PART THREE West Indies-Europe (1926-1930)

Dear Grace: —/—/ I gave notice to the boss as soon as I found out definitely that I was not going to get a raise. The time is set for a week from this Saturday. You know my feelings and reasons well enough from former letters, so it’s not necessary for me to repeat them now. Later on in the summer I may take a boat job on the South American or West Indian Routes, but at present I have been very lucky in being invited out to a lovely farm near here (Brewster, N.Y.), to spend a month or so. Brown has just bought it, and has urged me to come out and help him plant the garden, etc. And this is just what I have been needing, exercise, open air, and relaxation from the tension of the desk (which had become very threatening to my health and nervous stability, I can assure you). This invitation came subsequent to my resignation at Sweet’s—so don’t think that I have been seduced by a tempting prospect of any kind. I was ready for ANYTHING after the prolonged tension and confinement here for the last year, and whatever happens I shall not regret having left the office.

E—— has or rather will take my room over at Columbia Heights, and I have reserved it for myself again after October, as it’s such a good room I don’t want to loose my hold on it if possible. Write me there up to June 6th, when I leave for the country, and I shall write you much more in a few days. You certainly haven’t been very generous, yourself, with correspondence lately. I hope you are both very well. C.A. [Crane] looked me up here recently and offered me a job which I was all ready to take. Whereupon he became so pettily dictatorial that I withdrew quickly. In some ways it was all very funny, and I’ll write more about it later. We parted on friendly enough terms, I guess. — — — —

Dear Grace and Grandma: Practically everything is packed up. There has been a real turmoil, too, I can tell you. The frightful and sudden heat of the last 3 days brought on a fearful attack of uric acid trouble—headaches, bladder trouble and urethritis. No sleep for three nights and I have been dieting on buttermilk and crackers. Besides trying to complete all arrangements by Saturday and still give some time to the office, I have had 3 engagements with the dentist. I thought one tooth had an abscess and had to have an x-ray taken to find out that it hadn’t. There is one more trial with a filling tomorrow and then I’ll be through. I’m about done out, however, and a feather could knock me over. Furthermore, all these exigencies have about used up all the money I had saved up, little enough! -/-/

I did enjoy that talk with you over the wires to Cleveland! Your voice is so much better than ink and paper.

Have a good time in Chicago, and, by the way, why don’t you explain my case to the Ross’s—that is—if any opportunity appears. They give thousands to charities every year—and boast about being patrons of art. Why don’t they help some artist who is trying to live—and still get something done? A small allowance for me six months of the year would mean almost nothing to them—and it would keep me alive and productive in some cheap place in the country. You might mention Frank’s and O’Neill’s and Anderson’s admiration for my work,—and that I have a book about to be published.

They won’t be hard to convince on C.A.’s neglect of me, as they have had their own evidence of that side of him.

Everyone thinks it a crime the way I have been treated. I’d be glad to work six or eight months of the year if I could have the remaining time for my natural creative activity. Please see what you can do about this.

Dear Grandma: —/—/ As for myself—things couldn’t be better. I have great quantities of fine Guernsey milk every day from a neighboring farm, the finest butter and eggs and fresh vegetables—and so much outdoor exercise than I am brown as a nut already with the sun and all greased up at the joints. Sleep nights like a top and the uric acid trouble has disappeared completely—at least for the time being. When you consider that this is only about my tenth day out here such results seem astonishing, don’t they? I should have written you more if there had been a moment, but you have no idea how busy we have all been. There has been a great deal—tons—of wood to clear away from the house, rubbish, also, and a lot of old plaster they threw out in making alterations. Then we have been building bookcases, shelves and tables for the inside, as well as scrubbing and rubbing down floors. Getting up every morning at five-thirty. The air is so fresh and the birds so sweet that you simply can’t stay in bed a moment longer. And how good breakfast tastes! We have bought a good oil stove, which works on about 10 cents a day. All our cooking and lamp-oil comes to much less cost than similar means in the city would cost. Brown has a Ford which he got for 35 dollars! We go marketing about 7 miles away to the nearest town every three or four days. This place, you know, is quite delightfully isolated from other houses. It’s about 150 years old—and did I tell you that a lot of wonderful old rope beds and furniture came right along with it? —/—/

Dear Grace and Grandma: —/—/ Life has been going along here at Brown’s farm as pleasantly as anyone could wish excepting that the last few days I have had a considerable touch of the [rose] fever. I had expected to evade the whole season, but I guess I’m in for a few days of it here, despite the altitude and other favorable circumstances. We have the house painting almost finished. I’ve already mentioned how I enjoyed doing that. Brown and I have been making screens for the last couple of days and now I defy a mosquito to attack my slumbers or a fly to fall into my soup. Although planted very late in season Brown’s garden is about up, peas and beans, and soon will follow a whole menu of delicious vegetables for the table. This is the kind of place I am going to have when I can afford it. Perfect quiet and rolling hills, almost mountains, all around—with apple orchards and lovely groves of trees and rocky glens all about the house. Yesterday afternoon we picked blueberries—about four quarts in an hour—and there’s nothing better to eat with cereals for breakfast I can tell you. It’s pleasant to pick them, too—great patches of bushes laden to bending with the beautiful milky-blue fruit that looks the freshest thing on earth. The huckleberries will be out later—and there will be simply bushels of them. Brown also has great quantities of raspberries, blackberries, currants and gooseberries—as well as elderberries on his place. Also plenty of sap maples and walnut trees. I haven’t yet stopped enthusing about the place, you see, and when you mention buying land in Florida, that dry and tourist-ridden place, I find it hard to agree with you. Brown has even been so nice as to offer me a strip of land as my own and a great pile of cut timber to build me a cabin—if I will stay here with him and Sue [Jenkins]. You can’t beat his affectionate generosity in any friend on earth. I wish you could know Sue, also. Well, someday you will, I’m sure, as I’m not likely to lose my enthusiasm for them very soon.

This Florida plan of yours prompts me to worry a little, Grace. You must certainly be cautious about investing your money there the way things are going at present. Of course I have been hearing all that you have about the tremendous sums exchanged there in real estate, and maybe more than you. That information is certainly nothing that one has to be “tipped on” these days. Everyone—even the farmers around here—are scraping their coins together and rushing down to Miami to buy little lots, and I know well enough that at least some people have made and are making fortunes there. But doesn’t such a great campaign of advertising as this now seems to be—doesn’t it arouse your suspicions as to the validity of the proposition to the small investor? Remember, Grace, that the stock market is run on the same plan and with the same tactics—and the daily crop of suckers can be reaped in other fields and byways than Wall [Street], and often is. If you had thought of investing in Miami property a year or so ago it would undoubtedly have meant a considerable profit. But—as I see the situation now—the whole proposition there is like a whirling roulette wheel that with every revolution spins a higher figure—but which has already begun to slow down. I don’t see how the situation can be otherwise when there has been such a wholesale flux of gamblers to the place as there already has been. For certainly there is a limit to the value of property—and there is a limit to the present national craze of flocking to Miami. I may be wrong, of course, but it seems to me that most of the fruit down there has been picked up already. It might net you something to try and sell for others down there, but I would be awfully slow about making any investments myself—at least until after I had been there long enough to ascertain some direct information of my own about matters. In such “gold rushes” watch out for the boom psychology that animates everyone concerned—even the losers—into bursting their voices with salutary legends of their luck and the general prospects of the place. It amounts to as much a conspiracy as though they had all sat down together at a great mass meeting and agreed to swear they each saw Jesus bathing on the beach. Of course I can see your special interest in going to Miami this winter to make money—but I’m blind to the other advantages of the plan. Especially when you have as lovely a place—only a day and a half further away—down on the island [Isle of Pines] to go to, and where living expenses will be about one third as much. (Miami is a very expensive place to stay, I understand, especially since this boom.) Further—it seems to me you ought to take a run down there—for at least two weeks—regardless of other plans. Or otherwise, after all this time, who is to know what is becoming of the place? I’d jump at the chance to go there myself. Please don’t resent my advice about these foregoing matters. My opinions on such matters have to be got off my chest naturally—as they are inevitable concomitants to my interest and affection in you both. I certainly have no desire to stand in the way of anything you wish to do.

My trip to South America is as hazy as it’s always been. It may be that line of boats or some other across the Atlantic for me when I get back to New York—I won’t be able to wait long for employment anywhere as I have only about the carfare back to town. I may even take some other kind of office job. My chiefest concern while I have been out here is to avoid worries of whatever kind for awhile; doing that, you know, takes a kind of discipline after one has been so constantly precautious and apprehensive as I have been for the last five years. With my health and nerves all ready to snap beneath that strain I decided that life wasn’t worth it—and the pretense of living under such an attitude of mind year after year was certainly not worth continuing. So I am—at least for awhile longer—content to drift a little, let things take care of themselves, reduce my needs and requirements to a minimum and avail myself of as much time for free breathing and meditation as possible. The boat job would—on the South American line—permit me practically three weeks of time (absolutely to myself) out of every eight. This time would be spent in Buenos Aires at one end of the trip, and at New York at the other. I might get some time to write and read again. I really hope very much to make connections with this line for that reason, even though the first job I could get wouldn’t amount to more than 65 dollars a month. At least three-fourths of my living expenses while on the job would be gratis, of course. And I even long to be entirely away from the best of friends at time. It gives you a fresh picture of the world. One trip would decide whether I cared for the job or not—six weeks and 12,000 miles. I could probably get a job as night watchman or as engineer’s writer. But you have to take what places are open when the ship comes in.

Exactly how much longer I shall stay here isn’t decided yet. But it will probably not be more than two weeks from now. In New York I shall stay with either Allen Tate or E——,—probably with the latter as E—— is still staying in my old room at Columbia Heights. At any rate that will be the place to write me. I’ll let you know more details of course, when they are settled. In the meantime I have written to Freeman who is still with the New York office of Corday and Gross if he has any free-lance ad writing which I could do for them while I am out here. That will probably amount to nothing at all, but the idea occurred to me and I thought I ought to try it out at least. If I could pay my share in household expenses here I should like to stay all summer as I have certainly been made to feel extremely welcome. Otherwise I can’t go on accepting things as they are. —/—/

Eugene O’Neill wrote me that he was enthusiastic about some recent things I had sent him, and I have enough enthusiasm from other astute and discriminating people in America to make me feel that my writings are justified. Publishers shy at it, of course, because they know it won’t make them money. Meanwhile the same flood of mediocrities in verse continues to be printed, bound and sold year after year.

Your story of the Fourth sounded very jolly indeed. Nothing could beat the hilarity of this place—with about an omnibus-full of people here from New York and a case of gin, to say nothing of jugs of marvellous hard cider from a neighboring farm. You should have seen the dances I did—one all painted up like an African cannibal. My makeup was lurid enough. A small keg on my head and a pair of cerise drawers on my legs! We went swimming at midnight, climbed trees, played blind man’s buff, rode in wheel-barrows and gratified every caprice for three days until everyone was good an’ tired out. The guests are still recovering, I understand, in their separate abodes in the city. It certainly is infinitely pleasanter drinking and celebrating on a wide acreage, like this farm, than in the tumult and commotion of the city. Aside from this one blowout I have not had a drop since I have been here—and have not felt like drinking, either. The desire for booze in the city comes from frayed nerves and repressions of the office, I’m sure. —/—/

Dear Waldo: I’m awfully sorry about the Jimenez translations: they are locked in my trunk at Columbia Heights in my letter file. But I’m going back to New York about a week from tomorrow and I’ll be glad to copy them—and either send them on to you—or directly to The New Republic, as you may direct. That would be—at most—only a few days later than they would arrive had I sent them along with this letter. I don’t know what you are accenting in your thesis on the poet, but I think [the] short poem on the Virgin better than the one called “The Three.” I think you sent me only these two.

Along with your letter today comes the news from my mother that transactions are about completed for the sale of our home in Cleveland. If this really eventuates I may be called upon to help them move—which will defer my plans for sea roving at least until after September. However, I may decide to evade the moving: I can’t at present see my way to make any definite plans without risking some kind of unpleasant entanglement. I wish that “wile” and “guile” were easier instruments for my imagination to use! There is always some other immediate duty or requirement for me to perform than creation. I’ve had only above five hours at the writing table since I came out here, and now it’s about time to look for a postage stamp—I mean the wherewithal for it—to post this letter! Of course I’ve had a good time, find I enjoy painting house, gardening, etc. BUT——.

At any rate your sanguine hopes for White Buildings warms me. It came back from Harcourt yesterday. They couldn’t make anything out of most of the poems. My “obscurity” is a mystery to me, and I can’t help thinking that publishers and their readers have never heard the mention of Sir Thomas [John?] Davies, Donne, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Valéry or even Emily Dickinson. Within a few days, probably, I’ll get time to make you a copy of the mss. It has been loutish of me not to have delivered the poems to you long before this, but hurry and general confusion have been mainly responsible. In looking over the selection I hope you will (when the leisurely moment arrives) have the impulse to make what comments and criticisms occur to you. I am dissatisfied with at least half the poems, but I realize that this will possibly always be so with regard to poems written more than two years back. Reason seems to dictate, then, a certain amount of necessary indifference, that is, if I’m ever to print any collection of poems before the grave. —/—/

Dear Waldo: —/—/ After the quiet and freshness of the country the New York or rather Manhattan mid-summer seems more than ever intolerable. Rather ghastly, in fact. But Cleveland won’t be much better. Gorham was thoughtful in writing me news of a possible position with Henry [Robert] McBride as publicity man. I am going to see them about it before leaving,—as it might be a decent sort of thing for me.

Dos Passos has just come back from the hospital, after about two months of some influenza complication which has almost finished him. Cummings looks bilious and harried. His connections with Vanity Fair are broken and like the rest of us he is looking for pennies. Jimmy Light has just sailed past Columbia Hts. for England where he expects to put on some O’Neill plays. He has sole direction of the Provincetown theatre (not Greenwich Village branch) when he comes back in September. Have you thought of sending your play to him? The repërtoire that is at present planned doesn’t sound any too brilliant to me. Haven’t seen Jean or Gorham yet,—but expect to tomorrow. Such is the news in a hasty batch.... —/—/

Dear Waldo: I have been trying to get time and clarity to write you for the last two weeks—ever since I sent you the mss. of White Buildings—but the nightmare hurly-burly and confusion here intercepted me consistently. Three more weeks of it and I shall be able to get back to Brown’s place in the country and collect myself. Our old home will be rented by its new owner to a fraternity, my mother and grandmother will be leaving for Miami, and Cleveland will become for me, I hope, more a myth of remembrance than a reality, excepting that my “myth” of a father will still make chocolates here.

There has been one bright afternoon, however—last Sat. when I went out to Brandywine valley (between here and Akron) and revisited Bill Sommer. The old baldpate was asleep on a sofa when I looked through the screen door and knocked. Arose a great bulk in white undershirt and loose white duck pants—the black eyes revolving in the pallid or rather, dusty-white miller face like a sardonic Pierrot’s. The few hours I was there were spent with him out in the old school-house studio, surrounded by a flower garden and filled with plentiful new wonders of line and color. I wish you could have seen several of the oil children’s portraits that he has been doing! And there is a line drawing of a head and hand that I am bringing back to New York that you will greatly care for. While we were both chewing, smoking and listening to the crickets I finally found out why Sommer has been so remiss about joining in with me in my several efforts to expose him to fame and “fortune.” He hates to let his pictures leave him. Against that impasse, I guess, nobody’s efforts will be of much avail. It’s just as well, of course, if he has triumphed over certain kinds of hope. I admit that I haven’t, at least not entirely. I still feel the need of some kind of audience.

By the way—do you know if O’Neill is at present a resident anywhere on Nantucket? He has promised to write some kind of notice for my book, and I should like to get in touch with him. He wrote me from Bermuda, but where he has settled since returning from there I don’t yet know. If he has been near you I hope that you have got together.

I am enclosing an improved version of “Passage,”—the poem I wrote in the country this summer. It should replace the version that is in the mss. you have. To me it is still the most interesting and conjectural thing I have written—being merely the latest, I suppose. I’m particularly anxious to know what you think of its form. On sending it to The Dial I recently got this comment from Miss Moore:

“We could not but be moved, as you must know, by the rich imagination and the sensibility in your poem, Passage. Its multiform content accounts I suppose, for what seems to us a lack of simplicity and cumulative force. We are sorry to return it.”

It seems almost as though Miss Moore might be rather speaking of her own poems with such terms.... Allen Tate is writing a short essay (he intends a longer one later) on my work to appear along with four of the “Voyages” in the next copy of The Guardian. You will probably see it. It does hearten me somewhat that you and a few others have been so actively interested in what I’m trying to do. Certainly I have never done anything to personally deserve it, but I think my personal and economic embarrassments and frustrations have curtailed a good many of my intentions. —/—/

Dear Charlotte! dear Richard! —/—/ I am ready to send you one of the Light masks (from last year’s production of The Ancient Mariner). Jimmie promised me one of them, and I can think of no one better to send it to than you. I’ll get a box tomorrow, pack it and send it along. You can have some great fun playing with it in pantomime around the house. The effect is unearthly—the mask belonged to one of the angels, in fact, that are described as standing on the deck of the ship as it reaches the harbor in Coleridge’s poem. —/—/

I am so afraid that the land up there will get away from me before I get there that I can hardly sleep nights. I find that O’Neill is not in town and the other person, the publisher, from whom I had planned to possibly borrow the money is away also. Would it strain your pocketbook at this time to lend me the amount, so that I can at once clinch the bargain? It was so good of you to make the offer in the first place that I feel [I] am possibly taking advantage of your friendship. But if I could just settle the matter there before it is too late, I could later borrow the money from O’Neill, or someone else and return you at once the money borrowed. I will need a little over two hundred dollars as otherwise I shall not have anything to pay the lawyer’s fees with for looking up the deed, etc. Would $25.00 extra be too much? You must allow me to pay 6% interest on the loan—and to send you a regular note for the money. I would like the time stipulation about 5 years, but I would repay it as soon as possible before that. I know you trust me, but I also want to assure you of protection in the matter. —/—/

Dear Charlotte and Richard: I think I have found an even better solution for the “land problem” than the first proposition offered. A friend of Brown’s, Miss Bina Flynn, has just bought a lovely place within a half mile from Brown’s place, wonderful old Dutch house in good condition and built about the time of the American Revolution and with 160 acres of land around it. She needs money to help pay for it and has offered me 20 acres of the best of her land for $200.00. The piece that I have picked to buy is on the top slopes of a hill that overlooks the valley and it contains several open fields and a great deal of forest land. As it is much more convenient (within better access from the main road), and as it contains no useless swamps or wasteland as the other property included, I think I am getting as much of a bargain, if not more. Twenty acres is plenty to spread out in anyway, and there will be plenty of room on it for whatever place you would want, too.

Miss Flynn is out here today transacting the purchase of her property and I expect to settle with her very soon. More and more I become convinced that this is the only way for me to live, that is, when I can make arrangements to afford it as a permanent way of living, and I am sort of planning to come out here next summer and put up a temporary cabin which will at least do during the warm weather. I shall roll in the grass with prayers and pleasure when I really get this tract of land for my very own. And such beautiful country you will not find in many sections of this vast continent. Enclosed is my note for the $225.00 which I intend to pay much before the stipulated time. I shall, in fact, probably take a job in New York or on the sea this winter which will enable me to pay it back before a year is over—at the latest.

Today it is raining, but the ten days before it have been as divine as anyone could wish for. We have had big fires in the evenings, long walks, big meals almost entirely of lettuce, carrots, beets, turnips, squash, etc., just taken from the garden. Sue [Jenkins] seems to be very contented out here and is busy every moment making jellies, jams, pickles, etc. The hills are covered with wild grapes, elderberries and apple orchards. Don’t you think the quince is a beautiful fruit? There are about a dozen quince trees on Brown’s property—all loaded with their sort of kid glove golden fruit. Yesterday we had a great time making six gallons of ale. It must ripen for about five days in a warm corner of the chimney in a huge crock, and then we can begin to drink it. Brown also has a complete distilling outfit out in the shed. He makes wonderful apple jack from cider. But this is a forbidden drink for me these days!

All my furniture and things arrived in perfect condition. In addition I have been making tables and cupboards from old loose wood that has been lying around for years. They really look like antiques, all right! But I do love the weather stains and silver streaks on the surfaces. Most of the wood is oak and quite strong.

So you see how the days go.... In addition I am getting back to enough poise to read a good deal. It’s funny! Here I’ve been for over two weeks, now, and without a cent of money to my name. But I haven’t felt uncomfortable by any means. I know I can go back to a job now with a much better feeling of independence than before. —/—/

Dear Tories: There have been numerous “celebrations” besides the already recounted one (by Bina) on the great transaction, and the Punch Palazzo has had due patronage. The engrossing female [Laura Riding] at most of these has been “Rideshalk-Godding,” as I have come to call her, and thus far the earnest ghost of acidosis has been kept well hence. My real regret, however, is that I just missed getting the pick of jobs of the S. Am. line, last steamer—said occupation being deck yeoman at 20 minutes work a day, all freedom of ship, mess with officers or any first class passengers that seemed colloquial, white uniform, brass buttons, cap, meditation on the sun deck all day long, and seventy-five dollars a month clear sailing! The chief officer had already approved me, but before I could get over to the offices for final approbation they had already sent someone else over to the ship. We must have passed under the river. However, I noticed that my questionnaire (filled last June) had won an OK sign in the upper right corner, and I have been told to come around again on the 26th when the next boat arrives. I’m not waiting for that, however, as I need instant cash and there is not one chance in a hundred of a similar vacancy soon. Otherwise I have finished “The Wine Menagerie” and have sent it off, along with “Passage,” to The Criterion. Since the last (yesterday) Guardian has come out without the “Voyages” I am thinking of trying to become a literary ex-patriot. It’s just as tiresome as ever. This issue contains a lot of tommy-rot by Seaver and an “announcement” in the bargain that reads unforgivably: “Voyages, four remarkable poems by Allen Tate” will appear in the next issue! —/—/

Am on my way to The Dial to have lunch with K. B[urke] and shall try to bag a review or briefers from the Rt. Rev. Miss Mountjoy [Moore]. A momentous morning: Frank is going to try to corner Liveright on my vol., also. —/—/

Dear Waldo: Your advice and stimulation are still with me. Your solidity and conviction seemed never more firm or luminous than during our last talk.—I was glad to see you looking so well. I wrote this out this morning, thinking it might go well in the book.[39] No other news yet.

Dear Bill: —/—/ I know you’ll be glad to know that there is a good chance of my first book of poems, White Buildings, being published by next spring. In fact Boni & Liveright (at Waldo Frank’s persuasion) have practically agreed to bring it out if Eugene O’Neill will consent to write a short foreword. They have lost so much money on the better kind of poetry (which simply doesn’t sell these days) that they want to hook the book up with an illustrious name and catch the public that way as much as possible. Gene is a good friend of mine and admires my work—I know that—but whether or not he feels like performing this favor I haven’t yet heard. Frank thinks he can engineer the matter anyway—in time, but I don’t know. He would gladly write the foreword himself if he thought his name would count sufficiently, and at any rate will write a whole page of praise for it in The New Republic when it comes out. This and other favorable reviews that I am sure to get from friends of mine ought to make quite a sensation for the book. I’m a little up in the air with the uncertainty and excitement of the present situation. It would be fine for me in so many ways if the thing did go through!

Have been reading Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, a new book that is full of startlingly simple and vivid description. —/—/

Dear Father: I was very glad to hear from you and it was generous of you to thus come to my aid.[40] The only pity is that artificial theories and principles have to come so much between us in what is, after all, a natural relationship of confidence and affection.

You may not believe it, Father, but in spite of what opinions you may hear that I have against you (and, not knowing what is told you, I still refuse to acknowledge them, either way), I still resent the fate that has seemed to justify them and God knows how much we all are secretly suffering from the alienations that have been somehow forced upon us. If we were all suddenly called to a kind of Universal Judgment, I’m sure that we would see a lot of social defenses and disguises fall from each other, and we would begin from that instant onward to really know and love each other.

I feel rather strange these days. The old house sold in Cleveland; Grandmother ill in Florida; Mother somewhere in Cuba or the Isle of Pines; and I not hearing from either of them for the past month. Altogether, it’s enough to make one feel a little foot-loose in the world. But I’ll have a job soon, and will probably be reassured in the mail that everything’s all right. At such times, though, I realize how few we are and what a pity it is that we don’t mean a little more to each other.

Dear Charlotte and Richard: —/—/ The facts are hard, but true, I have not yet succeeded in finding myself a job, and even after trying every sort of position, like selling books in stores during the Christmas rush, ship jobs, etc., etc., and I have just been kept going by the charity of my friends. The nervous strain of it all has about floored me, and I feel as though the skin of my knees were quite worn off from bowing to so many people, being sniffed at (to see whether I had “personality” or not), etc. How I shall love it when, some day, I shall have a little hut built on my place in the country to live in—and get out of all this filthy mess!

Even the publication matter of my book of poems has not come through the way I had expected. O’Neill is writing the Foreword, after all, but he took so long to notify Liveright (the publisher) about it that I must now try to place it somewhere else. This may not be so hard, but it probably means that it will not come out until next autumn, and I had so hoped to have it printed before that....

So you see how it’s been! I don’t mean to wail, but it is hard to keep up and going sometimes. —/—/

—/—/ I have an appointment tomorrow with a possible job. I certainly hope to get it, and begin paying back what you were so kind in lending me. The Dial bought my “Wine Menagerie” poem—but insisted (Marianne Moore did it) on changing it around and cutting it up until you would not even recognize it. She even changed the title to “Again.” What it all means now I can’t make out, and I would never have consented to such an outrageous joke if I had not so desperately needed the twenty dollars.—Just one more reason for getting my book published as soon as possible!

Dear Father: Your letter was appreciated in many respects and I don’t want you to think that I wasn’t glad to hear from you. But there were recriminations in it which assumed a basis for apologies and regrets on my part which I don’t feel I at all suggested in my last letter and which I certainly cannot acknowledge now or later. In fact, you always seem to assume some dire kind of repentance whenever I write you or call on you, and so far as I know I have nothing in particular to repent. I simply said I was sorry that you could not see me in a clearer light, and it seems I shall have to go on lamenting that to some degree for the rest of my life. If I began to make recriminations on my behalf there wouldn’t be any use writing at all, for though I have plenty to mention, I don’t see what good it would be to either one of us to embark on a correspondence of that sort. My only complaint right now is that you seem determined to pursue such a course, and I can only say that if you persist I have no answers to offer. You and I could never restore our natural relationship of father and son by continually harping on all the unnatural and painful episodes that life has put between us via not only ourselves but other people during the last ten years, and if you are not willing to bury such hatchets and allow me, also, to do so, then I’ll have to give up.

For the last six weeks I’ve been tramping the streets and being questioned, smelled and refused in various offices. Most places didn’t have any work to offer. I’ve stepped even out of my line as advertising copywriter, down to jobs as low as twenty-five per week, but to no avail. My shoes are leaky, and my pockets are empty; I have helped to empty several other pockets, also. In fact I am a little discouraged. This afternoon I am stooping to do something that I know plenty of others have done whom I respect, but which I have somehow always edged away from. I am writing a certain internationally known banker who recently gave a friend of mine five thousand dollars to study painting in Paris, and I’m asking him to lend me enough money to spend the winter in the country where it is cheap to live and where I can produce some creative work without grinding my brains through six sausage machines a day beforehand. If he refuses me I shall either ask Eugene O’Neill who is now writing the Foreword to my book and won’t refuse me for some help to that end, or I’ll take to the sea for awhile—for I’m certainly tired of the desolating mechanics of this office business, and it’s only a matter of time, anyway, until I finish with it for good. I can live for ten dollars a week in the country and have decent sleep, sound health and a clear mind. I have already bought ten acres near here in Connecticut and it’s just a matter of time until I have a cabin on it and have a garden and chickens. You see I have a plan for my life, after all. You probably don’t think it’s very ambitious, but I do. As Dr. Lytle said to me when I was last in Cleveland, “What does it all amount to if you aren’t happy?” And I never yet have spent a happy day cooped up in an office having to calculate everything I said to please or flatter people that I seldom respected.

I wish you would write me something about yourself these days. Let’s not argue any more.

Dear Mr. Kahn: Yesterday I telephoned Mr. Sharpp, your secretary, to request an interview with you regarding some temporary assistance which I felt you might possibly care to render me under the pressure of my present circumstances. Mr. Sharpp advised that I write you first, explaining the exigencies of the situation and the application I wished to make. I shall try to be as definite and as brief as possible.

My first collected poems are about to be published (probably next spring) with a Foreword by Eugene O’Neill. Although my poems have appeared from time to time in various magazines such as The Dial and The Little Review, I am not yet well enough known to reap any substantial benefits from what I have written. I am twenty-six years of age, and for the last seven years I have been entirely dependent on my efforts as an advertising copywriter for my living. What real writing I have done has had to be accomplished after office hours and sometimes at the risk of losing my position. Last June, as a result of ill health and nervous exhaustion, I had to resign my position with Sweet’s Catalogue, regardless of my dependence on my salary there, and live in the country until my health recovered.

For the past eight weeks I have been back in New York, endeavoring by every means to secure work again as a copywriter. As I have been unfortunate in not finding any openings I have recently attempted to get any other kind of work available, but as I find myself now completely without funds, my circumstances seem to be rather acute. One of my friends has suggested that you might be sufficiently interested in the creation of an indigenous American poetry to possibly assist me at this time. As I have never before asked for such assistance I run the risk of writing you quite presumptuously, and I certainly wish to beg your pardon if my letter seems so.

Besides the poems collected into my forthcoming volume I have partially written a long poem, the conception of which has been in my mind for some years. I have had to work at it very intermittently, between night and morning, and while shorter efforts can be more successfully completed under such crippling circumstances, a larger conception such as this poem, The Bridge, aiming as it does to enunciate a new cultural synthesis of values in terms of our America, requires a more steady application and less interruption than my circumstances have yet granted me to give to it.

If the suggestion seems worthy and feasible to you I should like to borrow the sum of a thousand dollars, at any rate of interest within six percent. With this amount I could live in retirement and cheaply in the country for at least a year and not only complete this poem, but also work on a drama which I have in mind. As security I can only offer an unconditional sum, amounting to five thousand dollars, which by the terms of my deceased grandparent’s will, I inherit on the death of his widow. I do not know whether such bequests are open to outside inquiry, but the proper reference, in case you are interested, is Mr. Stockwell, Trust Department, Guardian Savings & Trust Co., Cleveland; estate of C. O. Hart.

As to the estimation my work deserves, I naturally do not feel free to do more than quote a few statements from critics who have seen my poems in print and read my mss. I include these on a separate sheet herewith. Let me say in concluding that I should appreciate an interview with you at your offices, Mr. Kahn, and that I honestly feel that my artistic integrity and present circumstances merit the attention of one like yourself, who is and has been so notably constructive in the contemporary and future art and letters of America.

Statements on my writings—

“It is time that your poetry should appear in a volume. You know what I think of it. I have done my best these years to spread my recognition of your genius not alone here but abroad. But it has been hard, without a volume of your work to go on. WHITE BUILDINGS will be an event in American poetry—a major event. Not the sort of event that journalists make paragraphs about, three times a week. But the sort of event that literary historians make chapters about—years later. You are a real poet.

“I promise you, that when your volume appears, I shall devote a long article to your work, in one of our leading literary magazines.” WALDO FRANK

“The publication of WHITE BUILDINGS is one of the five or six events of the first order in the history of American poetry. It is doubtful if any other first volume since Whitman’s, in 1855, has so definitely exceeded promise and reached distinction on its own account. Hart Crane’s poetry, even in its beginnings, is one of the finest achievements of this age. So one must predict the reviewer’s protest—‘Incomprehensible!’” ALLEN TATE—Reviewer for Nation, New Republic, etc.

“Many thanks for sending me copies of your recent poems. I have taken them with me on my brief vacation and I have greatly enjoyed reading them. They have refreshed my conviction that you are writing the most highly energized and the most picturesquely emotionalized poetry in ‘These United States.’ ‘Voyages’ is the finest love suite composed by any living American.” GORHAM B. MUNSON—Managing editor of Psychology, and critic; contributor to Dial, New Republic, Criterion, New Age, Europe, etc.

Other references—Eugene O’Neill, Greenwich Village Theatre, or Ridgefield, Conn.; James Light, Provincetown Theatre; Miss Eleanor Fitzgerald, Provincetown Theatre; Waldo Frank, 150 East 54th St., N.Y.C. Telephone: Plaza 2342; Marianne Moore; Jane Heap; Harrison Smith; Paul Rosenfeld.

My dear Mother: For almost six weeks, now, I have not heard from you or Grandma. Though Mr. Curtis was thoughtful enough to notify me that you have been taken ill, the circumstances did not seem to describe a situation so severe that you could not have taken pen in hand and at least have written me once yourself during that time—especially, it seems to me, since you knew by my several letters that I was having a difficult time and was without funds entirely. I have put off writing you under these conditions; there was enough reason to so do simply on the basis of your own indifference, or possible disgust with me. And I admit that it was a shock for me to realize that you needed me so little. I have gone through a good many realizations of various sorts during the last six months and they are not without echoes of certain things you said to me last summer, trying as I may have been.

I don’t know where you may be at this time, but in case you may for any reason wish to write to me I am writing to say that I shall be probably for the next year at the following address: c/o Mrs. Addie Turner, Patterson, New York, R.F.D. I am unusually well provided for and shall leave for the country next Saturday. Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of being rewarded in some measure for some of the work I have been doing. You have probably heard of the banker, Mr. Otto H. Kahn, who has kept the Metropolitan Opera and various other artistic ventures endowed for years. After an interview with Mr. Kahn at his home at 1100 Fifth Ave., I was given the sum of two thousand dollars to expend on my living expenses during the next year, which time is to be spent in writing the most creative message I have to give, regardless of whether it is profitable in dollars & cents or not.

Mr. Kahn was keenly interested in what Waldo Frank and Eugene O’Neill had said about my work, and it makes me very happy indeed to have this recognition from a man who is not only extremely wealthy and renowned on that account, but who is also very astute and intelligent. I am very tired now—with all the strain and effort of the last two months, but I shall probably pick up as never before when I get into the quiet of the country and have the first real opportunity of my life to use my talents unhampered by fear and worry for the morrow.

If you are not too prejudiced about me by this time, you may also be interested in this turn of affairs.

Dear Charlotte & Ricardo: Here I am at this date and sixty-six miles from a drink. Isn’t it tragic! And there will not be a whistle or a shout to tell me it is a new year. I shall probably be fast asleep, unless I get scared and stay up blinking over a book—for it must be a bad omen to be asleep at the switch of the new twelvemonth. But tomorrow night I shall make up for it. That is, if certain friends come out from New York with all their bottles on them.

Life out here so far has been ideal—even if it has been below zero much of the time. But I came prepared for all kinds of weather and dress every morning in boots, woolens, and furs. I shall have my picture taken and you shall see how very impolite I look.

Imagine paying only ten dollars a month for the rent of a whole house (8 rooms)! I share it with Allen Tate and his wife and have a suite all to myself on the second floor—1 room I do not use at all, a bedroom with a fine old “sleigh bed” and a study, spacious and light, in which the sun streams every morning. My pictures and nick-knacks look wonderfully jolly on the simple kalsomined walls and the books fairly glisten on the shelves. This room is kept well heated by two oil stoves. Downstairs we cook and heat with wood-burning stoves which means enough daily exercise to keep us glowing.

Otherwise all I have to do is wash dishes. Mrs. Tate cooks lunch and dinner and Allen gets breakfast! This routine plan is the only way for all of us to get each his work done—I mean our writing. Mrs. Tate is writing a novel (her second) and Allen is supposed to be writing reviews, etc. Nothing much yet, however, has been done by any of us. There have been food supplies, appliances and sundries of all sorts to order—and then came Christmas with flocks of people visiting Brown’s place (about 1/2 mile away) and drinking and talking day and night. Allen also has dissipated terribly with a gun he bought (called “The White Powder Wonder”)! and has so far spent most of his time ranging over the hills shooting at sparrows. He did get a squirrel one day, however, and we had an exclamatory time over the stew it made. — — — — There are all kinds of game around here, even deer, and it’s a temptation to hunt, of course.

Well, the expected results have already been noticed on my family! Long and ardurous letters from uncles, aunts, etc. (not Zell [Hart Deming], but she’s in Europe anyway), and a fat check from my father for Christmas. They all want me to come out and visit again—which I see no reason for doing at this time. I want to get into my work. My God, it’s the first time anyone paid me to do it or even encouraged it in any substantial way! Of course—to them the $2,000 seems like some kind of shower bath without any connection with any conceivable responsibilities. You can have responsibilities toward your time clock, your cow or your maiden aunt, but you can’t mean to say that poems or pictures demand anything but aimless dreaming! No. I’m not coming until spring—unless there is serious need of me.

Mother, it seems, has been terribly ill in Miami, and did not even go to the Isle of Pines. As she was scheduled to leave for there on a certain day and, failing to, did not inform me I went on writing her there and as I got no word of her from anywhere I finally gave up writing at all. Finally I got word through Mr. Curtis that he had been called to Miami to take care of them both—but I still didn’t understand her not writing me in all that time, and thought she must be angry about something.

Everything was all mixed up. And I finally had a long letter from her rejoicing in my good luck and full of the harrowing details of how very ill she had been with all sorts of complications. Miami turned out to be more terrible than even I had predicted—and what this folly has cost those women in pain and in expense God only knows. Both in bed for weeks. Six doctors, nurses, compartments on trains, etc., etc., Grandma got back about 2 weeks before Grace was able to leave. The latter joined her finally and they are living at the Manor—where they should have been all the time, of course. I’m sure they would love to see you both, and believe me, there were no complications, as I had thought, between us.

I’m expecting you both to visit me here next summer. Plenty of room for you—and you’ll be sure to relax. I bought some wonderful snow shoes with some of Otto’s money and so I pray for heavy storms. —/—/

PART THREE

West Indies-Europe

(1926-1930)

1926

Dear Malcolm: The poem [41] has been read with approval—is flatteringly apocalyptic and has the proper nautical slant.... Seriously, though, it seems to stand on its own feet as a poem and I appreciate a very great deal the tonality and direction of it in its more intimate aspects. You and Peggy [Baird] have been more than good in remembering me—thanks for the photo, too. —/—/

Are you reviewing Doc. Transit anywhere? Schneider finally sent me out a copy. It intrigued me more than any such tour de force since Poe, though it has its obvious weaknesses. Some chapters, however, of great imagination. I didn’t anticipate half so much from the earlier things I’ve read by Schneider.

I’m coming in town probably about two weeks from now, and should like to know what day or days about that period you’ll be there also. You know what the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of S. Carolina—! I’m such a rum-scallion that I never even planned to stay put anywhere very long in the woods. Let me hear from you soon. —/—/

Dear Grandma: I was sorry to hear from Grace yesterday that you have been undergoing more pain and illness—and I only hope that this finds you MUCH improved. I wish I could be near you—and have a long talk. We certainly will manage that when I come out to Cleveland next spring.

Yesterday I finally got started into my Bridge poem—really the first full day I have [had] for the work since arriving. And from now on I hope to have the necessary inspiration to keep steadily at it. One really has to keep one’s self in such a keyed-up mood for the thing that no predictions can be made ahead as to whether one is going to have the wit to work on it steadily or not.

It is fine to get somewhere where I can sleep soundly again. I’m beginning to feel very much rested. I’m so glad that you both are located in a place where there is nothing more to do than to care for your personal comfort. —/—/

Dear Grace & Grandma: —/—/ There isn’t much news—only the good news (to me!) that I’ve been at work in almost ecstatic mood for the last two days on my Bridge. I never felt such range and symphonic power before—and I’m so happy to have this first burst of substantiation since I had the good luck to be set free to build this structure of my dreams.

I sent New Year’s greetings to Kahn and in the mail today comes the most cordial answer—wishing as he puts it, “that you will prove yourself a master builder in constructing The Bridge of your dreams, thoughts and emotions.” —/—/

Dear Waldo: I am not through working on it yet, but I thought you might care to see this last part of The Bridge, oddly enough emergent first.[42] It is symphonic in including the convergence of all the strands separately detailed in antecedent sections of the poem—Columbus, conquests of water, land, etc., Pokahantus, subways, offices, etc., etc. I dare congratulate myself a little, I think, in having found some liberation for my condensed metaphorical habit in a form as symphonic (at least so attempted) as this.

The bridge in becoming a ship, a world, a woman, a tremendous harp (as it does finally) seems to really have a career. I have attempted to induce the same feelings of elation, etc.—like being carried forward and upward simultaneously—both in imagery, rhythm and repetition, that one experiences in walking across my beloved Brooklyn Bridge. I’m now busy on the Niña, Santa Maria, Pinta episode—Cathay being an attitude of spirit, rather than material conquest throughout, of course.

I know I can depend on you to mention the flaws and shortcomings. This section seems a little transcendental in tendency at present,—but I think that the pediments of the other sections will show it not to have been. —/—/

Dear Grace: It is a good thing I got your letter yesterday—or I should have been sore. I was so tired last night I simply fell into bed at 10. We had spent most of the day shopping in town and I later built me some bookshelves which are very simple but extend to the ceiling—the kind I have always wanted. My study now is a picture to enjoy. When I was in New York I bought some beautiful and rare Congo wood carvings—and added to my Sommer paintings and your photograph they make a marvelous room.

My hands are so stiff from wood-cutting that my writing looks funny. It is very, very cold today, was yesterday and promises to continue. We all go about shivering most of the time and I’m sorry to say get too little freedom for our writing. Certainly the spring warmth will be unusually welcome to all of us.

—/—/ We do not correspond—except at considerable intervals as I hesitate to presume much on his [Otto Kahn] attention. There are so many others whom he is always helping that his time is largely taken up anyway. What with two personal secretaries and a whole corps of personal office help—besides his huge financial machine (his interests occupy a building of about 22 stories) he must be a busy man. He wants to hear from “time to time” as he puts it—about how my poem is progressing. But, since writing him New Year’s I shan’t presume again until next March or so. My second thousand is not payable until along in May. At which time I shall probably personally talk to him again. Beyond this money I have no expectations of more assistance, but if my poem when completed seems good enough to him, it may be, of course, that he will be further interested. I’m thankful enough for what I already have, however!

Your news about Grandma is rather heartrending. I do hope she won’t have to suffer much longer—and if she does that she will be given enough sedatives to keep the pain dulled, no matter what the consequences. It would be best if she really gives up more—for the remainder of her existence—under any conditions—promises her only misery. —/—/

Dear Grandma: —/—/ I am hoping to hear from Grace tomorrow all about how you are. Much better, I hope.

We had a brief flurry of snow again today, but not enough yet to permit me to use my scrumptious snow shoes. I have been reading the Journal of Christopher Columbus lately—of his first voyage to America, which is concerned mostly with his cruisings around the West Indies. It has reminded me many times of the few weeks I spent on the Island to hear him expatiate on the gorgeous palms, unexpected pines, balmy breezes, etc., which we associate with Cuba. — — — —

Dear Lachaise: Constantly your seagull has floated in my mind—ever since I saw it, and it will mean much to me to have it. I can’t thank you enough. I am enclosing an amount which I hope will to some extent defray the cost of materials, and you must let me know if more is needed.

I envy you your occupation out here in the extreme cold of the last two weeks—wiggling a pen or tapping a typewriter is hardly as conducive to good circulation or warmth while every breath one takes comes out like a steaming snort from a dragon! At present the snow is so deep that we are obliged to use snow shoes or skis to get anywhere. Fortunately we are well supplied with wood and oil and provisions.

When I get to New York—probably not for six weeks or so—I hope to find you in. If the white bird is done before then you can express it out to Patterson, or I’ll be glad to carry it back when I come in. — — — —

Dear Charlotte et Ricardo: —/—/ In spite of many inconveniences, however, I am glad of coming out here. Temperate living, good sleep and considerable outdoor exercise have had their usual effects. The cold has kept us hopping, though, and I’ll be glad to greet the first warm days that come. Then there will be both more time and more comfort for reading and The Bridge. The finale of which is just about completed—but the antecedent sections will take me at least a year yet. At times the project seems hopeless, horribly so; and then suddenly something happens inside one, and the theme and the substance of the conception seem brilliantly real, more so than ever! At least, at worst, the poem will be a huge failure! If you get what I mean. When I am a little better satisfied with certain details of the part already finished I’ll send it on to you, although I really shouldn’t—as isolated from the rest of the poem it would probably not be interesting.

Mother wrote me that you called on her. She was extremely pleased, and remarked how beautiful and youthfully radiant my Charlotte was! —/—/

Dear Gorham: The long siege of snow—the mail delivery has been discontinued for six weeks, and isn’t resumed yet—despite occasional sportiveness with snow shoes and skis, has been a burden. Especially as I was swindled on a fifty-gal. drum of kerosene I bought for the stoves in my study, and have had to risk chapping hands every time I came near the typewriter to say nothing of tumbling through many a chilly night with chilblains from cold floors, damp, etc. It really would have been alright had I had pure kerosene, though. Nothing but the swindler is to blame.

None-the-less, I’ve read considerably—Aeschylus (especially the Oresteia) was a revelation of my ideal in the dynamics of metaphor—even through the rather prosy translations [43] one gleans the essential density of image, impact of substance matter so verbally quickened and delivered with such soul-shivering economy that one realizes there is none in the English language to compare him with.—Then Prescott’s Ferdinand & Isabella, Journal of Columbus, a book on Magellan by Hildebrand (this was rather inexcusable), Melville’s delightful White Jacket as well as a marvelously illustrated book [44] on whaling and whaling ships, published by the Marine Research Society, Salem, Mass.... In the midst of my readings of Science & the Modern World, Whitehead,—along comes Virgin Spain. I’m about half way through this at present and feel like telegraphing Waldo my immediate uncontrolled and unstinted enthusiasm. As prose it certainly is his climax of excellence—and as a document of the epic one of the most lively testaments ever written. I had been dwelling with a good deal of surprise in a pleasant conviction that Lawrence’s Plumed Serpent was a masterpiece of racial description. It certainly is vividly beautiful, its landscapes, theatrical vistas, etc.—but Waldo’s work is a world of true reality—his ritual is not a mere invention. Only my interest in Maya and Toltec archaeology led me to order Lawrence’s book. It was poor in this—at least regarding the details I had hoped for, but I was rather astonished at the calibre of much of the prose.

As Waldo may have mentioned, the finale of The Bridge is written, the other five or six parts are in feverish embryo. They will require at least a year more for completion; however bad this work may be, it ought to be hugely and unforgivably, distinguishedly bad. In a way it’s a test of materials as much as a test of one’s imagination. Is the last statement sentimentally made by Eliot,