Chapter III: Part ONE: Ohio (2)

Rec’d a letter from Sherwood Anderson this morning in which he tells me about early business experiences in Cleveland and Elyria. The latter is about as unpleasant as Akron, so I guess I needn’t despair. My mother and grandmother are going to Cuba this winter and close up the house, so I fear that our visiting plans will have to be postponed a while. I won’t be in Akron long. After that it may be Kansas City, Frisco, or even New York. The business is simply enormous now and growing so that I expect I will have a real job in time. I like to think that I can keep on writing a little, at least, of good quality, until,--someday when I shall start up a magazine that will be an eye-opener. I feel in a Billy Sunday mood this evening, and am very much in haste, so I hope you will not consider this letter as anything other than a scrap-heap of petty news. -- -- -- --

30: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Akron, Ohio_] _Nov. 22nd_

My dear Gorham: --/--/ If business were to continue so slow behind my counter at the drug store as it has thus far, I could get a good deal of reading done. As it _has_ been, _Pavannes & Divisions_, T. S. Eliot, Maupassant and _The L. R._ have been my steady companions. I have to be on the job about 14 hours every day, and when the Christmas rush begins I fancy I will be indeed well tired out at night. However, I don’t expect to remain here very long after that date on account of a probable promotion, when my evenings, at least, will be free. And, after all, that is about all I ask for.

Josephson wrote me a fascinating letter last week enclosing a poem of his own and two translations from Jules Romains. If you two continue to keep me warm, I am not at all pessimistic about my interest waning in les arts. Josephson’s opinions of _The Modernist_ will more than match your own, I think. Fawcett sent me a copy of _The Modernist_, and having time to peruse it, I was quite astonished by the amount of literary rubbish he had managed to get into its confines. There was hardly a gleam of promise through it all. Your three poems were practically the best things in it, and I am not complimenting you thereby. For a time I was sorry for you and for me. I wanted to write a letter withdrawing my contributions. But a certain resignation to fatality dissuaded me from the effort.... -- -- -- -- is a poor ignorant bastard of some kind. His comments on history and government are not even in a class with the _Evening Journal_. The rest of the sheet seems like a confused, indiscriminate jelly-like mass.... But, ah, well-a-day, the time must come when we can do more than groan and hoot.

I have thought for some time that your connection with it resulted mostly in a waste of time. I may send them more stuff simply to have it published and also on account of a kind of dumb-animal affection that I have for Waldo [Fawcett]. How furious he would be to hear this!!

I am liable to break forth in song about any time, but nothing has happened as yet. I wrote a short affair last night that I may hammer into shape. Grandma and her love letters are too steep climbing for hurried moments, so I don’t know when I shall work on that again. As it is, I have a good beginning, and I don’t want any anti-climax effect. If I cannot carry it any further, I may simply add a few finishing lines and leave it simply as a mood touched upon. New theories are filling my head every day.--Have you given the poems of Wallace Stevens in the Oct. _Poetry_ any attention. There is a man whose work makes most of the rest of us quail. His technical subtleties alone provide a great amount of interest. Note the novel rhyme and rhythm effects.

Josephson sends me a list of names for reading that you might be interested in. Marlowe is one of his favorites, John Webster, and Donne; the last is a wonder speaking from my own experience. I’ve got to rush back to work now so this is all. -- -- -- --

31: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Akron_ _Friday_

Dear Gorham: Have been up to Cleveland for over Thanksgiving, and rushed back again at dawn today and spent the day as usual. I enjoyed your letter with its encouragement to Grandma and am sending you a record of her behaviour to date. She would get very fretful and peevish at times, and at other times, hysterical and sentimental, and I have been obliged to handle her in the rather discouraging way that my words attest. However, I think that something has been said, after all, although the poem hasn’t turned out as long as I had expected. Tell me, pray, how you like it.

Have you read _The Young Visitors_ by Daisy Ashford (alias Sir James Barrie) yet? I don’t know when I have been more delighted. Subtle satire par excellence!

I shall try to get hold of your article in _The Smart Set_ and see how you have got up in the world, according to Joe Kling.

I hear a little gossip even here in Akron. There is a bookseller here who is well known far and wide as a character. I had known him years ago in Cleveland, but our acquaintance has recently come to more ripeness here. I just missed dining with Alfred Knopf who came here to see him the other day. Knopf tells him that Mencken is about to publish a book with him of which the title I forget, but the last scene is laid in the Sultan’s bed. The S. having a very large and luxurious one. This bookseller also gave me the enclosed booklet which was written by Mark Twain in one of his ribald moments. You will enjoy it, I know, and it gives me a stronger light on some of Mencken’s enthusiasm for the writer. The grand ejaculatory climacteric speech of Queen Bess is magnificent. You will regard the book as quite a treasure. I don’t know where else on earth it could be procured. --/--

32: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Akron_] _Dec. 13th, ’19_

My dear Gorham: I think you are wrong about _1601_. The bookseller friend who gave me the book you have, informs me that that is just another name for the same piece. So you see it is even more scarce and valuable than you thought. Will you ever forget that sentence of Raleigh’s where he says he was but clearing his nether throat!? I must get another one and send it to Josephson, who, by the way, has just written me about my “Grandmother.” He has some of the same complaints to make of her as yourself, and many others, but he ends up by calling it the best thing I have written, and, what is more flattering, begs to keep the copy I sent him. He says he has had a falling out with Amy Lowell, but a falling in with T. S. Eliot by way of compensation. His letters are charming with a peculiar and very definite flavor to them, and buck me up a good deal. I have lately begun to feel some wear from my surroundings and work, and to make it worse, have embarked on a love affair, (of all places unexpected, here in Akron!), that keeps me broken in pieces most of the time, so that my interest in the arts has sunk to a rather low station. Now that Christmas is coming in with its usual inhuman rush in candy selling, I shall not have a moment for anything but business and sleep. My life is quite barbarous and the only thing to do is recognize the situation and temporarily bow to it.

Waldo Frank’s book IS a pessimistic analysis! The worst of it is, he has hit on the truth so many times. I am glad to see such justice done to Sherwood Anderson, but this extreme national consciousness troubles me. I cannot make myself think that these men like Dreiser, Anderson, Frost, etc., could have gone so far creatively had they read this book in their early days. After all, has not their success been achieved more through natural unconsciousness combined with great sensitiveness than with a mind so thoroughly logical or propagandistic (is the word right?) as Frank’s? But Frank has done a wonderful thing to limn the characters of Lincoln and Mark Twain as he has,--the first satisfactory words I have heard about either of them. The book will never be allowed to get dusty on the library shelves unless he has failed to give us the darkest shadows in his book,--and I don’t think he has. I notice that Marsden Hartley is mentioned, but how does it come that “our Caesar” [Zwaska] is omitted!?

This last makes me think of _The Little Review_, and how terrible their last issue, November’s, is. I have sent them my poem, but have heard no answer as yet. If _The Dial_ goes on as you announced in your letter, perhaps they would care to print it. I am thoroughly confident about the thing itself since it has got by the particular, hierarchic Josephson, and I won’t blush to show it to anyone now.

If _The Modernist_ is not already in the mails for me, please do not forget that I am anxious for a copy. I wrote Fawcett a long time ago, but he hasn’t responded. My last letter from Anderson urges me to make him a visit, and I am hoping that sometime next summer such a thing will be possible. He calls the poem beautiful, but says that it is not as much poetry to him as “the flesh and bone” of my letters. He and Josephson are opposite poles. J. classic, hard and glossy,--Anderson, crowd-bound, with a smell of the sod about him, uncouth. Somewhere between them is Hart Crane with a kind of wistful indetermination, still much puzzled.

33: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Akron, Ohio_ _Dec. 27, 1919_

My dear Gorham: --/--/ My stand in the drug store has not proved exactly a success, although my father is good enough to admit that I am not to blame in any way. The principal reason that it will be discontinued is that no one can be found to work there without a quite exorbitant salary, and the location is too poor to afford that. So many things have happened lately with the rush of Christmas, etc., that I am tired out and very much depressed today. This “affair” that I have been having has been the most intense and satisfactory one of my whole life, and I am all broken up at the thought of leaving him. Yes, the last word will jolt you. I have never had devotion returned before like this, nor ever found a soul, mind, and body so worthy of devotion. Probably I never shall again. Perhaps we can meet occasionally in Cleveland, if I am not sent miles away from there, but everything is so damned dubious as far as such conjectures lead. You, of course, will consider my mention of this as unmentionable to anyone else.

Sherwood Anderson is coming to N. Y. this week, he writes, and perhaps it would be possible for you to meet him. Vide _The Little Review_ for information as to his whereabouts. He says that Van Wyck Brooks has given in Doran’s hands for publication a book well named,--_The Ordeal of Mark Twain_, which, I imagine, will follow on something the same line of direction that Waldo Frank suggests in his book. Hackett’s review of the latter is a bit severe, although he touches the weak points in every instance. The work _is_ too rhapsodical, and I noticed frequent lapses in plain grammar, not to mention diction. But the meat is there anyway, and the book is stimulating, even though a bit pathetic. Anderson says he respects the mind of Brooks more. Brooks and Hackett belong, both, to a harder and more formal species. Therefore Hackett’s critique is quite consistent with his characteristics.

I have been reading Masters’ latest, _Starved Rock_, and must mention to you my enthusiasm for “Spring Lake,” the best thing he has written since the _Spoon River_ elegies. “The Dream of Tasso” has a few splendid passages free from rhetoric, and there are others, a few, that satisfy. More and more am I turning toward Pound and Eliot and the minor Elizabethans for values. I have not written anything for a month, but I feel, somehow or other, as though progress were being made. Your estimates of Djuna Barnes and Ida Rauh are interesting and true. I have been instructed recently not to read behind my counter and so, working twelve hours per day, have not had time to do much reading. I want to get at your _New Republic_ reviews, if possible, tomorrow. The booklet, _1601_, is your own to keep. I can get another, I think, any day for the asking. My write-up in the paper was silly enough, but forced upon me, and misquotations as well. However, I took it as an agreeable joke and an anachronism in Akron. But the pater was furious, at the headlines in particular, and I spent a nervous day yesterday with him in explanations, etc. Sic semper. Akron has afforded me one purple evening, however. I got dreadfully drunk on dreadful raisin brew, smoked one of the cigars made especially for the Czar, defunct, of Russia, and puked all over a boarding house. You will believe me an ox when I tell you that I was on the job again next morning, and carried the day through with flying colours. I enclose an opus by Eugene Field,--very exclusive,--which you will copy if you wish, and then return. Do not let Burleson or your father see it, as it is quite strong. I think you will more than smile. --/--/

Yes,--Edgar Saltus _is_ gone. I remember reading him and a rare and wonderfully complete edition of Catullus on the night of the debauch. However,--I hope you will not think that my companion on that occasion was the one I mention early in the letter. This fellow of the raisin brew is another poor soul like myself, in Akron exile from N.Y. A very sophisticated and erudite fellow to whom I was introduced by my bookseller.

1920

34: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Akron_] _Jan. 9th, ’20_

My dear Gorham: What a good job Somerset Maugham does in his _Moon and Sixpence_! Have just finished reading it at a single sitting. Pray take the time to read it if you haven’t already. How far it follows the facts biographical to Gauguin, I am not able to say, but from what little I do know, it touches his case at many angles. Your letter coming this morning calls echoes in my ears of many such moods familiar to me during my times in N. Y. and I know how you feel. The mentioned book, I suggest as a tonic for hardness,--we all need how much more of it!

Complaining of a headache this morning I was excused from my duties for the day, and so have had time for reading, etc. I have not had to serve at the soda fountain as yet, and as a matter of fact, have not had much of anything to do,--my duty seeming to be a kind of marking _time_ until I shall be occupied in the addition to the store,--a restaurant,--or am sent up to Cleveland to fly about in a Dodge car, selling. I have a kind of tacit quarrel with everyone at the store, in spite of smiles, etc., but am becoming accustomed to the atmosphere, and suffer considerably less. Akron has, after all, afforded me more than N. Y. would under present circumstances and time, and, odd as it may seem, I have almost no desire for an immediate return there. Of course, I suppose my “affair” may have a great deal to do with my attitude. And I have also made two very delightful friendships, one,--the fellow I mentioned as my companion in the raisin brew debauch (Candee), and a more recent acquaintance with a filthy old man,--a marvelous photographer [Minns], the only one in this country to hold the Dresden and Munich awards, and who has several times been “written up” in the _International Studio_. Authorities rank him with Coburn and Hoppé of London, and there is no one in New York who compares with him. He used to read _The Little Review_, knows Marsden Hartley,--and lives in a tumble down old house in the center of the city. I expect the pictures of me that he takes to be wonders. He refused to take the “rubber-king,” F. H. Seiberling, for love nor money, simply because he thought his face without interest. He confided in me yesterday that he was an anarchist, and I picture with some pain the contrast in his circumstances here with what acclaim he would achieve in a place like London. He has always been afraid of N.Y.--and wisely,--for probably he would have long since starved there.

I was suddenly surprised last evening (Candee and I have been in the habit of talking until two and three in the morning) to hear him mention the Baroness. It seems he knows her very well. Knew her before she came to the village and Margaret Anderson got hold of her at all, and believe me he had some surprising tales to tell. He goes on for hours telling of exotic friends of his and strange experiences. He know[s] Europe well, English country house parties, and Washington society,--prizefighters, cardinals, poets and sculptors, etc., etc., and the wonderful thing is to find him here in Akron, forced to earn his living as secretary for some wheezing philanthropist.

Your anecdote of New Year’s Eve was interesting,--who knows,--perhaps someday you will fall too. Prenez garde!

35: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland, O._ [_January 15_]

Dear Gorham: Your play presents simple difficulties of criticism as far as particular details. Of course you cannot take it seriously as a work of art after the first page. It is stark propaganda, however much in the right direction it may be. For types like ourselves it should hold no deep interest, as it begins and ends with the universally-obvious understanding between the artist and what is supposed to be his “audience.” The Comstock raps are good, but not well enough,--humorously enough, placed to be sufficiently amusing or effective. Humor is the artist’s only weapon against the proletariat. Mark Twain knew this, and used it effectively enough, take _1601_ for example. Mencken knows it too. And so did Rabelais. I think that _The Liberator_ would be likely to take it, but I cannot imagine it presented on a stage. You have a sense of humor and I cannot see how you allowed some lines of it to pass your pencil. I have marked a few. You’re too damned serious. You victimize your hero. Your aristocrat is much more vital and admirable than the polyphonic God, chosen to symbolize the artist. And anyway,--it’s sentimentality to talk the way he does. The modern artist has got to harden himself, and the walls of an ivory tower are too delicate and brittle a coat of mail for substitute. The keen[est] and most sensitive edges will result from this “hardening” process. If you will pardon a more personal approach, I think that you would do better to think less about aesthetics in the abstract,--in fact, forget all about aesthetics, and apply yourself closely to a conscious observation of the details of existence, plain psychology, etc. If you ARE an artist then, you will create spontaneously. But I pray for both of us,--let us be keen and humorous scientists anyway. And I would rather act my little tragedy without tears, although I would insist upon a tortured countenance and all sleekness pared off the muscles.

My love affair is affording me new treasures all the time. Our holidays are spent together here in Cleveland, and I have discovered new satisfactions at each occasion. The terrible old grind at the factory is much relieved by this. I live from Saturday to Saturday. Gold and purple. Antinoüs at Yale. So the wind blows, and whatever might happen, I am sure of a pool of wonderful memories. Perhaps this is the romance of my life,--it is wonderful to find the realization of one’s dreams in flesh, form, laughter and intelligence,--all in one person. I am not giddy or blind, but steadier and keener than I’ve ever been before. The daily grind prevents me from doing anything productive. Here is something enclosed on which I would like your opinion, as frank and unmerciful as mine has been of your play.[8] -- -- -- --

36: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland, O._ _Jan. 28th, --20_

My dear Gorham: Well, I hope that Kling will be able to sell out for the price of dinner anyway,--but most of all that he sells out, and rids his own arms, as well as the public’s, of that fetid corpse, _The Pagan_. The last issue is the worst ever, and I don’t think there are lower levels to be reached. Joe doesn’t properly belong in an editor’s chair,--hasn’t taste or discrimination, and that’s all there is to it. He can make just as good money a thousand other ways,--most Jews can.

I am enraged at Mencken and Nathan for satisfying the public and insulting their admirers so grossly with that cheap and banal play,--_Heliogabolus_. Any one who has read even Saltus’ _Imperial Purple_ knows that there is not a vestige of historical truth in the setting or dialogue,--and that character, Heliogabolus, the most dissolute minion of decadent Rome, portrayed as I thought our authors were about to do,--so truthfully that a limited edition hastily gathered up would be the only possible method of presentation in America,--that delusion induced me to part with two good dollars. Instead we have a senile Al Jolson, farting the usual bedroom-farce calamities. If you want to read up on Heliogabolus, read some of Dio Cassius, if you can procure the old scribe,--at least this is what my Akron man-of-the-world prescribes. He agrees with me about the book, and writes thus: “I confess I was terribly disappointed. When I think of that slim child of seventeen with his hair powdered with diamond dust and gold, his half oriental eyes all but closed, dressed in the costume of a priest of Baal, offering his hand covered with jewels, to a gladiator who has fallen at his feet with the words,--‘Hail, Lord,’ and answering him,--‘Call me not Lord, for I am thy Lady,’ and then read of the senile, doddering creature with twelve wives as he is pictured by the joint authors, I have to laugh.”

Your N. Y. notes of the journalese, artists, etc., keeps me awake during these days of trial at the factory. I am packing cases and moving heavy cases of chocolate, barrels of sugar, etc., for my living at present, but even this is better than a station behind the soda counter. My father is just as impossibly tedious and “hard” as ever, and still as insistent on starvation wages. I’ll be glad when my mother returns from the south and the house and my own room are open to me again, and living will be a little less expensive. Then, too,--I am beginning to discover that I enjoy her society,--I have worked over her for three years painfully,--and the result is a woman of more interest than I had dared to hope for. I’m still in love, too, so I have much to be sad about. --/--/

37: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Cleveland, Ohio_ _Feb. 5th, --’20_

Dear William: --/--/ But I have cheering news to tell you. “My Grandmother’s Loveletters” tempted _The Dial_ to part with ten dollars, my first “litry” money,--the seduction was complete,--and you may begin to look for outrageous exposures next month or the next, in that magazine. I cannot write much now, cramped in this rooming house room, but when my mother returns from the tropics next month and I am re-installed in my own room with my little Victrola, I hope to revive my intimacy with la Muse. Just now I am deep in Baudelaire’s _Fleurs du Mal_, and won’t brook anything healthful or cheery about the place.

38: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Cleveland, Ohio_ _Feb. 24, 1920_

My dear William: --/--/ Take a layman’s word of advice and remain in your present surroundings as long as possible and extract the full amount of enjoyment from them while they last. It is not very exciting to arise and essay forth to ten hours dull and exasperating labor every morning at five-thirty and return home at night with a head like a wet muffin afterward. And that is the routine that I am enmeshed in at present, to say nothing of trying to exist on starvation wages. It’s the old bunko stuff about “working from the bottom up” and “earning an honest dollar” in practice, and if there are not some enlivening changes in it soon, I am liable to walk into the office and tell the amused and comfortable and rich and thriving spectator that “the joke’s up.” Catullus uses somewhere in his epigrams about a man that he was “----ed flat,” meaning I suppose a reference to emaciated thighs, etc., but the phrase is none too vivid for me to use at present in reference to my nervous and intellectual state. Add to this, an uncomfortable room, cold, etc., and a routine of hasty and inadequate meals snatched from chance lunch counters and there is further evidence for the state o’ things. --/--/

39: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _March 6th, --’20_

My dear Gorham: Well,--my mother is at length returned and the house open again. At present, however, the domestic vista appears a desolate prospect to me,--a violent contrast to the warm pictures that the former rooming-house room had conjured up as anticipations. I wrote you a while ago that I had gotten ’round to enjoy my mother’s companionship. That illusion, at least for the present, seems to be dispelled. She left here two months ago, a rather (for her) ductile and seductive woman with a certain aura of romance about her. She comes back now, satisfied, shallow, unemotional, insistent on talking food receipts and household details during meals. The weight of this terrible Christian Science satisfaction I feel growing heavier and heavier on my neck. Tonight I am distraught after a two-hour’s effort at camaraderie and amusement with her. “Dutiful son,” “sage parent,”--“that’s nice,”--and a pat on the back and the habitual “goodnight kiss.” I give up evenings to her to hear advice about details in business affairs which she knows nothing about. Mon Dieu!!! And there is Grandmother in a loud background to add to the confusion. Exhausted as one may be from an inhuman day, one must beam out the dinner and evening in proper style or there are exclamations culminating in excruciating tears. However, I mind it most when I am alive, like tonight,--not tired, stupid, mild, as on “week nights.”

Well, anyway, last night was made enjoyable by the spectacle of a good prize-fight. I have been to a number lately as guest of a newspaper man who lived over at the rooming house. Of course many matches are boresome, but provide two sublime machines of human muscle-play in the vivid light of a “ring,”--stark darkness all around with yells from all sides and countless eyes gleaming, centered on the circle,--and I get a real satisfaction and stimulant. I get very heated, and shout loudly, jump from my seat, etc., and get more interested every time I go. Really, you must attend a bout or two in N.Y. where a real knock-out is permitted. Along with liquor, that aristocratic assertion has disappeared here. There is something about the atmosphere of a ring show that I have for long wanted to capture into the snares of a poem. I shall not rest easy until I do, I fear. To describe it to you,--what I mean,--would be to accomplish my purpose. A kind of patent leather gloss, an extreme freshness that has nothing to do with the traditional “dew-on-the-grass” variety conveys something suggestive of my aim. T. S. Eliot does it often,--once merely with the name “Sweeney,” and Sherwood Anderson, though with quite different method in a story of his in _The Smart Set_, some time ago, called “I Want to Know Why,” one of the greatest stories I ever expect to read,--better even than most of the _Winesburg_ chapters. This brings me to your story in _The Plowshare_. What there was of it was well done. But it seems to me that the humor and satire of this kind of theme depends on a continued heaping-up and heaping-up of absurd detail, etc., until a climacteric of either bitterness or farce is reached. For example,--have you read Gogol’s “The Cloak,” ever? I don’t know what Hervey White did to it,--but I would mistrust him of any improvement on it after reading his comments on Frank’s _Our America_. -- -- -- -- I am as anti-Semitic as they make ’em, but Frank’s comments cannot afford to be ignored merely because of race prejudice. White is just an ordinary ass, though, and can easily be disposed of. I don’t understand, though, how you can consent to such “alterations” in your mss.

I’m very glad you sent the poem. It begins well,--dramatically, and maintains itself well until the last two lines. They are an appendix which I’d remove--merely repetition of better phrases in the beginning. Why not divide up the second verse into two equal parts and have three quartet-line verses? Another thing,--the “shoot-the-chutes” image jars,--one wants to laugh,--and one shouldn’t--something else there would be better. Also, why use a French title? I know it’s “done in the best families,” but there seems a touch of servility,--inadequacy about it to me. I’d send it to _The Dial_ if I had it, and be quite proud of it whether taken or not.

Josephson writes me that _The Dial_ is causing a great stir, but that clique favoritism, the old familiar and usual magazine button, is beginning to become evident. J’s letters are charming, and a recent love affair of his, a disappointment, has added seasoning to his observations. I only hope that you, he, and Anderson continue to keep me awake [?] with occasional mail.

I had a long and hypocritical conference with my father today, and succeeded to the extent of a five dollar per week raise in salary,--this makes existence at least possible.

I don’t know, G., whether I’m strong and hardened or not. I know that I am forced to be very flexible to get along at all under present conditions. I contrive to humanize my work to some extent by much camaraderie with the other employees and this is my salvation there. Of course I am utterly alone,--want to be,--and am beginning to rather enjoy the slippery scales-of-the-fish, continual escape, attitude. The few people that I can give myself to are out of physical reach, and so I can only write where I would like to talk, gesture, and dine. The most revolting sensation I experience is the feeling of having placed myself in a position of quiescence or momentary surrender to the contact & possession of the insensitive fingers of my neighbors here. I am learning, just beginning to learn,--the technique of escape, and too often yet, I betray myself by some enthusiasm or other.

My Akron friend has not been able to see me for some five [?] weeks, and I am in need of a balm, spiritual and fleshly. I hope next Sunday something can be arranged. -- -- -- --

40: TO MATTHEW JOSEPHSON

_Cleveland_ _March 15th --’20_

Dear Matty: Your praise of _Parsifal_ reminded me to buy a certain Victrola reproduction,--_The Processional_,--that I have long wanted, and I have found it an incessant pleasure ever since. I read the _Times_ often enough to realize that music is the only extra stimulus that N.Y. has to offer above Cleveland in these dry days. As I’ve said before, I don’t especially long for N.Y. as of yore, except once in awhile when an overwhelming disgust with my work afflicts me and I want to lose myself in the chill vastness of the old place. (I should better have said “find myself,” for I play a business part so much and so painfully, that the effort wears.) The little “iridescent bubbles” of poems that you suggest as fortnightly events simply refuse to come to the surface, and as I get so much of regularity in my daily routine,--time-clock ringing, etc., and rushing,--I won’t even worry about it. I cannot commit the old atrocities,--and I have not time at present for new adventures. At any rate, in the slow silence my taste is not suffering. There are still Rabelais, Villon, Apuleius and Eliot to snatch at occasionally. In my limited surroundings I grow to derive exceptional pleasures from little things such as a small Gauguin I have on the wall, Japanese prints, and Russian records on the Victrola, in fact, the seclusion of my room. My mother is able to offer me only the usual “comforts of home” combined with stolid, bourgeois ultimatums and judgments which I am learning how to accept gracefully. So, if you are bored and spleenful, we have much in common, though you are less impulsive and emotional than myself, and take it, I am sure, more lightly. Your suggestion of a flight to the walks of Chelsea or the Mediterranean tempts me exceedingly. I should like to be rash. I assure you that if I were in your position I should do just such a thing, but I feel too much bound by responsibilities in connection with my Mother’s fate, to more than dream of it. However, I wish we could get together for a while next summer. Perhaps you could make me a visit here. I will be badly in need of your conversation for a tonic by that time, and perhaps you will consider it. I can offer you no woodland retreat or metropolitan carnival,--only a very middle-class house and dull conversation,--but the time we had to ourselves would be very interesting to me, at least.

The last _Dial_ was interesting, mainly on account of a story of Anderson’s and “Mrs. Maecenas.” Burke can write at least very cleverly. I was entertained. The hero, I cannot help remarking, touches resemblance to you in several intellectual instances. Physically,--I never saw you broken out with a rash, or gawky,--but Burke has known you longer.--Is there an understanding between you about it?... My opus comes out in the April issue, and you will remark a couple of salutary changes,--omissions.

It’s late, and those who arise at five must get sleep, so I’ll barbarically acquiesce. My poem, the phallic theme, was a highly concentrated piece of symbolism, image wound within image.[9] You were only too right in your judgment of it. When I get some time I’ll work more on it. What you saw was fresh and unshodden enough.

41: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland, Ohio._ _April 14th, ’20_

My dear Gorham: --/--/ Yes,--the Grandmother poem came out very nicely. You notice, of course, that I cut it in several places, which improved it, I am sure. It is the only thing I’ve done that satisfies me at all now,--whether I can ever equal it in the future remains to be seen. I’ve recently been at work on something that I enclose for your verdict.[10] As usual I am much at sea about its qualities and faults. It is interesting to me,--but do I succeed in making it of interest to others? Please slam and bang your best about it,--pro and con. I have much faith in your critical powers. Much remains to be done on it yet, but enough is done with it at present to detect the main current of it, which is principally all that worries me. My daily routine tends to benumb my faculties so much that at times I feel an infantile awe before any attempt whatever, critical or creative. This piece was simply a mood which rose and spilled over in a slightly cruder form than what you see. It happens to be autobiographic, which makes any personal estimate of it all the more dangerous.

I like Marianne Moore in a certain way. She is so prosaic that the extremity of her detachment touches, or seems to touch, a kind of inspiration. But she is too much of a precieuse for my adulation. Of this latter class even give me Wallace Stevens, and the fastidious Williams in preference. Is there anything more fastidious in poetry than these lines of his in a recent _Little Review_ ...--? --/--/ [“To a Friend Concerning Several Ladies,” II. 1-7.]

The Bynner poems and translations were fine. Vildrac is the one who set me on the track of the Grandmother mood, and it is odd that our poems should have come out in the same number.

Have not heard from Josephson for some time. His last letter told of splenetic days following his post-graduation from Columbia, and an urge to ramble toward the continent via a stewardship on some vessel. Perhaps, for all I know, he has left our shores. Anderson writes me often from his Alabama bower. He is enthusiastic about the Negroes and their life, and will probably write something, sooner or later, on the subject.

The prospect of Easter spent at home was too much for me, and so I went to visit an Akron friend armed with two bottles of dago red. That didn’t seem to suffice after we got started, and a quart of raisin jack was divided between us with the result that the day proper (after the night before) was spent very quietly, watered and Bromo-Seltzered, with amusing anecdotes occasionally sprouting from towelled head to towelled head. The bath in the unconscious did me good, though, and was much better than the stilted parade and heavy dinner that my home neighborhood offered. Since then I have been beset by two terrible occasions,--a Crane-grandparent--golden-wedding celebration, and a collegiate ball. The terrors of the first were alleviated by some real champagne, but the second was aggravated by auto trouble on the way home with two hysterical, extremely young and innocent females under my care at three in the morning. I am just getting over it.

Well, this is all for tonight. I have no youths to put to bed,--otherwise perhaps my correspondence might suffer. I’m afraid I wouldn’t do in your position at all. But enough! I read in the paper that John Barrymore is going to appear before the movie public in _Dorian Gray_!! Mercy me!! Poor Oscar’s ghost upon the screen!! I wonder what will be done with the part.

42: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _April 26, ’20_

Dear Gorham: Thank you “muchly” for your speedy response to the plea for a critique. I was very anxious for your words, and they proved very valuable. You are right in every particular, except in so far as the understanding of my personal motive of interest in the poem. I realize that it is only my failure in the realization (concretely) which has permitted you this possibility. The poem fails, not because of questions, propagandistic and economic, which you mentioned, but because of that synthetic conviction of form & creation, which it lacks. It is all too complicated an explanation to attempt least wise on paper at this time of the night,--but perhaps you will miraculously be able to penetrate through to my meaning. As it stands, there are only a few fragments scattered thru it to build on,--but I may make something of it in time. However,--if it does evolve into something,--it will be too elusive for you to attach sociological arguments to, at least in the matter of most of the details you have mentioned. At present,--I feel apathetic about it,--but there is, of course, no telling when I will take it up again. The “Garden Abstract” has got hold of me now--and I venture that you would not recognize it. It is carrying me on with all the adventuresome interest that “Grandmother’s Love Letters” did, and I am very hopeful. Later, when I am further advanced with it and surer, I’ll send it to you. Also, I am “working up” the “Aunty Climax” which you will remember,--and a new piece in conventional form about a child hearing his parents quarreling in the next room at midnight,--a rather Blake-ian theme, I fear.

I have gone through a great deal lately,--seen love go down through lust to indifference, etc., and am also, not very well. This, I blame mostly to overwork. In fact the most of last week I spent at home mending an incipient rupture caused by the incessant heavy lifting at the factory. The possibility of such a thing made me furious with resentment against all those concerned in the circumstances of its cause. But I am quieter now that the affair has not been so serious as I at first suspected. I am back at it again today,--but shall in the future take more precautions against strenuosity. Your letter breathed an equanimity which it seems is more [than] in your late surroundings. The change must be doing you good.

43: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _May 25th, ’20_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ Your story in _The Plowshare_ was good and in the right direction, I think. Somewhat in the Chekhov tradition,--but a little too slight to leave many foot-marks. Work up to a few more complications in plot and treatment, and you will give us more of a chance for a grip. But the main point for praise strikes me in the evident fact that you have attained an hygienic attitude (“naturalism,” or what you will, but the only foundation left for serious and interesting modern work). I’m, I fear, a little obscure, but I need a conversation with you to get at the root of the matter.

I am plugging along in a very sodden way, planning as much as I dare on a chance to work a little in the New York office for a few weeks this summer by way of a change. After a recent conversation with my father the move seems rather more probable than before,--so, it may be that I shall see you within six weeks from now of a hot evening. Have been reading Stendhal’s _Chartreuse de Parma_, _Noa Noa_, _Way of All Flesh_, and Landor’s _Conversations_,--a strange mixture. Anderson wrote me very much the same criticism of my “Episode of Hands” poem that you did. I haven’t done anything more with it in spite of frequent attempts. The new version of “Garden Abstract” I enclose for your criticism. _The Dial_ has rejected it, but that doesn’t mean much to me after reading in their last number that vacant lyric of Alter Brody’s.

This “business life” is getting me in a terrible way,--and I am beginning to feel that I must contrive a jolt for myself soon. If it were only myself concerned in the “jolt” I wouldn’t have delaying qualms,--but,--perhaps I am fated to a life of parental absorptions. My interests are as keen as ever, though, and so I suppose I need not worry about myself,--as long as I keep worrying.

44: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_, _June 8th, ’20_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ I’ve just read your critique in _The Freeman_, and while I have never been to a Provincetown performance, I should certainly want to after this of yours. _The F._ rejected my “Garden Abstract” along with _The N. Rep._ and _The Dial_, and I’m at a loss to understand such things in the light of some of the mediocre effects that are more-or-less the rule in the columns of the first two. Of course the theme was pure pantheistic aestheticism,--and I suppose they would say that it was too detached from life, etc. I’m started on a set of sketches connected with Akron life now, and enclose a sample.[11] Maybe I shall be able to do something in New York in the mornings, the best time for such work, but as you know, plans for that kind of thing can never be made. -- -- -- --

45: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _July 30th, --’20_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ I have been promised the territory around Washington, D.C., Norfolk, Richmond, Va., etc., as a hunting ground for “selling,” beginning about the second week in September when I shall embark for Washington as headquarters. This last named place strikes me as interesting in the extreme,--even better than N.Y. which I know so well anyway. I shall more or less freely govern my own operations, rise and retire at later hours, and have a drawing account at the bank at my own disposal in addition to a good percentage commission on everything I sell. I must admit a happy surprise at my father’s recent appreciation of my efforts here during the last six months. He even made the unhoped-for concession of mentioning that he had chosen this territory for me on account of the better sort of business type that is in Washington and also on account of Washington’s “literary and journalistic associations.” Well, it will be much better than this smug atmosphere around here, and I rather tend to expect a moment or two of revived inspiration. Before closing, I must mention my enthusiasm for our Henry James. I have read recently his _American_, an early novel, and a group of tales in his “middle manner” collected in a book called _The Better Sort_, also I have been at his letters which I bought riskily but wisely, after all. -- -- -- --

46: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _August 18th --’20_

Dear Gorham: I am delighted to hear about your sudden appreciation of D’Annunzio’s novels. In fact, I get a picture of you running with them under your arm, (one arm, I should say,--the other being occupied with other cargo,--) away from the, as usual, glaring M. Schopenhauer who stands in the doorway of your erstwhile quiet ivory tower waving his arms and shaking fists at you. I would rather, and more truthfully, I think,--think of you thusly than as another picture, more common to humanity, that always obtrudes upon me when anyone announces “an engagement”--“The Storm”.... You will remember seeing it in a thousand “art store” windows:--a curly youth partly in a bearskin trotting amiably with a barefooted flaxen lady away from something that evidently hasn’t taken the starch out, as yet, from a rag that they are dragging along above them. It is all “too lovely” and pink. I am sure there is more of a “rouge et noir” cast to your surrender. Well,--betrayal brings memories and wisdom (to the male, anyway), and so I congratulate you on your splash even though I suffer from unaccustomed silence. One word before we close the subject, though:--you must not expect me to read D’Annunzio.

Did I tell you that I have been enjoying the letters of Henry James? Also, Aldous Huxley’s “Limbo,” and the Noh plays of Fenollosa and Pound. Conrad’s _Nigger of the Narcissus_ seems to me all polyphonic prose, plus the usual quality of Conrad characterization, etc. Then I’ve read most of the tales in James’ _Better Sort_ vol. and that is about all I’ve been able to cram into the exhausted evening hours since New York. I’ll chuck in a page of the Akron poem that I struck off the other evening just because I want an opinion on it from you.[12] Hustle back to the ivory tower and put on your specks for a minute, please, and tell me what you think of this uncouth trifle, sir. In view of my attitude toward what Akron so strongly represents, I have been thinking that it might be amusing to call the whole series “Porphyro in Akron.” I don’t much care whether anyone will care for it or not. What I seem to want to do more and more as time goes on, is to preserve a record of a few thoughts and reactions that I’ve had in as accurate colors as possible for at least private satisfaction. --/--/

47: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Washington, D. C._ _Sept. 13th, ’20_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- Here I am after a three-days search for a room in an unexceptional maison in a row of other rooming houses. There are charming places in Washington, but it takes time and information to get at them, and as I haven’t either, and had to give the Cleveland office “an address” very quickly, I shall remain here for three weeks yet, anyway. Your last came just before I left home. You ought to thank your stars for such a summer as you have had. I haven’t any idea yet how much I shall like Washington. There is a certain easiness about it, and geographically it is, I should judge, the nearest like Paris of any American city. An endless number of parks and monuments, and all the streets are lined with trees. At least it is more elegant than any other American city and with a very different psychology than N.Y., Cleveland or Akron. This last name reminds me that I sent “Porphyro” to _The Dial_ with some additions and subtractions from the version you read, before leaving home. I dread this tramping around trying to sell Crane’s candy, but this week will see me started in it, and my affection for Washington will largely depend upon how well I get on. At present I feel a terrible vacuity about me and within me and a nostalgia for Cleveland. -- -- -- -- I share your enthusiasm for Cowley’s poem in _The L.R._

48: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Washington_] _Sept. 24th, --’20_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- I’ve been running around talking, talking, talking and waiting for the proper persons to arrive at their offices, etc., etc., etc., all week, and have succeeded to the mild extent of inaugurating two new accounts for the firm. Fortunately, people here don’t seem to arrive at their offices until after ten, and so I have the opportunity to sleep more than I did in Cleveland where the requirements commanded my resurrection at five A.M. My Akron friend, Mr. Candee, gave me an introduction to a poet friend of his who has charge of all the official communications, etc., that come into the State Department. He has proved a charming person, and has introduced me to several other interesting people. He is one of the few who is cognizant of what is going on abroad, knows some things weeks in advance of the newspapers and, of course, a great many things that never come out. His opinion of most of Europe, especially the greedy tactics of some of the freshly hatched nationalities, is below cynicism. I have not yet heard from _The Dial_ about “Porphyro,” or at any rate he has [not] been redirected to me. I am beginning to feel that he is my lost soul, and will be a long time in returning. This simply means that I haven’t had a creative impulse for so long that I am even getting not to miss it. I am not in the type of Washington life that offers material or incentive for writing. The diplomatic circles have all kinds of scandals waving around which I generally hear a whisper of from the fringes, but there is really no cafe life here or factory or shop life worth mentioning. Thousands of clerks pour out of government offices at night and eat and go to the movies. The streets are beautiful with many parks, etc., but it is all rather dead. I am really more interested in the soldiers and sailors that one meets than anything else. They have a strange psychology of their own that is new to me. This sounds bad, and perhaps it is so,--but what should one do with the reported example of our new VICE -- -- -- -- scenting the air as it does. From what I’m hearing, about every other person in the government service and diplomatic service are enlarged editions of Lord Douglas. Amusing Household! as Rimbaud would say. I shall look for _The Rainbow_ in Brentano’s here, and hope that it may be interesting. -- -- -- --

49: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Washington_] _Oct. 1 ’20_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ New York seems to be set for a fine musical and dramatic season. I took in _Footloose_ here last week and enjoyed it in spite of many obvious impossibilities of situation, etc. Emily Stevens did well in it--I suppose it would have failed without her. _Stepping Stones_ is here this week and I may go to see it. -- -- -- --