Chapter M: H. P

The New Note

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

The new note in the craft of writing is in danger, as are all new and beautiful things born into the world, of being talked to death in the cradle. Already a cult of the new has sprung up, and doddering old fellows, yellow with their sins, run here and there crying out that they are true prophets of the new, just as, following last year's exhibit, every age-sick American painter began hastily to inject into his own work something clutched out of the seething mass of new forms and new effects scrawled upon the canvases by the living young cubists and futurists. Confused by the voices, they raised also their voices, multiplying the din. Forgetting the soul of the workman, they grasped at lines and solids, getting nothing.

In the trade of writing the so-called new note is as old as the world. Simply stated, it is a cry for the reinjection of truth and honesty into the craft; it is an appeal from the standards set up by money-making magazine and book publishers in Europe and America to the older, sweeter standards of the craft itself; it is the voice of the new man, come into a new world, proclaiming his right to speak out of the body and soul of youth, rather than through the bodies and souls of the master craftsmen who are gone.

In all the world there is no such thing as an old sunrise, an old wind upon the cheeks, or an old kiss from the lips of your beloved; and in the craft of writing there can be no such thing as age in the souls of the young poets and novelists who demand for themselves the right to stand up and be counted among the soldiers of the new. That there are such youths is brother to the fact that there are ardent young cubists and futurists, anarchists, socialists, and feminists; it is the promise of a perpetual sweet new birth of the world; it is as a strong wind come out of the virgin west.

One does not talk of his beloved even among the friends of his beloved; and so the talk of the new note in writing will be heard coming from the mouths of the aged and from the lips of oily ones who do not know of what they talk, but run about in circles, making noise and clamor. Do not be confused by them. They but follow the customs of their kind. They are the stript priests of the falling temples, piling stone on stone to build a new temple, that they may exact tribute as before.

Something has happened in the world of men. Old standards and old ideas tumble about our heads. In the dust and confusion of the falling of the timbers of the temple many voices are raised. Among the voices of the old priests who weep are raised also the voices of the many who cry, "Look at us! We are the new! We are the prophets; follow us!"

Something has happened in the world of men. Temples have been wrecked before only to be rebuilt, and destroying youth has danced only to become in turn a builder and in time a priest, muttering old words. Nothing in all of this new is new except this--that beside the youth dancing in the dust of the falling timbers is a maiden also dancing and proclaiming herself. "We will have a world not half new but all new!" cry the youth and the maiden, dancing together.

Do not be led aside by the many voices crying of the new. Be ready to accept hardship for the sake of your craft in America--that is craft love.

Some Letters of William Vaughn Moody

Edited, with introduction, by Daniel Gregory Mason. (Houghton
Mifflin Company, Boston.)

I shall never forget how, at sixteen, I read Stevenson's letters and thought them the most beautiful things in the world. I shall never forget similar experiences with Keats and Browning, and finally with Meredith; and now comes another volume of letters by the man who might be called the American Henley (though that only does him half justice) to keep one up at night and teach him unforgettable things. People have been saying that this collection doesn't represent the best letters Moody wrote. Certainly if he wrote more interesting ones the world ought to be allowed to see them, for these are valuable enough to become an American tradition.

The following is typical:

_To Daniel Gregory Mason._

DEAR DAN:

I have just heard from your sister-in-law of your enforced
furlough. I am not going to help you curse your luck, knowing
your native capabilities in that direction to be perfectly
adequate, but my Methodist training urges me to give you an
epistolary hand-shake, the purport of which is "_Keep your
sand._" I could say other things, not utterly pharisaical. I
could say what I have often said to myself, with a rather reedy
tremolo perhaps, but swelling sometimes into a respectable
diapason. "The dark cellar ripens the wine." And meanwhile, after
one's eyes get used to the dirty light, and one's feet to the
mildew, a cellar has its compensations. I have found beetles of
the most interesting proclivities, mice altogether comradely and
persuadable, and forgotten potatoes that sprouted toward the
crack of sunshine with a wan maiden grace not seen above. I don't
want to pose as resourceful, but I have seen what I have seen.

The metaphor is however happily inexact in your case, with Milton
to retire to and Cambridge humming melodiously on the horizon. If
you can only throttle your Daemon, or make him forgoe his leonine
admonition "Accomplish," and roar you as any sucking dove the
sweet vocable "Be"--you ought to live. I have got mine trained to
that, pardee! and his voice grows not untunable. I pick up shreds
of comfort out of this or that one of God's ashbarrels. Yesterday
I was skating on a patch of ice in the park, under a poverty
stricken sky flying a pitiful rag of sunset. Some little muckers
were guying a slim raw-boned Irish girl of fifteen, who circled
and darted under their banter with complete unconcern. She was in
the fledgling stage, all legs and arms, tall and adorably
awkward, with a huge hat full of rusty feathers, thin skirts
tucked up above spindling ankles, and a gay aplomb and swing in
the body that was ravishing. We caught hands in midflight, and
skated for an hour, almost alone and quite silent, while the rag
of sunset rotted to pieces. I have had few sensations in life
that I would exchange for the warmth of her hand through the
ragged glove, and the pathetic curve of the half-formed breast
where the back of my wrist touched her body. I came away
mystically shaken and elate. It is thus the angels converse. She
was something absolutely authentic, new, and inexpressible,
something which only nature could mix for the heart's
intoxication, a compound of ragamuffin, pal, mistress, nun,
sister, harlequin, outcast, and bird of God,--with something else
bafflingly suffused, something ridiculous and frail and savage
and tender. With a world offering such rencontres, such aery
strifes and adventures, who would not live a thousand years stone
dumb? I would, for one--until my mood changes and I come to think
on the shut lid and granite lip of him who has had done with
sunsets and skating, and has turned away his face from all manner
of Irish. I am supported by a conviction that at an auction on
the steps of the great white throne, I should bring more in the
first mood than the second--by several harps and a stray
dulcimer.

I thoroughly envy you your stay at Milton--wrist, Daemon, and
all. You must send me a lengthy account of the state of things at
Cambridge.... If the wrist forbids writing, employ a typewriter
of the most fashionable tint--I will pay all expenses and stand
the breakage. I stipulate that you shall avoid blonds, however,
they are fragile.

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY.

There are over a hundred letters here, written to Mr. Mason, Percy MacKaye, Richard Watson Gilder, Josephine Preston Peabody, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Henry Miller, Robert Morss Lovett, Ferdinand Schevill, and others; and every one of them shows Moody's remarkable gift of metaphor, his constant striving to "win for language some new swiftness, some rare compression," his belief in the positive acceptance of life, his paganism, "deeply spiritual, and as far as possible removed from the sensualism the thoughtless have found in it." Mr. Mason furnishes an introduction that is masterly; and the first and final drafts of _Heart's Wild Flower_ are included, proving vividly how this poet disciplined his rich imaginative gifts, training away from a native tendency to the rococo to the high, pure dignity that marks his finished verse. This volume is invaluable. Certainly with two such authentic voices to boast of as Whitman's and Moody's this young country of ours has reason to be proud.