CHAPTER SEVEN

A Mote in the Metropolis

The city to which I was winging my way was not on the surface a poetic one. Among its long, traffic-clogged defiles, its endless miles of five- and six-story residential buildings, its fabulous skyscrapers, and its slums laden with pushcarts, evil odors, and dangling washing, there was indeed picturesqueness and interest; but the tints were mostly the drab and gray of prose. Here indeed, as time went by, I was to find the subject-matter of poetry, which may bloom in the small weed struggling to life beside a cobblestone quite as much as in the free-blowing flowers of the fields. But here in the beginning my verses reflected the solitude of the lonely wanderer among the swarm rather than the enthusiasm of the visitor stirred by the physical or human panoramas of the metropolis. I would write nostalgically of friends and loved ones in the West, in lines which show less distinction of utterance than poignancy of feeling:

Oh, that there gleamed some searchlight of the soul To let us view the cherished far away, And intimately follow, day by day, Loved ones that dwell where alien oceans roll.

The need for personal friendship was expressed in another sonnet of about this time:

Oh, why do friends, like meteors of the dark, Gleam to the sight, then go some hidden way? Like lingering music cheer us for a day, Then vanish swiftly as a chance remark?

These pieces, and others like them, including poems on more general themes--to none of which I would now grant the nod of critical approval--I find written out in a crumbling old notebook, some with notations showing that they had been printed in papers such as the New York _Sun_ and _Herald_ (then not yet absorbed by the _Tribune_). But they are numerous enough to prove that, in the lonely room which I occupied--first, the gas-lit cubbyhole on the top floor of an ancient brownstone building on West Eighty-Fourth Street, and later the more modern quarters not a block from the little Fordham park containing Poe’s famous cottage--I had by no means forgotten my Muse. And this despite the dire necessity to earn my way if I wished to remain in New York.

I had set out blithely enough to conquer the great city, my pockets bristling with ammunition in the shape of letters of introduction from friends in the West. But I was soon to learn that most of my high-powered shells were really duds. This I began to suspect after my first interview, with a Nassau Street lawyer whom I will give the name of Frederick Horton--a man said to have extensive connections in Manhattan.

Mr. Horton received me courteously in a room lined with great leather-bound tomes, and glanced at me amiably through his horn-rimmed spectacles across the polished width of his great oaken desk.

“Ah, Mr. Coblentz!... But you’ll let me call you Stanton? Glad you stepped in! George wrote me you were coming. I’ve a number of things to talk to you about.”

I would hardly have been human if I had not felt a flash of hope at this cordial, not to say chummy reception. Doubtless Mr. Horton, with his wide associations, knew of some literary openings.

The lawyer’s ferret eyes narrowed in a face seamed with the wisdom of fifty winters; all the amiability had been drained from them while he surveyed me appraisingly, as if I were a client approaching him with a questionable case.

His swivel chair creaked as he swung slightly to one side, and, thrusting his bullet-head toward me, threw his questions like a cross-examiner.

“So, Stanton! You’re out to earn your way in the big city?”

“That’s right,” I acknowledged, with the sinking feeling of one entering a plea of guilty.

“You want to be a writer--a poet?”

“Guess your brother George has told you all about that?” I countered, thinking a direct answer unnecessary.

“Yes, indeed.”

He sat inspecting me solemnly, and unconsciously shook his head, in the way of one who says, “Too bad! Too bad!”

“Of course,” he went on, slowly, picking his words with difficulty, “you understand that the writing game isn’t exactly as easy as falling downstairs. Still, I wonder--do you realize how very hard it is?”

I sat staring at him gravely.

“You’re tackling something so tough that one hundred thousand persons in New York are starving at it,” he went on in warning tones, drawing his features together darkly. “It’s darned lucky you came to me, Stanton; I can give you more pointers than most fellows. You see I’ve known so many good writers who went under. There was Bill Arlington--if I had more time, I’d tell you about poor Bill. Then there was Joe McBride--poor devil, met him in the Village just the other day--looked like he needed the loan of a dime. And Jim Callender--well, a million dollars wouldn’t help him where he is now, and I always say it’s a merciful release. There are others, too, lots of them.”

By this time I felt as if a leaden bar were pressing down upon my head.

“You see, Stanton,” Horton finished, puffing out his chest like a _paterfamilias_ who has done his painful duty by the younger generation, “I believe in being frank. Better for you that way in the long run. Why not pick some graft where the pace isn’t quite so hard? I’d suggest--”

I thanked him, and rose to leave.

“Just one point more,” he added, as he escorted me warmly, almost affectionately toward the door, “I have a friend, Dick Grosset, who used to be a writer himself, before he found he had to make a living and turned to real estate. He’s with Dunstall, Grosset, and Brown--a million-dollar firm. Knows a lot more than I do about the literary humbug. Suppose we all have lunch together some day?”

Without waiting for my acquiescence, which he took for granted, Horton went on to request, “Here, give the girl over there your address! I’ll let you know just as soon as I’ve been in touch with Dick.”

But that was the last I ever heard from Horton.

My enthusiasm was just a little subdued as I went to visit the next man on my list.

My second letter of introduction was to a prominent preacher, who was courtesy personified, and promptly sat down and wrote two further letters of introduction. One of these was to the editor of a literary monthly, with which I had hopes of a connection; but all that this great man could do was to dictate still another letter of introduction, to a friend who volunteered to send me yet further on my travels with an additional letter of introduction.

By this time I was feeling just a little like a rat in a treadmill. “The best way,” I decided, “is to make the introductions myself.”

And so, armed with no passport but my own resolution--or, if you wish to call it that, my own effrontery--I began visiting the editors of my choice. In the beginning I found reason to fear that Mr. Horton might be only too correct in his gloomy prognosis: from office to office I took my way, seeking an opening in an editorial staff; and openings in editorial staffs appeared about as easy to find as free passageways into armored cars. At every office they were “completely staffed”; but at every office they were obligingly willing to take down my name and address, just in case.... However, this did not delude me.

For an endless two weeks the merry search went on, while the nest egg I had brought with me to New York became noticeably thinner and more sickly looking. Clearly, I must do something--and soon. It was but natural, therefore, that I should think of book reviewing, in which I had had well over a year’s experience on the _Argonaut_. I remembered a letter from the magazine’s editor, Sidney Corwyn, _To Whom It May Concern_; and I decided that it might concern the editors of the New York reviewing sections. The first one whom I approached was Robert Jermain Cole, a gentle and sensitive being, then book editor of the old _Herald_, a job in which he would not remain much longer. (Years later I was to be briefly in touch with him again, when he wrote from Paris to send me some poems for my magazine _Wings_ shortly after its establishment in 1933.) Cole received me pleasantly; glanced over my letter _To Whom It May Concern_; scrutinized several clippings of my reviews from the _Argonaut_; and then, to my boundless delight, made the first dent in the solid wall surrounding me ever since my arrival in New York. He reached into one of the crowded bookshelves behind him, pulled out a huge tome, and suggested, “Maybe you’ll let me have six hundred words on this?”

“Copy due on Thursday,” he went on, as, after profuse thanks, I turned to leave.

This, as it happened, was only the beginning. Before long, as will appear a little later, I was reviewing books for other media also; was writing articles (when I could get them assigned to me) for the Sunday _Herald_ and other publications; and was interviewing for _Success Magazine_.

The connection with _Success_ (an “inspirational” magazine that was to prove a notable failure, and was to be followed by a new failure called _The New Success_) would not have come to me except for my poetic interests. The dean of American poets at that time, a man whose work I greatly admired (as I still do) was Edwin Markham; and through some mutual acquaintance I had obtained the one letter of personal introduction that brought me much except gainless footwork. Having written Markham at his home in Staten Island, I was invited to visit him on a specified Sunday afternoon; and you may be sure that, even had my engagements been innumerable (which was far from the case), nothing short of the necessity of swimming the distance would have kept me away.

My recollections of the visit are most pleasant: the large old-fashioned house, in agreeable rustic surroundings; the spirit of amiability and hospitality that pervaded the small gathering; the Markhams themselves, Mrs. Markham a kindly elderly woman with a heart-warming manner, and still personally attractive; and Mr. Markham looking every inch the poet, white-bearded as a patriarch, with cordial, twinkling eyes, and a voice that could roll like that of one of the old bards when intoning his own poems.

Unlike a host of this latter-day age, who would have made it a point of honor not to let his guests stretch their legs further than between their car-doors and his house-door, Markham took his visitors on a stroll down a wooded lane, then dreamily beautiful with the first tan and crimson of the autumn foliage. I remember that I was privileged to walk at his side for a good part of the time; he took my arm, in a fatherly way, and discoursed to me on matters connected with poetry, though not only with poetry, for I recall his advice to read Carlyle, and his appraisal of the great moral strength and conviction behind the famous Scotsman’s writing.

One of the visitors that afternoon was a bald middle-aged man who was introduced to me as “Mr. Mackay,” and who, I was told, was the editor of _Success Magazine_. It was at his own initiative, and not owing to any suggestion of mine, that he said to me, before the meeting broke up that evening, “Listen, Coblentz. If you’re in the neighborhood of 1133 Broadway some day before long, drop in to see me. Bring some of your writings--enough to give me an idea what you can do. Don’t forget!”

As I shook his hand, I assured him heartily that I would not forget. Nor did I. Not many days had passed before I had seen the inside of the offices of _Success Magazine_; and not many additional days had gone by before Mr. Mackay, after looking over some samples of my prose and verse, made me a proposition.

“Ever done any interviewing?”

“A little for the _Examiner_.”

“Well, we need something better than newspaper interviewing. Every now and then some celebrity passes through town, and we arrange for one of our writers to visit him and get his views on some important subject--such as the prospects of the League of Nations, or the position of women in India, or the future of air travel. Think you could handle an occasional assignment?”

To this question I gave the expected answer.

“We can’t pay very much,” he drawled on, his stubby fingers drumming meditatively at his desk. “Twenty-five dollars an article is as high as we can go.”

Since twenty-five dollars looked as big to me as the side of a mountain, I assured him that this would be satisfactory.

And thus it came about that I interviewed various notables, of whom far from the least was Einstein, as modest a man as you could meet, who spoke through an interpreter, and tried his obliging best to make plain to me some of the root principles of relativity, though he was less receptive to certain other reporters, one of whom wanted to know what he ate for breakfast and was told that the question was too trivial to answer.

Of all whom I interviewed, only two were poets: the huge, bluff Gilbert Chesterton; and Rabindranath Tagore, who struck me as no other human being has ever done. I am at a loss, even after many years, to explain my awesome feeling upon being ushered into the presence of the saintly-looking, white-bearded figure--the sense of having come into contact with a superior being. But it is not enough to say that he was saintly-looking, and might have been mistaken for one of the patriarchs of Biblical times; nor would it help to try to repeat any of the wise things he said. It was simply that, from the man himself, from his very surroundings, there seemed to emanate spiritual greatness. Even in memory, it is not hard for me to recapture something of the peculiar, fascinating spell of his presence, although, among all the people I have subsequently met, this feeling has never been duplicated, nor even approached.

In view of the amount of time which I gave to the miscellaneous jobs necessary to meet room and restaurant bills, it is hard for me now to see how I could have found much leisure for poetry. My principal work, in the course of time, came to be book reviewing; regularly I brought home piles of the latest fiction and non-fiction; I remember a friend telling with a chuckle how he once met me on a downtown street, my arms so full of brand-new volumes that I looked like a book salesman. Until the _Herald_ was merged with the _Tribune_ in 1924, I was one of its most frequent reviewers, most of the time under Mr. Cole’s successor, the severe-looking but friendly Arthur Bartlett Maurice; I also was permitted to do feature reviews and smaller items for the _Times_, first under Dr. Clifford Smyth and then under Brooks Atkinson, a thin, wiry, whimsically smiling man later to be better known as dramatic critic. At the same time, I reviewed for the _Literary Review_ of the _Post_ under Dr. Henry Seidel Canby; for the _Tribune_ under Burton Rascoe, the _Bookman_ under John Farrar, the _Sun_, the _Dial_, and subsequently the _International Book Review_, which was published for some years by the ill-fated _Literary Digest_. Never let it be said that the great, callous city of New York is cold and unreceptive to the unknown newcomer. I, at least, did not find this to be the case.

Among the multitudes of books which passed through my hands--sometimes as many as twenty-five or thirty unreviewed works stood simultaneously on my shelves--there was everything from a cookbook for cafeterias to a monograph on the intelligence of insects. Books of poetry and books about poetry were much in the minority, though they did come to me occasionally. But I continued to write poems, and not only short ones but long, including seventeen hundred lines of blank verse, _The Light Beyond the Sunset_, which I completed sometime during my first two years in New York, and which, whatever else you may say about it, did not exactly pick a tried and familiar theme; it dealt with the imagined experiences of one who had survived death. This lengthy composition, so far as I can remember, was not permitted to bore many publishers, though I recall one who told me he could not publish it because it was too short for a saleable volume--ah, if only I had spun out another thousand lines! But from later experience, I now suspect that, if it had had the extra thousand lines, he would have found it too long for publication.

I also remember submitting the poem to a Boston publisher, who had himself written many poems, as well as a number of translations in verse. Since his publishing house (now long out of existence) issued occasional books of poetry, I hopefully mailed him _The Light Beyond the Sunset_. And, a short time afterwards, my hope expanded from a flicker to a blaze, upon the receipt of a letter: “Dear Mr. Coblentz: I will be in New York on Thursday the eighteenth. If you can meet me at 2:30 that afternoon in the lobby of the Bryant Hotel, I should like to talk over your poem with you.”

Truly, a case of the mountain coming to Mahomet! So the great publisher Mr. Bruce (to give him a name which was not his) was to be in New York! Not that I flattered myself that his visit was for the sole or even the principal purpose of seeing a nobody like myself. But how could I help being elated that so important a man would take up time with my poem? What could this mean? Naturally, that he wanted to publish the poem. Nothing less, surely, could prompt a personal interview.

Precisely at two-thirty on Thursday the eighteenth, I entered the lobby of the Bryant, so excited that it never even occurred to me to remove my topcoat in the overheated room. I found Mr. Bruce as good as his word: he seemed to recognize me by something in my looks or manner as I stared about the lobby with an anxious, appraising glance. There he was, dressed in dull brown, a spindly man, in his sixties, with a thin goat-like face and a wispy gray beard. He greeted me enthusiastically; and trembling just a little now that the great occasion was upon me, I dropped into a seat beside him.

His opinion of _The Light Beyond the Sunset_ was not long in coming out. He regarded it as “almost a great poem”--a view which I can report without a blush, since I consider it about as flattering as if he had credited me with being “almost intelligent” or “almost honest.” He would be proud to publish the work, but there were, unfortunately, some little difficulties--he coughed, and hesitated--some little difficulties, mostly of a financial nature, which should not even be mentioned in connection with so fine a poem. But if I could manage a mere few hundred dollars--

Alas, I could not manage a mere few hundred dollars! All at once my rainbowed cloud castles collapsed. I had to console myself with the thought that my “almost great poem” had been almost published. Mr. Bruce and I, after a long talk about poets and poems generally, said our goodbyes with mutual cordiality, though nothing more was mentioned as to _The Light Beyond the Sunset_. This was not to be my last contact with the man, for sometime later, when he learned that I was compiling the anthology _Modern American Lyrics_, he sent me an enormous tome of his sumptuously printed _Collected Poems_ from which to make selections; and when I could find only one short piece that seemed to deserve admission, he was sorely disappointed, not to say aggrieved at my lack of critical discrimination, and probably never forgave me.

Mention of _Modern American Lyrics_ brings me back to the subject of contemporary poetry in general, which I was following insofar as my reviewing jobs permitted. I still felt that America was witnessing a poetic revival, just as I felt this when I wrote my college thesis; and I wished to do whatever I could to proclaim that great fact, and to make the poets of the new age known to a public to whom poets still did not seem important. At the same time, I wanted to warn of dangers that seemed ever-present and ever-increasing. One method was by means of articles, and in this I was fortunate: the _New York Times Book Review_ under Brooks Atkinson on several occasions allowed me a full page. Referring again to the old clippings, at which I have not glanced for dozens of years--not, in fact, since they were first culled from the paper--I see that on February 25, 1923, under the heading of _Oases and Mirages of the Poetic Desert_, I declared that “It is stimulating to observe how much good poetry is being written in America today, and depressing to witness how much poor poetry is being applauded.” As an example of the “poor poetry,” I quoted from a contribution to Professor Howard Willard Cook’s critical anthology, _Our Poets of Today_:

I grasped the greasy subway strap And read the lurid advertisements, I chewed my gum voraciously, Inhaled strange fumes pugnaciously, I heard the grating of the wheels And felt that the chords Of my city soul Were in perfect tune.

Worse than this, far worse, has since been perpetrated, but back in the innocent early twenties, this was bad enough to be noted as an example of misbranded poetry, and an indication of the perils ahead--perils recently all too fully realized. By way of contrast to such barren prose, however, I devoted the greater part of the article to more capable poems, including _Fog_, by John Reed, the exquisite early sonnets of David Morton, several offerings by Hermann Hagedorn and Arthur Davison Ficke, and the now unfortunately forgotten lyricist Kendall Banning. Alas, it required far more than any mere article of mine to keep these things of beauty before the eyes of a world that concentrated furiously on the things of utility, the things of luxury, and the things of finance. It is a strange and not a heartening thought that my very article has no doubt long been lost to the mind of every being on earth except myself, probably even to the memory of the editor who accepted the material.

But realizing the fugitive quality of all periodical publication, I early gave my chief thought to books, a medium that might preserve--at least, a little longer than the fluttering pages of papers--such things as I could offer in poetry or prose.