Chapter I

Joyce Kilmer was reported in the papers as having said, just before he sailed for France, that he was “half Irish,” and that was why he belonged with the boys of the Sixty-ninth. His birth was not exactly eloquent of this fact. Though, indeed, he was, as will appear, a much more ardent Irishman than many an Irishman born--that is, in the sense of keenly savouring those things which are fine in the Irish character, and with characteristic gusto feeling within himself an affinity with them. Later, in a letter from France to his wife, he was more explicit on this point:

As to the matter of my own blood (you mentioned this in a
previous letter) I did indeed tell a good friend of mine who
edits the book-review page of a Chicago paper that I was “half
Irish.” But I have never been a mathematician. The point I
wished to make was that a large percentage--which I have a
perfect right to call half--of my ancestry was Irish. For proof
of this, you have only to refer to the volumes containing the
histories of my mother’s and my father’s families. Of course I
am American, but one cannot be pure American in blood unless
one is an Indian. And I have the good fortune to be able to
claim, largely because of the wise matrimonial selections of my
progenitors on both sides, Irish blood. And don’t let anyone
publish a statement contrary to this.

He also, in a letter from France, quoted with much relish the remark of Father Francis P. Duffy that he was “half German and half human.” English and Scotch strains made up another half or three quarters. The English goes straight back to one Thomas Kilburne, church warden at Wooddilton, near Newmarket, in Cambridgeshire, who came to Connecticut in 1638. The “e” was lost apparently in Massachusetts, and the word became, as in his mother’s maiden name, Kilburn.

Soldier blood, too, flowed in his veins--though it is likely that this fact for the first time occurred to him, if at all, when his nature rose white-hot to arms. He was, so to say, a Colonial Dame on both sides, as members of both his father’s and his mother’s family fought in the American Revolution; and members of his father’s family in the French and Indian wars.

Alfred Joyce Kilmer (as he was christened) was born at New Brunswick, New Jersey, December 6, 1886, son of Annie Kilburn and Frederick Kilmer. Though he seems always to have been, in familiar address and allusion, called Joyce, the Alfred did not disappear from his address and signature until he began, as more or less of a professional writer, to publish his work, when it went the way of the Newton in Mr. Tarkington’s name, and the Enoch in Mr. Bennett’s. Then “Joyce Kilmer” acquired a fine humorous disdain for what he regarded as the florid note in literary signatures of three words (or, worse still to his mind, the A. Joyce kind of thing); and he enjoyed handing down, with much relish of the final and judicial character of his utterance, the opinion that the proper sort of a trademark, so to say, for success in letters was something short, pointed, easy to say and to remember, such as Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, O. Henry, Joseph Conrad, and so on through illustrations carried, at length, to intentionally infuriating numbers.

As a small boy, Kilmer is described by those who knew him then as the “funniest” small boy they ever saw, by which is meant, apparently, that he was an odd spectacle. And this, of course, is so altogether in line with literary tradition that it would have been odd if he had not been an oddity in the way of a spectacle. He wore queer clothes, it seems, ordinary stockings with bicycle breeches, and that sort of thing. He didn’t altogether fit in somehow, couldn’t find himself, was somewhat of an outsider among the juvenile clans; he was required to fight other boys a good deal; he evidenced a pronounced inability to comprehend anything at all of arithmetic; and somewhere between eight and twelve (so the report goes) he contracted a violent passion for a lady, of about thirty-five, who was his teacher at school; a passion which endured for a considerable time, and became a hilarious legend among the youth about him of jocose humour.

It is told that at “Prep” school, when this goal seemed rather unlikely of his attainment, he made up his mind to stand at the head of his class; and with something like the later Kilmerian exercise of will he accomplished his purpose.

Kilmer was graduated from Rutgers College in 1904, and received his A. B. from Columbia in 1906. His University life seems to have been, in outward effect, fairly normal. There is no ready evidence that he “shone” particularly, and none that he failed to “shine.” He was not deported by the authorities, and he was not unanimously hailed the idol of his classmates. He became a member of Delta Upsilon fraternity: and he was, of course, active in college journalism. Then as always he appears to have been zestful in living well, to have counted sufficient to the day the excellence thereof, and to have been too warm with life to be calculating in expenditures. He retained in the years that followed--and it seems to have been the college memory he retained most distinctly--a humorous recollection of his consuming his allowance on an abundance of rich viands during the first few days of each month, and being reduced to the necessity of living precariously on a meagre ration of crackers and sandwiches thereafter--until next income day.

Characteristic of the vehement manner in which he went after life, as a Sophomore Kilmer became engaged to Miss Aline Murray, of New Jersey, a step-daughter of Henry Mills Alden, editor of _Harper’s Magazine_. Upon leaving Columbia he took up the business of making a living in the way of an elder American intellectual tradition, by teaching school in a (more or less) rural community. He returned to New Jersey and began his career as instructor of Latin at Morristown High School. So slight a lad he was, even several years after this time, that it is difficult to picture him in the disciplinary adventures of the classic figure of this calling. His problems at Morristown doubtless were dissimilar to those of his early, Hoosier, prototype. He married and became a householder. His son, Kenton, was born. In religion he had been bred an Episcopalian, and during this period in New Jersey (it is told) he acted as a lay reader in this church.

He soon concluded, apparently, that pedagogy was, so to say, no life for a boy. At the conclusion of a year’s teaching he tore up the roots he had planted, and, together with the young lady he had married, and the son born to them, and with a few youthful poems in his pocket, he advanced upon the metropolis, even in the classic way, on the ancient quest of conscious talent.

The rapidity and brilliance of Joyce Kilmer’s success has altogether obscured his very democratic beginnings. As his initial occupation in New York, he obtained, by a lucky chance, employment as editor of a journal for horsemen, though of horses he had no particular knowledge--to be exact, no such knowledge whatever. Here finding little to do, and discovering one day in a desk drawer a bulky manuscript, he decided--as he was editor--to edit it. This, apparently, he did with youthful energy. The little job he mentioned with some satisfaction to his employer, a fine portly sportsman with a crimson face and an irascible temper. The young editor explained that the manuscript evidently had been written by a man familiar with horses, but one apparently innocent of the art of literary composition. “Young man,” bellowed his employer, “I would have you understand I have been through the best veterinary college in the world, and I have been a veterinary myself for over forty years.” His wife, he added, was his amanuensis, and he guessed she knew something about writing. The editorship came to an abrupt termination.

Then followed a brief sojourn, at a salary of (I think) eight dollars a week, as retail salesman in the book store of Charles Scribner’s Sons, a dignity which the young littérateur wore with humorous dignity for exactly two weeks. A distinct mental impression of him of this time presents him as decidedly like an Eton boy in general effect, and it seems that a large white collar and a small-size high hat should have gone with him to make the picture quite right. One who met him then felt at once a gracious, slightly courtly, young presence. He gave forth an aroma of excellent, gentlemanly manners. He frequently pronounced, as an indication that he had not heard you clearly, the word “Pardon?”--with a slight forward inclination of his head, which, altogether, was adorable. His smile, never far away, when it came was winning, charming. It broke like spring sunshine, it was so fresh and warm and clear. And there was noticeable then in his eyes a light, a quiet glow which marked him as a spirit not to be forgotten. So tenderly boyish was he in effect that his confreres among the book clerks accepted with difficulty the story that he was married. When it was told that he had a son they gasped their incredulity. And when one day this extraordinary elfin sprite remarked that at the time of his honeymoon he had had a beard they felt (I remember) that the world was without power to astonish them further.

As a retail salesman, however, this exceedingly interesting young man did not make a high mark. One’s general impression of him “on the floor” is a picture of a happy student, standing, entranced, frequently with his back to the door (which theoretically he should have been watching for incoming customers), day after day engrossed in perusing a rare edition of “Madame Bovary.” One sensational feat of business he did as a clerk perform. Misreading, in his newness to these hieroglyphics, the cypher in which in stores the prices of books are marked on the fly leaves of the volumes, he sold to a lady a hundred-and-fifty-dollar book for a dollar and a half. This transaction being what is termed a “charge sale,” not a “cash sale,” and amid some excitement the matter being immediately rectified, disaster for the amateur salesman was averted.

At Scribner’s a close friendship was, almost at once, formed between the youthful poet and another then unpublished writer acting at that time in the same capacity of clerk--a friendship which was never diminished by the numerous shiftings of Kilmer’s fields of activity, the multitudinous, diverse and ardent interests which he acquired in an ever-mounting measure, and the steady addition of numberless friends of all classes who eagerly yielded him their devotion. It was rather a friendship which was continually cemented by increasing and closer bonds. It was a part of Kilmer’s spirit to make his first friend in his literary life a sharer as far as was possible in each new success of his own. One among many, innumerable, instances of this was his contriving, by his influence with the editor (at that time another intimate, Louis H. Wetmore), to work his friend into a position somewhat rivaling his own at the period (1912–1913) when he was the bright and shining star reviewer for the _New York Times Review of Books_. The regular Tuesday lunching together of these two friends when their offices were widely separated became, at least in their own fancy, an American literary institution. The two were united in all the symbols of affection between men. And at seasons of rejoicing and adversity the Kilmer house was to his friend as his own. It is to this one who among all of Joyce Kilmer’s friends owes him the greatest debt of friendship has come the supreme trust of writing, within the power of his many and conscious limitations, this Memoir, and editing these volumes.

Dropping the very small bird which he held in his hand in the way of a secure salary, the spectacular bookseller, somewhat to twist the figure, plunged again into uncharted seas, and became a lexicographer, as an editorial assistant in the work of preparing a new edition of the Standard Dictionary. He blithely began his Johnsonian labours by defining ordinary words assigned to him, at a pay of five cents for each word defined. This is a very different thing indeed from receiving a rate of five cents a word for writing. It is a task at which you can obtain an average of perhaps ten or twelve dollars a week, though some weeks “stickers” will hold you back. It soon became apparent, evidently, that it was advisable to put this very capable pieceworker on a salary; and he was rapidly promoted, with corresponding increases in remuneration (reaching an amount of something like four times his initial earnings), to more advanced phases of the work: research into dates of birth (involving correspondence with living celebrities); research into the inception of inventions (as, for example, the introduction of the barrier into horse racing); together with the defining of words of contemporary origin, in, for instance, the nomenclature of aviation. In this last mentioned department, it was his office to call upon authorities, such as the Wright brothers, and upon presentation of his credentials to receive precise information. He interviewed famous tobacco importers, and coffee merchants; compiled in the New York Public Library material about fans; unearthed for use as an illustration a picture of a strange bird; or was assigned to collect for this purpose designs of ancient mouldings.

If lexicography was Kilmer’s venerable occupation, by political faith he was at the time, this very young, young man, a socialist. He subscribed for and frequently contributed to the _Call_ newspaper. And the height of his effervescence was in addressing meetings of the proletariat. He was, it must be said, a burning “young radical.” He frequented, to some extent, a club of that name. And with a joyous consciousness of being in the character of his surroundings he ate meals at the Rand School of Social Science. He rapidly acquired a wonderful string of queer acquaintances, in whose idiosyncrasies he took immense delight. Some, not of the persuasion, fancied that as an adherent of the socialist party he was merely enamoured of an intellectual idea. At any rate, whenever in conversation he spoke of socialism, as he frequently did, his graceful, amiable young features assumed a very firm and earnest aspect. Exactly the point of transition, if there was any decided point, I cannot recall, but from the proletariat he passed to the literati. A “man of letters” became a great word with him. And he looked rather proudly about as he said it, as a Scot might speak of the doughty deeds of the Scotch. He was wont to refer, too, to the “intellectual aristocracy.” His luncheon engagements were now mostly with this order of humanity, and his anecdotes featured such figures as Richard Le Gallienne and Bliss Carman--men whose personalities delighted his heart beyond measure.

How absurdly juvenile he looked. But you would have noted, as you observed him, that he had a very fine head, something like that of Arthur Symons (without the moustache), I thought; or, according to Mr. Le Gallienne’s sympathetic picture in _The Bookman_: “Though the resemblance was perhaps only a spiritual expression, his then thin, austere young face, with those strangely strong and gentle eyes (eyes that seemed to have an independent, dominating existence), reminded me of Lionel Johnson, for whom he had already a great admiration, and whose religion he was afterwards to embrace.” Or, again, he seemed as if he might be a comely youth out of ancient Greece. I think that what I mean is that he was so unlike all other young men anyone had ever seen walking about, so much brighter and purer, or some indescribable thing, that he did not seem altogether real. A feeling which I think was shared by many, and which I have never quite been able to make articulate, Mr. Le Gallienne has most happily expressed with his own easy charm; that is the “hint of destiny” in this “very concentrated, intense young presence--masculine intense, not feminine:”

We have all met young people who give us that--beautiful,
brilliant, lovely natured, so superabundant in all their
qualities (and particularly perhaps in some quality of
emanating light)--as to make them suggest the supernatural, and
touched, too, with the finger of a moonlight that has written
“fated” upon their brows. Probably our feeling is nothing more
mysterious than our realisation that temperaments so vital and
intense must inevitably tempt richer and swifter fates than
those less wild winged.

Above all, this young gentleman was the portrait of a poet, even (in those days) of the type of literary sophistication which is (or was) called decadent! There was about him a perceptible aroma of literary self-consciousness. He had begun to contribute to magazines and newspapers the verses which he soon gathered into a first volume, “A Summer of Love” (an “author’s book,” as the trade term has it), verses patently derivative in character (as whose early verses are not?), showing the influences of various masters.

He had already become a bit of a celebrity, arriving at twenty-five in _Who’s Who_. In conversation he spoke with striking fluency and precision, and a rather amusing effect of authority; all of which, together with a ready command, rather incongruous for his years, of very apt words little employed in speech, gave a general impression, I fancy, of something of an infant prodigy. He wrote in a letter of this time of the poems of Coventry Patmore:

I have come to regard them with intense admiration. Have you
read them? Patmore seems to me to be a greater poet than
Francis Thompson. (Kilmer, had by the way, just given a lecture
at Columbia University on Francis Thompson.) He has not the
rich vocabulary, the decorative erudition, the Shelleyan
enthusiasm, which distinguish the “Sister Songs” and the “Hound
of Heaven,” but he has a classical simplicity, a restraint and
sincerity which make his poems satisfying. Some of his shorter
poems, such as “Alexander and Lycon” and “The Toys,” approach
Landor in their Greek economy. Of course, the “Angel in the
House,” and many other of his poems, are marred by Tennysonian
influences. But the “Unknown Eros” is a work of stupendous
beauty. It is certainly supreme among modern religious poems.
That part of it devoted to Eros and Psyche is remarkably
daring and remarkably fine. Psyche symbolizes the soul, and
Eros the love of God. Their amour is described with realistic
minuteness, even with humorous flippancy, and yet the whole
poem is alive with religious feeling.

The finding of Patmore, by the way, was what might be called a finger-post in Kilmer’s life. The fortunate introduction was performed by, it is my impression, Kilmer’s friend Thomas Walsh.

If in cold print to-day there is a slightly preposterous didactic quality in these remarks of this youthful character, it should be instantly noted as a tribute to the charm that was his that in the presence of so much handsomeness and grace, combined with so much flexibility of mind and agile humour, even this was an engaging thing.

There was to Kilmer nothing whatever dry-as-dust about the erudite business of lexicography; instead his impressionable nature found among his co-workers a rich, a colourful, an exciting school of humanity. He glowed continually with affectionate amusement at the motley band of literary adventurers, intellectual soldiers of fortune, who apparently were his colleagues. One, the most motley perhaps of all (the long cherished dream of whose ancient bachelor life it was one day to write a popular song), touched, for the first time, I think, the deepest spring of his song--his profound and wide-ranging humanity.

Some people ask: “What cruel chance
Made Martin’s life so sad a story?”
Martin? Why, he exhaled romance,
And wore an overcoat of glory.