximilian, published,
i902, Masters wrote at this period the following plays (still unpublished, I935):- Althea, I906; The Trifler (considered for production
by Mrs. Fiske), 1907; Eileen, and The Locket, 9Io0; The Leaves of the
Tree, 19 I1.
X. Against our conquest of the Philippines. With these poems by
Masters, as profoundly felt protests against America's growing imperialism, may also be grouped Moody's poems, Ode in Time of Hesitation, I899, Gloucester Moors, 1900, On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines,
I90o; and MacKaye's poems, The Spirit of Aguinaldo, 1898, To Spain in
Defeat, To Dewey in Victory, Columbus' Remains at Cadiz, The Ten at
Ilo-ilo, Aguinaldo's Illusions, To William Watson, To Senator Hoar,
I899. (Cf. 'Annals of an Era,' p. 78.)
X. The New Theatre. The formal opening (with 'Antony and Cleopatra') in New York, at Central Park West and 62nd Street, on Dec.
15, I908, was preceded by a Dedicatory Service on the completion of
the building, some weeks earlier. The Choral Ode by P. M-K. was
sung by the Metropolitan Opera House Chorus, on both occasions.
X. Conried. Before the opening of the New Theatre, Heinrich Conried was succeeded by Winthrop Ames as director.
XII. One of its earliest versions (The Great Divide). Ridgely Torrence recounts that on New Year's Day, i906, on returning from an
outing in Cos Cob, Conn., with W. V. M. to his room in New York,
Moody thrust into his hand a newspaper clipping, exclaiming excitedly:
'Read that!' Torrence read it — a true melodramatic episode of the
far west. 'Well?' he queried. 'Well, indeed! Don't you see it's a play?'
During the next three weeks, Torrence states, Moody completed at
white heat a first draft of the play, which he had been working on, its
first act based on the episode, and called it A Sabine Woman. Cf.
[ 420




INTRODUCTION NOTES


W. V. M.'s letters to Harriet, Dec. 3, 6, 27, 1905, and Jan. 2, I906.
XII. Just before his co-starship. Excerpt from Philadelphia Ledger.
July 30, I905: 'Sothern's plans for Fenris the Wolf are delayed by his
partnership with Marlowe, but costumes are being made by Karl of
London, and Manuel Klein is writing the music.'
XII. Published chronicles. Robert Morss Lovett, in his Introduction
to Moody's Selected Poems (Houghton Mifflin, I93I), and Hamlin Garland, in his Companions on the Trail, pp. 87-94 (Macmillan, I93I), have
written interesting accounts of the Chicago premiere of A Sabine Woman, at which both Lovett and Garland were present in the audience.
But neither account explains its inner cause of conflict nor its aftersequel.
XIV. On the road. Cf. second note under XVI, 'A salvaging bonanza.'
XV. Voices overseas. In 'The London Morning Leader,' Jan. 24,
Io19, reviewing P. M-K.'s first collected Poems, William Archer wrote:
'Among America's younger writers, Mr. MacKaye has perhaps only
one rival, his friend, William Vaughn Moody, to whom his book is
dedicated.'
XVI. Before I knew Moody and our group. Jan. 24, 19oI, Moody.
wrote from Chicago University to Robinson: 'I like to hark back and
mouse dreamily over... those walks we had from Riverdale to Yonkers,
especially the last one.'
At that time when Moody and Robinson were taking -long walks together along the Hudson, still all unknown to me, I may have passed
them on such another long walk which I took with Pegram Dargan (the
gifted poet-husband of Olive), while Dargan was eloquently declaiming the Elizabethan dramatists, wholly skeptical of my eulogies of
Sothern as champion of a new dramatic revival of poets. (P. M-K.)
XVI. A salvaging bonanza. Eleven years after the play's first production, Harriet dictated (from 2970 Groveland Ave., Chicago, March
6, 1917) the following letter to Alice Corbin Henderson:
'When I was in New York in January, I saw the revival of The Great
Divide. Mr. Miller has put it on in New York with himself in the lead
and Miss Gladys Hansen opposite. I went the first night and sat in a
box. The Torrences and Mrs. Crow and Molly Colum were with me.
We got in early and the theatre had a dreary dusty look.
'I sat there with my heart in my mouth, thinking of the first firstnight and half inclined to believe that the audience of the present hour
would not accept The Great Divide, turning over in my thought that
The Faith Healer was more in the mood of an audience today.
[ 42 ]




NOTES


'By slow degrees the house filled. Percy MacKaye came in with
Vachel Lindsay, and their pleasant faces shone reassuringly in the distance. Mr. Miller, though rather haggard, was in great form for playing, and Miss Hansen gave a much more understanding and sympathetic interpretation of Ruth than any one else has ever done. The
house responded with the utmost enthusiasm from point to point, and
at the close one realized that it was a real first night rather than a reproduction of the play. All the newspaper comments were as long and
as sympathetic as if the play had never been seen in New York before,
and I understand it is still running on there, with great success.'
(Earlier she had written (Feb. 17), to another friend:)
'It was greatly cheering to me to see how wonderfully well it is staged.
The first night many of Mr. Moody's friends were present, and it
seemed almost as if he were there himself, the atmosphere was so buoyant. I felt that I was living over the experience of its first production
in i906.'
XVII. Differences. Cf. Moody's letter to Harriet, Jan. 25, 1907.
Also page 145, 'Annals of an Era,' I932.
XVII. Veteran in full dress. On Oct. I8, I907, Stedman had written
to Cornish, N.H. the following: 'My dear Robin MacKaye... Your
father has invited me to attend the first performance of his new play,
and he and Mr. Moody and I are going to sit side by side in full dress!
We all think it will be a grand occasion... Affectionately your birthmate, Edmund Clarence Stedman.' Cf. last note under XXIII.
XVII. Festively toasting. Concerning that New York premiere of
Sappho and Phaon Ridgely Torrence has recalled the following:'I know that Will Moody, E. A. and I were enjoying it, greatly interested, and all seemed going finely (in spite of some accidents) till after
the second act when Manager Fiske came out before the curtain. His
face looked like a wax mask and took the life out of the audience. -
That very afternoon, by the way, -, who had decamped with Will
Moody's only overcoat two years before (and Will had worn a mackintosh all winter because of it) turned up at his studio, begging to borrow
a dollar. Will asked him, "Where's my overcoat?" — "Pawned."
" Where's the pawn-ticket? " " Lost." " Well, here's a dollar. Get out, and
don't ever let me set eyes on you again." After the play was over, while
we stood in the swarming lobby, who should sail up but --   in great
spirits: "Hello, fellows! Wasn't it superb? The American Drami is
now in full flower!" Then he beckoned E. A. aside and borrowed another dollar from him. So he had seen the show with Will's dollar, and
went home with E. A.'s in his pocket. - Our party adjourned to the
[422 ]




INTRODUCTION NOTES


Arena restaurant, a super-garden with a big ornamental basin and
fountain, where we festively toasted the author, all but Norman Hapgood, who warningly advised him to go right back stage and call a rehearsal of the awful actors.' - Cf. letter from W. V. M. to E. A. Robinson, March 3i, I905, under Section VIII of Introduction.
XVIII. Actd professionally. Sappho and Phaon has never been staged
as it was written. Its modern Prologue and its Herculaneum Induction
and Entre-scenes were omitted by Harrison Grey Fiske and only the
central Greek tragedy produced by him. Some years later, a revival of
that portion by University students was admirably produced by Prof.
Samuel Eliot, Jr., at Smith College, Dec. 2, 3, 1926.' Cf. Scheme of
Metrical Motifs in 'Sappho and Phaon,' with A Letter from P. M-K. to
Harrison Grey Fiske, June 7, I907, in 'Annals of an Era,' edited by
E. O. Grover, I932; pages 460-472.
XVIII. Disillusionizing facts. During four days Moody wrote the
following:- (Oct. 17, 1907) 'Before I knew it I was pouring out my
heart to him (Frohman) on what our little group dreamed of trying to
do... I swore the daylight black and blue cracking up The Porcupine.'
(Oct. 18) 'Frohman sent back Robinson's play, "not available for
stage."' (Oct. 22) 'We are all in the dumps... we men in buckram...
The cynical critics are slaughtering with all the cosmopolitan refinements of torture.'
XVIII. Mrs. C. P. Davidge, then a widow, was the daughter of
Henry C. Potter, Episcopal Bishop of New York, and the sister of Mrs.
William Hyde (wife of the artist), who neighbored her, summers, at
Cornish, N.H. Kindly, generous and brilliant, Mrs. Davidge was an
intellectually instigating friend of Moody, and during some years the hospitable benefactress of E. A. Robinson at her winter home in New York,
and later on Staten Island, after her marriage to the artist, Henry Taylor.
XVIII. Island of Mackinac. From Mackinac Island, Michigan,
Sept. 29, I908, W. V. M. wrote to P. M-K.: 'Congratulations! The
Sun review of Mater was especially first rate... It is a wonderful place
here, for beauty and fine traditions - Indian and French stories of the
old fur-trading days... I have been deucedly slow in picking up. My
doctor forbids city life at present.'
XVIII. Henri and Julia. Henrietta Moody (Fawcett) and Julia
Moody (Schmalz) sisters of W. V. M. His nephew and namesake,
William Vaughn Moody Fawcett, is the son of Henrietta.
XIX. Social functions. e.g. The dinner of American Dramatists.
The down-town settlement dinner, at which W. V. M. and P. M-K.
both first met Edwin Markham of the 'beautiful leonine head.' The
[423 1




NOTES


Andrew Carnegie dinner of the Authors Club. The Players Club dinner, in Moody's honor of which P. M-K. still has the printed menu, with
its caption, from Shakespeare's Tempest, I, 2; 'How, now- moody?'
Concerning the last, W. V. M. wrote to his sister, Charlotte, from The
Players Club, Nov. i, 1906:'Mr. Miller gave me a dinner at the Players Club last week which was
very interesting. The main personage was John Drew, who was amusing and delightful in a quiet way. The dinner began at midnight and
when I left at quarter to six in the morning, there was still a knot of
old inveterates and enthusiasts of the theatre laying down the law to
each other over their wine and walnuts.'
W. V. M. was elected to the Players, Jan. 14, 1907. His proposer
was Adolphe E. Borie and his seconder Gutzon Borglum. After the
death of W. V. M., an appreciation of his work and personality was
written by P. M-K. in The Players Year Book, for I9I.
W. V. M. was proposed for the National Institute of Arts and Letters
by Edmund Clarence Stedman, was sponsored also by Richard Watson
Gilder and Robert Underwood Johnson, and was elected February 28,
I905. (Cf. his letter to Harriet, Jan. 25, I907.) He was elected to the
Academy, Nov. 7, 1908, the second occupant of chair No. 7, succeeding
Edward MacDowell. Moody was one of the sponsors of E. A. Robinson,
Ridgely Torrence and Percy MacKaye, who were all elected together to
the Institute, February 20, 1908. Moody was taken ill with typhoid
fever, March 22, 1908, and so did not attend the dinner of the National
Institute, at the University Club, New York, in April, I908, with his
poet associates, Robinson, Torrence and MacKaye. By late June he
was sufficiently recovered to receive at Yale University the honorary
degree Doctor of Letters, June 24, 1908.
XIX. Guffanti's. In this stanza of Uriel, Guffanti (the 'laird'),
Moody, Torrence, Robinson are in turn referred to:
Thy Parmazan, immortal laird of ease,
Can never mold, thy caviare is blest,
While still our glowing Uriel greets the rest
Around thy royal board of memories,
Where sit, the salt of these,
He of the laughter of a Hundred Lights,
Blithe Eldorado of high poesies,
And he - of enigmatic, gentle knights
The kindly keen - who sings of Calverly's.
From Uriel and Other Poems, by P. M-K.; Houghton Mifflin, I912.
[424]




INTRODUCTION NOTES


XX. Shirley Center, Mass. (Reference to footnote, under XX.)
See W. V. M.'s letter to Harriet, postmarked, June 14, I906. On his
trip then from Cornish, N.H., to attend with Harriet the Agamemnon
performance at the Harvard stadium, Moody went with Percy MacKaye to visit MacKaye's boyhood home at Shirley Center, Mass.,
where still their two names are recorded together written in pencil in a
corner on the board-wall of the little woodland studio (where The
Scarecrow was written, four summers earlier). On that trip, Moody
read aloud some of his poems to MacKaye's mother and to neighbors
there, Frank Lawton and his daughter, Shirley Lawton. The latter still
recalls his 'magnificent reading' and her own 'ten-year-old girl's impression of the new poet's corduroy trousers and their resemblance in
shade to his hair and close-cropped beard.'
At Shirley Center, also, Miss Marrette Longley recorded in a volume
of Moody's Poems, which he presented to her and her sister, Mary: -
'William Vaughn Moody; with Percy MacKaye called Friday, June 15,
I906. We were together in upper East Room - a perfect June day -
a delightful call. Mr. Moody took away with him a beautiful branch of
our mountain laurel from Paradise Woods. From our house they went
to call on the Lawtons in their Pasture House.'
XX. The Saint-Gaudens Masque. Written by Louis Evan Shipman
with Prologue by P. M-K. Cf. 'Annals of an Era,' pp. I66, 181, 283,
343, 389.
XX. Miss Barrymore. Six weeks later, this passage from the diary
of Marion MacKaye (Mrs. P. M-K.), Aug. i8, I906, gives another
Cornish glimpse of W. V. M.:-'Ethel Barrymore asked us over to
play tennis. At the court we found Will Moody, Richard Harding
Davis and his wife, and Harry Fuller playing doubles, while Mr. and
Mrs. Herbert Adams and Howard Hart and Ethel herself were looking
on.'
XX. A one-act play. Nereida, later published as The Cat-Boat, in the
volume by P. M-K. Yankee Fantasies (I9I2). At Cornish, Moody was
scheduled to act the Skipper, Ethel Barrymore the boy, Nico, and
Hazel MacKaye (who acted Anactoria in 'Sappho and Phaon') the part
of Nereida.
XXI. The Three Angels. Published in full (8 stanzas) in his Poems
and Poetic Dramas, Vol. I, pp. I44-I46; Houghton Mifflin; 1912.




NOTES


CONCLUSION NOTES
XXIII. Three diaries. The regions and dates of Harriet's three
diaries are as follows: (I) England: May 25 - July 29, I909. (2) Maryland (environs of Baltimore): Nov. Io- Nov. 25, 1909. (3) California
(Riverside, Santa Barbara, Hollywood): Dec. 8, I909 - May I9,
1910.
The itemized places and dates of her first diary are as follows: May
25, I909, London (Guildford); May 26, British Museum; May 27,
South Kensington Museum; June 12, Guernsey- 'Roman foundations, churches of the Conquest, towns of the Commonwealth, relics
of French occupation'; June 17, Sark; June 23, Bonchurch, Isle of
Wight; June 26, Winchester; June 29, Harriet to London, leaving
Will at Winchester; Will goes to Salisbury; June 30, Stonehenge; July I,
London; July 8, Isle of Jersey; July 12, Guernsey, Le Gouffre
(Harriet in London, returning to Will at Le Gouffre, Sat. July I7);
July I9, London; July 22, Windermere, Ambleside, Keswick, Derwenwater Lake; July 24, Keswick, Boseenthwaite; July 25, Ambleside; July 28, Bowness (Harriet to London, Will to Dartmoor); July
29, London.
XXIII. Bessie. Elizabeth O'Neill, whose lively and enlivening personality was almost inseparably a portion of 'the Grove' group of
Harriet's Chicago household, including her secretary and Katherine
Lyle.
XXIII. No wordfrom Will. The next day, July I4, W. V. M. telegraphed from Guernsey: -'To Mrs. W. V. Moody, Inns of Court,
Holborn, London: Doing well. Address Gouffre Hotel. Will.'
On Friday, July i6, Harriet wrote in her diary: 'When I arrived at
the Inns of Court, I found a telegram from Will - for which I had been
telephoning all day -saying that he was not doing well and would
come up to London Monday. I decided to spend Saturday and Sunday
with him, telegraphed for a stateroom and got to Southampton to find
they had no reservation for me, so I sat up on deck all night,' etc.
On July i6, Will wrote to Harriet: 'Guernsey-Friday aft.Dearest, I have just telegraphed that I should come up to London
Monday unless you suggested some other place. I have not been doing
very well today or yesterday - nothing at all alarming or worse than
usual, but too much general discomfort and "misery" (I mean it niggerfashion) to want to remain here, or anywhere away from your blessed
comfort. I have tried exerting myself, and it simply won't go. I must
keep still, that is all there is to it. Shall leave here by the Monday boat
[426]




CONCLUSION NOTES


(I can't very well get off tomorrow) and shall come up to London unless
you telegraph me to the contrary. My love- W -.'
XXIII. Last letters he ever wrote. After his return to America and the
operation for his failing eyesight, W. V. M. wrote no more letters. Of
any letters which he may have written to Harriet in London, while he
was elsewhere, during the summer of I909, there have survived only
one letter (from Guernsey, July I6, quoted in full above) and one picture postcard, post-marked, 'Glasgow, 9, Aug. I8, 09, I.I5 P.M.' addressed to 'Mrs. W. V. Moody, 43 Carlton Mansions, Portsdown Road,
Maiden Vale, London,' reading as follows: 'Please be sure to call at
the bank for my mail. Leave forwarding address. W -.' (On back
of card is a photo of cattle, standing in lake-water, surrounded by
mountains, labeled: 'Loch Arklet, Evening.' On the card is printed:
'Loch Arklet is reached by a road from Aberfoyle, about half a mile
from Stronaclachar, "the Stonemason's point." Glen Arklet which lies
between Stronaclachar and Inversnaid is a pleasant valley.')
XXIII. The Canterbury Pilgrims. The large-scale outdoor production of P. M-K.'s Chaucerian play known as 'The Gloucester Pageant,'
produced in honor of President Taft at Gloucester, Mass., August 3,
I909, with 500oo citizens, directed by Eric Pape and P. M-K., with
music by Walter Damrosch and Charles A. Safford, conductor of the
Chorus, at Stage Fort Park, with participation of the U.S. Navy.
XXIII. 'Those adorable children.' The children were Robin, Arvia
and Christy (called by W. V. M. 'the newest one'), who grew up to be
poets and artists. (Robin) Robert Keith MacKaye (Harvard, A.B.,
1923): author, Yale University Prize Poem, 1927; Honey Holler, play
in 3 acts, Brentano's, I930; etc.- Arvia MacKaye (Radcliffe), poet,
sculptor, illustrator; author, poems in Harper's, Poetry, anthologies,
etc.- Christy MacKaye (Smith; Rollins, A.B., I932); author, Wind
in the Grass, a book of poems, Introduction by E. A. Robinson; Harpers, I932; etc.
XXIV. Farm. Soon after Will's death, Harriet bought a large hillfarm at Cummington, Mass., with a small building once owned and
used by William Cullen Bryant, whose birthplace adjoins the farm.
There, as a memorial to Will, she planned a place of work and refuge
for poets, but did not consummate the plan.
XXIV. Yohns Hopkins hospital. W. V. M. was a patient there from
Oct. 6-I7, Oct. 28-Nov. Io, Nov. 25-29, i909.
In i909, operations on the brain were far more dangerous than today.
In the case of Moody, after two minor operations, the surgeons at
Johns Hopkins stated that there were not more than five chances out
[427 ]




NOTES


of a hundred of his surviving a third operation, and even if he should
survive, they could not guarantee beforehand either curative results
or certainty that the diagnosis of tumor was correct. Under these circumstances, Harriet's decision (made in conference and in unanimous
agreement with Will's sister, Charlotte, and his friend, P. M-K.) to
permit no further operation but to seek improvement, if possible,
through restorative surroundings in California, was in her judgment the
only right and feasible decision and accordingly she proceeded to act
upon it immediately.
XXIV. The Scarecrow. At that production of The Scarecrow, by the
Harvard Dramatic Club, Cambridge, Brattle Hall, Dec. 7, I909, in
the cast were Robert Benchley (Bugby), Samuel Eliot, Jr. (A Harvard
'Don'), Timothy Spelman (Dickon). Kenneth Macgowan was StageManager; Chalmers Clifton, Composer of the Music and Director of the
Pierian Orchestra, in which Robert Edmond Jones played First Fiddle.
On the Executive Committee were John Silas Reed ('Jack' Reed) and
Edward Eyre Hunt. The poster was drawn by Gluyas Williams.
These, as students, were then at the dawn of their varied, notable
after-careers just as Moody's life-work was at its sundown. One of
them, John Reed, died in Russia, October 17, i920, exactly ten years
after Moody's death.
XXV. Santa Barbara Beach. This poem by Ridgely Torrence is
published in his volume, Hesperides (Macmillan, I925). Another poem
about Moody, by E. A. Robinson, is Broadway Lights, published in
Robinson's Collected Poems (Macmillan, I927).
XXV. His new play. This refers almost certainly to his new (last)
version of The Faith-Healer. Harriet's diary makes no allusion by
name to The Death of Eve, which she would hardly refer to as a
'play.'
XXV. Telegram. 'Jan. 14, 910o. New York. To William Vaughn
Moody, Care Potter Hotel, Santa Barbara, Cal. - Producing Faith
Healer next Wednesday, Savoy Theatre, Rehearsals prove changes to
be immense improvement. Have also accepted invitation to play the
piece at Harvard, Monday week; good advertisement for play here.
Hope you are feeling better. Friendliest greetings to Mrs. Moody and
yourself. Henry Miller.' —This telegram was answered as follows:
'Santa Barbara To Henry Miller, 338 Fifth Ave. New York - Hugely
delighted by splendid news. Only sorry I can't be there. William
Vaughn Moody.'
XXV. Telegraphic message. 'Jan. 19, 190o. New York. To William
Vaughn Moody, Care Potter Hotel, Santa Barbara, Cal. - A glorious
[428 ]




CONCLUSION NOTES


play, gloriously acted, and the audience rose to it gloriously. God bless
you. Rann Kennedy, Wynne Matthison, Percy MacKaye.'
From the Players Club, New York, Jan. 23, I9Io, Garland wrote:
'Dear Moody: I saw The Faith Healer yesterday (with Chas. Francis
Browne) and liked it immensely. It is a big original work and should
succeed. It is an acting play all the way through and is deeply interesting. Miller is not the man for the part. His personality is too well
known and limits the imagination of the hearer. Some new and fervid
and poetic personality should be your medium. I am urging him to take
the play to Chicago, with a man perhaps like a Walter Hampden in the
part, though he is not the man needed. - With all good wishes, as ever
yours - Hamlin Garland.'
XXV. Soon in Cambridge. The Cambridge performance of The Faith
Healer at Sanders Theatre, took place three days later. Telegram:
'Jan. 24, I9IO. Santa Barbara. - Large audience applauding play again
and again. Genuine success. Our thanks and united congratulations.
F. N. Robinson (for Harvard English Department), Henry Miller.'
In reply to this telegram, W. V. M. wired to Miller: - 'Have had
no New York newspaper reports yet, but rejoice in the thought that
you are interpreting Faith Healer so splendidly. Thanks for telegram.'
Cf. note under VI.
XXV. From Henry Miller. Telegram: 'Jan. 29, I9I0. New York.
To William Vaughn Moody, Hotel Potter, Santa Barbara, Cal. -
Newspaper criticism sent Monday. Regret lack of public appreciation,
but believe play will live. Glad to hear good reports of your improvement in health. Kind regards to Mrs. Moody and yourself. Henry
Miller.'
XXV. Programme. Sanders Theatre. Cambridge. January 24,1910o,
at 8 o'clock.- Harvard University (seal) Department of English.
Henry Miller, in THE FAITH HEALER, a Play in Three Acts, by William
Vaughn Moody. - The Cast: -
Ulrich Michaelis....................Henry Miller
Matthew Beeler...........................Harold Russell
Mary Beeler, his wife.......................Mabel Bert
Martha Beeler, his sister...............  Lillian Dix
Annie Beeler, his daughter..................Gladys Hulette
Rhoda Williams, Mrs. Beeler's niece.............Jessie Bonstelle
Dr. George Littlefield...........................Theodore Friebus
Rev. John Culpepper............................Edward See
Uncle Abe, an old Negro.........................Robert McWade
Lazarus, an Indian boy................James Hagan
[ 429




NOTES


The action of the play takes place in the living room of Matthew
Beeler's farmhouse near a small town in south-western Missouri.
XXV. A friend in Cambridge. Prof. Edward K. Rand of Harvard
College. His letter (dated 'Lake View Ave., Cambridge, Mass., Jan.
24, I9Io') was as follows:
'Dear Will: We have just. come from the Faith Healer (at Sanders
Theatre) and are still in the heights... I trembled a minute before the
final moment. What was to give him his faith again... the knowledge
that she had been base? That would make him a villain as black as
Theseus. You didn't let the doubt last too long. You showed that his
first vision of love was as base as her past had been, and you purified
them in that instant with passion both human and divine. The rare
moment of creation - one stroke and your world was built.
'Miller, I am afraid, though delightfully simple for the most part,
walks clumsily on the higher levels. When he feels poetry coming -
especially in description - he blows out sentences by the yard, with a
painfully melodramatic effect. If he would speak naturally then, as he
generally does, and give the phrases time to visualize themselves, much
would be gained. But in general, it was well acted. The audience was
enthusiastic- for Cambridge, vociferous. Get well fast, Will, and
know that you are always in my thoughts. With affectionate greetings
from us both to you and Mrs. Moody, I am Yours ever, E. K. R.'
XXV. Mr. Mason's letter. From his old friend, Daniel Gregory
Mason. During their college days together at Harvard, Mason composed an admirable music setting for Moody's song, My love is gone into
the east; and, later, for his song, Of wounds and sore defeat. In 1935,
he has under way the writing of his personal reminiscences ofW. V. M.
XXVI. Groveland Avenue. The name of this avenue in Chicago
called 'Groveland' during Moody's life-time, was afterwards changed
to Ellis Avenue.
XXVI. A play. For Margaret Anglin. Tomorrow, by P. M-K.
(Stokes; N.Y.; 1912), first produced not by Miss Anglin, but by Frank
Reicher, at the Little Theatre, Philadelphia, Oct. 31, I9I3.
XXVI. Bartlett. T. H. Bartlett, father of Paul Bartlett, the sculptor.
Ten years earlier, Moody had written to Robert Morss Lovett from
Chocorua, N.H., August I8, 9oo: -'I am staying with a Mr. Bartlett, ex-sculptor, art-critic, and in spite of himself a magnificent old
goat and man of God.' (Cf. Some Letters of William Vaughn Moody,
edited by Daniel Gregory Mason; Houghton Mifflin; I913, p. I29) -
To Mason Moody wrote of Bartlett: 'The old boy stars the passing
hours with immortal phrases.'
[ 430]




CONCLUSION NOTES


XXVI. Manuscript of the novel.- Excerpt from diary-journal of
Marion MacKaye, 1927:-'On December 7, E. A. Robinson dined
with Percy at the Players. E. A. told him that in writing his novel out
of his play, The Porcupine, he used up an inch and a half of hard lead
pencil. First he cut typewriting paper in two, the long way; then he
wrote down each half- 900 words to a page - completing the novel
in 75,000 words.' (Cf. third note under IX, on page 418.)
XXVII. The proposed plan. The plan proposed by P. M-K. in 1910,
to Prof. G. P. Baker, for a Harvard Theatre in Cambridge, involved
eight definite objects in view, as set forth in P. M-K.'s letter to G. P. B.,
Oct. I8, I9Io, together with a William Vaughn Moody Memorial Committee of the following personnel: George Pierce Baker, Treasurer;
Percy MacKaye, Chairman; Mrs. William Perry Northrup (57 E. 58.St., New York), Secretary; John W. Alexander; Winthrop Ames;
Hamlin Garland; Mrs. Ben Ali Haggin; Norman Hapgood; Mrs. Edward MacDowell; Josephine Peabody Marks; Daniel Gregory Mason;
Mrs. William Vaughn Moody; H. T. Parker; Edwin Arlington Robinson; Ridgely Torrence.
The plan came to no fruition at the time, owing to non-co-operation
of the Harvard authorities toward the raising of funds for the purpose;
but the initiative thereby set on foot was instrumental in furthering
the idea of a great endowed University Theatre which eventuated,
sixteen years later, in the erection and launching of the Yale University
Theatre, 1926. Strangely, Harvard likewise allowed Yale first to recognize and honor the Harvard poets, Moody and Robinson, by conferring
upon them the honorary degree, Litt.D., Moody, 1908; Robinson, 1922.
XXVII. Twenty-fifth anniversary. At the least, his anniversary should
attain some memorial tablet to Moody at his college room in the Harvard Yard, 28 Stoughton, and another memorial to him at the house
of his birth, at Spencer, Indiana-comparable to that organized by the
fine initiative of Laura E. Richards at Gardiner, Maine, for the memorial there to Moody's friend, Robinson.
XXVII. The Fire-Bringer. By that title a poem by P. M-K., written
with thoughts of Moody's last rites in October, 1910, and sent to Harriet
at that time, is published in MacKaye's volume, Uriel and Other
Poems (Houghton Mifflin, 1912) and in his Collected Poems (Macmillan,
1916). Cf. fifth note under X. Other poems about Moody by MacKaye
are Uriel (written 1911), and two Sonnets, one on The Great Divide
(1906) and one on W. V. M.'s recovery from severe illness (1908). All /
are published in his Collected Poems.
XXVIII. Long Island's shore. Walt Whitman himself wrote of that
[431]




NOTES


same sea-beach: -'Down on the long, bare, unfrequented shore, which
I had all to myself, I loved, after bathing, to race up and down the
hard sand, and declaim Homer or Shakspere to the surf and sea-gulls by
the hour.'- Cf. 'Complete Prose Works,' by Walt Whitman. David
McKay, publisher, Philadelphia, 1892; page I4.
XXIX. Like Shelley's. The last sea-rites of W. V. M. on the Long
Island shore bring to mind those of Shelley on the Italian seacoast
off which he was drowned, nearly a century earlier. Both were imbued
with the majestic spirit of Prometheus - unbound.
XXIX. The House of a Hundred Lights is the title of Ridgely Torrence's first slender volume of jewel-faceted poems, I900.
XXX. Fachel Lindsay. Another letter from Lindsay to Harriet is
the following, written from Spokane, Washington, March 3i, 1925
this excerpt being the first paragraph of a long letter wherein he proposed to take to the road for good: -
'My dear Harriet Cordelia: You are the finest of all Good Samaritans.
You are more than that. Hundreds have turned to you in trouble that
was the trouble called aspiration and you have helped them up. Your
house is the Castle of Peace and Help, and also it is the Palace of Wisdom. I have met more wise people there than anywhere else on earth.
And you have no competitors. There is no second, no third, no imitation Harriet Cordelia. There is only one. Yours faithfully, Vachel.'
XXX. Home Delicacies Association. Out of Harriet's addiction for
'homing' both 'delicacies' and the delicate art of poets, there sprang
her published Cook Book, which might have been her literary masterpiece but for her publisher's uncomprehending veto. For her artist
mind (like the chef's in Rostand's Cyrano) conceived a perfect reconciliation between Poetry and Pies for which she invited the collaboration of
living poets in contributing their pages of homage to both, and several
noted poets gladly responded with their manuscripts. But the publisher rejected the Poets by his edict: Pies only! Among the rejected
manuscripts was one by Edwin Arlington Robinson.
XXX. Succession of friends. In that succession was also Vachel
Lindsay, who occupied W. V. M.'s old apartment at 107 Waverley
Place, during the summer of 1914. Cf. third note under X.
XXXI. Some forty. In this list are included three or four poets who
had their homes in Chicago and visited 'the Grove' as neighbors.
XXXI. Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser. She wrote to Harriet from Edinburgh, Scotland, Feb. Io,.918: 'The Preface of my new Hebridean
Songs (Vol. II) was all written, you know, in your library bedroom
upstairs in the month of June, I916. How inexpressibly kind you were
[432




CONCLUSION NOTES


to us! I wonder who has the supreme good luck to be under your shel.
tering wing at present.'
XXXI. Francis Brett Young. From Anacapri, Italy, May I4, I927,
Francis Brett Young wrote to Harriet, in Chicago: - 'Love makes
many curious interchanges that are not material. In your husband's
plays and poems I can read reflections of your mind and glimpses of the
play of light that must have passed between you. Stamped with spiritual integrity and truth, the first thing about all his work is its present
vitality. I wish I could feel that many living poets were as acutely
alive as Moody is today. Yours always affectionately, Francis.'
XXXI. Rabindranath Tagore. From Shantiniketan, Bolpur, India,
March I9, I914, to Harriet in Chicago, Tagore wrote: 'My dear Friend,
In memory of the delightful evening we had, reading Chitra by your
fireside, I have dedicated that little lyrical drama of mine to you, hoping that this dedication will remind you how deeply I value your
friendship.... It was to add to the list of the already numerous transgressions you had allowed your poet in the generous exercise of your
forbearance. Your affectionate friend, Rabindranath Tagore.'
XXXII. Solicitous cares. Immediately after the last rites of W. V. M.
(on Oct. 28, I9I0), Harriet sailed for Europe with her brother, Will
Tilden, who was very ill. When they came back (her secretary states)
'she took him and his wife to Santa Barbara for the winter, then in
June (?), I9II, she brought them to Chicago, and from there to Lake
Geneva, Wis., for the hot months. In the fall of I9II, the Will Tildens
were at 2970 Groveland Ave., till his death in December. In 1912,
Harriet went to England three times, the last time at the end of November. She did not stay long. In January, 19I3, Tagore made his first visit
to Chicago, and stayed at 2970, by her invitation.'
XXXII. The following account. It was dictated by Harriet to her
secretary.
XXXII. Magazine. The magazine, Poetry, edited by Harriet Monroe.
XXXII. Sudhindranath Datta. Telegram: 'Los Angeles, Calif.,
April 20, I929. To Mrs. Moody, 2970 Ellis Ave., Chicago, Ill. - Leaving now. Goodbye. Have advised my friends, Sudhindranath Datta
and Boyd Tucker to see you when they are in Chicago. They accompanied me from India. They will go soon. - Rabindranath Tagore.'
XXXIII. Before her own death. Harriet died at 'the Grove' on
Washington's birthday, I932. The next day, Dr. Martin H. Fischer,
Professor of bio-chemistry in the University of Cincinnati (formerly
one of Harriet's pupils in Chicago), wrote to her secretary:
[ 433 1




NOTES
'Thank you for your note which verifies the sad news of the morning
paper. Her distress was great on Sunday and I feared - though not
so quickly - the inevitable. Her death takes out of my world of the
living the greatest and grandest experience of my life.'
XXXIII. E. A. Robinson. Born at Head Tide, Maine, Dec. 22, I869,
Robinson died in New York City, April 6, 1935.
XXXIII. Sonnet. By P. M-K. 'William Vaughn Moody. In
Memoriam. 20 Years after: I9Io-I930. To Edwin Arlington Robinson.' First published in the Boston Evening Transcript, Sat., Oct. I8,
I930. Also in Harvard Graduates' Magazine, December, 1930; and in
Anthology of the MacDowell Club Poets, New York; December, 1930.




BIOGRAPHICAL DATA
I. William Vaughn Moody
Note. For comprehensive biographical data and comment see the Introduction
(92 pages), by Robert Morss Lovett, to Selected Poems of William Vaughn
Moody (Houghton Mifflin, I93I). Also, William Vaughn Moody; A Study.
By David D. Henry, Ph.D., State Dept. of Public Instruction, Lansing, Mich,
(276 pages with Index. Boston. Bruce Humphries, I934).
Born. Spencer, Indiana, July 8, I869, son of Francis Burdette Moody
and Henrietta Emily Stoy.
Education. At Spencer, he attended grammar and high school;
studied drawing and painting at the local art academy; in music he
played the guitar. At Louisville, Kentucky, he attended the Pritchett
Institute of Design. In 1884, his mother died, after which he taught a
district school near New Albany, Ind. Then for two years, he prepared
for college at Riverview Academy, a military school at Poughkeepsie,
N.Y., headmaster Harlan Page Amen, afterwards headmaster of
Phillips Exeter Academy, who taught him the Classics. I889-I892, he
completed in three years the 4-year course at Harvard College, being
an editor of The Harvard Monthly there. I892-I893, travelled abroad
(tutoring a pupil) in Black Forest, Switzerland, Italy, England, Greece.
Graduated Harvard, A.B., I893, delivering Class Day poem. I893-I895,
studied medieval philology in Harvard Graduate School, assisting Prof.
Lewis E. Gates, in an English course. I895-1901, was Prof. of English
Literature, for short terms at Chicago University.
In July, 900o, he delivered his Anniversary Ode at Cambridge, on
125th anniversary of Washington taking command of American army.
1902, published his A History of English Literature, with Lovett (Scribner's). In June, I908, received hon. Litt. D. degree from Yale University. Nov. 7, 1908, was elected a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Letters. His published books, with their dates, are listed in
the front of the present volume, which deals with his life from May,
1901, till his death at Colorado Springs, Col., Oct. 17, I9Io.
II. Harriet Converse Tilden (Moody)
Born. Parkman, Ohio (village of about 200 inhabitants, with no
railroad), March I8, year date unknown.
[435]




NOTES


Ancestry. Directly descended from Thomas Jefferson, Pres. U.S.A.;
also, through Converse (originally de Coniers) family, from French
Huguenot settlers in America in 17th Century and during Colonial
Wars in Vermont, where Col. Israel Converse was the great grandfather
of Harriet's grandfather. The Tilden family came from Kent, England,
where Daniel Tilden was made a baronet.
Parentage. Her father was William Mason Tilden. Her motherHarriet Converse (a first cousin of Mark Hanna's mother) - taught
Harriet in her babyhood to read and later to cook and housekeep. When
she was about eleven, the family moved to Chicago, where her father
became an operator on the Board of Trade and at the Stock Yards.
Education. Sent to Union Springs, N.Y., to board at the Howland
School for young girls, Harriet was an excellent student there, especially
in German, besides taking part in dramatic entertainments and playing pranks on her teachers. Years afterward, in 193i, an old schoolmate
wrote to her: 'Your ardent spirit is unchanged, and your happy expression of it warms the heart and makes me feel young again.' Upon
finishing at the Howland School, she went to Europe with another girl
and a chaperone - a joyous experience which greatly expanded her
views of life. (She did not go abroad again until her marriage with
Moody.)
At Cornell University, she completed the four-year course in two
years and a half, meanwhile enjoying the natural beauty of the place
on long walks and boat rides with fellow students and young professors.
There she lived in the home of Hiram Corson, Professor of English
Literature, whose teaching deepened her studies of poetry, especially
of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Browning, in which her knowledge was
minute and her appreciation large and imaginative. Later, elected by
both Alumni and Alumnae, she served two terms (i9i2-i922) as a
Trustee of Cornell University, the only woman on the board. After
graduating from Cornell, she studied medicine briefly in Philadelphia
but, finding it uncongenial, returned to her father's house in Chicago.
A friend of her father was Dr. Daniel Brainard, an eminent Chicago
surgeon of great wealth, whose son, Edwin, was a lawyer, very brilliant
but dissipated. Harriet and Edwin Brainard were married, and during
a number of years she kept his house and entertained his guests.
Finally on the death of her father, Harriet secured a divorce and devoted herself to providing her mother with a comfortable living.
[ 436 ]




BIOGRAPHICAL DATA


At first, on passing examinations, she taught English literature for a
time in several of the high schools of Chicago, inspiring her pupils I
to write stories, plays and verses (all the French forms), several books
of which were published.
Of her first meeting with Moody, one tradition relates that W. V. M.
was invited by Alice Corbin (then a member of Harriet's household)
to one of Harriet's informal Sunday afternoon receptions and met her
there. Another tradition gives 'the Little Room,' a small club, as
their first meeting place; not long after which, W. V. M. came on a
Sunday morning to the door of Harriet's house and left for her a copy
of his Masque of Judgment, then just published (900o).
In the spring of I90o, Harriet rented a house on the North Shore of
Lake Michigan, at Lakeside, where she began to give week-end houseparties of her friends.2 At these parties it was the custom to gather
wood and build a great bonfire on the Lake Shore, and watch the coming
of dawn. There, one night in May, while Harriet was going down the
bank to the shore, she stepped off a culvert and broke her ankle. It
was a very dangerous, complicated fracture. This happened on May I6,
1901. On May 7, I909, she was married to William Vaughn Moody.
Concerning her immediate family, Harriet resembled her father in
temperament and looks. During the lifetime of her aunt, Amelia
Converse, who lived in her father's fine old Colonial house in Parkman,
Harriet took great pleasure in going back there to visit. She had one
cousin, Henry D. Lyman, who founded the American Surety Co., of
New York, and two brothers, Will and Fred Tilden. Her niece, Alice
Harriet Tilden, graduated from the University of California at Los
Angeles, in 1935.
Her business, The Home Delicacies Association, of which she was
personal executive, having begun about 1899 in the kitchen of her
mother's house at I3th St. and Wabash Ave., was moved to the English
basement of a house on Indiana Ave.; then to the top-floor of 2970
1 Among her pupils were Franklin P. Adams ('F.P.A.,' Columnist), Charles
W. Collins (dramatic critic, Chicago Tribune), Alice Corbin (poet), Martin H.
Fischer (Prof. of Bio-Chemistry, U. of Cincinnati), Edith Foster Flint (Prof. of
English Lit., U. of Chicago), Milton Sills (stage and screen star).
2 Among her guest-friends there were Samuel Harper, F. J. Miller, R. D.
Salisbury, Ferdinand Schevill, Alex. Smith (all professors at the Univ. of Chicago), Dr. Llewellyn Barker, Alice Corbin, Nott Flint, Edith Foster, Katherine
Jones, Evelyn Matz, Harriet Monroe, William Vaughn Moody, Elizabeth
O'Neill, Beatrice Butler, William Morton Payne, Ralph Fletcher Seymore, Mr.
and Mrs. Lorado Taft.
[437]




NOTES
Groveland Ave.; then, in 1913, to the old Bournique dance hall on
23rd St., Chicago. It had also a branch in London, England.
Harriet was the author of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody's Cook Book;
Scribner's, New York, I93I. She was a member of the Fortnightly,
Woman's, College and Arts Clubs of Chicago.
She died, suddenly of bronchial asthma, at 2970 Ellis (formerly
Groveland) Avenue, Chicago, on the night of Monday, Feb. 22, 1932.
Her funeral service was held privately on Friday, Feb. 26.
On her death, Harriet Monroe wrote of her in Poetry (April, I932):
'Lavish to the last, no defeat was registered in her active life of happy
and generous adventure, and the memory of her friendship will enrich
many lives.'




BIBLIOGRAPHY
(i) Concerning William Vaughn Moody
Note. The major works of W. V. M., under nine titles, are listed
chronologically on the first printed page of this book.
The only volume by a single author which is entirely devoted to the
life and works of W. V. M. is William Vaughn Moody: AiStudy, by David D. Henry (Boston; Bruce Humphries, 1934; 276 pages). It contains
a very comprehensive list of published writings by Moody and a voluminous bibliography of publications concerning him and his works. The
bibliographical material concerning W. V. M. contained in the following Lists is in large measure (though not wholly) additional to that contained in Mr. Henry's volume.
List A comprises titles of standard Books, portions of which deal with
W. V. M. and his works. List B comprises material (Periodical Articles,
Pamphlets and Books by W. V. M. containing editorial Commentaries
on him and his works) deposited in the Chicago University library by
Harriet Moody's secretary, who has compiled the list. List C comprises
Periodical and Newspaper Articles reviewing works by P. M-K., either
jointly with works by W. V. M., or inclusively with works by a group of
poets or dramatists. List D comprises publications, in verse and prose
concerning W. V. M., written by P. M-K. Lists C and D comprise material having special reference to the group-activities, shared byW. V. M.,
set forth in the Introduction. List B is arranged according to authors;
the other lists, according to dates of publication.
LIST A
The American Stage of Today. Walter Prichard Eaton. Small Maynard;
I908.
The American Dramatist. Montrose J. Moses. Little Brown; 195, 1925.
The Case of American Drama. Thomas H. Dickinson. Houghton
Mifflin; 91 5.
Chief Contemporary Dramatists. Thomas H. Dickinson. Houghton
Mifflin; I915.
Playwrights of the New American Theatre. Thomas H. Dickinson. Pp.
I34-I44. Macmillan; I925.
The Story of the Theatre. Glenn Hughes. 1928.
[ 439




NOTES


A History of American Drama, Vol. II. Arthur Hobson Quinn. Pp.
1-17. Harpers; 1928.
Companions on the Trail. Hamlin Garland. Pp. 87-94,439,449. Macmillan; 1931.
LIST B
Baker, George P., Harvard Graduates' Magazine; December, I9I0.
Bicknell, Percy F., 'A Poet in Epistolary Mood.' (A Review of Some
Letters); Dial, 55:300-30I; October 16, I913.
Grabo, C. H., 'Poetry of William Vaughn Moody'; Chautauquan, 50:
274-283; April, I907.
Hagedorn, Hermann, Independent; 74- Part I: pp. 314-316; Feb. 6,1913.
Hutchison, Percy, 'The Poetry of William Vaughn Moody.' (A Review
of Selected Poems, edited by R. M. Lovett); New York Times Book
Review, 36:2; April 12, I931.
K., Q., 'After the Play.' (A Review of the revival of The Great Divide);
New Republic, 10:137; March 3, I917.
Lessing, 0. E., 'Briicken uber den Atlantik, beitrage zum Amerikanischen und Deutschen Geistesleben'; Berlin, Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, Stuttgart; 1927; pp. 117-129.
Lewis, Edwin Herbert, 'William Vaughn Moody.' A Club Paper, read
before the Chicago Literary Club, November 4, I9I2; printed for
members by The Lakeside Press, R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co.;
March, I9I3.
Lovett, Robert Morss, 'Memories of William Vaughn Moody'; Atlantic Monthly, 147:385-393; March, 1931.
Lovett, Robert Morss, Introduction to Selected Poems of William
Vaughn Moody; Houghton Mifflin; I931.
MacKaye, Percy, 'Uriel,' Elegy on the Death of William Vaughn
Moody; Uriel and Other Poems, 30 stanzas, pp. I-13; Houghton Mifflin; 1912.
MacKaye, Percy, 9 other publications, itemized under List D.
Manly, John M., 'The William Vaughn Moody Lectures'; University
Record (University of Chicago) New Series, 3,;139-I4I; April, I917.
Manly, John M., Introduction to Poems and Poetic Dramas and Prose
Plays, by William Vaughn Moody; Hioughton Mifflin; 19,2.
Mason, Daniel Gregory, Introduction to Some Letters of WFilliam
Vaughn Moody; Houghton Mifflin; 1913.
'William Vaughn Moody,' Christian Science Monitor; August 2, i920.
'W. V. Moody,' Life, 49:837; June 20o, I907. (A Caricature.)
-l440l




BIBLIOGRAPHY


'William Vaughn Moody: a Study,' I, 'The Lyrist and Lyric Dramatist,' by Nash 0. Barr; II, 'The Playwright,' by Charles H. Caffin,
Drama, No. 2:206-2I1; May, I9II.
'Mr. Moody's Verse,' The Independent, 53:I557-I558; July 4, I901.
'A New American Dramatist,' Literary Digest, 33:551-552; October 20,
I906.
Munson, Gorham B., 'The Limbo of American Literature'; Broom,. pp.
259-260; June, 1922.
Payne, William Morton, 'The Poetry of Mr. Moody'; Dial, 30:365-369;
June I, I901I.
Payne, William Morton, 'Two Poetic Dramas';. Dial, 36:319-323;
May 1,6, I904,
Payne, William Morton, 'William Vaughn Moody'; Dial, 53:484-486;
December I6y 1912.
Rose, G. B., A Review of The Masque of Yudgment; The Sewanee Review, Part II, 9:332-336; July, 1901.
Schevill, Ferdinand, 'A Remembered April. Recollecting a Spring
with a University Poet.' (Inset - Road-Hymn for the Start.) The
Circle (University of Chicago), 2:5-6; June, 1924.
Shorey, Pauly 'The Poetry of William Vaughn Moody.' A Lecture
delivered under the auspices of the William Vaughn Moody Foundation (University of Chicago), February 3y I927. Reprinted for private circulation from  The University Record, 13:I72-200; July,
I927.
Sinclair, May, 'Three American Poets of Today.' Atlantic Monthly,
98:325-330; September, I906. The Same: Fortnightly Review, 86:
422-429; September I, I906.
Soule, George, 'A Great Pilgrim-Pagan';. The Little Review, I:2-9;
December, I9I4.
LIST C
'Moody's "Fire-Bringer" and MacKaye's "Fenris."' A Review.
New York Evening Post; May 9, I905.
'Recent Harvard Graduates as Men of Letters.' J. M. Groton. Harvard Graduates' Magazine; April, 1907.
'A Fresh Generation of American Poet Playwrights: MacKaye, Moody,
Young, Aldrich.' New York Evening Post; May II, 1907.
'A Group of Harvard Dramatists.' By George Pierce Baker. Harvard
Graduates' Magazine; June, I909.
'The Harvard Dramatists: Moody, MacKaye, Sheldon.' With their
[441 ]




NOTES


Portraits and Photograph of the Coburn Players, in 'The Canterbury Pilgrims.' Literary Digest; June 26, I909.
'MacKaye's Poems and their Dedication.' By William Archer. London
Morning Leader; Jan. 29, 9Io0.
'National Poets: MacKaye and Moody.' Philadelphia Telegram; Feb.
7, I9Io.
'Poems of MacKaye Dedicated to Three Poet-Friends: Moody, Robinson, Torrence.' By Edwin Markham. Chicago Examiner; Feb. I2,
9Io0.
'Our New Generation of Dramatists.' By Walter Prichard Eaton.
American Magazine; Nov., I9o0.
'In Praise of Vaughn Moody.' Portions of MacKaye's Commemorative
Poem. Boston Evening Transcript; Oct. 4, I9II.
'The Author of "The Great Divide": MacKaye's Stately "In Memoriam" to Moody.' Indianapolis Star; Oct. 9, I9II.
'One Poet-Dramatist's Tribute to Another: MacKaye's Elegy on
Moody.' Richard Burton. The Bellman; Minneapolis; Oct. 14, I9II.
"'Uriel" and "The Fire-Bringer."' ('That winged lyric "The FireBringer" runs like a Victory before William Vaughn Moody's fame.
Both poems commemorate the close affection between these poet
friends.') Milwaukee Free Press; Nov. 25, I9I2.
'The Quiet Evening of American Poetry. MacKaye's Elegy on
Moody.' By A. W. W. The Harvard Monthly; December, I9I2.
'The Passing of a Great Singer. The Only Lasting Elegy of the Present
Generation of Poets.' San Francisco Call; Feb. 17, 1913.
'William Vaughn Moody Finds His Fitting Elegy.' Book News Monthly;
April, I9I3.
'Our American Poets: Moody and MacKaye.' Review of Reviews; May
I9, I913.
'Our First Decade Revolutionary Poets: Moody, MacKaye, Robinson,
Eastman.' Syndicate Article; Fort Wayne (Ind.) Gazette; July 20,
I930.
LIST D
Io Items by P. M-K.
'To William Vaughn Moody.' Sonnet, on the premiere of 'The Great
Divide,' Oct., I906. Harvard Monthly; Feb., 1907.
'To W. V. M. on Recovery from Severe Illness.' Sonnet, summer of
1908. In Collected Poems; Macmillan; I916.
'To the Fire-Bringer.' Poem, on the Last Rites ofW. V. M., Oct., 1910.
[442 1




BIBLIOGRAPHY


In Uriel and Other Poems; Houghton Mifflin; 1912. Also, in Col.
lected Poems; 1916.
'A Harvard Theatre, as a William Vaughn Moody Memorial.' Proposal, Oct., I9I0, by P. M-K. to G. P. Baker. Pp. 146-147, Annals
of an Era; E. O. Grover, edit.; I932.
'William Vaughn Moody: An Appreciation.' P. 73, The Players Year
Book, 1911; Players Club, New York; 1911.
'In Memory of William Vaughn Moody.' (Later entitled, 'Uriel')
Stanzaic Poem, 8 pages. North American Review; Oct., I9II.
'Uriel.' (The Same, with slight emendations.) Elegy on W. V. M. In
Uriel, and Other Poems; Houghton Mifflin; 19I2. 'Also, in Collected
Poems; I916.
'Moody and James MacKaye's "Economy of Happiness."' P. 473,
Epoch, Vol. II, Boni & Liveright; 1927.
'William Vaughn Moody: In Memoriam: 20 Years After.' Sonnet, to
E. A. Robinson. Boston Evening Transcript; Oct. 18, I930. Also,
Harvard Graduates' Magazine; Dec., 1930. Also, Anthology of the
MacDowell Club Poets; A. Browne; Dec., I930.
'Will and Harriet Moody.' Being the Introduction and Conclusion,
with Notes, for the present volume; I935.
(2) Concerning Harriet Converse Moody
Note. The only published volume by H. C. M. is Mrs. William
Vaughn Moody's Cook Book. Scribner's; 1931. The following titles are
of newspaper Articles concerning her.
'Poetry and Pies.' Anne Hard. With half-page portrait of Mrs. Moody.
New York Herald Tribune; Sunday, June 22, I930. Pp. 8, 9 and Io.
'Famous Persons Long Have Made House A Mecca. Paintings keep
Old Memories Alive.' Bertha Fenberg. With 2 photos of Harriet
Moody, in youth and middle age, and photo of interior of her Chicago
home. Chicago News; July 9, I931.
'Poet's Widow Dies.' Obituary, with portrait head of Mrs. William
Vaughn Moody. Chicago Daily Tribune; Thurs., Feb. 25, 1932.
'Harriet Converse Moody.' A Brief Tribute on her Death. Harriet
Monroe. P. 53. Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; April, 1932.
'A Genuine Friend to Poets.' Carilyn Stevens. 2-column article.
Christian Science Monitor; March 9, 1932.
'Harriet Converse Moody.' Ridgely Torrence. Signed editorial. The
New Republic; March 9, I932. P. 99.




I




INDEX


A
Abelarde and Heloise: 31, 4i, 172
Academy of Music: 341
Acoma: 295
Acropolis: 104, 107, 112
Acts of the Apostles: 391
Adams, Franklin P.: 437
Adams, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert: 425
Adams, Maude: 171
Admirable Crichton: 168, 169
Adonais: 396
Aegean Isles: 105, 107, 0o8
Aegina: 104, 107
Aeschylus: Agamemnon: 120, 121, 267,
271, 273, 284, 286, 417, 425. Prometheus Bound: II8
A Garland to Sylvia: 32
Aguinaldo: 420
Aiken, Louis: 196, 198, 207, 219, 22I,
222, 247
Albany, N.Y.: 295, 296, 297
Albuquerque, N.M.: 294, 295, 374
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey: 214, 44I
Alexander, John W.: 431
Alhambra: 330
Alice ('little Alice'): See Corbin, Alice
Allen, Viola: 218
Amalfi: 89
Ambleside: 426
Amen, Harlan Page: 435
America: 211, 370, 427
American Academy of Arts and Letters:
235, 424, 435
American Dramatists, Society of: 48,
49, 316, 321, 423
American School of Classical Studies,
Athens: 104, 105, 112, 123, 134
Ames, Winthrop: 31, 419, 420, 431
Amsterdam, N.Y.: 297
Andritzena: 126
Anglin, Margaret: 41, 42, 45, 46, 254,
255, 256, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 271,


276, 277, 290, 291, 296, 298, 302, 35,
316, 339, 341, 353, 354, 355, 392, 430
Anna Karenina: 156
Annisquam: 340
Anniversary of Moody's death: 3, 395,
410, 411, 431
An Ode in Timeof Hesitation: 27, 35,
394, 420
Anton: 403
Aphrodite: 124
Apollo: I13, I26, 1i6, 228, 411
Apollon: 292, 297, 4I7
A Prairie Ride: 13
Arachova: 114
Arcadia: 126, 127, 128
Archduke of Austria: 149
Archeology: 112
Archer, William: 421, 442
Arizona: 190, 191, 222, 374, 416
Arts Club, National: 184, 312
Arvia: See MacKaye, Arvia
A Sabine Woman: Sec The Great Divide.
Also under Moody, William Vaughn
Ascutney, Mt.: 65, 251, 292
Ashwell, Lena: 315
Athens: 103, 104, io8, 109, 116, 117,
118, 119, 135
Atlantic City: 298, 299
Atlantic Monthly: 441
Attica: 11o, 121, 123
Austen, Jane: 46, 279
Austin, Mary: 36
Australia: 272
Authors. Club: 424
B
Baker, George Pierce: 20, 2I, 395, 43I,
440, 441
Baltimore: 25I, 386, 387, 426
Barker, Llewellyn: 437
Barnard, George Grey:.56, 63, 64


[445 ]




INDEX


Barr, Nash 0.: 441
Barrett, Elizabeth: 3
Barrie, James M.: Little Mary: I77.
The Admirable Crichton: I68, 169.
Peter Pan: 242. The Professor's Love
Story: I78
Barrymore, Ethel: 68, 171, 269, 278,
279, 283, 284, 286, 288, 425
Bartlett, Paul: 430
Bartlett, T. H.: 392, 394, 430
Beach, Rex: The Spoilers: 315
Beethoven: 369
Belasco, David: 378
Belasco Theatre: 299
Benchley, Robert: 428
Beowulf: 418
Berkeley Lyceum: 224
'Bessie': See O'Neill, Elizabeth
Bicknell, Percy F.: 440
Bimbles: See Lovett
Bjornson (Bjornstjerne): 171, 250.
Beyond Human Power: 90
Blackwood's Magazine: 245
Blue Ridge Mts.: 164
Bois, Jules: 403
Bonchurch, Isle of Wight: 382,383,426
Bonstelle, Jessie: 429
Book News Monthly: 442
Borglum, Gutzon: 182, 184, 257, 424
Borie, Adolphe E.: 424
'Borrowing' W. V. M.'s overcoat; 27,
422
Boseenthwaite: 426
Boston: 82, 231, 274,284,353,355, 360,
367, 368, 371, 372, 390
Bowness: 426
Brainard, Daniel: 436
Brainard, Edwin: 436
Brainard, Harriet C.: 6, 378, 415; and
see Moody, Harriet C.
Branch, Anna Hempstead: 420
Brattle Hall: 428
Brawne, Fanny: 3
British Museum: 426
Broadway: 221, 299
Broadway Lights: 428
Bronxville, N.Y.: 218, 219
Brook Farm (by Lindsay Swift): 178
Brooklyn Bridge: 246


'Brother,' pet name for W. V. M.'s dog,
Sieg: 155, I62, I67, i68, I83, 200,
237, 238, 335, 336, 360
Browne, Charles Francis: 429
Brownell, Edwin: 33
Browning, Robert: 3, I63, 285, 436. In
a Balcony: 302. Blot in the 'Scutcheon:
302. Pippa Passes: 315
Brush, George de Forest: 41
Bryant, William Cullen: 427
Bull, Dr. William: 228, 229, 230, 233,
237, 249, 4 8
Burke, Fielding: pseudonym of Olive
Tilford Dargan, q.v.
Burnett, Mrs. F. H.: 171
Burns, Robert: 385
Burton, Richard: 442
Butler, Beatrice: 437
Bynner, Witter: 403
Byron: I2I
C
Cadiz: 420
Caffin, Charles H.: 441
Calcutta: 409
California: 361, 373, 392, 426, 42g
Cambridge, Mass.: 17, 83, 189, 231,
267, 348, 390, 428, 429, 430, 435
Campbell, Kathleen: 409
Campbell, Mrs. Patrick: 54, 90, 242
Canada: 272, 377, 378
Canei, in Crete: I06
Canyon Diablo: I9I, I96, 22I
Canyon, Grand: I9I
Cape Henry, Va.: 9I, 92, 93, I42, I55,
259, 417
Captain Craig; 27, 28, 418
Carnegie, Andrew: 350, 424
Carson, Eugene: 404
Castaly:  6
Cawein, Madison: 242
Century Magazine: 243, 286
Century Players: I88
Chaucer: 436
Chicago: I7,70, 109, 147, 189, 200, 210,
216, 219, 227, 236, 240, 241, 250, 254,
263, 264, 265, 266, 272, 280, 295,300,
302, 36, 324, 339,350, 35I, 358, 362,


[ 446 ]




INDEX


363,386, 397, 402,403,407,408, 409,
414, 426, 432, 433, 436, 437, 438, 440
Chicago University: 19, 400, 421, 435,
437, 441
Chinatown: 221
Chippewa River: 278
Chitra: 406, 433
Chocorua, N.H.: 392, 394, 395, 430
Christodora House: 420
Clifton, Chalmers: 428
Coburn Players, The: 442
Collins, Charles W.: 437
Colonus: o08
Colorado Springs: I8, 76, 82, 39I, 393,
394, 396, 46, 435
Colum, Mary: 403, 42I
Colum, Padraic: 403, 404
Columbus, Christopher: 420
Coney Island: 203
Conried, Heinrich: 37, 240, 420
Continental Divide: 78, 79. The Great
Divide: 374
Converse, Amelia: 437
Converse, Frederick S.: 5I
Converse, Harriet (mother of Harriet
Converse Moody): 9, 436
Cook Book, Mrs. Wm. Vaughn Moody's:
432, 438, 443
Copyright laws: 60, 6i, 37I, 372
Corbin, Alice: 9, 86, go, 91, 0o8, 403,
416, 47, 421, 437
Corbin, John: 308
Corinth: 130, 27I. Gulf of: II2
Cornell University: 285, 436
Cornish, N.H.: 17, 24, 32, 41, 46, 5I,
54,64-70, 84,230, 234, 236,249, 25,
257, 266, 267-284, 286-290, 291-294,
339, 340, 345, 352, 353,386, 395, 40,
411, 417, 418, 423, 425
Cornwall, N.Y.: 416
Corson, Hiram: 285, 436
Cortina d'Ampezzo: 146
Cos Cob, Conn.: 59, 248, 312, 362, 420
Cosmopolitan Magazine: 257, 258
Couldock, Charles W.: 53
Cowell, Henry: 402
Craig, Edward Gordon: 34, 419
Crane, Hart: 402, 403
Crete: io6


Critic, The: 33
Crow, Martha Foote: 42I
Cuba: I36
Cummington, Mass.: 427
Cyclades: 105, 107
Cyrano: 432
D
Daly, Arnold: I88, 2I9
Daly, James: 403, 405, 406
Daly's Theatre: 318, 34I
Damrosch, Walter: 427
Dana, Mrs. William Starr: How to know
the Wild Flowers: I56
Dante's Hell, rings of: 96. Vita Nuova:
222
Dargan, Olive Tilford (See also Burke,
Fielding): 33, 35, 38, 39, 4I8, 419,
42I
Dargan, Pegram: 421
Dartmoor: 385, 426
Datta, Sudhindranath: 408, 433
Daughter of Satan (negro play): 216
Davidge, Mrs. C. P.: 59, 307, 350, 35I,
353, 354, 423
Davis, Allan: 21
Davis, Richard Harding: 425
Davison, Edward: 403
Death of Eve, The: See Moody, William
Vaughn
Debussy: 357
Delmonico's: 321
Delphi: 112, II3, II6, 119, I27, 135
Demeter: I I, 117
Derwentwater: 426
Desphina: 1 6
Dewing, Thomas: I67
Dickinson, Thomas H.: ii, 414, 439
Dionysiac cult: 117
Dionysus: I22, I6I. Sanctuary of: 123.
Theatre of: 12
"Divine Fire" lady,' the: See Sinclair,
May
Dolomites: I4, I50
Dramatists of America: 316. And see
under American Dramatists
Drew, John: 206, 424
Dublin, N.H.: 234


1 447




INDEX


Dunbar, Olivia (Mrs. Ridgely Torrence): 64, 421
Duncan, Isadora: 34, 63, 64, 369, 419
E
Earle, L. C.: 4I5
Eastman, Max: 442
Eaton, Walter Prichard: 439, 442
Echegaray: 331
Ehrichs, Alma: I8
Ehrichs, Walter: I8, 77
Eldorado: 31, 37, 172
Eleusis: 104, io8, IIo, 117
Eliot, Charles W.: 417
Eliot, Samuel Jr.: 423, 428
Elis: 127
Eumenides: I 12
Euripides: 135, 141, 292. Bacchantes:
139. Medea: 214, 271
Eve poem and play, the: See Death of
Eve, The
Everyman: 188, 339, 353, 354
F
Faggi, Alfeo: 402
Faith Healer, The: See Moody, William
Vaughn
Faulkner, Barry: 51, 277
Faversham, William: 227, 228, 351
Fawcett, Henrietta Moody: 63, 235,
423
Fawcett, William Vaughn Moody: 423
Fenris, the Wolf: 32, 39, 41, 230, 242,421
Ferd: See Schevill, Ferdinand
Fez: 326, 329
Field, Lew: 316. The Great Decide: 316
Fire-Bringer, The: See Moody, William
Vaughn
Fischer, Martin H.: 404, 433, 437
Fiske, Harrison Grey: 23, 55, 422, 423
Fiske, John: 117
Fiske, Minnie Maddern: 172, I88, 420
Fitch, Clyde: 188, 378
Flagstaff, Ariz.: 200
Flint, Edith Foster: 279, 437
Flint, Nott: 437
Florence: 149, 333


Flowers, names of: 157
Forbes-Robertson: 226, 366
Fortnightly Club: 250, 438
Fountain, The: See Moody, William
Vaughn
Franconia: 404
Franzen, Augustus: 25
Frazee, Minnie (niece of W. V. M.): 225
Freund (German translator): 368
Frohman, Charles: 23, 28, 48, 53, i88,
31o, 343, 344, 372, 393, 423
Frohman, Daniel: 308, 315
Frost, Robert: 33, 34, 35, 403, 404
Fuller, Harry (Henry B.), artist: 269,
425
G
Galdos: 331
Gale, Zona: 403
Gardiner, Me.: 431
Garland, Hamlin: 17, 76, 78, 79, 8o,
414, 416, 421, 429, 431, 440
Gates, Lewis E.: 19, 435
Genoa: 152
German Players: 241, 244
German Plays: By Hauptmann: Los
vom Manne: I77. Die Waber: 232
By Sudermann: Der Sturmgeselle
Sokrates: 180. Johnannisfeuer: 214
German Theatre: I7I
Gibraltar: Ioo, 326, 329, 330, 331
Gibson, Wilfrid: 403, 404
Gilbert,Mrs. Anne Hartley (Mrs. G. H.),
in Granny: 209
Gilder, Jeannette: 250
Gilder, Richard Watson: 28, 224, 234,
241, 284, 285, 350, 424
Glasgow: 427
Gloucester, Mass.: 340, 385, 427
Gloucester Moors: 40, 411
Gliick: 369
Goethe: 406
'Good Friday' Procession: 332
Gorky, Maxim: I80
Gouffre: 426
Grabo, C. H.: 440
Graham, Stephen: 403
Gramercy Park: 3I2, 356


[ 448




INDEX


Granada: 330
Grand Canyon: 416
Grand Haven: 238, 239
Gray, Thomas: I47
Greece: 107-130, 133, 134, 190, 199,
204, 213, 4I7, 435
Greek Coloring: 104, II8. Drama: 112,
I20, I2I. Plays, great: 291, 292
Groton, J. M.: 21, 44I
Groveland Ave., 2970: 6, 51, 70, 147,
339,392,399, 400, 403,408,410,415,
421, 426, 430, 432, 433, 438
' Grove, The': See Groveland Ave., 2970
Gubbio (The Wolf of Gubbio): 23
Guernsey: 382, 426, 427
Guffanti's: 64, 233, 424
Gytheion: 121, I23


Hay, John: 28
Hazel Kirke: 53
Henderson, Alice Corbin: See Corbin,
Alice
Henderson, Wm. P.: 219, 403
Henry, David D.: i6, 414, 435, 439
Hering, Henry: 66
Herrick, Robert (English poet): 203
Herrick, Robert (American novelist):
85, 276, 325, 348
Hesiod: 96, 179
Hesperides: 428
Heyward, DuBose: 403
Highland Park: 236
Hindu luncheon: 408, 409
History of English Literature: See
Moody, William Vaughn
Hoar, Senator George Frisbie: 136, 137,
420
Hollywood: 426


H


Hagedorn, Hermann: 440             Home Delicacies Association: 401, 402,
Haggin, Mrs. Ben Alii: 431           409, 432, 437
Hampden, Walter: 53, 54, 414       Homer: 396, 409, 432. Odyssey: 96
Hanna, Mark: 436                   Hopi, Hopi village, Hopiland: I95, 197
Hansen, Gladys: 421                Hovey, Richard: 37
Hapgood, Norman: 20, 32, 57, 276, 278, Howard, Bronson: 316, 321
414, 431                         Howells, William Dean: 56, I56
Hard, Anne: 443                    Howland School: 436
Harned, Virginia: 41, 42, 252, 254, 255 Hughes, Glenn: 439
Harper, Samuel: 437                Hulette, Gladys: 429
Harper's Magazine: 244, 427        Huneker, James: 321
Harriet (see Moody, Harriet Converse): Hunt, Edward Eyre: 428
Sec. III pp. 7-I3                Hutchison, Percy: 440
Hart, Howard: 425                  Hyde, Mr. and Mrs. William: 423
Harvard Advocate: 20, 21           Hymettus: Io8, i0o, 409
Harvard Club, N.Y.: 59, 355, 377, 378
Harvard Dramatic Club: 428
Harvard English Dept.: 429                         I
Harvard Graduates' Magazine: 21, 434, Ibsen, Henrik: 249,  Brand: 117.
441                                Hedda Gabler: I88, 215, 315. Lady
Harvard Monthly: i9, 20, 263, 435, 442  Inger of Ostrdt: 249. The MasterHarvard Stadium: 4I7                 Builder: 34i. The Pretenders: 249.
Harvard Theatre: 395, 396, 431, 443  The Vikings of Helgeland: 249
Harvard University: 19, 273, 338, 417, Icaria: 121, I22
418, 427, 430, 431, 435          Illington, Margaret: 308
Harvard Yard: 417, 431             India: 408, 433
Hauptmann, Gerhardt: See German Indian Harvest Dance - Albuquerque:
Plays                              294-295.  Katchina Dance: 197.
Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance: I78  Kiva: I99. Race: I99
[ 449 ]






INDEX


Ingomar: 356
Innsbruck: 142, 148
Iroquois Theatre fire: 174
Irving, Washington: 330
Irwin, Wallace: 244
Italy: 130, I3I, 134, I44, 216, 330, 332,
433, 435
Itea: 113, II9
Ithome: 125
J
James, Henry: 2I9. The Golden Bowl:
216
James, William: 318, 323. Varieties of
Religious  Experience: 318, 320.
Pragmatism: 323
Janeway, Dr.: 227
yeanne d'Arc: 32, 50, 51, 54, 242, 243,
277, 309
Jefferson, Thomas: 383, 436
Jersey: 384, 426
Jewett, Sarah Orne: 363
Johns Hopkins Hospital: 386, 387, 427
Johnson, Robert Underwood: 424
Jones, Henry Arthur: 315, 316. Mrs.
Dane's Defence: 3 5. The Evangelist:
340
Jones, Katherine: 437
Jones, Robert Edmond: 31, 428
Jonson, Ben: 406. The Case is Altered:
II9
K
Kalich, Madame Bertha: 55, 345
Kansas City: 190
Keats, John: 3, II, 88, 246. The Eve
of Saint Agnes: 88
Keats's grave: 131, 333
Keenan, Frank: 224
Kennedy, Chas. Rann: 53, 354, 368,
429.  The Servant in the House:
54, 368, 373, 378. The Winter Feast:
369
Kennedy-Fraser, Marjorie: 403, 432
Kent, Eng.: 436
Kent, Rockwell: 277
Keswick, Eng.: 415, 426


Klein, Charles: 32I, 322. The Lion and
the Mouse: 321
Klein, Manuel: 421
Kramer, Wright: 31
Kreider, Nobel: 255
L
La Farge, John: 167
Lago di Garda: 149
Laguna: 295
Lake City: 8i
Lake Zurich, Ill.: 200
Lakeside, Ill.: 5, ii8, 437
Lambs' Club: 290
Langhada Pass: I23, 124
La Robe Rouge: 212
Laurion: 121
Lawton, Frank and Shirley: 425
Lawton, Mary (actress): 370, 373, 376
Lee, Mass.: 284
Leipzig Univ.: 418
Le Moine, Mrs. Sarah Cowell: 33, 302,
306
Lessing, O. E.: 440
Letters to Harriet, their elements and
emphasis: 3-5; acknowledgments
concerning: 414
Lewis, Edwin Herbert: 440
Lewisohn, Alice and Irene: 33
Life of Milton: 5
Lindsay, Vachel: 33, 34, 35, 399, 403,
41o, 419, 422, 432
Literary Digest: 441, 442
'Little Room, The': 437
Loch Arklet: 427
Lodge, George Cabot: 213, 241
Loftus, Cissy: 206
London: 135, 272, 318, 333, 336, 337,
338, 378, 383, 396, 426, 427, 438
Long Island: 397, 431, 432
Longley, Marrette: 425
Longley, Mary: 425
Los Angeles: 374, 391, 433
Lovett, Robert Morss: i6, 17, 19, 84,
87, I2i, 2oo00, 204, 206, 273, 276, 4I4,
416, 417, 421, 430, 435, 440. Bimbles (Lovett): 273
Lowell, Amy: 34, 35, 39, 403
50 1




INDEX


Luxembourg Gardens: 132, 135
Lycidas: 396
Lyle, Katherine: 426
Lyman, Henry D.: 437
M
MacDowell Club: 434, 443
MacDowell Colony: 410
MacDowell, Edward Alexander: 424
MacDowell, Marian, Mrs. Edward: 431
Macgowan, Kenneth: 428
MacKaye, Arvia: 65, 66, 269, 275, 28I
386, 403, 4I8, 419, 427
Christy: 386, 403, 427
Harold Steele ('Hal'): 5i
Hazel: 283
James: 443
Robert Keith ('Robin'): 65, 66,
386, 403, 422, 427
Mrs. Steele M-K.: 425
William Payson ('Will'): 53
MacKaye, Percy: 4, 17-25, 28-48, 50 -69, 230, 23I, 242, 243, 249, 251, 266,
269, 270, 27I, 274, 275, 277, 278,
284, 290,292, 293,309,316,322,339,
344,385,386,392,393,403,414,4I7,
418, 4I9,420,422,424,425,427-43I,
434, 440, 441, 442, 443. Early
Works: 17, 32.' Canterbury Pilgrims:
32, 385, 427, 442. Civic Theatre: 32.
Epoch: 443. Fenris, the Wolf: 39, 4I,
230, 242, 421, 439, 441. The FireBringer: 43I, 442. yeanne d'Arc: 32,
50, 51, 54, 242, 243, 277, 309. Mater:
23, 32, 54, 423. Nereida: 68, 283.
Sappho and Phaon: 24, 32, 38, 52,
54, 55, 56, 57, 345, 422, 423. The
Scarecrow: 32, 41, 428. Tomorrow:
32. Uriel: 69, 419,424,431,440,442,
443. Yankee Fantasies: 32, 283
MacKaye, Mrs. Percy (Marion Morse
M-K.): 41, 46, 52, 65, 66, 25I, 253,
269, -270, 274, 275, 386, 392, 403,
414, 425, 43I
Mackinac Island: 7, 60, I54-I63, 238,
242, 268, 339, 363-365, 383, 4I6, 423
Macmillan Co.: 289, 39I
Madrid: 330


Maeterlinck, Maurice: 163, 209, 249,
357.  Monna   Fanna: 163.   The
Double Garden: 209. Pelleas et Melisande: 357. The Life of the Bee: 387
Maine: 144, 340, 363, 366, 367
Manly, John M.: I6, 19, 440
Mansfield, Richard: 227
Mantell, Robert: 247
Mantellini, Signor G.: 84
Marbury, Elizabeth: 263, 264, 368
Markham, Edwin: 218, 219, 235, 403,
404, 423, 442
Marks, Lionel: 22, 414
Marks, Mrs. Lionel: See Peabody,
Josephine P.
Marley's ghost: 401
Marlowe, Julia: 33, 41, 50, 51, 54, 55,
209, 213, 252, 322, 422
Masefield, John: 403
Mason, Daniel Gregory: I6, 17, I9, 48,
84, i66, 167, 172, 311, 391, 404, 414,
416, 430, 43I, 440
Masque of Judgment, The: See Moody,
William Vaughn
Masters, Edgar Lee: 33, 35, 36, 403,
414, 420
Mater: 23, 32, 54, 423
Matthison, Edith Wynne: 53, 339, 354,
355, 357, 429
Matz, Evelyn: 437
Maximilian: 420
Maynard, Theodore: 403, 404
McComas, Francis: 208, 402
McDougal Street: 218
Medea: 214, 271
Megaspaelion: 128
Melos: 105, 107. 'She of Melos': 105,
109
Messenia: 124, 125, 128
Metropolitan Opera House: 64, 369
Meynell, Alice: 210
Michaelis: 369, 370, 371, 429
Millay, Edna St. Vincent: 404
Miller, Henry: 42, 46, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54,
59,60,6I, 63,260, 261,262, 263,272,
276, 277, 283, 286, 287, 288, 289, 291,
294,295,296,303,306,3I0,318,320,
323,339,340,341,349,351, 352, 353,
355,356,360,361,365,366,367, 370


45I ]




INDEX


371,372,374,375,376,377,378,389,
390,417,421,422,424,428,429,430
Milton, John: I5, 381
Moki-land: I93
Moliere: Misanthrope: 227
Monadnock, Mt.: 409, 410
Monhegan, Me.: 363
Monroe, Harriet: 33, 404, 433, 437,
438, 443
Montreal: 347, 378
Moody, Charlotte Earle: 59, 6o, 62, 63,
68, I52, 227, 233, 242, 247, 248, 261,
350, 355, 358, 363,364,386, 387, 388,
4389, 390, 393,395, 397, 44, 424, 428
Moody, Francis Burdette (father of
W. V. M.): 435
MOODY, HARRIET     CONVERSE: For
special phases of her life and personality, see Sections II, III, IV of Introduction, XXI-XXXII of Conclusion, and Biographical Data, pp.
435-438
Her Accident: 5-6, 4I5, 437
Ancestry: 436
Bibliography: 443
Business: 382, 401, 402, 409, 432,
437
Conversation: 9, 400, 401
Cook-Book: 432, 438, 443
Diaries: 382, 426
Education: 436
Father: 436
Lettersfrom W. V. M.: 3-5, 414
Letters to W. V. M.: 8, 9, 382
Mother: 9, 436
Secretary: 408, 414, 426, 433, 439
Special references: 2, 13, i6, 59,
70-73, 305, 339, 358, 378, 381-4I1,
415, 418, 429, 43I-433. Numberless
personal references throughout volume
Moody, Henrietta Emily Stoy (mother
of W. V. M.): 435
Moody, Henrietta: See Fawcett, Henrietta Moody
Moody, Julia: See Schmalz, Julia
Moody
MooDY, WILLIAM VAUGHN: For special phases of his life and works, see


Contents, with 33 Section-headings
of Introduction and Conclusion.
Also Biographical Data on page 435.
His Writings:
A History of English Literature: 84,
86, 87, 89, 90, III, II9, 150, 200, 202,
214, 217, 240, 416, 435. And see
under Text Books
A Prairie Ride: 13
A Sabine WFoman: I8, 35, 40-46,
253, 260, 263, 265, 283, 420, 421; and
see The Great Divide
Chorus of Young Men: 16I
Gloucester Moors: 40, 411, 420
Life of Milton: 15
Musa Meretrix: 272
Ode in Time of Hesitation. 27, 35,
394, 420
Old Pourquoi: 208, 320
Pandora's Song: 175, 178
PhilippinePoems: 136,137,308,420
Second Coming: 204, 243
Thammuz: 44, 173, 243
The Counting Man: 66
The Death of Eve, Poem: 52, 172,
i8i, I83, 203, 286
The Death of Eve, unfinished
poetic drama: 24, 294, 306, 334, 393,
428
The Faith Healer.24, 32, 52, 57, 58,
6o, 61, 62, 63, 85, 265, 320, 322, 323,
325, 34, 341, 347, 349, 353,367, 374,
375,378, 389, 390,39, 417, 421, 428,
429, 430
The Fire-Bringer: 18, 24, 32, 37,
39, 137, I41, I49, 154, 159, i6i, 162,
175, 178, 179, 189, 197, 235,255, 263,
279,342, 396, 397, 398, 46, 431,441,
442
The Fountain: 207, 208, 212, 213
The Great Divide: 15, I8, 39, 41, 46,
47, 48, 50, 54, 55, 6o, 211, 237, 244,
246, 248, 2'50, 2~3, 26o, 265,280, 282,
283, 290, 291, 306, 308, 310, 38, 339,
340,343,354,367,368, 370,372,373,
376, 420, 421, 43I, 440, 442
The Masque of Judgment: I5, 32,
38, 39, I54, I59, I64, I92, 235, 334,
437


[ 452 1




INDEX


The Three Angels: 70, 270, 425
Trilogy (Masque of Judgment, FireBringer, Eve): I54, I59, 334, 393
Unfinished play, in verse (unnamed and lost): 24, 185, i86, 187,
248
Unpublished volumes concerning
W. V. M.: 416
His Paintings: 36, I09, III, 113,
II8,II9, I27, 37, 43, 54, I55, 58,
I59, 192, I97, 234, 242, 364, 365,
402
His Ancestry; 4I7. Biographical
Data concerning: 435. Bibliography:
439-443. Death: 395. Last Rites:
396-398. Marriage: 378. Middle
Name; 417. Typhoid illness: 30,358,
431, 442. Tramps, his interest in:
346, 347. Travels: 17. Numberless
personal references throughout volume
Moses, Montrose J.: 439,Mudlavia, Ind.: 20o
Munich: 163
Munson, Gorham B.: 44t
Murray, Gilbert: 292
Musa Meretrix: 272
Muse, or the Muses: 65, 114, 149, 185,
I27, 220, 227
Myers, F. W. H.: Human Personality:
344
N
Naples: 102, 330, 33I, 332, 418
National Institute of Arts and Letters:
322, 424. See also American Academy
National Theatre: 37, 240, 396
Navajos: 193, 207
Nazimova, Madame: 31, 315, 320, 341
Nereida: 283
New Albany, Ind.: 435
New Haven: 296, 298
New Mexico: 47, 294
New Republic, The: 402, 440, 443
New Theatre: 36, 37, 240,315, 3I6,419,
420
New York City: 17, 91, I53, 164, I65,


216, 288, 289, 295, 299, 304, 305, 3I8,
339, 363, 372, 389, 397, 429
New York Herald: 302
Newton, Mass.: 234, 235, 236, 339, 350
Nichols, Robert: 404
Nobel Prize: 408
Noguchi, Yone: 404
Nordfelt: 310
North American Review: 24I, 244, 247,
3I3, 443
Northrup, Mrs. William Perry: 431
Norton, John W. (mural painter): 190,
192, 194
Nuvalau: I50
0
Ode in Time of Hesitation: 27, 35, 394,
420
Oedipus at Colonus: o08, 112, 120, 277
Old Pourquoi: 208, 320
Olympia: 127, 128
Olympus: 112, I25
O'Neill, Elizabeth ('Bessie'): 91, 364,
416, 417, 426, 437
O'Neill, James: 339
O'Neill, Nance: 214
Ophelia: 213
Oraibi: 193, 197, I98
Orphic poets; 117
P
Painted Desert: 193
Paintings, sketches, watercolors of
W. V. VM.: I09, III, 113, II8, II9,
127, 137, I43, 154, I55, I58, 59, I92,
197, 234, 242, 364, 365
Palmer, Frederick: 154
Pan: 127
Pandora's Song: 175, 178
Pape, Eric: 427
Paris: I2I, I30-I42, 2I3, 224, 336, 337
Parker, H. T.: 431
Parkman, Ohio: 236,305,306,333,435,
437
Parnassus: 28, 29, 30, 112, I14, 116, 418
Parrish, Anne: 51
Parrish, Maxfield: 251,274,278,279,292


1 453 1




INDEX


Parrish, Stephen: 5i
Payne, William Morton: 437, 441
Peabody, Josephine Preston: I7, 21, 22,
23, 28, 3I, 35, 37, 244, 250, 284,404,
417, 419, 420, 431. The Piper: 3I
Peloponnesus: 119, 124, I3I
Penelope: 409, 410
Pentelicon, Mt.: I22
Perry, Bliss: 27
Peterborough, N.H.: 406, 410
Philadelphia: 50, 309, 310, 430, 436
Philippines: I36, 137, 308, 420
Phillips, Stephen: 59, 90, 213, 215.
Ulysses: 59, I68, 356
Pike's Peak: 393
Pindar: I35
Pinero, Sir Arthur Wing: Letty: 206,
227. His House in Order: 308
Piraeus: 103, I05, io8
Pirene: 271
Pit, The (by Norris): I6o
Pittsburgh: 46, 302-305
Plato: 141, 155
Play-book, The: 414
Players Club: 59, 290, 291, 313, 345,
355, 356, 424, 429, 431
Players Theatre: 265, 272
Players Year Book: 424
Pleiades: 391
Poe, Edgar Allan: 33, 224
Poetry, magazine: 427, 438, 443
'Poetry and Pies': 432, 443
Poets' Guild: 420
Port Chester, N.Y.: 59, 359, 36I, 362,
363
Portraits, a loan exhibition of: I69
Poseidon: 97. Temple of: I2I
Posilippo, Mt.: 418
Potter, Bishop Henry Codman: 307,
423
Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: 435
Power, Tyrone: 54, 59, 6o, 355, 356,
368, 370, 373
Prague: 37
Princess Theatre, The: 47, 295, 304,
307, 318
Progressive Stage Society: 236
Prometheus Bound: 18, 120
Prometheus, 'the Prometheus theme':


I37, 141, 149, 154, I79, 397, 4I7, 432
Providence, R.I.: 55
Q
Quebec: 378
Quinn, Arthur Hobson: 440
R
Radcliffe College: 3I, 427
Ramona: 387
Rand, Edward K.: 390, 430
Ravinia: 325
Reed, John Silas ('Jack' Reed): 428
Rehan, Ada: I88
Reicher, Frank: 430
Reinhardt, Max: 419
Rejane: 2I0, 2iI
Review of Reviews: 442
Richards, Laura E.: 431
Riva: 148
Riverhead, L.I.: 201
Riverside, Cal.: 426
Riverview Academy: 435
Robertson, Donald: 36, 42, 236, 250,
252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 26o, 264, 265,
266, 3I6, 325
Robin: See MacKaye, Robert Keith
Robinson, Boardman: 246
Robinson, Edwin Arlington: 2, 17, 22,
23, 26, 27, 31, 35, 49, 56, 64, 92, 93,
172, 2I, 241,246, 267, 3I9, 323, 342,
343,344,392,393,394,395, 4o6,410,
411,4I6, 417, 418, 419,421,422, 423,
424, 427, 428, 431, 432,434,442, 443 -Broadway Lights: 428. Captain Craig:
27, 28, 93, 4I8. Ferguson's Ivory
Tower (early title of Van Zorn): 31,
319, 320. The Porcupine: 23, 28, 29,
49, 342, 343, 344, 393, 4I8, 423, 431.
The Town Down the River: 394 Van
Zorn: 23, 3I, 319, 320, 323, 393, 418
Robinson, F. N.: 429
Rblvaag, O. E.: 404
Rome: 131, 332, 333
Ronda: 331
Roosevelt, Theodore: 28, 24I, 418
Rose, G. B.: 441


[ 454 ]




INDEX


Rosenfeld, Sidney: 188
Rostand, Edmond: 432
Rothenstein, Sir William: 406
Rotterdam: 151
Ruskin, John: 399
Russia: 428
Russian Players: 236, 241, 244
S
Sabine Woman, A: See under Moody,
Win. Vaughn
'Sacred Day,' the: 5-7, 7I-73, Ii8,
38I
Safford, Charles A.: 427
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus: 66, 67, 68,
230, 234, 251, 417
Saint-Gaudens, Homer: 51
Saint-Gaudens Masque: 67, 425
Saint Peterport: 382
Sakuntala: 236
Salisbury Cathedral: 383, 426
Salisbury, R. D.: 437
Sandburg, Carl: 404
Sanders Theatre: I9, 417, 429, 430
San Dimas, Cal.: 374
San Marlo, Alfredo: 404
Santa Barbara: 62, 388, 426, 428, 429,
433
Santayana, George: 21
Sappho and Phaon: 24, 32, 38, 52, 54,
55, 56, 57, 345, 422, 423
Sarony: 307, 308
Savonarola, Villari's Life of: 229
Savoy Theatre: 428
Schevill, Ferdinand: 6, 7, 12, I6, 17, I8,
6I, 8I, III, 121, 139, 144, i6o, 164,
189, I90-200, 219, 255, 257, 271, 396,
397, 400, 4I4, 416, 4I7, 418, 437, 44I
Schlatter, Schlalka, Herman Schlatka:
318, 348, 352, 353; and see The Faith
Healer, under Moody, W. V.
Schmalz, Julia Moody: 17, 63,414, 417,
423
Scribner's: 206, 240, 241, 257, 416, 438
Second Coming: 204, 243
Selfridge, London: 382
Seville: 327, 329
Seymore, Ralph Fletcher: 88, 437


Shakespeare: 188, 314, 396, 400, 406,
418, 432, 436. Hamlet: 15o, 213, 226.
Lear: 247, 277. Richard III: 226.
Romeo and Juliet: 209. The Tempest:
424. The Winter's Tale: 92, 217.
Twelfth Night: 187, i88
Sharon, Conn.: 348
Shaw, George Bernard: 345. Candida:
172, I75, I88. John Bull's Other
Island: 344. Major Barbara: 344.
You Never Can Tell: 219
Shaw, Robert: 67
Sheldon, Edward: 21, 441
Shelley, Percy Bysshe: 131, 235, 398,
432
Shipman, Louis Evan: 339, 425
Shirley Center, Mass.: 64, 284, 425
Shorey, Paul: 441
Shoreys, The (Mr. and Mrs. Paul): 104,
I05
Shubert, Lee: 46, 53, 299, 263, 264,308,
372
Shunem Woman: 117
Sicily: 324
Sieg, setter dog: See 'Brother'
Siena: 139, I44, 271
Sills, Milton: 215, 366, 368, 370, 378,
437
Sinclair, May: 242, 245, 441
Skinner, Otis; 62, I88
Slumgullion Gulch: 78
Smith, Alexander: 437
Smith College: 423, 427
Sophocles: 314. Oedipus at Colonus:
o08, 112, I20, 277
Sorbonne (Paris): 21
Sorrento: io6, 332
Sothern, E. H.: 31, 32, 33, 41, 50, 52,
53, 54, 55, 65, 209, 213, 25, 252, 322,
42I
Soule, George: 441
Sousa, John Philip: 316
Spain: 324, 327, 330
Spanish Drama: Echegaray: 331.
Galdos: 331
Sparta: 103, 121, 123
Spelman, Timothy: 428
Spencer, Ind., birthplace of W. V. M.:
43I, 435
55 1




INDEX


Speyer, Leonora: 404
Spokane, Wash.: 432
St. Augustine, Fla.: 214, 215
Stedman, Edmund Clarence: 25, 33,
38, 39 40, 56, 57, 218, 219, 338, 418,
419, 422, 424
Stephens, James: 404
Stevens, Carilyn: 443
Stevenson, Robert Louis: 232
Stfickney, Joseph Trumbull: 121, 135,
141, I6o, i79, 189, 210, 213, 220, 222,
241, 246, 313, 3I6, 325, 337
Stickney, Lucy: 222, 234
Stillman, Henry: 31
St. Louis: 6I, 374, 375, 376
Stonehenge: 383, 426
Stoughton, 28: 417, 431
Stoy, Henrietta Emily: See Moody,
Henrietta Emily (Stoy)
Strauss, Richard: 23
Strindberg: 250
Studio Building: I65, 201, seq., 309,
3"1
St. Valentine's Day: 65, I86
St. Vigil: 142-150
'Success': 48, 49, 321
Sudermann: I8o, 214, 392
'Sufficing art': 184
'Sunday,' setter dog of W. V. M.: 390,
391, 392
Sunion Cape: I2i
Swinburne, A. C.: 337
Swinnerton, Frank: 404
Syndicate, The Theatrical: 53,302, 304,
3Io, 343
T
Taft, Lorado: 437
Taft, William Howard: 385, 427
Tagore, Rabindranath: 404, 405, 406,
407, 408, 433
Tangier: 326, 329
Taygetos, Mt.: I24
Taylor, Henry: 423
Tempest, Marie: 171
Tennyson: 285
Text books, 'the text books,' 'the


book': 84, 86, 87, 89, 9o, 19, 50.
'a certain  historical work': II.
'the revision': 200. 'the book': 202,
240. 'the M. & L. Nuisance': 202.
'Hist. of Lit.': 214, 2I7, 4I6, 435
Thammuz: 173, 243
Thayer, Abbott H.: 277
Thayer, William Roscoe: 21
Theatre Antoine: 224
Theatre Magazine: 286
The Canterbury Pilgrims: 32; and see
MacKaye, Percy
The Civic Theatre: 32; and see MacKaye, Percy
The Faith Healer: 24, 32; and see
Moody, W. V.
The Fire-Bringer: I8, 24, 32, 37, 39; and
/see Moody, W. V.
jhe Great DiMide: 15, I8, 32, 39, 4I, 46;
"and see Moody, W. V.
The Madstone: 319; and see Torrence,
Ridgely
The Masque of Judgment: 15, 32, 38, 39;
and see Moody, W. V.
The Piper: 3I;. and see Peabody, Josephine P.
The Porcupine: 23, 28, 29, 49, 418, 423;
and see Robinson, E. A.
The Scarecrow: 32, 41; and see MacKaye, Percy
Theseus: 430
Thomas, Augustus: 349
Thompson, Francis: 2o0. Hound of
Heasenm 208
Thoreau, Henry D.: Ix
Tietjens, Eunice: 404
Tilden, Alice Harriet: 437
Tilden, Sir Daniel: 436
Tilden, Fred: 437
Tilden, Harriet Converse: 415,435; and
see Moody, Harriet
Tilden, Will: 397, 433, 437
Tilden, William Mason: 436, 437
Toledo: 330
Tomorrow: 430'
Torrence, Ridgely: i6, 17, 22, 23, 25,
26, 28, 30, 31, 33, 35, 37, 38, 39, 41,
42, 56, 6o, 64, 65, 66, 172, 2I8, 219,
233, 248, 25I, 257, 258, 267,,3I2 319,


[456 ]




INDEX


320, 324, 32, 327, 330,331, 332, 337,
344, 353,363,388,397, 402, 404, 405,
414,4I7, 418,419, 420,442,42,424,
428, 431, 432, 442, 443. Abelarde and
Heloise: 3I, 4, I72. Eldorado: 3, 37,
172. Granny Maumee: 31. Hesperides: 428. The Hlouse of? a Hundred
Lights: 432. The Madstone: 31, 319.
The Rider of Dreams: 3I
'Tortoise-shell cat': 56, 279
Toy, Mrs. Prof.: 210
Triggs, Harold: 402
Trilogy: 154, I59, 334, 393
Tschaikowsky: 169
Tucker, Boyd: 433
Tyrol: 130, 139, 14I, i42-I46
Uhland: 20
Ulysses: I68
Union Springs, N.Y.: 436
University Club: 424
University theatre: 431
Uriel: 69, 419, 424
U.S. Navy: 427
V
Van Hoogstraten, Willem: 404
Van Zorn: 23, 3I, 319, 320, 323, 393,
418
Velasquez: 330
Venice: 144, 335, 336
Venus of Melos: 105, 107, 109
Vermont: 275
Vesuvius: 102
Vienna: 139, 144, I51
Virginius: 339
Vita Nuova: 222
Volz, Fred: 197, 200, 221, 223
Voth, H. R.: '97
W
Wabash, 'Sweet Singer' of: 220
Wagner, Richard: 171. The Wagnerian proportion: 256. Parsifal: 18I,


2io, 215. Rheingold: 255. Tristan:
182. Valkyrie: 18I, 182
Wagon Wheel Gap: 76, 82
Walker, Stuart: 420
Walpi: 197, 199
Warfield, David, in The Music Master:
210
Washington, Conn.: 311
Washington, D.C.: 262, 299-303, 323,
35I
Washington Square: 314
Watson, William: 420
Watts-Dunton, Theodore: 337, 338
Waverly Place, No. 107: 314, 317 seq.,
402, 403, 432
Weir, Alden: 167
Weller, S.; 360
Wendt, William: 61, 374
Westcott, Glenway: 402
Wharton, Edith: House of Mirth:
248
White House: 300
White Mountains: 293, 394
Whiting, Arthur: I67, 174, 288
Whitman, Walt: 23, 158, 219, 396, 431,
432
William Vaughn Moody Foundation:
See Dedication page
William  Vaughn Moody Memorial
Committee: 431
Williams, Gluyas: 428
Winchester Cathedral: 383, 426
Windermere: 426
Windsor, Vt.: 274, 282, 289, 293
Woodberry, George: 21
Wordsworth, William: 384, 385
Wycherley, Margaret: 223
X
Xenia, Ohio: 23, 319
Y
Yale College honorary degree: 60, 361,
362, 424, 431, 435
Yankee Fantasies: 32


457 1




INDEX
Yard, The Harvard: i66, 417, 431                     Z
Yeats, W. B.: I58, 172, I8o, i88, 400, Zangwill, Israel: Serio-comic Governess:
404. Cathleen ni Houlihan: 223. The  206
Hour-Glass: 223, 224.    Land  of Zarathustra: 23
Heart's Desire: 223, 224, 278. The Zeus Ithomas: 125
Shadowy Waters: 157. Where There Zira: 262
is Nothing: I57                   Zona ('the Zona play' — The Great
Young, Francis Brett: 404, 433        Divide): 244, 246, 280, 282








THE UNP'F,t
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DATE DUE


a






m --


c~o






I
I
I
m