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 VINCENT STARRETT 
 
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 PERSONS FROM PORLOCK 
 
<From the Ci6rary of O.E. and 
 Mary MapCe Jones 
 
 JA gift from (Esther (Doughtie Erench, 
 
 Jane Doughtie TayCor (Richard r T (Doughtie III 
 
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 University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign 
 
PERSONS 
 
 C FROM 
 
 PORLOCK 
 
 Vincent oStarrdt 
 
 Ofiicctc/o 
 
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 J 9 2 3 
 
Copyright 1923 by 
 Vincent Starr ett 
 
 THE TORCH PRESS 
 CEDAR RAPIDS 
 IOWA 
 
“PERSONS FROM PORLOCK” appeared first in 
 Reedy's Mirror some time in December, 1919. If it is 
 important to anyone to know the exact date he may con- 
 sult the records and find out ; for what other purpose do 
 we maintain records at great inconvenience to ourselves 
 and to the community in general, and employ librarians 
 and other salaried functionaries who first create the 
 records and then interpret them to the public; than to 
 satisfy the demands of this person who is forever want- 
 ing to know the exact dates when things happened? 
 Suffice it to say that the appearance of this essay was 
 greeted with acclaim; children shouted, “It is so!” and 
 newspaper men in Ardmore, Oklahoma (where the Mirror 
 is understood to have had an enormous paid circulation) 
 exclaimed, “Selah !” and registered complete accord. 
 Readers far and wide joined in the verdict that at last 
 the whole, irrefragible and incontestible truth had been 
 told about the matter. 
 
 But the far-reaching effects of this tour de force were 
 by no means confined to the subscription list of the 
 Mirror. The people at home here, where there was only 
 one copy of the Mirror extant and that not free from 
 question as to its paidness, went around talking Por- 
 
 5 
 
lock for several days. Eric Dixon made frequent refer- 
 ences to it, and Frances Donovan was reminded of Per- 
 sons from Porlock whenever the doorbell rang. Without 
 exaggeration, it may be said to have modified the lives 
 of several families for a number of days. 
 
 An essay so latent with inherent power obviously 
 should be published in a limited first edition by The 
 Bookfellows; three hundred copies on French hand 
 made paper, each copy signed by the author, would not be 
 inappropriate. And that, dear reader, with your kind per- 
 mission, is exactly what has happened. 
 
 Done in the ancient city of Chicago in the month of 
 September, 1923. 
 
 — George Steele Seymour 
 
 6 
 
T THIS 
 
 moment he 
 was unfor- 
 tunately 
 called out 
 by a person 
 on business 
 from Por- 
 lock, and 
 detained by 
 him above 
 
 an hour. ...” 
 
 That person from Porlock! 
 
 There is no further record of him, I believe; 
 no clew to the business he was about, of such 
 importance that it detained “above an hour” the 
 poet upon whose table lay the interrupted man- 
 uscript of “Kubla Khan.” He lives for a mo- 
 ment in Coleridge’s note to the first edition of the 
 poem, then passes from history. Doubtless he 
 went back to Porlock, where, it is conceivable, his 
 
 7 
 
descendants still live, and occasionally perhaps, 
 still interrupt the labors of others. On business, 
 no doubt ! Always on business ! 
 
 In heaven’s name, just what business is Por- 
 lock celebrated for? There is no atlas handy, 
 or I would look it up. 
 
 And what earthly business could he have had 
 with Coleridge? — this — this — “person!” In 
 England, and more so in that day than in this, 
 the distinction between a person and a gentleman 
 is rather marked. Coleridge would not have 
 written down the one for the other. We may be 
 assured that it was “business” indeed; and prob- 
 ably a very low and sordid transaction — not, 
 however, furtive. Perhaps the matter of a bill — 
 trifling enough, no doubt, but of supreme import- 
 ance to the person from Porlock; even to Cole- 
 ridge, it may be. ... I hope he had the 
 money! I am convinced that this business in- 
 volved money, for it detained him “above an 
 hour.” Was not the poet’s first word sufficient, 
 that he could not pay that day? But no! The 
 person from Porlock would want his money. It 
 is characteristic of persons from Porlock. What 
 to him was the fact that, in the embarrassment of 
 
 8 
 
his demands, “Kubla Khan” was fading from the 
 brain that had dreamed it^ 
 
 I may be quite wrong about this. I hope I 
 am. But it is certain that however important 
 the business of the man from Porlock, it was 
 insignificant beside the necessity for finishing 
 “Kubla Khan.” 
 
 Would that we had this person’s name. We 
 would niche him forever with the outcasts — em- 
 balm him, a fly in amber, for the revilement of 
 all posterity. 
 
 Poor Coleridge ! Immortal somnambulist ! 
 Luckless dreamer! That person from Porlock 
 seemed always to stand between him and com- 
 pleted work. Nearly all his writings are frag- 
 mentary — incomplete. Some other person or 
 thing, when it was not the Porlock nuisance, 
 transpired to interrupt his performance. I fan- 
 cy he grew to dread a knock upon the door, shut 
 away in the shelter of his own imaginings ; heard 
 that devil’s tattoo upon his panels when, perhaps, 
 no knock had been given. . . . Jean Paul 
 
 wrote eloquently to the din of kitchen utensils, 
 with the amiable chatter of his family about him, 
 and the doves flying in and out of the kitchen 
 
 9 
 
door. Imagine Coleridge doing that . Imagine 
 Carlyle ! 
 
 Persons from Porlock. . . . They are at 
 
 every turn of the crooked road, at every bend of 
 the stream. Life is congested with them; they 
 fill the world with their meaningless, unmeaning, 
 well-meant chatter. From their “business” nobody 
 is exempt, nothing is sacred. They are numbered 
 in the millions; and of their number are our 
 friends and the members of our family. 
 
 Business is their excuse and their fetish. Now 
 business, of course, is important — ist it not ? 
 Business — important. The one word is signi- 
 ficant of the other. Obviously, if business is un- 
 important it is not business; if it is business, it is 
 not unimportant. And — dear me ! — if it is 
 neither business nor important, then it is nothing. 
 Nothing is that which without which nothing is 
 not. I do not know how this strikes you ; to me 
 it seems rather incoherent. To the person from 
 Porlock it is all as simple as A, B, C, for it is his 
 argument that I am trying to get at. I imagine 
 Coleridge found it trying enough; no wonder he 
 was detained “above an hour.” Importance, it 
 is true, is a relative term. There is important 
 
 10 
 
business, and more important business, and very 
 important business, and so on; but it is an in- 
 flexible rule that the business immediately in 
 hand is quite the most important business in the 
 world, at the moment, to the person from Porlock. 
 It is a truth easily demonstrated. The man will 
 tell you so himself, with the utmost candor, and 
 with an incredulous stare at your stupidity. You 
 say, for instance: 
 
 “Really, old man, I haven’t a moment to spare. 
 I’m just in the middle of ‘Kubla Khan,’ a very 
 curious poem I dreamed last night. I want to 
 get it down before I forget it.” 
 
 And the person from Porlock looks at you as 
 if you were quite the strangest thing he had seen 
 all day, and replies: 
 
 “I’m sorry, Mr. Coleridge, but this bill must be 
 paid. It’s been running now since June, and this 
 is the third time I’ve called to collect it.” 
 
 And you answer him: 
 
 “But, don’t you understand 4 ? I’ll forget this, 
 if I don’t get it down on paper, right away. It’s 
 a dream — don’t you understand 4 ?” 
 
 It is perfectly apparent that he does not under- 
 stand. If he is inclined to be rude, he will say : 
 
 11 
 
“I don’t know anything about your dreams, 
 and I care less. What I’m interested in is my 
 money. I won’t forget that, at any rate. Do I 
 get it, or don’t I?” 
 
 And this goes on for “above an hour,” because, 
 being capable of dreaming “Kubla Khan,” you 
 are incapable of throwing this person downstairs; 
 which, of course, is what he richly deserves. 
 Whether he gets his money, depends largely on 
 whether you have it to give him. Actually, he 
 is less menacing than he appears. He may even 
 have a sneaking sympathy for you; and all the 
 way back to Porlock he mutters comment relative 
 to your sanity. 
 
 Or, perhaps you are in the middle of the dream 
 itself ; stretched easily in the wicker rocker, smok- 
 ing. The telephone rings. You ignore it. It 
 continues to ring. In the end, you say “Damn!” 
 forcibly (I hope you do!), and answer it, although 
 you are entirely certain all the time who is at 
 the other end of the disturbance. And you are 
 right; it is the person from Porlock. He inquires 
 pleasantly whether you can rush him out an arti- 
 cle on bee-hives, and bring it to the office in the 
 morning. He would not bother you, but it is 
 
 12 
 
late in the month and he is up to his ears, it seems, 
 in “business.” If you are the right sort, you will 
 say immediately that it is impossible; that your 
 wife has just died unaccountably, and the chil- 
 dren all have scarlet fever. That is what you 
 will say, will you not? On the contrary, that is 
 what you will wish you had said, after you have 
 hung up the receiver. Actually, you will think 
 desperately for the space of perhaps one second, 
 and then agree to write the article. Meanwhile, 
 of course, the dream has vanished completely. It 
 will never return; not that dream. 
 
 I knew a man once who married a person from 
 Porlock! He was a writing man, too, although 
 a number of city blocks behind the author of 
 “Kubla Khan.” It occurred to him that inter- 
 ruptions to his work were planned with consum- 
 mate timeliness by one of his evil spirits. At 
 first, he thought the episode might be accidental, 
 and for a time he believed the repetition of the 
 episode might be charged to coincidence; after 
 a while it dawned upon him that, whether malici- 
 ous or not, it was chronic. He observed that al- 
 ways at the moment when the flame of his genius 
 was burning most brightly, or when a long-de- 
 
 13 
 
sired phrase was hurrying to his mind to be cap- 
 tured, his wife would burst dramatically into the 
 room to inquire what had become of last evening’s 
 newspaper, or whether he would mind answering 
 the doorbell if it should ring, because she was 
 going to lie down, or why he had not told her 
 he had received a letter from Robert Southey say- 
 ing that the baby was ill. 
 
 Whenever my wife — whenever my friend’s 
 wife — thus interrupted his writing, he became 
 choked with a blind fury, and replied that he had 
 buried the kitten in the desired newspaper, or 
 that the bell might ring until the battery was ex- 
 hausted, or that he sincerely hoped the baby would 
 die. All of which was not good for my friend’s 
 temper, and often spoiled his style. He realized 
 that his wife was a charming person, pleasant to 
 look at, and nice to have around the house; but he 
 fervently wished she were not so desperately in- 
 terested in affairs at Porlock. And, of course, he 
 did not really wish that Robert Southey’s baby 
 would die, while the kitten, at the moment, was 
 in his pocket — not at all dead, nor even mor- 
 ibund. It is likely enough that he was sincere in 
 the matter of the doorbell. 
 
 14 
 
 4 
 
Persons from Porlock, naturally, are not all 
 amiable; although most of them, no doubt, are 
 well-meaning. That perhaps is the worst of the 
 whole matter. If their intentions were delib- 
 erately malicious, an end to their pernicious activ- 
 ities might well be accomplished with the nearest 
 object to hand — a thick walking-stick, or a 
 flower-pot, — and Porlock (enormous as that city 
 is) shortly would be depopulated. Often, how- 
 ever, the person is one who should know better; 
 one who himself would be the first to groan when 
 the knocker resounded through the house. 
 Having finished setting down his own dream 
 of Xanadu, without interruption, blandly he 
 descends upon his friend to read it aloud. He 
 looks about him at the littered desk, at his friend’s 
 haggard countenance, at his friend’s ink-smeared 
 elbows, and hopes he does not interrupt. . . . 
 
 And a golden afternoon is torn from the calendar 
 with ruthless hand, and “Kubla Khan” remains 
 unfinished where it was dropped, until another 
 afternoon, when, as like as not, it is forgotten. 
 
 Good chap ! He is the least offensive of them 
 all — but he is from Porlock ! 
 
 The place has no frontiers; it is as wide as the 
 15 
 
universe. Its geographical boundaries are the 
 the boundaries of the world ; its history is the his- 
 tory of Time. Porlock-on-the-Hudson, Porlock- 
 on-the-Thames, Porlock-on-Avon. . . . How- 
 many times do you suppose Anne was obliged to 
 call Master Will to his dinner? . . . Por- 
 lock-on-the-Styx. . . . 
 
 Ah, that person from Porlock-on-the-Styx ! 
 
 How many “Kubla Khans” has he interrupted 
 with his sudden knock! With him there is no 
 argument; no payment will insure his departure. 
 . . . When he leaves we accompany him to 
 
 and beyond the threshold. St. Ives must wait 
 the magic of another hand to lead him from his 
 difficulties; on the littered desk, unfinished, lie 
 our Kubla Khans, our Edwin Droods, our Ivory 
 Towers. . . . 
 
 In kindness perhaps he comes, the last and most 
 formidable of his caravan. His business brooks 
 no delay. By him indeed are we detained “above 
 an hour.”