PART ONE

Ohio

(1916-1922)

1916

1: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER

[_Cleveland, Ohio_] _Jan. 26, 1916_

My Dear Grandmother: Examination time is _on_ now and I am kept completely occupied in the preparation for them. We had _English_ today and Latin and Geometry are due tomorrow. They are my hoodooes and so I am not a little worried tonight about the outcome. I am invited over to G. Crane’s for supper tonight as Aunt Bess is to be there on about a day’s visit so Dora can go out early. As you already know, Father and Mother are in New York and I am running things alone now. The store was doing surprisingly well today when I was there owing perhaps to the balmy weather (almost summer) which we are having. Alice has been _very sick_ and in response to my gift of some roses she sent me a beautiful note as soon as she was able to sit up. Your letters would augur a fairly favorable winter and good conditions on the island. So you rest as much as you can and enjoy the care-free feelings while you can whir around with the Wilcoxs in the machine. It is fine that you have found a group of such sympathetic thinkers and be sure and carry the _science_[1] as far as you can. I know of few better places to get a foothold in the faith than in the quiet and beauty of the island.

Mother left feeling fine for New York and suppose, tho busy, she is enjoying a splendid time. They will be back Sat. morn.

With the exception of a little sore throat I have felt fine myself lately. I think it is unnecessary to go to Mr. Ely.[2] My writing has suffered neglect lately due to study for examinations, but I will soon resume it with vehemence as I am intensely,--grippingly interested in a new ballad I am writing of six hundred lines. I have resolved to become a _good_ student even if I have to sit up all night to become one. You will undoubtedly wink when you read this state declaration so often made but this time it is in earnest.

2: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER

_Cleveland Ohio_ _Feb. 10, 1916_

My dear Grandmother: --/--/ I am now a Junior (capital) in high school and feel quite elated at having so passed my examinations. The present too, is more encouraging as fine marks have been in the great majority since my promotion. -- -- -- --

I’ll bet you were glad to be rid of that musty, fusty old preacher! Let him scramble the Andersons awhile with his talk. It is strange, in view of the fact that last winter I defended the desirability of northern winters to the expense of much discomfiture from other arguers, that the whole illusion has melted away and I have often this winter thought of the South with longing--yes, even Florida. My blood, I guess, has been thinner or digestion poorer. Some of these days have cut me thru and thru so that I have for the most part of the season been exquisitely uncomfortable, “Once south has spoilt me” as they say.

-- -- -- -- It is surely lonely for me here, eating alone and seldom seeing any one but in the darkness of morning or night. If you were here it would be different, but I am consoled amply by knowing of your comfort and welfare where you now are. I have been working hard lately at my writing but find it doubly hard with the task of conjoining it to my school work. They are so shallow over there at school I am more moved to disdain than anything else. Popularity is not my aim though it were easy to win it by laughing when they do at nothing and always making a general ass of oneself. There are about two out of the twelve hundred I would care to have as friends. --/--/

3: TO HIS FATHER

[_New York City_] _Dec. 31, 1916_

My dear Father: I have just been out for a long ride up Fifth Ave. on an omnibus. It is very cold but clear, and the marble facades of the marvelous mansions shone like crystal in the sun. Carl [Schmitt] has been very good to me, giving hours of time to me, advising, helping me get a room, etc. The room I have now is a bit too small, so after my week is up, I shall seek out another place near here, for I like the neighborhood. The houses are so different here, that it seems most interesting, for a while at least, to live in one.

It is a great shock, but a good tonic, to come down here as I have and view the countless multitudes. It seems sometimes almost as though you had lost yourself, and were trying vainly to find somewhere in this sea of humanity, your lost identity.

Today, and the remainder of the week, I shall devote to serious efforts in my writing. If you will help me to the necessities, I think that within six months I shall be fairly able to stand on my own feet. Work is much easier here where I can concentrate. My full love to you, dear father. Write me often and soon.

1917

4: TO HIS FATHER

_N.Y.C._ _Jan. 5, 1917_

My dear Father: -- -- -- -- It does me a great deal of good to hear from you often, and I hope you will continue to write me as often as you have lately done. While I am not home-sick, I yet am far from comfortable without letters, and often, from you.

Nearly every evening since my advent, has been spent in the companionship of Carl [Schmitt.] Last night we unpacked some furniture of his which had arrived from his home, and afterward talked until twelve, or after, behind our pipes. He has some very splendid ideas about artistic, and psychic balance, analysis, etc. I realize more entirely every day, that I am preparing for a fine life: that I have powers, which, if correctly balanced, will enable me to mount to extraordinary latitudes. There is constantly an inward struggle, but the time to worry is only when there is no inward debate, and consequently there is smooth sliding to the devil. There is only one harmony, that is the equilibrium maintained by two opposite forces, equally strong. When I perceive one emotion growing overpowering to a fact, or statement of reason, then the only manly, worthy, sensible thing to do, is build up the logical side, and attain balance, and in art,--formal expression. I intend this week to begin my studying--Latin, German, and philosophy, right here in my room. They will balance my emotional nature, and lead me to more exact expression. --/--/

5: TO HIS MOTHER

_N.Y.C._ _Jan. 26, 1917_

Dear Mother and Grandma: --/--/ Earl Biggers, the author of _Seven Keys to Baldpate_, was in for some grub, and I was shocked nearly off my feet by the quietness and un-worldliness of his behavior. He is a fine fellow however. I hear only pessimistic lines from Father, and hear from Erwin[3] (via, rather) that he is very unwell. The travel that he is planning, will straighten him out into better shape. We all needed to get away awhile.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Sullivan drop in any day, for his letters intimate such. He will be darn welcome, I can assure you, and promise you also that we shall have some fine times. You heard, I suppose, that I sent him a choice volume of Irish songs autographed by one of the principal literary figures in America today, Padraic Colum. I have invited Colum and his wife to dine with me tomorrow night at Gonfarones, an Italien eating-place, where the table d’hote costs only 60 cents per plate, and where the food is fine. Colum says I should have a volume of verse out in two years without any difficulty, and has offered to write a preface for it also. He has seen, as I said before, all my work,--nearly all, and admires it.

Every day I do my studying, and read a good bit also. The room I have been occupying has been too dark, and I shall change lodgings as soon as is possible. Friends of Carl have asked me out to dinners several times, and I have enjoyed as much of social life as I have ever cared for. When you move here, there is a fine bunch of friends waiting for you. O this is the place to live, at least for nine months of the year. --/--/

6: TO HIS MOTHER

_N.Y.C._ _Feb. 19, 1917_

My dear, dear Mother: --/--/ Last night I took dinner with Harold Thomas and Carl in an Italien restaurant where you have to speak Italien to get anything at all to eat. They cook everything in olive-oil so that one has a good cathartic with his meal besides a splendid gratification of the palate. And this morning, it being Sunday, I took a long ride on an omnibus out into the Bronx and back, and saw all the fashion on Fifth Ave. When you see the display of wealth and beauty here, it will make you crawl. It is the most gorgeous city imaginable, besides being at present the richest and most active place in the world. The swarms of humanity of all classes inspire the most diverse of feelings; envy, hate, admiration and repulsion. But truly it is _the_ place to live. --/--/

I wish above all other things that you could be here this week, for there are several big things that I have been invited to. The initial exhibition of the choicest of Chase’s pictures is to be privately (by invitation) opened tomorrow afternoon from four until six. The greatest painters of the day will attend. Carl having given me his invitation, I am going to take Mr. Colum and perhaps his wife. Then Mr. Colum has given me a ticket to the reading by Vachel Lindsay of his own poems at the Princess Theater. Also, on Thursday, I shall attend the meeting of the Poetry Society of America, which is quite exclusive. By the way, Mr. Colum intends to suggest me for membership. --/--/

7: TO HIS MOTHER

_N.Y.C._ _Feb. 22, 1917_

My dear Mother: Your good letter I have just read, and it cheered me up a good deal. You know, I am working hard and see very few people and even now haven’t had more than a half-hour’s talk with anyone for over a week. My work, though, is coming along finely, and I shall be published both in _Others_ and again in _The Pagan_ this next month. Yesterday was a day of tremendous work. I turned out, in some ways, the finest piece of work yet, besides writing a shorter poem also.

Mother, you do not appreciate how much I love you. I can tell by your letters that there exists a slight undercurrent of doubt, and I do not want it there. If you could know how I long to see you perhaps that might make some difference.

Now everything is in truth going splendidly, only I get terribly lonesome often when I am through working. A man _must_ wag his tongue a little, or he’ll lose his voice. Hurry, so that we can both wag!

8: TO HIS FATHER

_N.Y.C._ _August 8, 1917_

My dear Father: I am very, very sorry that things are going so badly with Mother. I guess there is nothing for her to do but to get back here as soon as is possible and try to re-instate herself in poise and health. I look for her this week. At least I see no reason why she should linger longer. But I have received no word from her and am uncertain as to much of the true state of affairs with her. I only hope you are avoiding any meetings as much as possible, for as I said, it is now too early,--she is not yet established well enough to endure the strain which you know any contact causes. --/--/

I have been diabolically nervous ever since that shock out at the house, but Sunday Carl, Potapovitch and I went out to Long Beach, and lying in the sun did me some good. If you could shake responsibilities like this for a week or so, it would work inestimable good upon you. You cannot worry on such a beautiful beach with the sound of waves in your ears. We all get to thinking that our heads are really our bodies, and most of the time go floating around with only our brain conscious, forgetting that our bodies have requirements also.

I feel so near to you now that I do hope that nothing can ever again break the foundation of sincerity that has been established beneath our relations. Never has anyone been kinder than you were when I was last home. I want you to know that I appreciate it, and also your two fine letters.

9: TO HIS FATHER

[_New York City_] _Sept. 18, ’17_

My dear Father: Your good letter rec’d yesterday. From what Hazel says I presume this will find you back in Cleveland, and busy looking over what has happened while you have been away. I haven’t written more because, as you can readily perceive, I haven’t known your address most of the time, but once again you may expect my regular letters. This one thing though, I am going to ask of you. If, when you write me, you are thinking of Mother in a distasteful way, please conceal it, remaining silent on the subject. And if, in thinking of her, one kind thought should occur (as I know it does) express it. You remember that when I last was home, I said that I “was through.”--That was possible with me for but one hour. My heart is still as responsive to both your loves, and more so, than ever. I have seen more tears than I ever expected in this world, and I have shed them through others’ eyes, to say nothing of my own sorrow. And now, when I hear nothing but forgiveness, tenderness, mercy, and love from one side, how can [I] bear resentment and caustic words coming from the other without great pain? Happiness may some time come to me, I am sure it will. But please, my dear Father, do not make the present too hard,--too painful for one whose fatal weakness is to love two unfortunate people, by writing barbed words. I don’t know how long we three shall dwell in purgatory. We may rise above, or sink below, but either way it may be, the third shall and must follow the others, and I leave myself in your hands. -- -- -- --

10: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _Sept. 28, ’17_

My dear sweet Mother: I have just read your letter and find it hard to express my rage and disgust at what you say concerning C. A. Crane’s conduct. “Forget him,” is all I can say. He is too low for consideration. I am only quietly waiting,--stifling my feelings in the realization that I might as well get as much money as possible out of him. Why be scrupulous in one’s dealings with unscrupulous people, anyway? --/--/

Maxwell Bodenheim called the other evening, complimented my poetry excessively, and has taken several pieces to the editor of _The Seven Arts_, a personal friend of his. Bodenheim is at the top of American poetry today, and he says that after four years of absolute obscurity, he [is] succeeding in getting publication only through the adverse channels of flattery, friendships and “pull.” It is all a strange business. Editors are generally disappointed writers who stifle any genius or originality as soon as it is found. They seldom even trouble to read over the manuscript of a “new man.”

Bodenheim is a first-class critic though, and I am proud to have his admiration and encouragement. As soon as _Others_ begins again this winter, he says I shall have an organ for all of my melodies, as he is one of the editors. Success seems imminent now more than ever. I am very encouraged, practically, at least. --/--/

11: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] [_October 1, 1917_]

My dear Mother: --/--/ O if you knew how much I am learning! The realization of true freedom is slowly coming to me, and with it a sense of poise which is of inestimable value. My life, however it shall continue, shall have expression and form. Believe me when I tell you that I am fearless, that I am determined on a valorous future and something of a realization of life. The smallness of hitherto large things, and the largeness of hitherto small things is dawning. I am beginning to see the hope of standing entirely alone and to fathom Ibsen’s statement that translated is, “The strongest man in the world is he who stands entirely alone.” --/--/

12: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] [_October 3, 1917_]

My own dear Mother: There is not much to tell you except that I am about to begin a novel. The plot is already thick in my head and tonight the first chapter will be written off, at least in rough draft. It is a story whose setting is to be Havana and the Isle of Pines. Walter Wilcox is to be the hero, and the heroine a N. Y. society maiden who is attending the races in Havana. More of this will doubtless bore you, now at least, so enough![4]

Grandma writes that you are succeeding beautifully. As soon as you found some active interests I knew you would improve in outlook and distinguish between a disgusting personality and the world in general.

These delightful autumn days, filled with cool sunshine, make me feel fine. I am alone a good deal of the time and am glad of it. My work will always demand solitude to a great extent in creative effort. Your son is improving every day, so don’t worry one moment about me. -- -- -- --

13: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] [_October 31, 1917_]

Ma chere et charmante mere: Yesterday it poured rain all day, and I remained sheltered, studying French. But November is less evident now, and the sun is out again. I suppose that you are all right although I have had no letter since Sunday. Mrs. Walton[5] went off to the movies this morning, which makes me think again that it would be agreeable for you to enter them when you arrive.[6] After I mail this, I am going up to _The Little Review_ office to have a talk with Margaret Anderson (and perhaps dispose of a poem). --/--/

1918

14: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Cleveland, O._ _Aug. 12, ’18_

Dear William: Your letter freshly “arriven.” Your reference to ambulance service arouses me to protest. You will _not_ be drafted--this year anyway, and I hope you won’t become agitated so much as to rush into any kind of service. A word in the ear: I tried to enlist this morning and was not permitted even to enter the office. The guard at the door said to “look in the paper,” which I did and found that all minors are to be excluded from “volunteering,” and if drafted at all, will be apprenticed in machine shops, etc., during the war period. Anyhow, I think by the way things look at present, ambulance service, after the time necessary for training, transportation, etc., would be a little superfluous. (Some would call me a demon of the Huns for whispering this in your ear) I really believe the war isn’t to last much longer.

Being destined, as you are, for Yale, you won’t be drafted for anything. But you will have to undergo some discipline, as Mother, who visited no less than twelve Eastern colleges in her last expedition, states.

Let me clear myself. Heat and conditions at home (both of which you comprehend, I’m sure) drove me to the deed from which I was frustrated this morning. I take no credit for patriotism nor bravery. Neither was it an attempt to get into a uniform before the war is over for certain effects with the ladies. I am really sorry I couldn’t get in, principally, I suppose, because I had made my mind up, and disposed of so many seductive distractions, such as, (well--) love, poetry, career, etc. Now the damned things come back again, sporting about me with all too much familiarity.

I may go to New York, I may remain here, I may explode, Lord knows. Thank your stars that you have a settled course to follow, and write soon.

15: TO CHARLES C. BUBB

_Cleveland, Ohio_ _November 13, ’18_

Dear Mr. Bubb: I hope I am not guilty of an officious presumption in approaching you with this meagre sheaf of poems. I am merely offering them to your consideration as being perhaps of enough interest for you to publish them at the Church Head Press. As you have published, much to the gratification of the few really interested in poetry, some recent war-poems of Mr. Aldington, I know your critical judgment to be of the highest standard, and while I am certain that you will be the first to detect any flaws and aberrations in these lyrics, I know that you will also be alive to whatever beauty they may contain.

These few poems are “gleanings,” as it were, from my work of the last few years, representing the best that I have done so far.--There is still hope, as I am yet under twenty. They have been published mostly in _The Pagan_, one in _The Little Review_ of December last, and while they are few in number, I thought that they might possibly be equal to the boundaries of a modest pamphlet. “Six Lyrics,” or some such title might be used for the booklet. But anon for such matters....

I am at present engaged on the _Plain Dealer_, and am too much occupied there for much of any personal “business.” So, in lieu of a real call on you at your residence, I am leaving these with Mr. Laukhuff, as he says that you are a frequent visitor to his establishment.

May I again express my hope that I have not infringed upon your generosity, and assure you that I shall welcome any opinion that you might express regarding the poems themselves, or my suggestions.

1919

16: TO HIS MOTHER

_New York_, _Feb. 24_,

Dear Mother: I have just returned from a dinner and evening with Mrs. Spencer. After the dishes were cleared away we sat before the wood-fire and talked Science, and I played the piano while she washed the dishes. She tells me some astounding stories about the numerous demonstrations she has made. Pat [Spencer] is very deep in it too, it seems, and has been twice saved in very dangerous falls from over 500 feet which would otherwise have meant instant death. It is convincing enough testimony that he is the only one living of the ten instructors chosen for the position at the time of his appointment. I am to help Mrs. Spencer move some things from her rooms over to Claire’s [Spencer] apartment next Tuesday afternoon. Mrs. Brooks has evaded all my efforts at a meeting today, but I hope to get to go to church with her tomorrow morning. --/--/

17: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _March 7th, ’19_

Dear Mother: The landlady has committed enough atrocities since writing you last to fill a book, and I have found another room which I expect to move into some time next week. In all truth she is quite insane. Mr. Brooks called me up three times the other day, and each time he asked for me was he told that there was no such person as Mr. Crane living here. Finally one of the roomers came to the rescue and took down his name and number, so that when I got in I was duly informed. Then in other ways she has been unbearable, coming up to my room several times, and vaguely pointing to some unseen object and inquiring, “Is that yours?” At other times she has come up and announced in a hushed voice, “It’s down there.” That would be all one could get out of her as to what was “down there”--letter, caller, or delivery man, and several times it has been nothing at all. --/--/ It has been very funny and very unpleasant, and I regret having to incur the expense of moving again. However, the room I have secured is better than the one I have--on the first floor, front, and much roomier. One of the fellows in the house here, a Harvard man and lieutenant just out of service, has roomed there before and swears to the complete sanity and integrity of the little Irish woman that runs the place. All these little trials have to be accepted in true sportsman-like fashion, in fact one might as well take them that way, or else get out of town.

--/--/ I am not sure, of course, but I feel quite certain that Mrs. Brooks is afflicted with consumption against which she is doubtless putting up a strenuous Scientific fight. I have noticed an incessant little cough that she has had on both my meetings with her since I arrived in town. She is quite thin, too, and without much colour. It must be due to a change of disposition within myself, but I find the Brooks’s much more cordial and agreeable. That I, myself, am largely responsible is borne out by what Mrs. Spencer told me the other day. She said that Mr. Brooks had remarked about the astounding change in my manner and disposition, and said that I was now quite a delightful personality. I should blush to tell this on myself were it not such an interesting testimony to the influence of Science. --/--/

18: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _March 11th, ’19_

Dear Mother: Just a word to let you know that I am busy casting about for a position somewhere. I have several ideas suggested by friends as to where to find jobs as an ad-writer, etc., and am investigating the matter. I may make a call on Mr. Kennedy, the friend of Grandmother’s, if two or three other projects do not turn out well. He runs a trade-journal, you know. Zell [Hart Deming] writes me that she is to be here for two weeks next month, and if I am settled by that time, I am positive that she will be able to get me in somewhere. You have no conception of the difficulties here in finding work of any description just now. Every day a couple of troop-ships dump a few thousand more unemployed men in the town, and there really is danger of a general panic and much poverty as a result unless the government takes a hand to assist in the matter. I know you are not worrying about me. As it happens, I am very fortunately situated in comparison with the rest. I wrote Mr. Ely yesterday, and so that is off my conscience. I would prefer that you discontinued his treatment of me, as I feel quite able to stand on my own feet and demonstrate the truth without assistance from without. I shall probably not move from here for some time. I have decided to make a demonstration over the landlady, and already have noticed an improvement.

19: TO HIS MOTHER

_N.Y.C._ _March 26th ’19_

Dear Mother: --/--/ At the recommendation of Colum, I am going to interview the publishing house of Boni and Liveright tomorrow in the effort to secure a job as proofreader, etc., with them. I have been around to several Sunday Feature Syndicates today but have found nothing there. I hope you aren’t worrying,--for you must realize that one cannot continue looking and looking as I am doing without finding something in time. I have some interesting news for you. I phoned up Alice Calhoun last night and find that she is working in a newly-organized moving-picture production company here.--She is now engaged in her first big picture, and is very busy, she tells me. How about writing a movie-story for her? It looks as though there might be a chance for some of my work to get an attentive reading after all. She can’t see me this week, but we are going to have a visit soon and I imagine it will be interesting. Alice certainly is pretty enough for success in the movies, and young enough (only 18) to develop a good deal of dramatic talent. A telephone conversation is rather a slight thing to offer judgment from, but I was rather impressed with a decided improvement in Alice, both in manner and character. Byron’s [Madden] letter arrived this morning. I think he is certainly a sincere well-wisher of mine. I hope to get into some sort of position in time to write him about it when I do write, because it “makes more to say,” as it were. I’ll write again in time for a Sunday delivery. The days are amazingly beautiful and the nights superb. Last night I took a long walk up Riverside Drive which is just around the corner from my room, and the Hudson was beautiful with the millions of tiny lights on the opposite shore. -- -- -- --

20: TO HIS MOTHER

_New York City_ _April 2nd, ’19_

My dearest Mother: -- -- -- -- Yes, you do seem to be quite occupied with various engagements, pleasant and painful, as in the case of the dentistry, although I am very glad to hear of your having that duty performed as you have needed work and attention expended on your teeth for a long while back. I think you are holding the wrong and un-Scientific thought concerning me and my attitude toward Science. The fact that I do not talk and write about it continually is no sort of testimony that I am not as much interested as ever in it. You know that I am not and probably never will be one of those who make the matter a complete obsession, reducing every subject and thought and description to the technical language of the textbooks. I have met a number of Scientists who by such proceedure managed not only to bore me and others quite dreadfully, but also to leave one with the impression that they were scared to death about everything and found it necessary to maintain a continual combat against every aspect and manifestation of life in general. Perhaps it may serve as sufficient testimony to the efficacy of right thought, etc., that I am finding far less problems and fears that demand denial. I certainly have not felt quite so well or quite so clear-headed for several years, and that is, or ought to be enough to reassure you and alterate your somewhat morbidly anxious fears for me which have leaked into your last few letters. I again beg you to relax from such fears, etc., which seem to have you in their power enough to prompt you to such seemingly strenuous conflicts of resistance and denials. Your letters seem to be prompted by some fear (I mean certain references in them) that seems to me entirely un-Scientific. Please do not mistake me and become hurt or offended. I only feel that you have not overcome, not quite, what might be called “the fear of fear” which is an ultimate Scientific triumph. --/--/

21: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_New York, New York_ _May 2, 1919_

Dear William: Your letter came this morning, so you can’t deny my promptitude. Dash haberdashery! I hope you have more freedom in writing your next letter,--the note of pain caused by the watchful eye of the floor-walker was too evident. It was like a hurried lunch. I felt your situation and rushed from line to line in trepidation of the next moment. And then you asked such very vital questions that you have set me thinking a good deal. No:--at present I am not a Christian Scientist. I try to make my Mother think so because she seems to depend on that hypocrisy as an additional support for her own faith in it. So,--mum’s the word to her. If it weren’t very evident how very much good it has done her I should not persist in such conduct,--lying to both Lord and Devil is no pleasure,--but as I frankly was very much interested in Christian Science at the time of my exit from home, I have not made any distinct denial of it to her since, and for the aforementioned reasons. However, Bill, I have unbounded faith in its efficacy. Not that a normal optimism will not accomplish the same wonders,--it is a psychological attitude which will prevail over almost anything, but as a religion, there is where I balk. I recommend it to you if you are nervous, etc., though, as a cure, and the best and only one to my knowledge. What it says in regard to mental and nervous ailments is absolutely true. It is only the total denial of the animal and organic world which I cannot swallow.

I don’t quite understand your criticism toward my “attitude of mind,” and sincerely wish you would particularize more in detail. We have had so many good talks that I wish you were here right now to tell me. But when you come to New York next autumn we shall have an opportunity. I am laying many plans for your coming, and you will enjoy meeting some of my friends here, I am sure. My advertising work for _The Little Review_ is coming a little slower than I expected. You have no idea how hard it is to even break into some of these huge and ominous mechanisms, New York offices. It ought to toughen me a little and perhaps that it what I need. It is a very different matter when one approaches with the intent of selling, and selling the appealing article,--space. However, _The Little Review_ has the possibility of affording me over four thousand per year on commissions if I can fill up the allowable space, and perhaps I am not wasting my time after all. --/--/

22: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_New York, New York_ _May 14, 1919_

Dear William: --/--/ At present I am under the spell of the first wave of rose fever! My reading lately has been rather diverse as is evident from any such list as Chaucer, D. H. Lawrence, Cervantes, Henry James, Plato, and Mark Twain.

Oh, by the way, I met Robert Frost’s daughter at a theatre party the other evening, and had the pleasure of taking the very interesting and handsome young lady back to her Columbia dormitory. I am hoping to see more of her at a near date, as she is worth looking at.

23: TO HIS MOTHER

_New York City_ _Decoration Day, ’19_

My dear Mother: I received your letter with check enclosed night-before-last, and hasten to thank you for them. Your letter was filled with the customary complaints about my not writing oftener. Now I admit that the last two weeks have been poorer in letters from me than usual, but you seem never to have realized, Mother, that there is absolutely nothing to fill up the three-or-four-letter-a-week program which I have been trying to conduct,--even were my days filled with tremendous action. A couple of letters a week will contain all the news worth telling, and whether you have appreciated that fact or not, the truth remains.

I see you are displeased at my having changed rooms, but I would like to ask you what you would have done faced with a like situation at the time I was. I felt indeed very fortunate to have located so successful a bargain as the two rooms here on the top floor of 24 West 16th St., for ten dollars per month. It only costs me that because Hal Smith uses one of the rooms as a study separate from his apartment to come to for his writing, and so I have the use of his room as well as my bedroom. When I told Hal and Claire of my predicament, Claire rushed to the cupboard and the result was that a bed was bought for me and temporary bedding loaned. Hal also sent over other furnishings, etc., which has made the place livable and even comfortable for me. I see no reason for returning now to a rooming house, and shall probably remain here for sometime to come. I asked for the rugs because they would be simply an additional comfort, but if it’s too much trouble for you to send them, or against your principles, it’s all right with me to do without them.

What I wrote you about sending money still holds good. I have cashed the checks you sent as there is no use in my being foolish about such matters when I have only fifteen cents in my pocket and a very empty stomach. I do ask you for more, however. I am very much against your sending me money from your personal allowance. It seems to me that it would not be very much trouble to go down and see Sullivan for a half an hour for a few days and get sufficient results from the enactment of a perfectly just and practical contract so that I would not be due to hear within a few years the accusation of having made you economize and scrimp your own pleasures for my assistance during this trying time when I am making every possible effort to get started in something. You know, Mother, I have not yet forgotten your twitting me last summer at my not paying my board expenses when I was at home, and I don’t welcome your generosity quite so much now on the possibility of a recurrence of such words at some future time. I don’t want to fling accusations, etc., at anybody, but I think it’s time you realized that for the last eight years my youth has been a rather bloody battleground for yours and father’s sex life and troubles. With a smoother current around me I would now be well along in some college taking probably some course of study which would enable me upon leaving to light upon, far more readily than otherwise, some decent sort of employment. Do you realize that it’s hard for me to find any work at all better than some manual labor, or literary work, which, as you understand, is not a very paying pursuit? My present job in connection with _The Little Review_ possibly offers me an opportunity for experience in the advertising world, which is a good field for money,--but it’s the hardest thing in the world to get worked up, especially with my complete inexperience in the work. I am looking for something else now every day,--anything that comes along,--with the intention of one way or another, establishing my independence from all outside assistance. In the meantime I am carrying on with this job, and should it give enough promise, will continue in it. I have found out recently what it is to be like a beggar in the streets, and also what good friends one occasionally runs across in this tangle of a world. For some time after your letter I was determined not to write rather than compromise with hypocrisy or hurt your feelings. If this letter has wounded you, then I am ready to beg your pardon in apology with the understanding that I write no more, for I have discovered that the only way to be true to others in the long run, is to be true to one’s self.

24: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_New York, New York_ _June 17, 1919_

My dear William: I’ve just returned from several days in the country with Hal Smith and wife (Claire). They rent a little cottage out in New Jersey that is perfection itself and we go canoeing and play tennis and eat amazingly every time we go out there. I am, unfortunately, badly sunburned today,--rather a sight,--and am remaining in my room rather than shock my friends and enemies by exposing myself. It is fine (though) to get out of this crowded metropolis once in a while, and see the moon and stars and hear the frogs croak. We intend to go out again next Friday and stay until Monday, living in our bathing suits most of the time. From your last letter, you’re in for quite a pleasant summer. I wish I could be in Cleveland when you are there. Hope you’ll go out and see my mother if you get time,--she likes you very much and always asks about you in her letters. We have had some differences of late, but my fundamental feelings toward her are not in the least altered. If I can get enough money together I intend to take a short course in business and advertising out at Columbia this summer,--which might possibly be continued next fall when you will be there. I agree with you that for such as ourselves business life is not to be scorned. The commercial aspect is the most prominent characteristic of America and we all must bow to it sooner or later. I do not think, though, that this of necessity involves our complete surrender of everything else nobler and better in our aspirations. Illusions are falling away from everything I look at lately. At present the world takes on the look of a desert,--a devastation to my eyes, and I am finding it rather hard at best. Still there is something of a satisfaction in the development of one’s consciousness even though it is painful. There is a certain freedom gained,--a lot of things pass out of one’s concern that before mattered a great deal. One feels more freedom and the result is not by any means predominantly negative. To one in my situation N. Y. is a series of exposures intense and rather savage which never would be quite as available in Cleveland, etc. New York handles one roughly but presents also more remedial recess,--more entrancing vistas than any other American location I know of. When you come to Columbia you will not be apt to feel it because any college (less Col. than any other) enforces its own cloistral limitations which are the best things in the world while one is there. It will only be after you have left the place and lived and worked in the city (should you do so) that you will begin to feel what I mentioned. May I venture a personal criticism on your last letter? It’s out of my habit to do so, and if I didn’t care for you so much I wouldn’t. Your remarks “about the ladies” really hurt me with a kind of ragtime vulgarity. It’s hard to say in the limitations of a letter what I mean. You know I am very free from Puritanical preoccupations,--as much as from excessive elegance. What I lament is that gross attitude of the crowd that is really degrading and which is so easily forced upon us before we know it. You are far too sensitive to harbour it long, I know. It is only because I hate to see the slightest tarnish at all in you that I run the risk of offending you. I do hope you won’t resent it. -- -- -- --

25: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _July 10, ’19_

My dear Mother: Your nice letter arrived this morning just a few minutes before the books, and I must thank you much for them and the check enclosed in the letter, which I have certainly sufficient use for as I need a haircut badly and a new set of razor blades besides being much in debt to Hal for this last week’s meals. It has been rather humiliating to have to come to one person for absolutely everything, rent, food, and minute sundries and rather than do it I have several times gone for long periods without food. But Hal and Claire have been wonderfully thoughtful and I haven’t had to ask,--evidences seemed to be enough and better than words. At last now, things seem to have lightened a little. I leave with them tomorrow for Brookhaven, Long Island, where Hal has rented a beautiful establishment for the rest of the summer. I am going along as their guest, although Hal lightened any embarrassment I might have felt at receiving such endless munificence at their hands by suggest[ing] an office for me as handy man about the place,--gardener, chauffeur, etc. --/--/ I can always find work in the machine shop and shipyard but cannot help avoiding them as a last resort, as they would merely suffice to keep breath in the body and get me nowhere in

## particular. I made no requests for assistance from C. A. [Crane] in

regard to the Columbia summer course which began day before yesterday. In answer to his letter which announced his intention and _promise_ to take an advertisement in _The Little Review_, I thanked him and told him that his payment would help me in taking a course in business advertising which I was hoping to take at Columbia this summer. That was all there was said about it. He didn’t mention the matter in his next (and last) letter and has not even paid for the advertisement which he said he would do, as long as I was associated with the magazine, and he has heard nothing to the contrary, I am positive. Of course all my friends think his treatment of me is disgraceful and unaccountable. My own opinion is hardly less reserved, as you know, but I try my best to turn my thoughts to other channels as much as possible. It is only when hunger and humiliation are upon me that suddenly I feel outraged. --/--/

26: TO HIS MOTHER

_Brookhaven_, [_Long Island_] _July 30th, ’19_

My dear Mother: Your letter dated the 8th has just come, and in answer, I of course will not need to repeat the contents of yesterday’s note. At best I think your words are a little unkind and very inconsiderate. I will not attempt again to reckon with your misunderstanding, etc., of the part you and I together, and as individuals, have played in relation to C.A. You either have a very poor memory, or are very confused when you think you have a right to accuse me of either a wrong or a right attitude toward him,--an unfriendly or a friendly one,--after the continually opposite statements and accusations you have made to me for the last four years yourself. At one time you have recommended a course of diplomacy toward a veritable devil, and five minutes later a blow in the face and scorn of any relationship whatever. And now you suggest a wily and conniving attitude toward a character which you claim as fundamentally good. With such inconsistencies in memory I fail to see how you have adequate reasons for “accusing” me of a “wrong” attitude toward him, whatever position I might have taken. It has all been very hard, I know. Probably the truth consists more moderately in the estimate of him as a person of as many good inclinations as bad ones. Your feelings as a woman lover were bound to be dangerous in diverting you from an impersonal justice, and, however much I may have been blinded by my own relationship with him, I cannot deny having been influenced by your sufferings and outcries. There are reasons for acts and prejudices which cannot always be justified at the turn of the moment, but look hard enough, and substantial roots will be found.

I returned to Brookhaven last night after a very satisfactory interview with Mr. Rheinthal, of the firm of Rheinthal and Newman, which handles the Parrish prints. I shall begin work there in the order department early in September, until which time I’ll be out here with Hal and Claire. My note of yesterday was expressive enough of the satisfaction I am feeling about the matter without repetition here. Everything is pointing toward very friendly relations with C. A. in the future, which good turn is greatly due to the interest of the New York office. People change in their attitude either from enlightenment of the understanding or change of impulse. In the case of father toward me I think a revival of interest was seconded by a more adequate understanding of my motives, interests, character and position which the office supplied. Also, a certain pride (now that his wealth begins to assume rather large dimensions) in the position of his only son, was equally responsible. --/--/

27: TO GORHAM MUNSON[7]

[_New York City_] [_August 22, 1919_]

Have been back in town for last 2 weeks very busy at my new job. Glad to know you are enjoying yourself. Look me up as soon as you return! Haven’t been over to see _The Modernist_ but suppose it is racing along as usual.

28: TO CHARMION WIEGAND

_N.Y.C._ _Nov. 5th, ’19_

Dear Charmion: Here are the rest of your poems; I think they are all there. _The Modernist_ took one of the Egyptian sonnets, I cannot remember the exact name of it, and hopes you will send more soon.

I leave for Cleveland tomorrow night, and am very anxious to get off. Packing all the truck I have accumulated here has proved a delirious task. Let me thank you and Hermann [Habicht] again for the evening last week and the many other treats of the summer.

Let’s write occasionally and be as metropolitan as possible. You know I’m now out in those great expanses of cornfields so much talked about and sung, and you can’t very well dispense with me even though you do live “in the big city.” I am beginning something in an entirely new vein with the luscious title: “My Grandmother’s Love Letters.” I don’t want to make the dear old lady too sweet or too naughty, and balancing on the fine line between these two qualities is going to be fun. I hope that living close to her in the same house won’t spoil it all.

P.S. Much to my surprise I got yesterday a very friendly letter from Sherwood Anderson thanking me for the _Pagan_ art[ic]le.

29: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 13, 1919_

My dear Gorham: It begins to look as though my work was to be confined to the hours between midnight and dawn,--that is, in writing. I go to Akron, O., next week to take up a position in my father’s new store there and my own hours are to be from six in the morning until eleven at night. I was down there with him yesterday, and find that he has a wonderful establishment,--better than anything of its kind in New York. It’s too bad to waste it all on Akron, but there seems to be a lot of money there that the rubber tire people have made. The place [is full of] fresh growth. A hell of a place. The streets are full of the debris from old buildings that are being torn down to replace [with] factories, etc. It looks, I imagine, something like the western scenes of some of Bret Harte’s stories. I saw about as many Slavs and Jews on the streets as on Sixth Ave. Indeed the main and show street of the place looks something like Sixth Ave. without the elevated.

The size of my father’s business has surprised me much. Things are whizzing, and I don’t know how many millions he will be worth before he gets through growing. If I work hard enough I suppose I am due to get a goodly share of it, and as I told you, it seems to me the wisest thing to do just now to join him. He is much pleasanter than I expected him to be, and perhaps will get around after awhile to be truly magnanimous.

You evidently were not consulted about the Josephson mss., as I saw one of them returned the day I left N. Y. I haven’t been able to locate a single copy of _The Modernist_ anywhere in Cleveland, and I suggest that Richard Laukhuff, 40 Taylor Arcade, would be a good one to send it to. He handles most of the radical stuff, and _The Pagan_, he tells me, is getting too tame. He also says that _The Little Review_ has suffered neglect since the last Baroness [Freytag-Loringhoven] contribution. The B. is a little strong for Cleveland.

I don’t know when I shall get time or the proper mood to work more on the Grandame poem. Contact with the dear lady, as I told you I feared, has made all progress in it at present impossible.

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. -- -- -- --

What think you of this Aldous Huxley’s “Leda” poems? They strike me as dry and very clever,--but is real poetry so obviously clever? Modern life and its vacuity seems to me to be responsible for such work. There is only a lime or a lemon to squeeze or a pepper-pot left to shake. All the same I admire his work very much. He comes in the line of Eliot and Sitwell. Eliot’s influence threatens to predominate the new English.

50: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Washington, D.C._ _Oct. 20th,--’20_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ Your letter that arrived this morning had the true rage of the celibate unwilling in it. I sympathize with you.... My nights are uneasy also. But you ought to pity me more than yourself,--my satisfactions are far more remote and dangerous than yours, and my temptations frequent, alas!

I have just been reading your Pollard article, and on bringing it to the attention of my friend Wilbur Underwood here, was delighted to find that U. knew Pollard very well, the latter having been enthusiastic about the two vols. of verse that Underwood brought out in England a long time ago. What pathos there is in these sudden flashes on forgotten people, forgotten achievements and encounters! Here is this man, Underwood, with the beauty and promise of his life all dried and withered by the daily grind he has had to go through year after year in the State Dept. with a meagre salary. A better critic and more interesting person one seldom meets, yet the routine of uninteresting work has probably killed forever his creative predispositions. A very few friends is all that life holds for him. Yes, Pound is right in what he says in his “The Rest,”--“O helpless few in my country, O remnant enslaved!... You who cannot wear yourselves out by persisting to successes.”

U. has a very fine collection of rare translations, etc., from antiquity, and I have just been enjoying to the full his copy of the _Satyricon_ of Petronius (Arbiter), a rare and completely unexpurgated Paris edition, purported to have been translated by Oscar Wilde, although it seems to me too fine a job for what I imagine Wilde’s scholarship to have been. Also, I am enjoying _The Golden Asse_ of Apuleius, and some Saltus vols. that he has.

I went to see Hampden in _The Merchant of Venice_ recently here. The way it was done, setting, costumes, speech, gestures,--everything was sickening. Hampden, in one scene only,--the tantrum with Tubal,--was good, everywhere else his acting was indifferent. I cannot understand how a man of his intelligence,--for I remember his Hamlet as being quite good,--will venture forth with such a cast of burlesque queens, (his Portia!!!) and bitches. The worst examples of antiquated theatricality, and mouthing of words! And the audience was ample and enthusiastic,--a true barometer of the American stage at present. --/--/

I shall be glad to get back to Cleveland for a while, if only to see the copies of Vildrac, Rimbaud, and Laforgue that have arrived from Paris since my leaving. I expect to return to W. later, in Jan. when the “season” here is on. I find agreement from my father that my lack of results here has not been so much a matter of personal inadequacy as the weather and general slowness of business here at this particular time.... I shall certainly be in an ungodly rush, though, all the time I am at the factory, as the holiday season orders will be coming in and things become perfectly maddening there for two months. However, anything will be better than the maddening experience I have been having here of clawing the air day after day without getting any but the most meagre results. --/--/

51: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland,_ _Nov. 9th--’20_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- Yes, “Jurgen” has been breathing his _native_ Ohio air for two weeks now, and is elbow and knee-deep in shipping and packing at the factory. The Christmas rush has already begun and I’m tired to death tonight after a rush since five this morning. But in spite of all it has been better to get out of the ghostly time I was having in Washington, back into the usual smoky and tawdry thoroughfares. Does one really get so used to such things as, in time, to miss them, if absent? I am sure I should not miss factory whistles in Pisa or Morocco, but I frankly did miss them in Washington. Anyway, they were more enlivening (and the people they claim) than anything or anyone that I saw in W., which seemed to me the most elegantly restricted and bigoted community I ever ventured into. They say it has changed a lot since the war, and prohibition, of course, smothered its last way out.--I almost hope I will not have the opportunity of returning there in Jan., as expected. But you’ve heard most of this before.--

I have written Margaret Anderson to find out the _L.R._ situation. Probably what you have heard is only too true. There is no use expressing familiar resentments about such proceedings, and anyway one grows rather calloused and numb in time. There is that danger with me,--of relaxing into an indifference more comfortable than an interest in the arts nowadays and here, allows. I suppose the Minns pictures, my poems, etc., are smothered,--at least I’ve reconciled myself to it peacefully. I’m sorrier about the Minns pictures than anything else, as it meant a great deal of trouble to bring their reproduction about. Perhaps they’ll print them again, I don’t know yet. My great wonder is that M.C.A. and j.h. keep persisting as they do.

When you get a chance see the new monograph on Jacob Epstein including fifty photos of his works. He seems to be much better than most of Rodin, and I’m enthusiastic almost to the point of silliness. I’m reading _The Possessed_ at your suggestion. Dostoievsky is a stranger to me beyond _Crime and Punishment_ which caught me by the throat. He _does_ give one more life than my mundane world supplies,--and stimulates. He makes you forget yourself (should I better say, lose) in the life of his characters for days at a time. And how few writers can do that! You see this record of my temper at present,--I’m tired, with every evidence of it. -- -- -- --

52: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _11/23/20_

My dear Gorham: Your letter has just come, and I’m sorry to know you are having such an ordeal of “nerves.” Of course, being thrown back violently again on celibacy after your Woodstock freedom would naturally tend to bring about such a result, and it is only a pity that you cannot find anything near you of sufficient temporary interest to relieve your situation. Of course, I realize, that the puritanical taboos of a typical boys’ school are what stands in the way most of all, and then you might possibly resent and refuse sheer sensuality after having experienced what I imagine has been offered you. I don’t believe in the “sublimation” theory at all so far as it applies to my own experience. Beauty has most often appeared to me in moments of penitence and even sometimes, distraction and worry. Lately my continence has brought me nothing in the creative way,--it has tended to create a confidence in me along lines of action,--business, execution, etc. There is not love enough in me at present to do a thing. This sounds romantic and silly,--you understand that I mean and refer to the strongest incentive to the imagination, or, at least, the strongest in my particular case. So I have nothing to offer you for reading and judgment. Mart Anderson writes me that the next _L.R._ will be out the twenty-fifth,--96 pgs., and will contain my poem, etc., and a publication of the J. Joyce trial and proceedings which she says are interesting. It ought to be a rich number with John Quinn and Burleson throwing epithets at each other. I stopped in the middle of _The Possessed_ to read _Poor White_, but am again on the Russian trail. What marvelous psychology!!! A careful reading of “Dosty” ought to prepare one’s mind to handle any human situation comfortably that ever might arise.... You will like the Anderson book. It fascinated me as much as _Winesburg_ and this in spite of a great fear I had of disappointment. There is a woman in it something like jh although too removed to do anything but suggest her. I wish, after you have read it, that we could have a fireside hour over the book. We might agree perhaps on the exquisite work of such scenes as the description of the murderer-saddlemaker sitting by the pond and rocking gently to and fro (the simplicity of A’s great power of suggestion is most mocking to the analyst)--and the scene where the sex awakening girl hears the men in the barn in speaking of her, say,--“the sap is mounting into the tree.” Nature is so strong in all the work of Anderson--and he describes it as one so willingly and happily surrendered to it, that it colors his work with the most surprising grasp of what “innocence” and “holiness” ought to mean. Also, his uncanny intuition into the feelings of women (a number of women have remarked to me about this) is very unusual. I have an absurd prejudice against Frank’s _Dark Mother_ merely on account of what I read of it in a copy of _The Dial_. There it seemed to me too exclamatory, Semitic, and too much in the style of David Pinski, whose stuff I somehow am terribly bored with. So I probably shall never read it, as I probably shall never read more than the three pages of W. D. Howells that I once attempted. Frankly, you see, I admit to a taste for certain affectations and ornamental commissions. I wish I could follow your finger guide to the advice of Brooks in _The Freeman_ about “outside interests” for the fallow seasons between poems. I had read the article and agree with it in many ways. But with me, there are no poems for “doldrums” to lag between, and no time, literally, for poems, to say nothing of energy. The fact is last week I ran gait at the factory at the rate of fourteen hours straight per day of rushed and heavy and confusing labor, and as it will probably continue that way until very near Christmas, I have all I can do to think of getting enough sleep to begin the rush again next day. Of course I am becoming very morose and irritable under this pressure of exertion, not to mention disgust and boredom, and yesterday, my first day of a chance to sit down and think a minute, I found myself in a rather serious state of indigestion and neurotic fever. So it goes. Our age tries hard enough to kill us, but I begin to feel a pleasure in sheer stubbornness, and will possibly turn in time into some sort of a beautiful crank. Pax vobiscum!!!!

53: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Sunday, Dec. 5th,--’20_

Dear Gorham: Your article in _The Plowshare_ was so late as to have arrived only a few days ago,--the “Pascal” came yesterday. In almost every way, I think, the latter work is superior, and to me, more suggestive, but this is probably because we agreed pretty well over most of the contents of “Cafe St. Beuve” last summer in my parlours at the Prince George and so it was familiar material to me. I have never read Pascal and so can’t speak beyond telling you that I like your handling of the theme and it seemed to me that your style was richer than I have noticed before. I am filled with a kind of bleakness of mind and spirit lately, so that even this answer to your appreciated interest in my bland career is somehow an unsatisfactory effort. I should like to be able to see and talk to you,--the mere technical mechanics of writing have become so foreign to me from long neglect, that I feel awkward at best. Again I am very much at sea about everything that personally concerns me. --/--/ I am not sure about remaining in Cleveland much after the first of the year, as there is a possibility of my being sent out on the road again as salesman. On the other hand, it seems to me that it will be about as much as I can endure to remain at my present work in the shipping dept. until Christmas is over without a clean and final break with my father and his company, owing to various humiliations he seems interested in either forcing or countenancing others about the place to force, on me. As soon as my mother is off the

## scene I shall feel freer to do more as I please. I have practically no

money and as employment is hard to find now, she is very much worried for fear I shall do something rash and suffer for it. About the only course I see is to save for all I am worth for two years or so, and then embark once and for all for foreign lands, Italy or Russia or Paris, and not come back until I want to. Literature and art be hanged!--even ordinary existence isn’t worth the candle in these States now. I enclose Matty Josephson’s last letter to me with his plans. They make my mouth water.

I wish I had three poems to send to _The Nation_, but I shall have to desist from a lack of “numbers.” _The Possessed_ was one of the most tremendous books I’ve ever read, I think, and I am planning on reading _The Brothers Karamazov_ as soon as time permits. At present I dip into Seutonius’ _History of the Caesars_, which is easy to recognize as one of Saltus’ principal authorities and sources for his _Imperial Purple_. -- -- -- --

54: TO SHERWOOD ANDERSON

[_Cleveland_] _12/8/20_

Dear Anderson: Your mention of a possible trip East soon makes me hope very much that you will care to stop off at Cleveland here (a few hours at least) and see me. I shall not be living at home at the time as my mother expects to leave for her place in Cuba very soon, closing the house, but if you come alone I can accommodate you at my room wherever it may be. I want very much to talk with you and hope you can “make it” this time. Better look me up at the factory at 208 St. Clair Ave. if you arrive between 8 A.M. and 5 P.M. You don’t know how much I appreciate the encouragement your letters give me. Although I am not at present doing anything creatively, I have not sunk too much into despair or indifference to hope.

Do come,--won’t you!

55: TO ----

[_Cleveland_] [_Dec. 22, 1920_]

Dear ----: NEWS! News! NEWS!--The “golden halo” has widened,--descended upon me (or “us”) and I’ve been blind with happiness and beauty for the last full week! Joking aside, I am too happy not to fear a great deal, but I believe in, or have found God again. It seems vulgar to rush out with my feelings to anyone so, but you know by this time whether I am vulgar or not (I don’t) and it may please you, as it often might have helped me so, to know that something beautiful can be found or can “occur” once in awhile, and so unexpectedly. Not the brief and limited sensual thing alone, but something infinitely more thrilling and inclusive. I foolishly keep wondering,--“How can this be?--How did it occur?” How my life might be changed could this continue, but I scarcely dare to hope. I feel like weeping most of the time, and I have become reconciled, strangely reconciled, to many aggravations. Of course it is the return of devotion which astounds me so, and the real certainty that, at least for the time, it is perfectly honest. It makes me feel very unworthy,--and yet what pleasure the emotion under such circumstances provides. I have so much now to reverence, discovering more and more beauty every day,--beauty of character, manner, and body, that I am for the time, completely changed.--But why aren’t you here to talk with me about it! How I wish you were here.

I have written you this way (typewriter) because, as you have discovered, my writing is hard deciphering. I have given up trying to improve it, and don’t try any more. You have probably got the candy and hymn by this time,--neither amount to much, but I wanted to send them. I don’t understand -- -- -- --’s silence,--but certainly hope that I have not been relinquished as one of Akron’s temporary “makeshifts” or “reliefs.” It would really hurt. I have told you all that has happened. This rest would merely be to mention details of ungodly strain and hours of “Christmas rush” at the factory,--seventeen hours a stretch sometimes. When I have had time I have spent it with Dostoievsky’s _Les Freres Karamazov_ which I like even better than _The Possessed_. The beautiful young Alyosha, and Father Zossima! Dostoievsky seems to me to represent the nearest type to the “return of Christ” that there is record of,--I think the greatest of novelists. But I am forgetting Frank Harris, who, you know, comes second to the “woman taken in adultery.” --/--/

1921

56: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _1/14/21_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ I’m slightly disabled today with a touch of la grippe and am remaining away from the factory. A talk with my father last week settled things more definitely for me than many months have afforded. I shall remain in my present capacity at the factory indefinitely until I find a job at some more “literary” work, when my father and I will more-or-less conclusively part hands so far as a business connection is concerned. At last he seems, after questioning various mutual friends as to my interests, etc., to have been forced into this much recognition of my persistence in artistic directions,--and it was gratifying to observe as gracious a surrender as he offered me. You see I have not said anything to him about my personal interests for almost two years, leaving him only what details of indifference to business as naturally revealed themselves throughout my association with him, to judge from. I long ago “gave up” talking over such sores with him,--and it has amused me vastly to find that at last the attitude aroused him to seek such indirect solutions to the “enigma.” Now I can hope to get a little reading and writing done before spring here in some sort of tranquillity. Before the summer is over I may have found me a journalistic job,--but the main point under either drudgery is that I accomplish some real writing. But this is the usual ante-room soliloquy, and I won’t bore you further with more of it.

I am just as glad for you that you didn’t start your magazine,--and with the same considerations in mind that you gave as your reasons against it. Italy will do you infinitely more good,--why waste your good money on what is, after all, an indifferent public. It is bad enough to waste brains and time--but not money!!! I haven’t seen _Contact_ yet, but will try to get ’round to send for a copy soon. Williams has a very fine poem in the last _Poetry_ and also there is a beauty by Padraic Colum. By the way, I hope you saw Colum’s write-up of Ezra Pound’s _Instigations_ in a not very recent _New Republic_. It was the best appreciation of Pound on his own grounds that I’ve ever read.

Your last letter, although very brief and fragmentary, did bring a whiff from you of revived sensibilities. N.Y. does that to one always after any period of provincial stiffness. What are you writing now? Of course I shall send you whatever I do,--but the waiting is longer, by far, for me than for you. I’m caught dead tight in a new affair de coeur that at least keeps me stirred up in some ways. I don’t know how much blood I pay for these predicaments,--but I seem to live more during them than otherwise. They give the ego a rest. I may sound like an utter profligate,--but there is much sincerity, too painfully much, for me to laugh.

57: TO MATTHEW JOSEPHSON

_Cleveland, O._ _1/14/21_

Dear Matty: --/--/ What you say about the Akron suite is very true. I have only one point of disagreement with you,--crudeness of form. This was deliberate, and you have got to convince me that such a treatment of such a mood and subject is inconsistent before we can pick asphodels together again on the slopes of Parnassus. By the way,--do you care for my “Garden Abstract” in its final form in _The L.R._? I think that the version I sent you was an earlier and poorer experiment. I must bestir myself soon and write something new. My main difficulty is at present a kind of critical structure that won’t permit me the expression of the old asininities, _and_ (as you say) the poverty of society in these “provinces.” Your suggestion about the trade paper work is alluring. However, I am bound not to break away from my father’s concern until spring, when there may be a little striving and stirring up of the dust,--I hope.

Are you still planning on Italy? Why not the island of Capri? I hear there is interesting company about there,--D. H. Lawrence and Mackenzie musing and moping around the baths and arcades of Tiberius.... I don’t long so much for change of surroundings as time, TIME which I never seem to get to read or write or amuse myself. I hear [that] “New York” has gone mad about “Dada” and that a most exotic and worthless review is being concocted by Man Ray and Duchamp, billets in a bag printed backwards, on rubber deluxe, etc. What next! This is worse than The Baroness [Freytag-Loringhoven]. By the way I like the way the discovery has suddenly been made that she has all along been, unconsciously, a Dadaist. I cannot figure out just what Dadaism is beyond an insane jumble of the four winds, the six senses, and plum pudding. But if the Baroness is to be a keystone for it,--then I think I can possibly know when it is coming and avoid it.

58: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _1/28/21_

Dear Gorham: Your N.Y. bulletin interested me immensely. Last Sunday I went down to Akron to see Minns after a four months’ separation. I read him the opinions of Man Ray, whereat he flew into a holy rage. “There is no sense in the theory of interesting ‘accidents,’” and I am with Minns in that. There is little to [be] gained in any art so far as I can see, except with much _conscious_ effort. If he doesn’t watch his lenses, M. Ray will allow the Dada theories and other flamdoodle of his section run him off his track. He seems to have done much good work so far, but it has been in spite of his ideas. If he is just recently infected, it’s too bad, because there is less chance of him containing his qualities under such theories--But so much for photography.

--/--/ When I get “Dosty” more cleared out of the way, I intend to get more poetry reading again, but just now he is all-absorbing, and somehow his offering is such a distinct type of itself that one doesn’t want to mix any other kind of reading with it. Here is my sum poetic output for the last three months--two lines--

“The everlasting eyes of Pierrot And of Gargantua,--the laughter.”

Maybe it is my epitaph, it is contradictory and wide enough to be. But I hope soon to turn it into a poem and thereby, like Lazarus, return.

59: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _2/11/21_

Dear Gorham: Yes, my writing is quite Dada,--very Dada (I like the term as applied) and yet you must put up with it again as my machine has suffered another relapse.

I was very much amused and interested by the _Contact_ that arrived about a week ago. Thank you, as always, dear old bean, for being so thoughtful. You are always sending me something to make my eyes blink delightedly and arouse me from the general stupor of these parts. How fine the Wallace Stevens were! And some of Williams’ talk was good--but how horrid that the room had to be splashed with the wet-dream explosions of Virgil Jordan and McAlmon. Their talk is all right--but what is true of it has been said adequately before,--and all they can seem to add is a putrid remnant or two. Perhaps I am on the downward grade, but when I come to such stuff as theirs I can only say “Excuse me.” I will be glad to receive stimulation from the sky or a foetid chamber or maybe a piss-pot but as far as I can make out they have wound their _phalli_ around their throats in a frantic and vain effort to squeeze out an idea. In fact they seem very “Dada” in more sense than one. But enough!!!

Don’t disown me,--but I have done literally no writing to give you. The fact is that I am entirely engrossed in personal erotic experience lately that nothing seems possible in that way. O if you had ever seen the very Soul of Pierrot (in soul and incarnate) you would at least admire. Never, though, has such beauty and happy-pain been given me before--which is to say that my love is at least somewhat requited. You and one other are the only ones to know now or later of this, so do not think me vulgar or silly to tell you. Well, you have felt the fire somewhat yourself so you may appreciate my mood. Never have I suffered so, or reached such moods of ecstasy....

What do you think of _Poor White_? It certainly has made Anderson one of the most talked-of artists there are. I wrote you my opinion some time past. I’m still on “Dosty”--a very fine biography and estimate and analysis by J. Middleton Murry.

You will please forgive this letter. I have been perhaps a little too personal,--perhaps vulgar. But if anything’s to blame it’s the Subconscious rioting out through gates that only alcohol has the power to open. --/--/

60: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _2/24_

Dear Gorham: Your article on education, etc., in the last _Freeman_ delights me. Remarkably courageous and true. I hope it may do at least a little good concretely,--but at least it will serve as an accentuation mark in the minds of a good many like myself who have felt with you along that line for some time.

Two new pictures just arrived from Minns that I wish you could see. One,--an old man’s head that is as good as a Rembrandt, and at the opposite pole, a young girl’s head that brings Pound’s sonnet lines persistently into my head,--“No, go from me. I have left her lately. I will not spoil my shield with lesser brightness.--” You know how it goes. I intend to send the old man’s head to _The Dial_ for publication, but scarcely hope they will accept it after the mediocrities they have lately staged there. Really,--I flatter myself, you see,--I have more doubts about their accepting a poem I recently wrote and sent them, which I enclose.[13] You see, my present job allows me more time while “at work,” and I may even do more,--for better or worse, according as you feel about it.

This is all now until I hear from you and have more to build on. You know there is precious little for me to build on here, and so you must not too much mind if my letters have a predominance of what must seem banality to you. If so, forgive me,--and when you get tired of vainly tugging at your end of the line, let me know, and I’ll take it philosophically.

61: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _April 10th_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- For me here--the same old jog-trot except that I have lately run across an artist here whose work seems to carry the most astonishing marks of genius that have passed before my eyes in original form, that is,--I mean present-day work. And I am saying much I think when I say that I prefer Sommer’s work to most of Brzeska and Boardman Robinson. A man of 55 or so--works in a lithograph factory--spent most of his life until the last seven years in the rut of conventional forms--liberated suddenly by sparks from Gauguin, Van Gogh, Picasso and Wyndham Lewis, etc. I have taken it upon myself to send out some of his work for publication, an idea that seems oddly, never to have occurred to him. --/-- I enclose an incipient effort of mine of recent date.[14]

62: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _April 20th_

Dear Gorham: Your letter did me good, and has left a good hangover for me for the last few ungenerous days. I left my father’s employ yesterday _for good_--nothing, I think, will ever bring me back. The last insult was too much. I’ve been treated like a dog now for two years,--and only am sorry that it took me so long to find out the simple impossibility of ever doing anything with him or for him.

It will take me many months, I fear, to erase from my memory the image of his overbearing head leaning over me like a gargoyle. I think he had got to think I couldn’t live without his aid. At least he was, I am told, furious at my departure. Whatever comes now is much better than the past. I shall learn to be somewhere near free again,--at least free from the hatred that has corroded me into illness.

Of course I won’t be able to get to N.Y. now for any summer vacation. You know what a privation that means to me. I have nothing in sight in the way of employment,--and as times are so bad,--I don’t know when I shall. A job as copy-writer for an advertising house will probably be open to me about June 1st. And there is a newspaper opening out here soon,--perhaps that may yield me something. I have a roof over my head and food, anyway--here at home--and maybe I shall write something. The best thing is that [the] cloud of my father is beginning to move from the horizon now, you have never known me when it has not been there--and in time we _both_ may discover some new things in me. _Bridges burn’t behind!_

Glad you like “Estador.” I’m beginning to myself. I cannot quite accept your word changes although I’m far from satisfied with it. But the more I work over it the less I seem likely to be,--so I’m going to try it on _The Dial_.--Anything for some money now.

63: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _May 3rd 21_

My dear Gorham: --/--/ I feel sure S[ommer]’s work is as important as any contemporary work anywhere, and I’m very interested to hear what you will think. I wish I were better trained for analysis of this kind of work,--but as it is I can only “feel” the power of it. I may send you a few of his drawings at any time,--and later if you have time around N.Y. after school is out, you might care to show some of them to people who could give him a chance perhaps, of exhibition somewhere. --/--/

I agree with you about your distinction between the earlier and later Anderson. I have never got hold of _Windy McPherson’s Son_, but I never could clap very loudly for _Marching Men_, although I imagine that it is an improvement on the former. He, I understand, is anxious for these two books’ extinction. They will probably never be issued by the publisher again. I’m anxious to read his “Out of Nowhere into Nothing” that _The Dial_ announces for three summer issues. By the way, a new book of essays by my acquaintance, Charles S. Brooks, has a chapter in it, “A Modern Poet,” which is a burlesque on me, the Baroness, and my rooms over _The Little Review_ on 16th Street. His effort is all the funnier for the especial lack of comprehension he has for _The L.R._ and “modern poetry.” I promise you a laugh or two anyway. The Yale Press has just got it out,--its title is _Hints to Pilgrims_. Brooks lives a few houses down the street from me here, but at that time he was a New Yorker, and used to be very hospitable to me with theatres and dinner at his apartment on 10th St. --/--/

64: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _May 16th, ’21_

Dear Gorham: I am delighted that you have found so much to hold your interest in Sommer’s work. Some later things that he had recently shown me only confirm my convictions the more. I’ll send you more of his work as soon as I can assemble what I want to. Sent two watercolours to _The Dial_ again last week, which I don’t see how they can let pass by--but all things are possible to them. --/--/ There is a French-Swiss artist here just eight months from Paris,--doing very interesting work with a peculiar sharp diabolism in it. Willy E. Lescaze. His work at a local exhibition here recently caused a terrible furor, being in company with Burchfield’s, the only work worth looking at. It amuses me to see Lescaze praise Sommer’s work--there [are] all the differences between them that distinguish Baudelaire from Rabelais. I recently sent some of L’s work to _The Little Review_ along with S’s--but what ever keeps Margaret Anderson so impolitely silent I cannot figure out. Do what I will, I can’t seem to get a word out of her. I begin to despair. At least I hope she will return the drawings someday. If you want more to take about with you, you might call on her when you next are in town and find out if she wants them. If not you will find some interesting additions to add to your bundle. I cannot but feel that there is an audience in N.Y. ready for such work. Sommer has tried Cleveland people and found them so indifferent that he didn’t even send one canvas or sheet to this last exhibition here. In one way, a mistake, I think. Before I forget your request,--_William Sommer_ is as completely as he signs himself.

Went yesterday to see the first movie for a long time. Did you see it--_Deception_--the foreign picture of the affairs of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn? It really was stimulating. I could wish for more of such fare, even though it should (horrid thought!) impoverish our native celluloid manufactories. There were mob scenes in it, perfect in every detail, that only the screen can produce. And the old sensualist king was well acted.

I am still without work. There is absolutely nothing doing here. Things are at such a standstill that I hate to think of it. I am practically on my mother’s hands here at home,--and you can believe me that such a situation is far from a pleasant one for me who have been used to paying my own way now for some time. If only that promise I have for a job with a local advertising house fulfills itself next month I shall be all right. But most friends and friendly offers have proved themselves such slippery fish! Two years thrown away at the feet of my father without the gain of a jot of experience at anything but peon duties in a shipping room! I can never forgive him, nor my own foolishness. Just now I am too uneasy to concentrate on any writing. Have got to prepare myself for some kind of practical activity--and so I do not even read much but advertising books and business folders! Roger Fry’s _Vision and Design_, a large tome beautifully illustrated, is good to unloosen one’s tongue about such work as Sommer’s. He brought it around one evening, and I have enjoyed it. Haven’t read _Main Street_ or _Moon Calf_ yet, nor _Miss Lulu Bett_. I am beginning to feel rather distinguished about it all.

65: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_ _May 21st_

Dear Gorham: I’m glad to say that my tension is less acute at present than when I last wrote you. An improvement of the weather with opportunities for tennis and getting out and around more helps me work off surplus energies generated by my “change of life.” And you are, of course, very much right in urging me not to be ridiculously bourgeois in accepting bourgeois standards.

I’m very glad you liked “A Persuasion.” Perhaps it seems a bit tame to me on account of having used several phrases coined some years ago in it. I was much pleased this week to get word from _Double Dealer_ accepting “Black Tambourine” for publication and urging me to send them some prose. They claim they are much in need of some. Haven’t you some to offer them? I might write something on Joyce or Anderson--but I don’t know. I always feel singularly lacking in ideas about these people excepting to blindly enthuse or refute some ridiculous criticism of them. Their (“_D.D’s_”) check has not arrived yet but they promise it soon--before the June number when they expect to use the poem. It surprises me to find such a Baudelairesque thing acceptable _anywhere_ in U.S. I sent it out as a kind of hopeless protest--not expecting to see it printed at all. I’m beginning to lose interest in it now--it cannot be as good as I had thought it. --/--/

66: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_, _Friday_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ Excuse my apparent evasion of your request for an explanation about “Black Tambourine.” The Word “midkingdom” is perhaps the key word to what ideas there are in it. The poem is a description and bundle of insinuations, suggestions bearing on the Negro’s place somewhere between man and beast. That is why Aesop is brought in, etc.,--the popular conception of Negro romance, the tambourine on the wall. The value of the poem is only, to me, in what a painter would call its “tactile” quality,--an entirely aesthetic feature. A propagandist for either side of the Negro question could find anything he wanted to in it. My only declaration in it is that I find the Negro (in the popular mind) sentimentally or brutally “placed” in this midkingdom, etc. Tell me if I have made it plain or not to you.

67: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_, _June 12th ’21_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ Sommer said you had something in a very recent _Freeman_ which I’ve been trying to get, but guess I’m too late. Sometimes I get so exasperated with the “intellectual” attitudes of these papers like _The Freeman_, _New Rep._, _Nation_, etc., where everything is all jumbled together,--politics, literature, painting, birth control, etc., etc., etc., that I ignore them for a time and probably miss some good things. It’s the way they are served that I object to. I’m beginning to be somewhat pained by this “Intelligentsia” mood when it comes upon me. This probably indicates that I am not a very responsible individual--and truth is--I’m not. How tired I am of the perpetual ferment of _The New Rep_. Those fellows are playing a canster game nonsense. Does anything they ever say have any concrete effect? Old Washington goes on just the same on the old rotten paths. These gentlemen are merely clever at earning their livelihood in clean cuffs. But hear me rant on!!! I don’t care two-pence for the whole earth & heavens and least of all for politics. It’s only when the political gentlemen (Irish potatobeds) obstruct my view of my petunias and hollyhocks that I’m thus aroused,--and even that is a small complaint in the long list of larger ones I have. --/--/

No job in sight even now! I’m about convinced of the hopelessness of the advertising plan. Business gets worse and worse and they don’t have enough to do to keep a new man busy.

Oh well!--I manage to get drunk once a week on delicious wine served out by a friend of mine here and I have an evening a week with Sommer when we do all kinds of stunts from Chopin Ballades and Heine lyrics to sparring with an old set of gloves I have. Wish I could think of something entertaining to write--but, at present I’m mostly trying to regain a mental and spiritual status that has been lost to me for over a year. What I want to do is gather up the threads again and go on, to put it stale-ly.

I have reached such blind alleys and found no way out of them that there is nothing at present for me to do but laugh a little and _endure_--which I hope to do. --/--/

Did I tell you I’d been drawing and painting some? I find it a tremendous stimulation--and you begin to see so many more things than before wherever you look. My drawings are original, at least, and Sommer professes to see much in ’em. --/--/

68: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_ _June 16th ’21_

Hail! Citizen of the world! --/--/No work here except what I’ve lately been making myself. This has all been occasioned by a very cordial letter from the editor of _The Double-Dealer_, Basil Thompson, who urged me to write something for them on Anderson. This has been done (to the extent of 2000 words which, if taken, means $20.00) and dispatched. In my present mood it seems to have been a good job. Also, I got up courage and erudition enough to “do” a Vildrac translation for them which in the original at least is fine.

I was very disappointed to find quite a bad typographical error in “Black Tambourine.” “Mingle” instead of “mingl_ing_”--last line 2nd verse. How foolish it makes me feel that way! It quite destroys the sense of the thing.

They pay .30 per line of verse & 1 cent per prose word and want prose badly. As I need money worse, I may do something in the short story way for them if they fancy the Anderson thing. This last little effort has rewarded me much already merely in getting my mind to working a little again. I don’t dare hope for an ultimate success as a “free lance” but am beginning to think that this writing game offers a chance to augment one’s savings a little now and then at least.

69: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Saturday midnight_

Dear Gorham: Well. It has been a day I shall not soon forget. I have just a little time since returned from my first visit to the Sommer farm and studio--about half way between here and Akron in a beautiful untrodden valley. He has an old old-fashioned schoolhouse for his studio--the walls are white and hung with such an array of things as you never have seen. Forgive my enthusiasm--I have been so dazzled for the last 8 hours that I may seem somewhat incoherent in my expression. I have brought home with me a considerable number of water-colours and drawings which I am going to send on to you within a few days. These are representative of his _best_ in this medium and I think you will be enthusiastic about them. I could picture a dozen N.Y. picture dealers in that studio today--radical or pedantical--all tearing [each] other’s hair for the first chance of exhibiting such stuff. I feel convinced now that all that needs be done is to get some samples of this work before them,--and if they have any sense at all--either artistic or commercial--they will seize upon it. --/--/

“Dynamism” is the splendid & fitting word for Sommer--the word I had been looking for and got only as far as the adjectival use. --/--/

70: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland,_ _July 8th_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ The weather has been terrifically hot here, making

## action and thought alike impossible,--but I am slowly trying to labor

out in the suitable style for _Shadowland_ an article on Ezra [Pound] which may bring me in a little money. This magazine is popular and in some ways becoming more interesting than _Vanity Fair_. I would like a foothold in it if it is possible. It seems evident enough that I have accomplished something in the estimation of the editors of _The D.D._ as they have incorporated me in their list of contributors on their stationery. I got word the other day that they will bring out my Anderson article in this July issue. I haven’t got my check yet but it ought to be twenty dollars or so.

I have a query for you. What would you think of a play on or around the figure of John Brown? There is plenty of material, but the only trouble I see is the issue of slavery, North and South, etc., which might kill it. I am reading a fine biography of the man by Villard. As I am principally interested in this idea for mere commercial reasons the possibility of popularity is the largest factor. I tend to think the subject, in this light, too forbidding.

-- -- -- -- I always seem to choose the wrong moment for my letters, when the ice-man is hammering at the door or the family is waiting to be driven to town, so my letters are more like bulletins and telegrams than anything else. Things pan out the same way when I start on an essay, article or poem,--but I hope for better days. --/--/

71: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_, _July 14th, ’21_

Dear Gorham: This is the kind of note I got yesterday from JH of _The Little Review_, returning some mss.,--“Found this as I was going through Mart’s files. She’s crazy. The drawings are fine but we haven’t any hope of printing them for ages, so I sent them back.--jh.” So it looks as though _The L.R._ was done for, and perhaps poor Mart. Doesn’t the way jh puts it makes you feel rather uneasy. I wish I knew more details,--whether it is a mere -- -- -- -- rumpus that is all the matter, or whether Mart Anderson has worn herself out in vain assaults against the decision against her in the Joyce trial. I wish I could get in touch with her direct, but as she hasn’t answered any letter for the last six weeks she probably cannot write. I happen to know from Mart’s friends too much inside information on the two women’s mutual relationships to feel certain of any direct truth about Mart from jh. If you hear anything about them or their plans please let me know. You know my admiration and (yes) affection for Margaret Anderson is very strong, and I detest nothing more than such a brutal squib as this thing that jh just sent. --/--/

The cover for the July _Double Dealer_ gives me the shivers, but my Anderson article is all there. Write me what you think of it now that you have read him more or less completely. I enclose a letter of introduction [to Anderson]. My Pound article is a far more difficult thing and progresses slowly, but I am bent now on making as much money writing as I can, and I’m going to get it published one place or another. Your encouragement anent the John Brown adventure is very gratifying. This is a long winded matter, but I think I shall go ahead with it, hoping by the time you get back from Europe to have something to show you. By the way, when you are in Paris there is one place you must go. Joyce’s _Ulysses_ is to be brought out complete in Paris this fall. I enclose a subscription blank with address, etc. I have already subscribed for it. --/--/

72: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_ _July 22nd, ’21_

Dear Gorham: The “march of events” has brought upon me Cleveland’s 125th anniversary with all its fussy & futile inanities and advertisements to make hideous the streets. Blocked, and obliged to wait while the initial “pee-rade” went by today, I spent two hours of painful rumination ending with such disgust at America and everything in it, that I more than ever envy you your egress to foreign parts. No place but America could relish & applaud anything so stupid & drab as that parade--led by the most notable and richest grafter of the place decked out in Colonial rags as the founder of the city Moses C. Ah--the Baroness, lunatic that she is, is right. Our people have no _atom_ of a conception of beauty--and don’t want it. One thing almost brought tears to my eyes (and I hope you do not think me too silly in mentioning it)--the handful of Chinese who came along in some native and antique vestments & liveries to prostitute themselves in the medley of trash around them. To see them passing the (inevitable) Soldier’s Monument ablaze with their aristocratic barbarity of silk, gold and embroideries _was_ an anachronism that could occur _only_ in America. And the last of their “section” brought a float with a large “melting pot”--its significance was blazoned in letters _on_ it!! All I can say is--it’s a gay old world! If ever I felt alone it has been today. But I must encounter fireworks, bawling “choruses” and more “pee-rades” for 7 more days--as the community believes in celebrations that are productive of business.

Your letter came this morning, and I agree largely with what you have to say about the Anderson article. A friend of mine here, Lescaze the painter, who is an excellent literary critic as well, told me that reading it gave him the impression of a young man inflating and playing with a series of variously-colored balloons in the boredom of his chambre--which in an imagistic way singularly seems to agree with the substance of your opinion on it. Well,--this is true & rather painfully so--I must admit. My only justification is the singularly inadequate surroundings I have here for any kind of concentration. My one hope is to do better with more practice at such work and relieved somewhat of the haste that the pressing necessities for money presently force upon me. I struggle with the Pound article still,--but the subject itself is so complex and (I fancy) the audience interested so small, that I may be forced to give it up.

You are right about _The D.D.’s_ exceedingly uneven quality. To my mind almost every issue has been largely filled with utter weakness and banality. Will some one tell me how an (often) good poet like Haniel Long can bring himself to allow to be printed such _stuff_ as he has signed himself to in _The D.D._? As a matter of fact I am continually being more and more horrified at what names we had always been accustomed to hoping rather much of,--are rushing into print with, and obviously out of the urgent need or desire of more money. _Shadowland_, especially the August number with Babette Deutsch’s list of American poets! Alas--what Fletcher wrote on the artist’s conscience in _The Freeman_ (July 12th or so) makes me think a good deal. Living _is_ at last becoming quite impossible, at least here,--when you get to Italy I advise a permanent residence there for you. Later, perhaps I’ll come over and join you. In time there may be only D. H. Lawrence, the rainbow, and Capri left. I shall (with my millions acquired by that time in flattering biographies of rich businessmen)--I shall rejuvenate the baths and temple there of Tiberius and we shall live in state,--waited on by the only fair and unsullied youths & maidens then procurable in Europe. --/--/

73: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland, O._ _Aug. 9th ’21_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ My unemployment lingers. I learn a Scriabin Prelude,--make a drawing,--stroke my black cat (a recent acquisition) and read intermittently. Lately I had a good letter from Colum, who likes my “Black Tambourine,” and yesterday a long letter from Matthew Josephson, the first word for almost a year. He is up in Maine with Carl Springhorn and Kenneth Burke in a kind of camp. (Also his wife.) They both expect to sail for Italy six weeks from now, to stay two years or more. I don’t know their proposed localities, but hope you will meet. -- -- -- --

74: TO CHARMION WIEGAND

_Cleveland, Ohio_ _August 13, ’21_

Dear Charmion: --/--/ I am very glad to know that you have been keeping up the writing,--whether prose, poetry, or drama doesn’t so much matter. The point about it all is that it serves to keep you alert and alive much more than any other activity I know of,--and especially anything as warm as a “Byzantine drama of blood” sounds interesting. The historical drama seems to me as legitimate as any other provided it has enough organic life of its own and doesn’t depend merely on the fame, etc., of the protagonists for effect. Have you read Stendhal’s _Chartreuse de Parma_? So far as I know it has never been dramatized, and there is much good material in it. I find Stendhal, incidentally, one of the few men who wear deeper with familiarity. You probably have read his _Rouge et Noir_. --/--/

75: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland, Ohio_ _Sept. 19th ’21_

My dear Gorham: --/--/ _The L. R._, I was informed on a card from j.h. the other day, is recovering, will shortly re-appear as a quarterly under Pound, Picabia, etc., 24 illustrations and 96 pgs! Mart Anderson also recovering “sanity,” etc. -- -- -- -- I sold them [_The Dial_] the poem you read just before leaving, “Pastorale”--which will come out soon. I also sold one, “Persuasion,” to _The Measure_--and “Porphyro in Akron” came out in the last _Double Dealer_ in first place.

The result of all this is that I am “sold out” and will have to rush rhymes and rhythms together to supply my enthusiastic “public” as fast as I can. But the family is all upset about my unemployment and money _is_ needed. I am too uneasy to accomplish a thing, but hammer out a translation of de Gourmont’s marginalia on Poe & Baudelaire for _The D.D._ I have projects and a few lines started on poems,--but nothing “comes through”--it is at times discouraging. I do not expect to hear from Josephson again. He wrote me several letters full of brilliant criticism and suggestions--but we do not exactly agree on theory and he has become so complex--that the lack of sympathy my last letter offered him will bring no response from [him] I’m quite sure--especially now after an unusually long interstice. But this extremity of hair splitting palls on one after awhile. A little is interesting--but goes a long ways. He seems afraid to use any emotion in his poetry,--merely observation and sensation,--and because I call such work apt to become thin, he thinks me sloppy and stupid,--as no doubt I am. But after all,--I recognize him as in many ways the most _acute_ critic of poetry I know of--the only trouble is that he tries to force his theories into the creative process,--and the result, to me, is too tame a thing. --/--/

76: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_ _Oct. 1, ’21_

Dear Gorham: My terrible hay fever days are over, and the fine autumn weather that I like the best of the year has arrived to console me. My mood is neither happy nor desperately sad. It will best be conveyed to you by the quotation of a new poem, “Chaplinesque”--only started (if I can help it) as yet: --/--/[15]

And I must tell you that my greatest dramatic treat since seeing Garden in _The Love of Three Kings_ two winters ago, was recently enjoyed when Charlie Chaplin’s _The Kid_ was shown here. Comedy, I may say, has never reached a higher level in this country before. We have (I cannot be too sure of this for my own satisfaction) in Chaplin a dramatic genius that truly approaches the fabulous sort. I could write pages on the overtones and brilliant subtleties of this picture, for which nobody but Chaplin can be responsible, as he wrote it, directed it,--and I am quite sure had much to do with the settings which are unusually fine. If you have not already seen it in N. Y., it may now be in Paris. It was a year late in arriving in Cleveland, I understand, on account of objections from the state board of censors!!!! What they could have possibly objected to, I cannot imagine. It must have been some superstition aroused against good acting! But they will always release any sickening and false melodrama of high life and sex, lost virginities, etc., at the first glance. Well, I am thankful to get even what their paws have mauled of the Chaplin and _Caligari_ sort. My poem is a sympathetic attempt to put in words some of the Chaplin pantomime, so beautiful, and so full of eloquence, and so modern.

--/--/ It will be time for me to raise my voice in praise of Anderson soon, as his new book _The Triumph of the Egg_, and other stories, is on the market. This also includes the serial “Out of Nowhere into Nothing,” recently completed in _The Dial_. I would lay a bet on it that long after Zona Gale, Lewis, etc., are forgotten, Sherwood will hold his own. There are lots of things I want to read but haven’t the money to buy, like Hecht’s first novel, a great success they say, _Erik Dorn_, recently out. I wrote you how much I enjoyed Shaw’s _Back to Methuselah_, a review of which I wrote for _The D.D._

I am taking a course in advertising two nights of every week until next May which is very good and ought to help me get started. It has the advantage, at any rate, of giving one a diploma which, I understand, has a real value. I am now pretty sure of making advertising my real route to bread and butter, and have a strong notion that as a copy writer I will eventually make a “whiz.” --/--/

77: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_, _Oct. 6th, ’21_

Dear Gorham: Here you are with the rest of the Chaplin poem. I know not if you will like it,--but to me it has a real appeal. I have made that “infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing” of Eliot’s into the symbol of the kitten. I feel that, from my standpoint, the pantomime of Charlie represents fairly well the futile gesture of the poet in U.S.A. today, perhaps elsewhere too. And yet, the heart lives on....

Maybe this is because I myself feel so particularly futile just now that I feel this pathos, (or is it bathos?). Je ne sais pas.

Yesterday I worked my first day foreman-ing three men on a distribution job, and walked untold miles of city blocks. I am stiff,--but the exercise did me much good. No work today,--perhaps tomorrow. At this work the most I can hope to get before spring is $30.00 per week. Yesterday brought me $2.50. Needless to say, I will look for something better as soon as I can get hands on it.

A new light and friend of my friend, the Swiss-French painter, Willy Lescaze, has arrived in town,--Jean Binet, teacher of Eurythmics in our very alive Cleveland School of Music which Ernest Bloch heads. I am to meet him tonight and with some anticipations, as I am told he is a remarkable and inspired amateur pianist, playing Erik Satie, Ravel, etc., to perfection. Lescaze has proved an inspiration to me. Knowing intimately the work of Marcel Proust, Salmon, Gide, and a host of other French moderns, he is able to see so much better than anyone else around here, the aims I have in my own work. We have had great times discussing the merits of mutual favorites like Joyce, Donne, Eliot, Pound, de Gourmont, Gordon Craig, Nietzsche, etc., ad infinitum. After this it goes without saying that I never found a more stimulating individual in N. Y.

78: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Cleveland, O._ _Oct. 17, 1921_

Dear William: I can come half way with you about Edna Millay,--but I fear not much further. She really has genius in a limited sense, and is much better than Sara Teasdale, Marguerite Wilkinson, Lady Speyer, etc., to mention a few drops in the bucket of feminine lushness that forms a kind of milky way in the poetic firmament of the time (likewise all times);--indeed I think she is every bit as good as Elizabeth Browning. And here it will be probably evident that most of her most earnest devotees could not ask for more. I can only say that I also do not greatly care for Mme. Browning. And on top of my dislike for this lady, Tennyson, Thompson, Chatterton, Byron, Moore, Milton, and several more, I have the apparent brassiness to call myself a person of rather catholic admirations. But you will also notice that I _do_ run joyfully toward Messrs. Poe, Whitman, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, John Donne!!!, John Webster!!!, Marlowe, Baudelaire, Laforgue, Dante, Cavalcanti, Li Po, and a host of others. Oh I wish we had an evening to talk over poetic creeds,--it is ridiculous to attempt it in a letter. I can only apologize by saying that if my work seems needlessly sophisticated it is because I am only interested in adding what seems to me something really _new_ to what _has_ been written. Unless one has some new, intensely personal viewpoint to record, say on the eternal feelings of love, and the suitable personal idiom to employ in the act, I say, why write about it? Nine chances out of ten, if you know where in the past to look, you will find words already written in the more-or-less exact tongue of your soul. And the complaint to be made against nine out of ten poets is just this,--that you are apt to find their sentiments much better expressed perhaps four hundred years past. And it is not that Miss Millay fails entirely, but that I often am made to hear too many echoes in her things, that I cannot like her as well as you do. With her equipment Edna Millay is bound to succeed to the appreciative applause of a fairly large audience. And for you, who I rather suppose have not gone into this branch of literature with as much enthusiasm as myself, she is a creditable heroine.

I admit to a slight leaning toward the esoteric, and am perhaps not to be taken seriously. I am fond of things of great fragility, and also and especially of the kind of poetry John Donne represents, a dark musky, brooding, speculative vintage, at once sensual and spiritual, and singing rather the beauty of experience than innocence.

As you did not “get” my idiom in “Chaplinesque,” I feel rather like doing my best to explain myself. I am moved to put Chaplin with the poets (of today); hence the “we.” In other words, he, especially in _The Kid_, made me feel myself, as a poet, as being “in the same boat” with him. Poetry, the human feelings, “the kitten,” is so crowded out of the humdrum, rushing, mechanical scramble of today that the man who would preserve them must duck and camouflage for dear life to keep them or keep himself from annihilation. I have since learned that I am by no means alone in seeing these things in the buffooneries of the tragedian, Chaplin, (if you want to read the opinions of the London and Paris presses, see _Literary Digest_, Oct. 8th) and in the poem I have tried to express these “social sympathies” in words corresponding somewhat to the antics of the actor. I may have failed, as only a small number of those I have shown it to have responded with any clear answer,--but on the other hand, I realize that the audience for my work will always be quite small. I freely admit to a liking for the thing, myself,--in fact I have to like something of my own once in a while being so hard to please anyway.

The job I mentioned lasted just one day. I took the men out and carried the thing through to success, sore feet, and numb limbses,--but,--there was no work to be done next day, nor the next,--and I got tired of trailing around hoping for only $2.50 for a fortune, and don’t care whether there is little or much awaiting me there now, having hit the employment trail again toward other fields. When I once get pastured again, I’ll praise even Edna Millay--may even buy her _Second April_ (if it is in Season) and not bore you so much with long diatribes on Poetry. Just now, though, that is all I have. Can’t even buy the books I long to read, like _Three Soldiers_, _Erik Dorn_, and the new _Little Review_ (Quarterly--AND $2.00). Write me soon and cheer me up. Just for fun, look up the poems of Donne in the Library and read some of the short lyrics like “The Apparition,” “A Jet Ring Sent,” “The Prohibition,” “The Ecstasy,” and some of the longer things like “The Progress of the Soul,” etc., if you feel intrigued.

79: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_ _Nov. 1st, ’21_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ Yes,--I much wish I could share your horizons,--instead of retracing day after day a few familiar circles of routine & thought. Keep on writing me your bright kindly letters. They are a lantern of hope and a warmth to the heart. I sometimes wonder if, without you, I should have kept writing so long.

Just read _Erik Dorn_ and am shy a little of criticizing it. Undoubtedly it is a fine piece of work,--and an odd addition to Am. literature. Almost European in viewpoint. I cannot, though, yet make sure whether Hecht has his tongue in his cheek part of the time or not. Hecht is a virtuoso, and arouses suspicions that one would never feel for Dreiser or Anderson. One sees an influence of Joyce in the book,--diluted or “rationalized” just enough to be more pleasing to the public taste. Carl Sandburg and Anderson are given parts in the scenery in an interesting way. --/--/

80: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 3_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ You are very much right about the poems. I can’t blame you for not seeing as much in “Chaplinesque” as myself because I realize that the technique of the thing is virtuosic and open to all kinds of misinterpretations. Maybe, though, since you have seen _The Kid_ which “inspired” it, you have got nearer to my meaning. For me, it holds double the interest of “Pastorale” which is more perfectly done, but to me, not so rich. Chaplin may be a sentimentalist, after all, but he carries the theme with such power and universal portent that sentimentality is made to transcend itself into a new kind of tragedy, eccentric, homely and yet brilliant. It is because I feel that I have captured the arrested climaxes and evasive victories of his gestures in words, somehow, that I like the poem as much as anything I have done. But we will see. My mind changes sometimes sooner than I plan. I was much surprised that Sherwood Anderson should like it, who is not prone to care for complicated expressions. He was, further, more or less in agreement with you about the sea poem.[16] --/--/

Further time and thought on _Erik Dorn_ lessen my opinion of it. It hangs somewhere between the prose symphonies of Huysmans and the poetic symphonies of Aiken. Impressionistic. However, there is little character. As long as we have _Ulysses_ and _Tarr_ to praise we need not spend too much breath on it, recognizing it, nevertheless, as a hopeful sign, not much more. One misses any actual sincerity,--and somehow the issue or accusation of meretriciousness creeps in. It brings back to me something about Hecht that Saphier once told me:--“A brilliant fellow,” he said. “He can sit down to a typewriter and reel off that stuff by the yard. Has three or four of them (short stories) on hand at once.” This was apropos of the really fine little things of his that were appearing in _The L.R._ then. In fact I am moved into sympathy with Seldes’ review of it in the Oct. _Dial_ which you will have read by this time. --/--/

Tonight I attend the weekly “salon” that Lescaze gives to his friends. There will be banter and chatter enough to be tiresome. Somehow, when there are women present (the kind one has around here) no conversation can be had uninterrupted by little compliments, concessions to them, etc. They insist upon being the center of attention irrespective of their ability to take part in any argument. Consequently there are interminable innuendoes and clucking and puffings that never terminate anywhere. One of the few women who would carefully avoid this kind of thing is Margaret Anderson. Hommage to Margaret!!

The Dada dramas are tres amusant,--but--well--alright56789--*!!

81: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_, _Nov. 21st._

Your letter about the _Gargoyle_ plan has just come and as I haven’t written you for some time, I’m giving some kind of answer, however unworthy. These enclosed poems you are welcome to use if you care to. -- -- -- -- _The L. R._ has it [“Chaplinesque”] in hand now, but I shall probably not hear from them about it for months and should they decide to take it,--I cannot see that its publication in France should complicate matters any. The same applies to “Black Tambourine” which came out misprinted in _The D.D._ last July. I would like to see it printed right sometime and it occurs to me that this may be an opportunity. I am doing nothing new worth while, so I can’t send you anything else. If you get the names your letter mentions together as contributors you will have something worth while. Burke’s contribution to the new _L.R._ quarterly just out is about the only good thing in it. I don’t need to go on about it, as you have probably seen it in Paris by this time. About the only thing to be gathered from Pound’s article on Brancusi is that Pound wishes to avoid being obvious at the cost of no matter what else. For myself--I [have] just finished a week’s trial at selling real estate--of which, of course, I didn’t sell any. Trying now to get into a bookstore to help out during the Christmas rush.

There is nothing but gall and disgust in me,--and there is nothing more for me to tell you but familiar, all-too-familiar complaints. I wish I could cultivate a more graceful mask against all this. --/--/

82: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_ _Nov. 26th, ’21_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ I’ve been having a wonderful time diving into Ben Jonson, so you see I haven’t been so far off, after all. After one has read _Bartholomew Fair_ it isn’t so hard to see where Synge got his start,--a start toward a husky folk-element in the drama. I can see myself from now rapidly joining Josephson in a kind of Elizabethan fanaticism. You have doubtless known my long-standing friendship with Donne, Webster, and Marlowe. Now I have another Mermaid “conjugal” to strengthen the tie. The fact is, I can find nothing in modern work to come up to the verbal richness, irony and emotion of these folks, and I would like to let them influence me as much as they can in the interpretation of modern moods,--somewhat as Eliot has so beautifully done. There are parts of his “Gerontion” that you can find almost bodily in Webster and Jonson. Certain Elizabethans and Laforgue have played a tremendous part in Eliot’s work, and you catch hints of his great study of these writers in his _Sacred Grove_. I don’t want to imitate Eliot, of course,--but I have come to the stage now where I want to carefully choose my most congenial influences and, in a way, “cultivate” their influence. I can say with J[osephson] that the problem of form becomes harder and harder for me every day. I am not at all satisfied with anything I have thus far done, mere shadowings, and too slight to satisfy me. I have never, so far, been able to present a vital, living and tangible,--a positive emotion to my satisfaction. For as soon as I attempt such an act I either grow obvious or ordinary, and abandon the thing at the second line. Oh! it is hard! One must be drenched in words, literally soaked with them to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. When they come, as they did in “Pastorale” (thin, but rather good), they come as things in themselves; it is a matter of felicitous juggling!; and no amount of will or emotion can help the thing a bit. So you see I believe with Sommer that the “Ding an Sich” method is ultimately the only satisfactory creative principle to follow. But I also find that J[osephson] stirred up a hornet’s nest in me this summer with his words about getting away from current formulae, from Heine to Wallace Stevens, by experimentation in original models, etc., and my reaction to this stimulation is to work away from the current impressionism as much as possible. I mean such “impressionism” as the Cocteau poem (trans.) in _The Little Review_, which you have probably seen. Dada (maybe I am wrong, but you will correct me) is nothing more to me than the dying agonies of this movement, maladie moderne. I may be even carried back into “rime and rhythm” before I get through, provided I can carry these encumbrances as deftly and un-selfconsciously as, say, Edward Thomas sometimes did. I grow to like my “Black Tambourine” more, for this reason, than before. It becomes to my mind a kind of diminutive model of ambition, simply pointing a direction. S’much for this endless tirade, but write as usual and keep me cheered and momentarily thrilled.

Maybe J[osephson] has already started on his novel, burlesquing the Americans in the Quartier, that he intended. Tell him to send me some poetry, anything he is writing. It’s sure to be better than anything the magazines offer here.

83: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_ _December the tenth_

Dear Gorham: Your letter in French (which innovation I like) reached me yesterday, a welcome evening stimulant after the day’s work. For I am, in a way, very glad to announce that I’ve been busy for the last two weeks at selling books in a store here during the seasonal “rush.” This is, in all probability, entirely a temporary tent for me,--but it has enabled me, though intensely occupied, to get free of the money complex that had simply reduced me to ashes. This item added to a total lack of any sex life for a long period had left me so empty that I gave up insulting you with a mere heap of stones for a letter, and though I haven’t more to offer you now, I have sufficient interest again in the

## activity of writing to make my meagreness seem less obvious. Erotic

experience is stumbled upon occasionally by accident, and the other evening I was quite nicely entertained, in _my_ usual way, of course. And thus the spell is broken! I can’t help remarking also that this “breaker of the spell” is one very familiar with your present haunts, “La Rotonde,” etc., etc., only of a few years back. You see, then, that one may enjoy a few Parisian sophistications even in Cleveland!

The _Ulysses_ situation is terrible to think on. I shall be eternally grateful to you if you can manage to smuggle my already-subscribed-for copy home with you. If this will in any chance be possible, please let me send you the cash for purchase, etc., at the proper time. I _must_ have this book!

De Gourmont’s _Une Coeur Virginal_ has just been published here, (trans. by Aldous Huxley), and I have snatched it up against its imminent suppression along with _Jurgen_ and other masterpieces. If this is a fair sample of its author, and it’s supposed to be, I cannot see how his _Physique d’Amour_, translated by Pound and to be published by Boni & Liveright, will ever get beyond the printers’ hands. Yet how mellow and kindly is the light from de Gourmont! One hates to see him on the tables with Zane Grey and Rex Beach. Maybe, after all (and since I have procured my volume), it will not be so heart-rending to see the destruction of the jealous Puritan at work again. Two weeks of book-service to the “demands of the public” in a store have bred curious changes of attitude toward the value of popularity (of the slightest sort) in my mind. The curious “unread” that slumber lengthily on the shelves, and whose names are never called, are much nearer my envy than I had once thought they might be from the mere standpoint of neglect. This pawing over of gift-book classics in tooled leather bindings, etc., etc., is a sight to never forget. Poor dear Emerson must slumber badly. Aristocratic is Whitman, though--no one ever calls for that “democrat” any more than for Landor or Donne. And Edgar Guest and Service, death heads both, are rampant.

Of course you have heard of Anderson’s winning of _The Dial_ prize. I was quite certain of it anyway, but intensely gratified at the fact now he has. He will probably go to Mexico now as money was all he needed. He wrote me an answer recently to my criticism of _Erik Dorn_, praising parts of it much and damning others. The book still puzzles me, which makes me dislike it a little more than ever. As a whole it is deficient, but I have always admitted certain parts good. But when one compares it with such a book as Anderson’s _Triumph of the Egg_, it fades out terribly. This latter is an anthology of recent short stories of Anderson and re-reading them together I get the most violent reaction. He has written of ghastly desolations which are only too evident in my own experience and on every hand. I am more enthusiastic than ever in my praise for him although I feel in an odd way, that he has, like a diver, touched bottom in a certain sense, and that his future work must manifest certain changes of a more positive character than the bare statement of reality, or conclude his promise. --/--/

84: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Dec. 25th, ’21_

Dear Gorham: Your letter arriving a few days ago, of the 5th, and the note of the seventh announcing my presence on the boulevards (in Chaplinesque attire) have provided me with rich materials for a kind of Christmas tree, at least as thrilling as any of remotest childhood memories. Names and presences glitter and fascinate with all kinds of exotic suggestions on the branches. I can be grateful to you for the best of Christmas donations, as I can thank you for the main part of my mental and imaginative sustenance of the last six months, weary and tormented as they have been. And now things seem, at least, to look a little better for me. I have been asked to remain on for a brief period in the capacity of book-clerk, and there is a possibility in sight of my gaining a very promising position soon in a very high-class advertising house here that has the attraction of the best connections with the largest agencies in New York and elsewhere. At least my interview with the “authorities” there today proved favorable to me, and if I can only manage to write them the proper kind of letter and “sell myself” as they ridiculously put it, I may secure myself something profitable. Leastwise, however, I have paid off an obligation that worried me and had a little change to spend during the last few weeks which has worked unbelievable miracles on my spirit. My work has been so hectic during the last month that I have not had time to write you, much less poems, but I have a feeling that now that the rush is over and the New Year started, I shall again do something. You see I am promising again.

You cannot imagine how interesting to me have been your opinions of the personalities you have come in contact with. Your opportunities in this direction have far exceeded my happiest anticipations for you. It strikes me that you have met about all the personalities in the younger left-wing at all worth while. --/--/

It has been very gratifying, also, to hear of your amiable progress with Josephson. His “tightening and hardening” effect on one is exactly the compliment I owe to him. In a way he is cold as ice, having a most astonishing faculty for depersonization,--and on the other hand, you have no doubt found a certain affectionate propensity in his nature that is doubly pleasant against the rather frigidly intellectual relief of the rest of him. He likes you much, and wrote me so, also sending me some poems to submit to _The D.D._ which I cannot fancy as having a ghost of a show in such an uneven corner. But he needs money, and I shall be glad to do anything in my power to help him along,--not worrying, however, very, very much, as he has a flexibility and resourcefulness that I envy.

--/--/ If I were only in N.Y. I would see to it that S[ommer]’s work were given its due,--but that time will have to wait. Meanwhile he shows not the slightest inclination to wilt. As I said, his achievements present one gorgeous surprise after another. A mutual friend of ours here recently died, a Nietzschean and thorough appreciator of all the best, who has pursued his lonely way in America since the age of fifteen when he left his family in Norway on account of religious differences. Bill and I were among the pallbearers at this funeral, where there were only a few others present, although all appreciative of what the man was. I can’t go into detail, but the affair was tremendous, especially the finale at the crematorium. It was beautiful, but left me emotionally bankrupt last Sunday, the day following. That funeral was one of the few beautiful things that have happened to me in Cleveland.

Now for a brief résumé of American literature. It is, in a way, hopefully significant that Anderson’s _Winesburg_ has been issued by Boni and Liveright in their Modern Library with a very fine introduction by Ernest Boyd which gives much praise to _The L. R._ for having had the acumen to introduce Anderson to the world. --/--/

_The Dial_ for December has a fine article in it on American painting by Rosenfeld, singling out Hartley for extra and very intelligent praise. It also includes a fairly good poem by Malcolm Cowley, a rather disappointing article on Flaubert by Middleton Murry, and an atrocious piece of dull nonsense by Bodenheim. The new _Shadowland_ is [as] far from thrilling as those tepid baths it did offer last summer, and the _Ladies Home Journal_ and the _Atlantic_ are as bouncing as ever.

This is all for tonight. We have a houseful of indiscriminate relatives and it has been hard to collect myself for even this potpourri, but I have more to say when I can get to it. I need time (a natural requirement with me for all writing or thought) to sit Buddha-like for a couple of hours every day and let things sift themselves into some semblance of order in my brain. But I haven’t had the opportunity for such operations for weeks, and may never,--until which time I pray you to be contented as you can by such thrusts in haste as this letter.

Your figure haunts me like a kind of affectionate caress through all sorts of difficulties. You are always my final and satisfactory “court of appeal,” and it is useless to attempt to tell you how much this means to me. So believe me when I tell you that I love you, and plan and plan for the glorious day when we shall get knees under the table and talk, and talk, and talk. The inefficacy of my letters to you always troubles me.

1922

85: TO SHERWOOD ANDERSON

_Cleveland_ _Jan. 10th_

Dear Anderson: Waiting on shoppers in a book store during the holiday hurricane deferred my answer to your letter. I was glad to get any kind of work, however, after my empty-pocketed summer and fall. Now I am working as a copy-writer for the Corday and Gross Co. here which you may have heard of. I like this better than any bread-and-butter work I’ve ever done. You were right about the real estate job. Ogling poor people for small investments against their will didn’t appeal to me very long. I had given it up before you wrote.

If I can satisfy the requirements of my position here, I shall feel a little hope returning for the satisfaction of a few aims again. I mean, of course, to turn out a little verse or prose this winter. When out of work I am not able to rid myself of worries enough to accomplish anything. Some pecuniary assurances seem necessary to me to any opening of the creative channels. Now things begin to look a little better for me.

I saw your story “The Contract” in the last _Broom_, and would like to offer a criticism. It may be an infraction, but if it is I want to ask your forgiveness. This story in some ways strikes me as inferior to the intensity and beauty of your other recent work, and I have an idea that it is something you wrote quite a while ago. Coming from anyone else, I would think, “This is good; but this fellow is trying to imitate Anderson and can’t quite do it.”

I wouldn’t attempt any suggestions nor try to point out any places. Your work is always too much a composite whole for that critical sort of prodding to yield anything. I only felt this story as somehow an anti-climax to the amazing sense of beauty I recently got in re-reading the short stories you have done during the last few years that are collected together in the _Egg_ volume. Please pardon me for this doubtless unnecessary comment. It is only in the light of my own desires and feeling in such circumstances that I have ventured it.

In my own work I find the problem of style and form becoming more and more difficult as time goes on. I imagine that I am interested in this style of writing much more than you are. Perhaps, though, we include the same features under different terms. In verse this feature can become a preoccupation, to be enjoyed for its own sake. I do not think you will sympathize with me very strongly on this point, but, of course, if you got as much pleasure out of finding instances of it in other writers as I do, you would see what I mean. For instance, when I come to such a line as the following from John Donne,--I am thrilled -- -- -- -- [“Of the Progresse of the Soule, The Second Anniversary,” ll. 296-98]. Or take another, called “The Expiration”: --/--/ [ll. 1-12]. What I want to get is just what is so beautifully done in this poem,--an “interior” form, a form that is so thorough and intense as to dye the words themselves with a peculiarity of meaning, slightly different maybe from the ordinary definition of them separate from the poem. If you remember my “Black Tambourine” you will perhaps agree with me that I have at least accomplished this idea once. My aims make writing slow for me, and so far I have done practically nothing,--but I can wait for slow improvements rather more easily than I can let a lot of stuff loose that doesn’t satisfy me. There is plenty of that in the publishing houses and magazines every day to amuse the folks that like it. This may very well be a tiresome ranting for you, but I think you will like the quotation anyway.

What are you going to do this winter: go to Mexico as you had thought of? I was all ready to scrape around for money enough to start for Europe when this job came along, and I thought I had better take it. Two friends of mine, however, have been in Paris for some time, writing me letters that made me foam at my moorings, and the desire to break loose has been strong.

If you aren’t too busy write me. A friend of mine, Lescaze, was in N. Y. over Christmas and says he had a very pleasant talk with you one evening at Paul Rosenfeld’s.

86: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Jan. 23rd, ’22_

Dear Gorham: I come to my first evening, free and alone, in some time, and recognize quite plainly that I have neglected you. There are so many rather interesting people around this winter that there is always something or other doing. A concert to go to, a soirée,--and then since I have been writing ads a certain amount of hangover work to be done evenings sometimes,--that altogether I don’t like it. But I like my work and am wonderfully treated at the office. Never guessed a commercial institution could be organized on such a decent basis. And they actually will come of their own accord and tell you that they are pleased with the work you are doing for them!!!!!!!!!! I pass my goggle-eyed father on the streets now without a tremor! I go on mad carouses with Bill Sommer wherein we begin with pigs’ feet and sauerkraut and end with Debussy’s “Gradus ad Parnassum” in the “ivory tower.” Around Ernest Bloch at the Institute of Music here are gathered some interesting folks from all over everywhere. There is even a French restaurant here where the proprietress stands at the cashier’s desk reading _La Nouvelle Revue Francaise_ and where wonderful steaks with mushrooms are served--alas, everything, including real garçons, except vin. The place looks like a sentence without any punctuation, or, if you prefer, this letter.

And now, mon cher, willy-nilly as it all may be, we come to your magazine. I don’t want to hurt you at all, but I must confess to little or no enthusiasm at the prospect of another small magazine, full of compressed dynamite as yours might well be. Unless one has half a million or so, what’s the use of adding to the other little repercussions that dwindle out after a few issues!? Don’t waste your time with it all, is my advice. Much better sit down and pound on your typewriter, or go toting mss. around to stolid editors. Listen,--there is now _some_ kind of magazine that will print one’s work however bad or good it is. The “arty” book stores bulge and sob with them all. I pray you invest your hard-earned money in neckties, theatre tickets or something else good for the belly or the soul,--but don’t throw it away in paper and inefficient typography. Don’t come home three months sooner for the prospects of that rainbow.

No one will especially appreciate it -- -- -- --. By all this you must not think that I have joined the Right Wing to such an extent that I am rollicking in F. Scott Fitzgerald. No,--but by the straight and narrow path swinging to the south of the village DADA I have arrived at a somewhat and abashed posture of reverence before the statues of Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Chaucer, sundry others already mentioned. The precious rages of dear Matty [Josephson] somehow don’t seem to swerve me from this position. He is, it strikes me, altogether unsteady. Of course, since Mallarmé and Huysmans were elegant weepers it is up to the following generation to haw-haw gloriously! Even dear old Buddha-face de Gourmont is passé. Well, I suppose it is up to one in Paris to do as the Romans do, but it all looks too easy to me from Cleveland, Cuyhoga County, God’s country. But Matty will always glitter when he walks provided the man in front of him has not sparkled,--which we hope he never does, of course,--and so I am happy to hear from him always about his latest change of mind. Quite seriously Matty is thrilling, in prose especially. His performance is always agreeable despite my inability to sympathize with his theories. Paris seems to be a good place for him to work and I suppose he will stay there at least until his contes are published. --/--/

87: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Cleveland, O._ _February 11, 1922_

Dear Bill: Don’t let me keep on worrying. Your visit was a great pleasure to me, resulting in the renewal of old contacts and the discoveries of many new ones. I am so much interested in you now, that I am in danger of pestering you with all kinds of advice and admonitions. One of these is: not to let the caprices of any unmellow ladies result in your unbalance or extreme discomfiture. Even the best of them, at times, know not and care not what they do. They have the faculty of producing very debilitating and thoroughly unprofitable effects on gentlemen who put themselves too much in their hands. Woman was not meant to occupy this position. It was only the Roman Catholic Church who gave it to her. Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians knew better how to handle her. I suggest your reading De Gourmont’s _Virgin Heart_ for a delicate dissection of this kind of problem. De Gourmont was something more than a purely “literary critic,” you know. He was one of the most thorough students of physiology and psychology of the modern world. He was an adept scientist of the emotions. Stendhal was another, but less clear.

All this suffering is quite romantic and beautiful, you know, but you pay a stupid price for it. I can’t help saying these things because of my interest and because I saw you go away in ominous style. I hope you haven’t been ill, and that you have merely forgotten to write me.

I have been through two or three of these cataclysms myself, harder than yours because of their unusual and unsympathetic situations. Maybe I have gained something by them, I don’t know,--but it is certain that I lost a great deal too.

88: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland?_] _Feb. 25th --’22_

Dear Gorham: Arrived yesterday the new _Gargoyle_. Altogether not such a poor issue as Matty predicted in one of his letters of last month. Your translations amuse me without interesting me as thoroughly as your nicely administered spanking of McAlmon. Maybe your translations (or rather selections) would excite me somewhat if I weren’t somehow so hopelessly tired of Art and theories about Art lately. I can’t quite account for it--never having suffered from indigestion like this before. It is, after all, I suppose, because I have nothing of my own to “give,” and therefore feel so little at stake in all the deluge of production and argument that I grow either bewildered or else indifferent. I am going through a difficult readjustment right now, besides meeting a period in my so-called “creative life” where neither my conscious self nor my unconscious self can get enough “co-operation” from the other to do anything worth while. I wrote something recently which I thought, on the moment, was good. Today I have faced it as a hopeless failure, disjointed and ugly and vain. I am only momentarily depressed by these facts, however, as I am kept so busy with my ad writing that I haven’t time to think much about it. --/--/

89: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Jamestown, New York_ _March 2, 1922_

Dear Bill: This is my second excursion to this place, no doubt somewhat familiar to you,--having been here part of last week. It’s a matter of business for the Co. (“investigation of the product,” in ad. lingo) and I rather enjoy getting out of Cleveland for a day or so. I’ve been getting out a catalog for the Art Metal folks here and puzzling my head over blue prints and figures until I have become somewhat dull. --/--/

By this time I suppose you are back again and full tilt in your customary carousels. I was glad to know that the trouble with you was only “physiological.” By this time you have probably read some of De Gourmont’s observations on that sort of thing, and, wise man!, were fully experienced to appreciate them. What an awful lot of novel forms there are! The novel is the most flexible literary form there is. It permits the freest and completest expression. Have you read Louis Hemon’s _Maria Chapdelaine_ yet? The young French emigrant who wrote it died shortly afterward, but for what it intends it is one of the most finished things one could hope for. Human emotion in it is like delicate pastel tinted flowers on a background of midnight black. The black terrific power of the forest and winter threatens continually behind every word in the action. But I am nowhere near so enthused about this book as I am about Gogol’s _Taras Bulba_ that I read on the train recently. I think someone has called it the Russian _Iliad_. It is certainly not secondary to _The Iliad_ in many ways. That sting and tang of those Cossack adventures are something I won’t forget, and the hero, old Taras, is altogether memorable. This is something you _must_ read.

I don’t want to go any further without thanking you for your “Ballade.” I find so much that is good in it that I am tempted beyond the proper respect for your very dégagé gesture of presentation in your letter, and want to risk the impropriety of some criticism of it. The main faults of it are faults inherent with the form you used. I do not, as you know, insist by any means on vers libre forms. But it is just when I see such a thing as your ballade with the (unavoidable) tiresome repetitions of sound or rhyme, that I am most moved to applaud even the slouchy vers libre work that seems to “get over” its meaning or lack of meaning at least without that mechanical insistence of certain formal patterns that can sometimes infuriate me. For instance, after “sweet, feet, deceit, conceit, and fleet” have all successively pecked at the ear, along comes “discreet retreat”!!, giving the whole poem at the point a tone of the neatest mean-ness. And that sort of tone is exactly what you do not want,--at least not along with some of your quite exquisite imagery that speaks in largeness of a full heart.

The first verse, the first four lines especially, is fine, and the idea behind that “discreet retreat behind sophistications of bread and meat” is good. It would be improved by using another and richer word than “sophistications” just to _improve_ the sophistication a little, however. I feel this way,--that however you wrote this poem,--in jest, literary exercise, or emotionally,--it proves distinct poetic possibilities in you, which, whether you care to follow or not, are still there. Why don’t you work this poem into an easier form or perhaps into a vers libre form? I could do it to show you what I mean, but that would take all the fun out of it for you. Forms as strict as the ballade, can, in my opinion, be used satisfactorily for only very artificial subjects, or abstract themes.

I’ve been doing something myself, but don’t feel satisfied enough with it yet to send it.

90: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _March 2, ’22_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ Just now, I apologize for it, I am so much worried by family finances that it’s hard for me to do anything more than my work. My mother’s alimony has reached its limited time and she is preparing (at 45 yrs. of age!) to go out into the world to learn to make her living!

I, naturally, shall henceforward be called upon not only to “keep” myself, but to lend as much of a helping hand as is possible in this predicament. So, it’s hard work for some time ahead for me, I guess. My present wages just suffice for my own limited requirements. My pater is too much of a cad to really do anything for his former wife except what the agreement between them says. The fact that this was made when she was partially out of mind and very ill, makes no difference to him.

However, I shall not resign myself to the proverbial and sentimental fate of the “might-have-been” artist without a few more strenuosities. I will have to expect a certain tardiness of gait, however.

I have just read Aldous Huxley’s latest, _Crome Yellow_, one of those things that evokes much quiet laughter and holds delightful savours, at least for a contemporary, between its covers. -- -- -- --

As no good plays ever get to Cleveland, and the Chicago opera not at all this year, my outside entertainment has been meagre. Only a symphony concert every other week, and little new there.

Ernest Bloch, however, conducted two weeks ago his _Trois Poèmes Juifs_ which were magnificent enough for Solomon to have marched & sung to. I occasionally pass him on the streets or in the aisles of the auditorium, and realize that genius, after all, may walk in Cleveland. -- -- -- --

91: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _March 24th_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ You know I shall talk it [_Secession_] up,--but the worst is that most of my acquaintances are totally unfitted for enthusiasms of this sort. The indifference you will encounter when you return to these States you must be prepared to face. Every one is suddenly and enormously _busy_--making money, attending teas, motoring, starving--God knows what all. It makes me reel! Life is too scattered for me to savor it any more. Probably this is only on account of my present work which demands the most frequent jerks of the imagination from one thing to another, still--the war certainly has changed things a bit here. The question in my mind is, how much less vertigo are we going to suffer in the latter whirl than we did in the first blows and commotion. If I am drifting into nonsense, it must be because I’m getting no time lately for anything but work.

If you come home in May--one of the first things you must do is to make me a good visit. You will be free to come, whereas there is a considerable doubt now about my coming east at all this summer. Here in my tower-study, rimmed with Sommer paintings and grey cracked paper, you will have a good chance to focus your recent observations -- -- -- --. Besides,--you have never seen any of the midwest, and it ought to be part of your education. --/--/

92: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _March 29th, ’22_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ With the banal arrival of spring and weeks of rain and cloudy skies, I have again fallen in love! I guess I might about as well take up quarters at La Rotonde--and be done with it. However, _something_ must be indulged in to make Cleveland interesting.

93: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Cleveland, O._ _April 2nd_

Dear Bill: Your prose is much better than your verse. I don’t know how to explain--perhaps if I saw more of your poetry I might,--but certainly the story you recently sent me makes me quite certain of it. The poem has the tepid and pubescent steam in it that always seems to issue from the environs of a college campus. It is college adolescence in only a slight advance from the ordinary. It has enough in it to “get by” on the first reading with a rather pleasing effect. But the second discovers much to be criticized. It’s not in the technique but in the attitude that I blame you for this. You have a real flair for phrasing, and two years ago I should have probably praised you for the poem.

But now let’s turn to the story. It is vital and well told. Nobody can imitate Anderson, of course, but that is not what we want anyway. Your story stands on its own feet quite well. In some places it is too accented. I say this in spite of my realization of the intent of it and also via recommending the very effective literary device of under-accentuation in just the right place to produce “overtones” of overwhelming effect. Then you could afford to be more sparing of adjectives! But I won’t rail any further! You certainly are displaying evidence and promises of a hopeful career. If you don’t get too engrossed in commerce after you leave college the break will do you good, I think. No matter how “free” one may be in college, the campus world with its idols and codes is very different from the world outside. Don’t think, please, that I’m decrying education, it’s only a mention that things are somehow harder and a little “scarey.” “Practical people” suddenly surround one, and they have such an insistence about being listened to. --/--/

The more speed I develop in ad-writing the more occasion I’m given to use it, and I seem to need to keep in touch with so many people that the hours spent at home are too few. This hankering for continual conversational excitement is one of my weaknesses. What I _should_ be doing is working. Truly, on this gay Sunday afternoon, my conscience is weighted.

94: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _April 19th --’22_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ The two copies of _Secession_ reached me yesterday. Of course they were immediately and doubly devoured. But right here I ought to stop--I have so many things to say about it. --/--/

I find I have many, at least several disagreements with you. I can’t say nearly so much for Matty’s poem as you do--I mean the Café phallicus. The Tzara poem is perfectly flat. The Cowley poem is encouraging, although dreadfully alike something he had published in one of the last _L.R’s_. The Aragon prose is, in its odd way, a quite beautiful thing. But what has happened to Matty!?! And,--just _why_ is Apollinaire so portentous a god? Will radios, flying machines, and cinemas have such a great effect on poetry in the end? All this talk of Matty’s is quite stimulating, but it’s like coffee--twenty-four hours afterward not much remains to work with. It is metallic and pointillistic--not derogatory terms to my mind at all, but somehow thin,--a little too slender and “smart”--after all.

O Matty must be amusing himself perfectly in Paris. And so he took you to be a real, honest-to-God disreputable and commercial editor! Serve you right, you bad boy, following the primrose path of the magazines! --/--/

95: TO CHARMION WIEGAND

_Cleveland, Ohio_ _May 6th, ’22_

Dear Charmion: --/--/ You must put me in direct touch with Emil Reeck, however, as soon as possible. I have just written Anderson all about the plan, and shall rush the answer to you as soon as possible. But letters take such a dreadfully long time to get back and forth and you say you are leaving Berlin just about a month from now!! I somehow feel as though I were rushing to catch a train!

I very much agree with you that Germany would be really appreciative of Anderson, and they ought to have him. However, as Huebsch, Anderson’s publisher, is himself a German and very much in touch with Berlin, I suspect that already translation arrangements may have been started. Anderson is having a great enough vogue here at present to turn the head of anyone but a pessimist like Anderson. He is, I understand, very much made of by _The Nouvelle Revue Francaise_ Group (headed by Jacques Copeau) and has been translated into French. His trip to Europe last summer put him in direct touch with all the younger crowd in France. However, we’ll see about Germany. There is still a chance.

Did I tell you that our friend, Gorham Munson, has been in Europe all this time? He is the one we went with to that meeting against prohibition, restricted speech, or something at some church on Central Park W. one night. Gilbert Cannan spoke, etc. Munson has been quite a bit in Berlin, and from Vienna has started a new literary magazine of his own, _Secession_, which is (first number) just seeping into this country. Munson must have just arrived in New York again, is due to anyway. He expects to print his magazine in Vienna right along as he can get it done there so much cheaper. His magazine is filled with quite ultra things by EE Cummings, Marianne Moore, Slater Brown, Matthew Josephson, Malcolm Cowley, etc., all of whom were with him in Paris last fall and winter when the inception of the magazine took place. I am sceptical about all such dear, darling and courageous and brief attempts, but shall do my best to make his magazine a success, despite my literary and philosophical differences with him in this project. --/--/

Thinking it might interest Chaplin to read the poem I wrote about him, I sent it to him,--and with the result that today I’ve received a most delightful acknowledgment of the same.... You know I worship Chaplin’s work. Think he is the greatest living actor I’ve seen, and the prime interpreter of the soul imposed upon by modern civilization. --/--/

You asked about French books. I have not been reading much modern work, but I am in touch with a good deal of it through a French-Swiss painter friend of mine here who has modern tastes and is in touch with Europe and the best of it all the time. --/--/

Any of the works of Andre Gide are good, same of older ones like Rimbaud, Laforgue (Jules) and Guillaume Apollinaire. The latter’s _Calligrammes_ and _Alcools_ (poems) are just being talked about in this country. I am mad about Laforgue, but he is hard to translate and very acid.

There is a wild bird and fashionable, Jean Cocteau, who writes plays, poetry and novelties that I understand is the present king of les boulevards, but I haven’t read him. The scene in France today is, I judge, about as scattered as the Genoa Conference. Everybody is being intensely clever, and everybody is also worried about what new standard tomorrow may erect. However, I have tried to name people here who have already been more-or-less settled and accepted, or who bid fair to be.

The people I am closest to in English are Yeats, Eliot, Pound, and the dear great Elizabethans like Marlowe, Webster, Donne and Drayton, whom I never weary of. I’ve lately been enjoying Melville’s _Moby Dick_, however. --/--/

I’ll write to you as soon as I hear from Anderson. If you come across any good monograph on Cezanne in Germany I would be glad to pay you for it as soon as you get back. Otherwise--with the exception of a good book illustrating Greek Vases well, I can’t think of anything.

96: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _May 16th ’22_

Hooray Whoop La! That little note on the back of the envelope meant a lot to me. And I somehow feel good that you are once more with me on the same stretch of land! Jump right on the train, old dear, and I’ll meet you at the station. I’m very anxious to see you. I want you to meet this _great_ Bill Sommer--and tell me all about all you have done and seen. I have the assurance now that you’ll come as soon as you can get the money, and it makes me quite happy.

Your rough & tedious transition back to the States gave you a good chance to prepare for the surprises of New York--there must have been some new aspects of the place awaiting you. I know that even a few months in the West Indies and Canada open your eyes to new things on your return. Of course there will be only too evident all the old aggravations,--but from occasional references in your letters I judge that you have more than once been touched by these same things during the last six months. The world is fast becoming standardized,--and who knows but what our American scene will be the most intricate and absorbing one in fifty years or so?

Something is happening. Some kind of aristocracy of taste is being established,--there is more of it evidenced every year. People like you, Matty and I belong here. Especially Matty, who was doing better work last summer before he got in touch with the Paris crowd than I suspect since. --/--/ His present crazes are, frankly, beyond my understanding. They are so much so that I have still a great deal of confidence that no matter how wild and eccentric he becomes, it’s just a phase which will be a practical benefit in the end. But, on the other hand, if one denies all emotional suffering the result is a rather frigid (however “gay”) type of work. Let us watch & pray! --/--/

97: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Same evening (May 16th)_

Dear Gorham: I forgot to mention that the art books reached me and how pleased I am. Derain is one of my favorites--more even than Matisse & Picasso--and Vlaminck I have long admired. Marie Laurencin is amusing--but no more than any febrile female. Have you seen the amazing satires of Georg(?) Grosz and the beautiful metaphysics of Chirico? My friend Lescaze has put me in touch with a lot of moderns that I fear, off here in Cleveland, I should otherwise never have heard of.

I’m at work on a metaphysical attempt of my own--again I mention the familiar “Faustus & Helen” affair which has received a little stimulus lately. The trouble is--I get so little _expanse_ of time undisturbed for it, that it’s hopelessly fragmentary so far. Here is a tentative beginning. -- -- -- -- [See Weber, _op. cit._, p. 175]

I wish you would tell me how you like my translations from Laforgue’s “Locutions des Pierrots” in the current _Double Dealer_.

You will notice below them a very interesting poem by Allen Tate. This poem interested me so much that I wrote him a letter and his answer reached me along with yours today. --/--/

98: TO ALLEN TATE

_Cleveland_ _May 16th ’22_

Dear Allen Tate: Being born in ’99, I too, have a little toe-nail in the last century. You are not alone in all your youth and disgrace! But perhaps the umbilical cord made a clean margin of it with you, for I am reminded that it is 1922 and there is a chance of that. I popped on the scene shortly after Independence Day! and consequently have always had a dread of firecrackers.

Despite all this desperate imminence, I want to thank you for your answer to my letter. It has thrown me clear off the advertising copy work I brought home with me (yes, I’m one of the band!) as I feel more like putting that off until tomorrow, than this. But on the other hand there are so many things I want to say that I don’t know where to begin. Letters are sometimes worse than nothing, especially for introductions, so if I am chatty and autobiographical you must pardon it.

Certain educated friends of mine have lamented my scant education, not in the academic sense, but as regards my acceptance and enthusiasm about some modern French work without having placed it in relation to most of the older “classics,” which I haven’t read. I have offered apologies, but continued to accept fate, which seems to limit me continually in some directions. Nevertheless, my affection for Laforgue is none the less genuine for being led to him through Pound and T. S. Eliot than it would have been through Baudelaire. There are always people to class one’s admirations and enthusiasms illegitimate, and though I still have to have the dictionary close by when I take up a French book, a certain sympathy with Laforgue’s attitude made me an easier translator of the three poems in _The D.D._ than perhaps an accomplished linguist might have been. However, no one ought to be particularly happy about a successful translation. I did them for fun, and it finally occurred to me that I might as well be paid for them.

As I said before, it is because your poem seemed so much in line with the kind of thing I am wanting to do, that I felt almost compelled to write you. While I am always interested in the latest developments in poetry I am inveterately devoted to certain English old fellows that are a constant challenge. I refer to Donne, Webster, Jonson, Marlowe, Vaughan, Blake, etc. More “modernly,” have you read and admired Yeats (later poems), Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Edward Thomas, Wallace Stevens? I am missing a few, but I like all these people.

I am interested greatly in seeing your poems in _The Fugitive_. It occurs to me that my friend, Gorham Munson, editor of _Secession_, would possibly be interested in publishing some of your things, although he can’t pay anything yet for mss. Notice and N.Y. address of his magazine are in the back pages of the current _D.D._ I am trying to give him something myself, but I write so little that I simply haven’t anything. The last went to _The Dial_ and ought to be out next month.

Don’t tell me you like the enclosed poems unless you really do. You may have seen them in different places, but I’m in the dark as to that.

P.S. Robinson is very interesting--his work is real and permanent, yet it is also a tragedy--one of the tragedies of Puritanism, materialism, America and the last century. Wm. Vaughn Moody’s beautiful tonality suffered in a kind of vacuum, too. We are more fortunate today, despite Amy Lowell!

The poetry of negation is beautiful--alas, too dangerously so for one of my mind. But I am trying to break away from it. Perhaps this is useless, perhaps it is silly--but one _does_ have joys. The vocabulary of damnations and prostrations has been developed at the expense of these other moods, however, so that it is hard to dance in proper measure. Let us invent an idiom for the proper transposition of jazz into words! Something clean, sparkling, elusive!

99: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _June 4th ’22_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- I probably should not be here at the Corona were it not that I want you to see the new coin from the mint enclosed herewith.

I have been at it for the last 24 hours and it may be subjected to a few changes and additions, but as I see it now in the red light of the womb it seems to me like a work of youth and magic.

At any rate, it is something entirely new in English poetry, so far as I know. The jazz rhythms in that first verse are something I have been impotently wishing to “do” for many a day. It is the second part of the (three section) “Marriage of Faustus and Helen” that I must have tired you with mentioning. The other parts are entirely unlike it, and God knows when they will be done. The first part is just begun. However, I have considerable ambitions in this opus, as I have told you. Please let me know your sentiments regarding the enclosed.

The reassurance of your projected visit here makes me happy in spite of rose-fever cyclones. What talks we shall have! and there are three others here who have heard so much about you that they are anxious to meet you too. Bill Sommer has moved to his country place where the charming schoolhouse-studio is located. We shall have to spend a week-end there among the gay canvasses that line its walls.

100: TO ALLEN TATE

_Cleveland_ _June 12th_

Dear Allen: So you are in love with the dear Duchess of Malfi also! How lovely she speaks in that one matchless passage: --/--[17] Exquisite pride surrendering to love! And it was this that faced all the brutality of circumstance in those hideous and gorgeous final scenes of the play! The old betrayals of life, and yet they are worth something--from a distance, afterward.

What you say about Eliot does not surprise me,--but you will recover from the shock. No one ever says the last word, and it is a good thing for you, (notice how I congratulate myself!) to have been faced with him as early as possible. I have been facing him for _four_ years,--and while I haven’t discovered a weak spot yet in his armour, I flatter myself a little lately that I have discovered a safe tangent to strike which, if I can possibly explain the position,--goes _through_ him toward a _different goal_. You see it is such a fearful temptation to imitate him that at times I have been almost distracted. He is, you have now discovered, far more profound than Huxley (whom I like) or any others obviously under his influence. You will profit by reading him again and again. I must have read “Prufrock” twenty-five times and things like the “Preludes” more often. His work will lead you back to some of the Elizabethans and point out the best in them. And there is Henry James, Laforgue, Blake and a dozen others in his work. He wrote most of this verse between 22 and 25, and is now, I understand, dying piecemeal as a clerk in a London bank! In his own realm Eliot presents us with an absolute _impasse_, yet oddly enough, he can be utilized to lead us to, intelligently point to, other positions and “pastures new.” Having absorbed him enough we can trust ourselves as never before, in the air or on the sea. I, for instance, would like to leave a few of his “negations” behind me, risk the realm of the obvious more, in quest of new sensations, _humeurs_. These theories and manoeuvres are interesting and consolatory,--but of course, when it comes right down to the act itself,--I have to depend on intuition, “inspiration” or what you will to fill up the page. Let us not be too much disturbed, antagonized or influenced by the _fait accompli_. For in the words of our divine object of “envy” (“Reflections on Contemporary Poetry,” _Egoist_, London, ’19--): “Admiration leads most often to imitation; we can seldom long remain unconscious of our imitating another, and the awareness of our imitation naturally leads us to hatred of the object imitated. If we stand toward a writer in this other relation of which I speak we do not imitate him, and though we are quite as [....]”[18]

101: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] [_ca. June 18_]

Dear Gorham: I have been in a house up in “Little Italy,” a section of Sicilian immigrants very near our house where one can get good three-year Chianti,--and incidentally am feeling very fine as Sunday evenings go. _There_ is the place to enjoy oneself, in the family parlour of a pickslinger’s family with chromos on the walls that are right in style of Derain and Vlaminck. Bitch dogs and the rest of the family wander in while the bottle is still half empty and some of the family offspring. _Tristram Shandy_ read to a friend with a Spanish Bolero going on the Victrola sounds good in such a milieu! I never should live without wine! When you come here we shall make many visits to this charming family. You will like my classic, puritan, inhibited friend Sam Loveman who translates Baudelaire charmingly! It is hard to get him to do anything outside the imagination,--but he is charming and has just given me a most charming work on Greek Vases (made in Deutschland) in which satyrs with great erections prance to the ceremonies of Dionysios with all the fervour of de Gourmont’s descriptions of sexual sacrifice in _Physique de L’Amour_, which I am lately reading in trans.

I am glad you like Lescaze’s portrait of me. He _has_ an athletic style. Your criticism of painting et al strikes me as very exact and appreciative--at least, as far as I am able to justly criticize it. He hates Cleveland with all the awareness of the recent description of this place accorded in the last _Masses_ or _Liberator_, as I understand. Just now I am in too banal a mood to give sympathy to anything. At times, dear Gorham, I feel an enormous power in me--that seems almost supernatural. If this power is not too dissipated in aggravation and discouragement I may amount to something sometime. I can say this now with perfect equanimity because I am notoriously drunk and the Victrola is still going with that glorious “Bolero.” Did I tell you of that thrilling experience this last winter in the dentist’s chair when under the influence of aether and _amnesia_ my mind spiraled to a kind of seventh heaven of consciousness and egoistic dance among the seven spheres--and something like an objective voice kept saying to me--“You have the higher consciousness--you have the higher consciousness. This is something that very few have. This is what is called genius.”? A happiness, ecstatic such as I have known only twice in “inspirations” came over me. I felt the two worlds. And at once. As the bore went into my tooth I was able to follow its every revolution as detached as a spectator at a funeral. O Gorham, I have known moments in eternity. I tell you this as one who is a brother. I want you to know me as I feel myself to be sometimes. I don’t want you to feel that I am conceited. But since this adventure in the dentist’s chair, I feel a new confidence in myself. At least I had none of the ordinary hallucinations common to this operation. Even that means something. You know I live for work,--for poetry. I shall do my best work later on when I am about 35 or 40. The imagination is the only thing worth a damn. Lately I have grown terribly isolated, and very egoist. One has to do it [in] Cleveland. I rush home from work to my room hung with the creations of Sommer and Lescaze--and fiddle through the evenings. If I could afford wine _every_ evening I might do more. But I am slow anyway. However, today I have made a good start on the first part of “Faustus & Helen.” I am, needless to say, delighted that you like the second part so well. The other two parts are to be quite different. But, as yet, I am dubious about the successful eventuation of the poem as a _whole_. Certainly it is the most ambitious thing I have ever attempted and in it I am attempting to evolve a conscious pseudo-symphonic construction toward an abstract beauty that has not been done before in English--at least directly. If I can get this done in the way I hope--I might get some consideration for _The Dial_ prize. Perhaps I’m a fool for such hopes--sooner or later I expect to get that yearly donation. --/--/

I am not going to read this over in the clear sober light of the dawn. Take it for what it is worth tonight when I seal the envelope--_if_ you can read it!

102: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _June 22nd_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ This is just rushed off between jobs. I must have insulted you to the limit with that letter of Sunday night,--but when I am filled up I am feeling too good to be taken seriously, so please don’t mind.[19] Your applause of the “Faustus and Helen II” has heartened me, although I am having a terrible time with the first part of it. The best way for me to speed up, I guess, is to forget all about time and be quite indifferent. --/--/

103: TO ----

[_Cleveland_] _4th of July_

Dear ----: --/--/ I am sorry to disappoint you about my “Praise.” There were no accouchements there at all. Not even temptations in that direction. It is, or was, entirely “platonic.” Nelson was a Norwegian who rebelled against the religious restrictions of home and came to America when a mere kid. Went to art school in Washington and won some kind of distinguished medal there. As soon as he was through school, an aunt of his in America who had been paying his tuition abruptly withdrew all her help and forced him into the prostitution of all his ideals and a cheap lithographic work that he was never able to pull out of afterward. He wrote several good poems published in _Scribner’s_ & _Century_ a long time ago, got married, and I finally met him here in Cleveland where he had been living in seclusion for a number of years. One of the best-read people I ever met, wonderful kindliness and tolerance and a true Nietzschean. He was one of many broken against the stupidity of American life in such places as here. I think he has had a lasting influence on me. --/--/

104: TO ALLEN TATE

[_Cleveland_] _July 19th, ’22_

Dear Allen: -- -- -- -- Let me salute you again. “Bored to Choresis” is as good as “Euthanasia,”--if not better. You do the trick here. Your vocabulary is exceedingly interesting--you have a way of meticulously accenting certain things in a quiet, yet withal so sharp a note, that the effect is greater than as though you roared. “Tribal library,” “Her rhythms are reptilian and religious,” etc., are excellent. And then, of course, I like your lunge at the bourgeois literary biographical interests. No one has ever put it better than you have.

You see what is good about this poem is over and above the merely personal sketches and digs that Robinson has been getting you into. Here you come into something larger, as you did in “Euthanasia,” where you hit all humanity a few slaps, but in so interesting a way! In other words,--this poem is _creative_ where the ordinary “character” portrait is merely analytic and, generally, unimportant (at least in poetry). You needn’t be afraid of running too squarely into Eliot with work like this.

I would like to see you follow out the directions indicated in this poem--not their downward slant (interesting enough), but (if you get what I mean) their upward slant into something broadly human. Launch into praise. _You_ are one who can give praise an edge and beauty, Allen. You have done so well in a couple of damnations, that I feel confident in you.

I must close. Bosses brush near my shoulder, and poetry isn’t exactly encouraged around here. Munson is strong for you with this new poem. I think he would like it for _Secession_ if _The Dial_ does not take it. He asks me to inform you that no particular “jargon” is necessary for _Secession_ contributors. Be your own language--in so pure a way that it will be noticeable, and you will do well enough.

My hay fever temporarily passes. I peer again on the world with subsiding eyes. It’s a pleasure to think you of down in the clear valleys, and feeling so top-spinning! Marriage! Well, it sounds ominous. Think well, beforehand. Are you easily satisfied? That’s the main danger.

105: TO ----

[_Cleveland_] _July 27th, ’22_

Dear ----: --/--/ I feel like shouting _EUREKA_! When Munson went yesterday after a two weeks visit, he left my copy of _Ulysses_, a huge tome printed on Verge d’arche paper. But do you know--since reading it

## partially, I do not think I will care to trust it to any bookbinder I

know of. It sounds ridiculous, but the book is so strong in its marvelous oaths and blasphemies, that I wouldn’t have an easy moment while it was out of the house. You will pardon my strength of opinion on the thing, but it appears to me easily the epic of the age. It is as great a thing as Goethe’s _Faust_ to which it has a distinct resemblance in many ways. The sharp beauty and sensitivity of the thing! The matchless details! I DO HOPE you get a copy, but from what Munson says there is little hope unless you can get some friend of yours in Europe to smuggle it in in his trunk. It has been barred from England. It is quite likely I have one of two or three copies west of New York. _The Dial_ ordered six and has only been able to get one so far, etc., etc. Munson, who met Joyce several times in Paris last summer, tells me that the Man Ray photo of J. in the recent _Vanity Fair_ is really not a good resemblance. The face is not so puffy-looking, nor the odd ocular expression. Man Ray, you know, has his own individual temperament to express! Ah, these interesting photographers. Joyce dresses quietly and neatly. Is very quiet in manner, and, Anderson says, does not seem to have read anything contemporary for years. His book is steeped in the Elizabethans, his early love, and Latin Church, and some Greek;--but the man rarely talks about books. I rather like him for that. --/--/

Joyce is still very poor. Recently some French writers headed by Valery Larbaud, gave a dinner and reading for his benefit. It is my opinion that some fanatic will kill Joyce sometime soon for the wonderful things said in _Ulysses_. Joyce is too big for chit-chat, so I hope I haven’t offended you with the above details about him. He is the one above all others I should like to talk to.

I have been very quiet while Munson has been here. Tonight, however, I break out into fresh violences. --/--/ And thanks, dear -- -- -- --, for the newspaper bundle. In the _Times_ I enjoyed Colum’s account of Joyce’s early Dublin days, although he told me the story of the Yeats encounter several years ago. --/--/

106: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Aug. 7th, ’22_

Dear Gorham: I sent 27 Sommer things off to Anderson last Saturday, feeling very much as though I were delivering Plato into the hands of the Philistines. Anderson has been very nasty besides being “just another fool.” I have been shocked, sensation very rare with me, with the contents of your letter relating his manoeuvres. He is evidently none too sure of the quality of his work so highly praised by Rosenfeld. I realize that he insulted me while he was here--it wasn’t necessary to tell fibs to avoid my company--but I shall beam on until all hope of his getting Bill an audience has vanished. In that event, I judge by your letter that we can depend fairly certainly on Frank, and Stieglitz, perhaps. I haven’t much hope in Anderson’s interest in anything connected with us now, after disgracing himself the way he has. Encore, regardez, mon ami,--don’t let kittens out of the bag before they have claws again if you want to be an effective iconoclast. --/--/

Why haven’t I received _Secession_ #2 yet? Your letter of last week mentions it, and I am anxious to get at it. I got the new _Broom_ with your Epstein trans. in it and Matty’s very clever translations and criticisms. Delightful “Blahs” and “blagues,” too! Matty has developed a “high hand” attitude in criticism that is (to anyone ignorant of his subject matter, direct contact with his authors, etc.) as effective and compelling as Pound’s. I am beginning to see little Caesarian laurels sprouting on his brow. His (anti-Zwaska) Caesarian attitude is not a little pleasing. Matty and Julius! Surely they have both gone into Gaul with somewhat the same stones, though Matty will have to wait until he gets back to the good old U.S.A. to be divided into three parts!

I am glad Frank took so well to your book. I have since wanted to read it over again, say fresh in the morning to better absorb its many compact and rich allusions toward your esthétique. Stupid and hasty as this letter is--I hope you won’t think I am satisfied with it. I’ve got so much on my mind that you must bear with me until a cool day comes when I shall not be so tired at night, nor the garret study be so hot as it is this evening. I enclose some poetry.[20] I think the first part of “Faustus” is about right now. Tell me what you think of the thing as a whole. Read it entirely over from the first so as to judge better of my graduation from the quotidian into the abstract, and tell me frankly what you think about it. I have been so close to the thing for so long a time that at present I cannot judge it _synthetically_ at all. The third part has not been even started yet. The other evening I had a hint for the speed that I wanted in something like the following [four] lines: -- -- -- --[20] But I have found nothing yet to satisfy me at all. It must be a dramatic comment done somewhat in a new idiom. I have got to search awhile yet for it. Meanwhile I have a homely and gay thing to show you that I did yesterday out of sheer joy, “Thinking of Bill----“, etc.[21] -- -- -- --

Joyce is being savoured slowly--with steady pleasure. Meanwhile I find _Enormous Room_ a stimulating article. It has taught me to better appreciate Cummings’ poetry--although the things in the last _Broom_ of his are, I think, boresome. _Since Cezanne_ by Bell has interested me a good deal.

_Dominick!_ O yes! I think we both were bored with the climacteric after your departure. I have not seen him since!

“The Bottom of the Sea” is too deep for me to model yet as I want it. I haven’t forgotten it though.

107: TO CHARMION WIEGAND

_Cleveland, O._ _Aug. 15th, ’22_

Dear Charmion: You will be delighted to know, I’m sure, that the Anderson trans. matter has been settled. I got a letter from Huebsch last week saying that he had given Herr Reeck the rights--so _some_ letters got across the waters anyway! This suggests the mention that Anderson was here about six weeks ago while Munson was visiting me, and came out to the house for an evening. The man’s personal charm supported the impressions his letters had given me (we had never actually met before) but I have been very disappointed in him since he went down to N. Y. afterward and stirred up a petty rumpus in _The Dial_ office, about something that Munson told him [in Cleveland] on the subject of Rosenfeld’s position as a critic, etc. The story is not worth going into, but it showed Anderson to be surprisingly petty and malignant, not to say untactful. La-La! Well,--he hasn’t yet destroyed my taste for some of his work yet--despite that most of my friends don’t value his work above a Russian rouble.

“Pandora’s Box” is a good piece of “general” criticism. It is more social than literary and is the kind of thing, above all, that Americans need to read. I hope you find a good market for it. You must let me know where and when your things are published so I can look for them and get them.

Since Munson brought me my copy of _Ulysses_ I have been having high times. A book that in many ways surpasses anything I have ever read. 800 pgs! You must read E. E. Cummings’ _Enormous Room_ for a real inspiration in language and humanity.

The first issue of _Secession_ does not come up to the second, now out. You should get it somewhere there in N. Y. and read Cowley’s two poems and Josephson’s story. “The Oblate.” --/--/

108: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Friday night_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- My enthusiasms, the hot weather, the onset of hay fever, the infinite and distasteful detail work I have been doing at the office, and the suspense of finding another position, etc., etc., have brought me very near the ground. In fact, for several days this week I have been unable to retain food and have thought at any moment something would snap and I would go into a million pieces. I haven’t felt as “dangerously” for several years. But I am picking up today--since I have got the job matter settled and informed the office that I shall not be with them after the first of September. This bit of news I had the wonderful pleasure of delivering to them just as my boss was starting in on a series of gentle reprimands, etc., and so instead of ever hearing the end of that rigmarole--I was begged to remain at a higher salary. Where I am going however, I shall have complete charge of the copy work and shall receive ten dollars a week more to start with and a considerable raise within sixty days. I was literally urged to come with them--a new agency--which was a unique pleasure for me!

Well,--we heard from Anderson! Rosenfeld’s remarks along with those of several other artists present at the time of the “trial” were quoted in effect that S[ommer] was not a notable man at all--had no personal vision--his work a mixture of half-a-dozen modern influences--and _couldn’t draw a head on man, woman or animal_! Anderson was very sorry he had had anything to do with any adverse criticism, etc., etc. So much for that. Dear G., let us create our own little vicious circle! Let us erect it on the remains of such as Paul Rosenfeld. But enough of this for now.

Of course I’m enthusiastic about “Faustus and Helen” now! Who wouldn’t be after your comments. However,--when it comes to the last section--I think I shall not attempt to make it the paragon of SPEED that I thought of. I think it needs more sheer weight than such a motive would provide. Beyond this I have only the surety that it is, of course, to include a comment on the world war--and be Promethean in mood. What made the first part of my poem so good was the extreme amount of time, work and thought put on it. The following is my beginning of the last part--at present: --/--/ How neatly here is violence clothed in pathos! --/--/

109: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Thursday_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ My vacation has given me the time to read _Rahab_ and finish _Ulysses_. _Rahab_ is a beautiful book. It has a synthetic beauty that is more evident than the lyric note behind _Ulysses_. It contains beautiful language--Frank is a real artist--no doubt about that and of course way beyond Anderson when it comes to craft. My only doubt about _Rahab_ comes in with the question, as yet undecided, as to whether or not there isn’t a slight touch of sentimentality attached to Frank’s “mysticism.” Certainly the man is not a _realist_--certainly he is sincere. There is also this question--Fanny’s later development, so far as I can see, does not put her far enough beyond her initial appreciation of life at the time she is deserted by her husband to warrant the stress on that thesis which Frank evidently intends as the _motif_ of the book. As a picture of crucifixion the book is superb--but, after all, what tangible gain has Fanny got out of it except an attitude that Butler outlines in some such words as I believe I have repeated to you: “No one has ever begun to really appreciate life, or lived, until he has recognized the background of life as essentially Tragedy.” It is from this platform of perception that I conceive every artist as beginning his work. Does Frank consider Fanny’s course as complete where he leaves her at the end of _Rahab_--or isn’t there still something more to be said? The reason I pose this question is because Stephen Daedalus has already gone as far as Fanny before _Ulysses_ begins. The _Portrait_ took him beyond where Fanny sits at the end of _Rahab_. Of course it would stretch reality a great deal, probably, to take Fanny Dirk any further--but, in my mind, it is just this stubborn impossibility (however nonresponsible Frank may be) that makes my judgment of _Rahab_ suffer in the light of _Ulysses_. Perhaps I am unfair and “all off.” Both books, however, have a strong ethical and Nietzschean basis and reading them at the same time as I have, I am irresistibly drawn into comparisons. Frank is so young that he has lots of time to benefit by Joyce and even go further--although I doubt if such will will be done for a hundred years or more. The point is--after all--I am interested in Frank and thank you for putting me out of prejudice. As an American today he is certainly in the front line--no doubt about that at all. --/--/

110: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Monday_

Dear Gorham: I’m glad that Burke meets you in approving the “sea” poem,[22] and I’m sorry that it is, or at least appears to be beyond me to make changes in it. Of course you know I have never been very enthusiastic about it. Its only value in my mind rests in its approach to the “advertisement” form that I am contemplating and, I think, spoke to you about. It is a kind of poster,--in fact, you might name it “Poster” if the idea hits you. There is nothing more profound in it than a “stop, look and listen” sign. And it is the conception of the poem that makes me like the last line as I do--merely bold and unambitious like a skull & cross-bones insignia. --/--/

111: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Tuesday_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ God! I wish I were on the New York scene, what with the items of your last letter. I was especially thrilled at the Damon book on Blake. You know how much Blake has always interested me. I’ve always thought Damon a very capable figure, and hope you get the Vers-Libre histoire for _Secession_. Sam [Loveman] was telling me today that he had seen some notice of issue #3 of that notable sheet in Sunday’s [N. Y.] _Times_, with a mention specific of Matty too.

I answered jh last Saturday, with a slight reprimand for the impotence of her “kick” at you in _The L. R._ I should rather like to see her aggravated a little longer, which is pretty sure to occur. I, as you know, have a certain admiration for Cuthbert Wright, but I felt his anti-DADA article in _The D. D._ was rather weak. I’m so tired of seeing the _young_ turn their heads and wag them despairingly at every modern manifestation. They don’t need to accept them all,--but it’s so uninspiring to see them turn back to Greece and quote some Meleager lyric as the paragon of all time. This gesture from Wright was a little disappointing to me. Allen Tate writes me that he has returned to Nashville and joined the Ransom crowd there again. Your rejection of “Choresis” I presume was largely responsible for this return to the native.

I’m about fed up on furnaces and hot water heaters. I’ve been very attentive to the little ad. stories now for quite awhile. It’s about time that I did something about “F and Helen” again. To make things better or worse (I don’t know which yet) I’ve almost fallen in love. I may add, an object more than usually responsive this time. --/--/

112: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Sept. 29th, 1922_

Dear Gorham: What would you think of my using the first part of “F and H” alone? Calling it just “For the Marriage of,” etc. This would seem rather disappointing, I know, but I feel that it is fate. This conviction comes after much thought and especially after writing one added verse (originally intended for part 3) to be inserted as the next-last, coming just before the “eye motif.” I feel that with this added the first part becomes an intensity that is definitely developed and closed,--and that further additions such as part 2 are irrelevant--at least anti-climactic by position. And as for the third part, I am interested enough in the aeroplane, war-speed idea but I think it would be better developed under a different sky. Let me know what you think of the idea;--what you think of the additional verse also.

“The Springs of Guilty Song,” or former part 2, would do very well, I think, to send to _Broom_. Of course, I want to try _Dial_ on “F and H,” before it goes anywhere else. Its present length will slightly overlap two pages.

I am glad to have the _Secession_ program in advance. You’re travelling right along it seems. I wish I could spare an erection, as suggested, but I have to save them all for Seiberling Tires, Furnaces, etc. I have a widening interest, you see, in tilling the public mind with my ideas of excellence. Frankly, I’m tired to death. The new job has been beyond expectations in many ways, but it simply keeps my imagination tied down more than ever. I have so much to do.

Allen Tate is in Cincinnati visiting his brother and may come up here for a couple of days. I really enjoy admonishing him--Matty is not the only one who has “disciples.” By the way,--I guess that latter gent got peeved again at my last letter. I preface every letter now, you know, with the prediction that its contents will absolutely disgust him beyond the desire to answer--someday, perhaps already, that prophecy will be fulfilled.

I can’t spare the money to put into reproductions of Bill’s [Sommer] pictures for some time. It will cost over twenty dollars just for six. It will be two months before I even break clear from the dentist and hay fever bills of the year,--so I guess we can’t send Loeb anything yet. --/--/

113: TO CHARMION WIEGAND

[_Cleveland_] _Oct. 9th, ’22_

My dear Charmion: --/--/ I’ve changed jobs only to find myself completely imprisoned now, there’s so much more to do. It’s copy work (as before) only now I have about _all_ of it to write. I haven’t had time to think about poetry for weeks and letters have to wait. There are birth pangs to go through with, even in so staid a thing as advertising copy and ideas. I hammer my forehead for hours some days trying to get an idea that will be read, and loosen purse strings. --/--/

About _Ulysses_--I paid $20.00 for mine, that being the original subscription price (1-1/2) years ago when I ordered it. But I should never have got it past the censors and customs had Munson not brought it all the way from Paris in the bottom of his trunk. I know that already it is bringing such prices as $200.00-$300.00 (depending on binding and paper) in some places. Certainly I should never part with mine for any price. I feel quite luxurious!

I got a beautiful German monograph on Etruscan art the other day. But the art books I ordered months ago from Halim (Bremen) haven’t yet arrived. God knows,--I suppose the postoffice found something “obscene” in the Japanese landscapes somewhere, or the Chinese temples--or the Egyptian monuments!! --/--/

114: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Oct. 12, ’22_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ Today also brought me the most prodigious book on Egyptian sculpture that I’ve ever seen. Of course it’s German,--one of the books I ordered from Halim (Bremen) months ago. I shall gloat over it many hours.

Looking it over gives one the impression that the children of the Nile completed every possibility of sculpture long before the Greeks began to work. The latter added some architectural features, in figures they only added a few rondures and a certain humanity that is less evident in the African forms. It’s largely the spacious austerity of Egyptian art that

## particularly hits me. --/--/

Williams wrote Bill [Sommer] a memorable letter accompanying his check (for $25.00) in which he said that Bill got under his under-drawers!--and went on to say that he was potentially greater than Marin. It has heartened Bill wonderfully. Such a letter was worth more than the plaudits of a hundred Rosenfelds. I’d like to meet Williams! (Repeating this statement so many times won’t do any good I suppose, but there’s that directness about the man that I know I’d find cleansing.)

I’m sending off “F. & H.” to _The Dial_ today. I’m impatient for the money--besides that I feel that it is complete and might as well be out and aired. Having it around stagnates new ideas for me.

Allen Tate sends me a good poem, acknowledges myself and Eliot as his models--calls me mature and perfect--so that now (with a grain of salt) I feel vastly superior to Matty. I feel quite jolly tonight! -- -- -- --

O Hell! what can you expect with a gallon of sherry gone since Sunday! It’s as smooth as Prufrock and is only supposed to be sold to _rabbis_ for religious purposes. Rabbi Crane! What strange conversions there are.

I’ve been reading Rebecca West’s _Judge_ with much delight. She’s the best exponent of the old novel form I know, and she has fine pathos and a certain cleanliness that is more than neatness. “Codes” are interesting after all. As a rabbi and upholder of document and tradition, I applaud. -- -- -- --

115: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Oct. 25th, ’22_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ You should see me in my luxurious new coat. Light brown with wide cross-stripes in orange! My progress down the avenue is attended with awesome gazes, to say the least. From now on, having broken the spell of modesty and bashfulness, I shall wear what I want to--providing I can afford it. But I just got a raise,--so maybe I stand a better chance in the future. --/--/

116: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 7th, ’22_

Dear Gorham: “F and H” came back from _The Dial_ on Monday. Evidently Mr. Watson, Jr., has something to say about things as Seldes mentioned that he was obliged to keep it over time in order to show it to Mr. Watson, concluding with, “Regrettably, we cannot use it.” Now it is on its way to _Broom_ along with “The Springs of Guilty Song” (former part II). I would like to make a vow, if I felt capable of keeping it, not to send anything again to _The Dial_ for two years. But, of course, I am merely cutting off my own nose with such tactics.

Matty wrote me quite a long letter from the _Broom_ office in Berlin, arriving last week. After dissecting the copy of “Guilty Song” that I had sent him last summer as a sample of what I was doing, he came forth with the statement that there was damned little stuff of this calibre being written these days. So I am presuming that he will be glad to publish that poem, whether or not he fancies “F and H.” This latter he will probably find too emotional or old fashioned to praise, but I thought I’d submit it anyway.[23] If you care to, show it to Burke. In case of its second rejection--I am assuming your continued interest--you might care to use it in _Secession_. _The Dial_ seems to have abandoned all interest in publishing American things, or anything, in fact, that comes to them unheralded by years of established reputation. Certainly, if the remaining installments of Anderson’s _Many Marriages_ are equal in stupidity and banality to the first installment, they are going to make pretty fools of themselves. Anderson’s “naiveté” or what-you-will, becomes very aggravating.

I am strong with you in my admiration for Burke. I repeat for the eleventh time, I wish I could be in New York to talk to him, especially lately do I feel an intense need for contact and conversation with the right sort of people. I have rather missed Lescaze’s stimulation since he left, while Loveman, the only other person left here, becomes more incoherent every day. I am, really, suffering a great deal these days, and the worst is that I have almost no impulse toward writing. This wholesale “fertilization” of America by such half-baked people as the Algonquin gang is one of the most depressing features of all, because it is without any sense of values. Ben Hecht and Eliot get equal honors in such company. But at any rate I can rival you in some ways. Where you have Untermeyer, I can trot out Braithwaite. A letter from Braithwaite came last week inviting or rather soliciting my “Praise for an Urn” for the 1922 _Anthology_. At last I shall rub shoulders with Florence [sic] Wilkinson!

Allen Tate was a week later than expected in getting to N. Y., but you have probably met him by this time. I am rather looking forward to his two days here--he has enthusiasm and brains, however, undeveloped his style may be. Matty’s trans. from Soupault in the last _Broom_ are undoubtedly clever, but I don’t see how he can rave so about this man’s conceptions. Matty mentions his recent love for Francis Jammes and Vielé-Griffin, the latter as being much abler than Laforgue. Where is he headed for, anyway? His Joyce article was amazing in its lack of recognition of the great elements in Joyce. I look forward to his final suicide with Frank. But, after all,--Matty will always keep his head up, and sniff ominously. --/--/

117: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 20th, ’22_

Dear Gorham: I am immersed totally in a rush job and will be for a week or so more. These campaigns are taxing affairs and very confining, so I can’t write much. But I do want to assure you of my enthusiastic desire to both write the jacket for your _Frank Study_ and also write a communication to the Double Skull[24] (delightful name) about it. As regards the latter,--it will necessarily be very short, as they once returned a reasonably-sized review I had written on Shaw’s _Back to Methuselah_ on the argument that it was too long for the comparative importance of the book! Please send me the proofs as soon as they are out and I’ll begin.

I hope you enjoyed -- -- -- --. I took the liberty of writing him to look you up because you had once mentioned a certain interest in him incurred in Pollard’s _Their Day in Court_. -- -- -- -- is delightful company, whether he goes in for post-Beardsley attitudes or not. The episodes of the _Satyricon_ are mild as compared to his usual exploits in N. Y. during vacations. --/--/

Are you continuing with the advertising instructions? What do you think of Eliot’s _The Wasteland_? I was rather disappointed. It was good, of course, but so damned dead. Neither does it, in my opinion, add anything important to Eliot’s achievement.

I like the admonitions you offered on Macy, etc., in _The New Republic_. You are developing a tightened hold on criticism that is a favorable opposite to Mr. Rosenfeld’s rapturous Turner-sunset technique.

118: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Thanksgiving Day ’22_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ I have not seen Sommer for weeks and weeks. He is very peculiar, never looks you up, never phones or manifests the slightest interest. I have got tired of ever-lastingly tagging after him and shall wait until I have some important news for him before I crash into his cosmos again. I don’t think he ever so much as replied with a note of thanks to Williams for his purchase and beautiful, generous tribute of praise. I can’t understand it. But it is perhaps good to become impersonal in the admiration of art.

Poor -- -- -- --! I feared you would not like him very much. My affection for him is based on a certain community of taste and pursuit we have which you will understand. Because he has been mewed up so long with unpleasant work -- -- -- -- in a city where conversation and letters never existed--he has, out of sheer ennui, been forced to find entertainment in ways which have taken the best of him to feed what has become a sort of obsession. His creative impulse was never very strong, but in his letters and on his favorite topic you get as strong a satire as Petronius! Life has tamed him terribly,--yet he has lived a great deal if the senses mean anything.

I haven’t had time to read all of #3.[25] But I can well understand your dismay at Matty. With all his boasted time and leisure he ought to have made a better job of it. And that silly slant at Joyce--putting him along with Cabell! Matty’s “gay intellectualism” will eventually expose him to the jibes of a psychoanalyst if he continues in such loose estimates as his article in _Broom_ on advertising displays. Some things he says may be true,--but how damned vulgar his rhapsodies become! I would rather be on the side of “sacred art” with Underwood than admit that a great art is inherent in the tinsel of the billboards. Technique there is, of course, but such gross materialism has nothing to do with art. Artistry and fancy will be Matty’s limit as long as he is not willing to admit the power and beauty of emotional intensity--which he has proved he hasn’t got.

Burke has an Egyptian quality of hard and solid speculation. Egyptian literature is, of course, not my comparison,--but in looking at the sculpture of that nation one gets the same impression, the same austerity. I have decided, perhaps I repeat myself, that no advance in sculpture has been made since the Egyptians so far as essential plastique is concerned. This after looking at the 200 or so photographs in a modern German book on the subject that I got recently.

Sam Loveman didn’t like your Saltus review. Said it was scattered, etc. I haven’t read it. His book on the man and his works is progressing, he says. I think it will probably be very bad. He is the kind of “critic” that feels it needful to damn every one else in order to praise. He made the terrible assertion that “while Saltus was steadily working, neglected in obscurity, Henry James was applauded in two countries for his _puking_.” James never did that, whatever else you may say about him. Ridiculous. Of course I don’t take Sam seriously in any criticism. The man _Rychtarik_ and his wife are really the best company I have now. (Note the spelling of his name, correct this time.) His initials are W. R. I mention this because it would be sad to get his name wrong for that cover. He was pleased greatly by your acceptance and praise. --/--/

119: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 30th ’22_

Dear Waldo Frank: I have heard through Munson that you care for some of my poems. Let me take the occasion of _Secession_ #3 to tell you how powerfully I think you can write in such a story or episode as “Hope.” This is so fine that I cannot keep [from] writing you.

I never read prose before that flowed with such lyricism and intensity.--I suppose there are sure to be shocked cries, but the beautiful manipulation of symbolism in the thing has made your daring (if it took any) infinitely worth while. Writing like this is a real legacy, and nothing could be cleaner!

You may be interested in seeing six reproductions of work by Wm. Sommer that I sent Gorham today. In that case, anyway, this outburst may have served some purpose.

120: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Dec. 7th, ’22_

Dear Gorham: Frank’s “Hope” struck me so strongly that I wrote him a few encomiums. I also wrote Fisher, ordering a copy of the Kuniyoshi monograph. His reply included mention that he failed to get to New York last week but expected to see you this week; that he would not be able to publish anything of Sommer’s for some time in any case until he got some monetary returns from his recent collections, etc. I hope Stieglitz likes them.

I haven’t heard anything whatever from Tate, not even a rumor. He must be quite ill, deranged or something. If, by any chance, he is sore at me, I cannot account for a reason.

Untermeyer’s article was at least decent, it was a non-insulting sort of bulletin and one of the better sort of things that could happen to _Secession_ and its group. I was quite surprised that this parodist and facile assessor could so gracefully rise to the occasion of a new attitude. Whether we like him or not, his “position” in the American

## scene carries some weight, so I rather hope to see him continue his

interest. --/--/

121: TO ----

_Cleveland_ _December 10th, ’22_

My dear ----: My mother will not tolerate wine at the house--so I am rebelling. I am thinking seriously of moving into permanent private quarters where one need not be questioned about every detail of life and where one can be free of the description of one’s food and its contents and manner of preparation while it is eaten at the table. To this end I am at present staying for a few days at a hotel. Maybe I shall move out as above indicated, or maybe I shall go back; it all depends on the course she takes. Because I dread to leave her on account of the position it puts her in I hope she will be more lenient with me. I don’t ask much, and the little wine I succeed in getting has never resulted in embarrassing her. I never “carry on” at the house or annoy her. The fact of wine, alone, is what infuriates her puritanical instincts. All this is tedious and maudlin stuff to write, but that very fact makes it in some measure an excuse for my present dull outlook on things. Life is hard enough, God knows, without having to put up with a hundred extra restrictions in order to just have a room and a bed! --/--/

How _do_ you manage such exquisite delights every time you journey to the Metropolis?! Your letter was superb. I can understand, also, how you failed to “mix” with Munson and his friends. You are so much of the Nineties that it was scarcely to be expected. You had the same reactions as H---- would have had to such a meeting. I am not saying that there is any single attitude toward art that is final. I do contend, however, that Munson, Burke, Cummings and Waldo Frank all have something new and fine to offer. And whether or not you agree with their critical “lingo” you will nevertheless find their creative results interesting and vital. In last week’s _New Republic_ there was an article on the group by Louis Untermeyer, non-committal but intelligent, on _Secession_ and its contributors in which I was mentioned casually. We are all of us quite different. Our differences from the attitude of the present generation-in-power are in each case individual. I shall probably never amount to anything--but the others that I have just mentioned will do things of considerable importance. Frank, in _Rahab_, and Burke in his criticisms and in a number of short ideographic stories, have already established places in contemporary letters. --/--/

I am quite disrupted. Family affairs and “fusses” have been my destruction since I was eight years old when my father and mother began to quarrel. That phase only ended recently, and the slightest disturbance now tends to recall with consummate force all the past and its horrid memories on pretext of the slightest derangement of equilibrium. As I write I am ensconced at my office. Everybody else is away, for it is Sunday. Yet, in forgetfulness someone was very kind in leaving a gallon of delicious sherry. I have already had two good glasses of it without permission. I shall probably have two more before I go to see Isadora Duncan this evening and go back to the uninteresting room at the hotel. For without my books around me and my pictures and my Victrola with its Ravel, Debussy, Strauss and Wagner records--I am desolate, I find. I have grown accustomed to an “ivory tower” sort of existence. I am succeeding very well in my advertising writing. Salary raised and promises of more and decent people to work with who enjoy Joyce, Cabell, Pater and the best things of life. Yet even so--Life is meagre with me. I am unsatisfied and left always begging for beauty. I am tied to the stake--a little more wastefully burnt every day of my life while all America is saying, “every day I am growing better and better in every way,” and Dr. Coué makes his millions!

I am just enough filled with wine at the time of this letter to make confessions that will bore you. Yet, oddly enough, it is at such times that I feel most like writing you and H----. He is floating under the shades of bamboos up the rivers of China under the dragon stars. You and I are in offices--seeking the same things--but my gift of humor has left me today. --/--/

122: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Tuesday, Dec. 12th_

Dear Gorham: You, as well as some of my local friends, must share in my excitement at seeing Isadora Duncan dance on Sunday night. She gave the same program (All Tschaikowsky) that she gave in Moscow for the Soviet celebration and, I think, you saw it in New York recently. It was glorious beyond words, and sad beyond words too, from the rude and careless reception she got here. It was like a wave of life, a flaming gale that passed over the heads of the nine thousand in the audience without evoking response other than silence and some maddening cat-calls. After the first movement of the _Pathétique_ she came to the fore of the stage, her hands extended. Silence,--the most awful silence! I started clapping furiously until she disappeared behind the draperies. At least one tiny sound should follow her from all that audience. She continued through the performance with utter indifference for the audience and with such intensity of gesture and such plastique grace as I have never seen, although the music was sometimes almost drowned out by the noises from the hall. I felt like rushing to the stage, but I was stimulated almost beyond the power to walk straight. When it was all over she came to the fore-stage again in the little red dress that had so shocked Boston, as she stated, and among other things told the people to go home and take from the bookshelf the works of Walt Whitman, and turn to the section called “Calamus.” Ninety-nine percent of them had never heard of Whitman, of course, but that was part of the beauty of her gesture. Glorious to see her there with her right breast and nipple quite exposed, telling the audience that the truth was not pretty, that it was really indecent, and telling them (boobs!) about Beethoven, Tschaikowsky, and Scriabin. She is now on her way back to Moscow, so I understand, where someone will give her some roses for her pains.

I am in great ferment, and have been staying at a hotel for several days until I talk to my mother about some things that will determine whether or not I shall continue to live out at the house any more. They are little things, mostly, but such little things accumulate almost into a complex that [is] too much for me to work under. There is no use in discussing them here, but just the constant restraint necessary in living with others, you may appreciate, is a deadening thing. Unless something happens to release me from such annoyances I give up hope of doing any satisfactory writing. -- -- -- --

123: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Cleveland, O._ _December 24, 1922_

Dear William: However much boredom you may find in Warren--I assure you, it will not be as strenuous as the hot water I am stewing in. The Pittsburgh Water Heater surely has been on my mind the last three weeks, and the burden is still unshifted. I am growing bald trying to scratch up new ideas in housekeeping and personal hygiene--to tell people why they need more and quicker hot water. Last night I got drunk on some sherry. Even in that wild orgy my mind was still enchained by the hot water complex,--and I sat down and reeled off the best lines written so far in my handling of the campaign. All of my poems in the future will attest this sterilizing influence of HOT WATER!

Nothing happens here, either. I am grateful only for wine. I have neither women or song. Cleveland street car rides twice a day take out all hope of these latter elements. I think of New York and next summer when the present is too sharp (or is it dull!). But the main faults are not of our city, alone. They are of the age. A period that is loose at all ends, without apparent direction of any sort. In some ways the most amazing age there ever was. Appalling and dull at the same time. --/--/