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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/78076-0.txt b/78076-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..71e2e28 --- /dev/null +++ b/78076-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3106 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78076 *** + + THE MURRAY HILL BIOGRAPHIES + + ROBERT FROST + + + [Illustration: _Photo by Doris Ulmann_ + + Robert Frost] + + + + + ROBERT FROST + + _A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense_ + + + By + GORHAM B. MUNSON + _Author of_ “WALDO FRANK: A STUDY” + + + GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + ON MURRAY HILL : NEW YORK + + + COPYRIGHT, 1927, + BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + + + ROBERT FROST + --A-- + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + To + HART CRANE + + in memory of many + enthusiastic conversations + about poetry + + + + + CONTENTS + + + I “THE GENERATIONS OF MEN” 11 + + II “ONCE BY THE PACIFIC” 21 + + III “A BOY’S WILL” 27 + + IV “THE ROAD NOT TAKEN” 32 + + V “NEW HAMPSHIRE” 36 + + VI “PAN WITH US” 58 + + VII “INTO MY OWN” 69 + + VIII “A SENSIBILITIST” 87 + + IX “AGAINST THE WORLD IN GENERAL” 99 + + APPENDIX A [Selected British Opinion + on Robert Frost] 117 + + APPENDIX B [Bibliographical] 125 + + APPENDIX C [Robert Frost on Education] 127 + + [Index] 131 + + + + +I. “THE GENERATIONS OF MEN” + + _“But don’t you think we sometimes make too much + Of the old stock? What counts is the ideals + And those will bear some keeping still about.”_ + + +New England is our association with the name of Frost, and we are no +doubt surprised when told that it is a Scandinavian name. Yet there +are today many persons in Denmark who hearing this sound uttered +behind their backs would turn with that sudden interest aroused by the +unexpected pronouncing of one’s name. Certain of the remote ancestors +of these Danish Frosts may have roved into England in the ninth century +A.D., or it may have been Saxons bearing the name of Forst, which is +the Saxon form of Frost, who invaded England in the fifth century A.D. +and founded the line of English Frosts. In either case, the Frosts were +settled there before the Norman Conquest and the name had begun to +accrete sturdy Anglo-Saxon associations about its slightly harsh sound. + +In 1135 Henry Frost, the probable ancestor of the American progenitor +of one line of Frosts,[1] founded the Hospital of the Brothers of St. +John the Evangelist at Cambridge, England, and this foundation became +in 1509 St. John’s College, for which reason it is said that “Henry +Frost ought never to be forgot, who gave birth to so noted a seat of +religion, and afterwards to one of the most renouned seats of learning +in Europe.” + +The son of Henry Frost bore the name of the subject of this Study and +wore a coat of arms which reads like a prophetic curio of the poetry of +his namesake. “Argent. A chevron azure between two thistles slipped in +chief, and a hind’s head erased in base proper. Crest: a grey squirrel +sejant, semée of estoiles sable, collared and chained or, and holding +between the paws a hazel branch fructed also proper.” + +Until the early seventeenth century the Frost family spread deeper and +deeper into the sub-soil of English life. Then came the migrations of +the Puritans, crowded by unfavorable forces at home and drawn from afar +by the promises of New England. In an old piece of writing one can +read: + + “Nicholas, Marride Bertha Cadwalla, + Jan’y 1630 ffrom Tavistock, Devon + Bertha Cadwalla, Borne ffeb’y ye 14th, 1610 + Aprill Arrived in + Sailed for America June, 1634, in ye year + In ye Shipp Wulfrana, Alwin Wellborn, Master + ffrom Plimouth, Devon.” + +It was this Nicholas Frost who founded the line of which Robert Frost +is a representative of the ninth generation. In the interval New +England incorporated itself into the tissue, blood and bone of these +“generations of men” ultimately to become song from the lips of Robert +Frost. + +The history of the early generations of this line is threaded into +the history of certain old villages in Maine--Kittery, Eliot, Wells, +York--located close to the present New Hampshire border, and today +there is an inscription on Ambush Rock where Major Charles Frost was +slain, Frost’s Hill is still known as such, and the Frost Garrison +House, erected in 1733, is the only garrison house that remains in Old +Kittery. Everett S. Stackpole, the patient chronicler of _Old Kittery +and Her Families_, hints that a little mythological moss may have +gathered about the early Frost settlers, and believes that Nicholas +Frost was on the coast of Maine as early as 1632. He surmises that he +returned to Tiverton, Devonshire, England, collected his wife and two +sons, John and Charles, and came back to America in 1634. + +Nicholas Frost appears to have landed at Little Harbor, now Rye, New +Hampshire, and to have lived there for at least a year, since there is +record of a daughter Anna being born there in April, 1635. Within the +next two years he removed to the head of Sturgeon Creek, in what is now +Eliot, Maine, where he made his home until his death in 1663. + +His vicissitudes and achievements were of a typical pioneer character. +He acquired a fairly large acreage of land, served as one of the first +selectmen of Kittery, signed with his son a petition to Oliver Cromwell +(signed with his mark, a combination of N and F, for this ancestor of +a distinguished poet was illiterate), and lost his wife and fifteen +year old daughter, Anna, to the Indians. It is said that they were +captured on July 4, 1650 “and taken to a camp at the mouth of Sturgeon +Creek. Nicholas and his son Charles were at York at the time, and on +their return attempted to rescue them but were unsuccessful; Charles, +however, killed a chief and a brave. The next day Charles, his father +and some of the neighbors went back to the camp but were too late. The +camp was deserted, only the bodies of Bertha and Anna were found there. +They were buried near the old Garrison.”[2] Stackpole finds some of the +details of this story scarcely credible, but it seems clearly a fact +that Bertha Frost and her daughter were killed by the Indians. + +Charles Frost, already mentioned several times in this narrative, +became locally celebrated and until _North of Boston_ was imported from +England in 1915 was probably the most famous of the American Frosts. + +He was noted as an Indian fighter, and bitterly hated by his foes who +finally killed him from an ambush on July 4, 1697. The hatred of the +Indians for him went to greater lengths: they opened his grave the +night after the burial and carried the body to the top of Frost’s hill +where it was suspended upon a stake. The reason for this vengeance lay +in an incident that occurred in September, 1676, following the close +of King Philip’s War, an incident that is sometimes described in the +colonial and border war histories of our early settlers. + +The Pennacooks, some of the neighboring Abenakis, and a number of +“strange Indians” (alleged to be King Philip’s men) assembled, having +been given an express pledge of safety, at Dover, New Hampshire, for +a friendly conference with the whites. A sham fight was instituted +and using this as a pretext the whites seized four hundred Indians. +Of these three hundred were sent to Boston where a few were hanged +and the rest sold into slavery. It is said that Major Waldron and +Captain (later Major) Frost joined this stratagem with reluctance, +but the Indians held them responsible for what they reasonably deemed +an atrocious and treacherous deed, bided their time and killed Major +Waldron thirteen years later and Major Frost twenty-one years after, +causing one Joseph Storer in Wells to write: “It hath pleased God to +take a way; Major Frost, the Indians waylad him Last Sabbath day as he +was cominge whom from meeting at night; and killed him and John Heards +wife and Denes Downing ... it is a Great Loss to the Whole Province; +and Espesely to his fameley ... mistress Frost is very full of sory; +and all her Children.” + +His death is said to have been the last English blood shed in New +England in King William’s War and inspired a memento in verse which +runs: + + The last of that grand triumvirate, + Unflinching martyrs of a common fate, + Waldron and Plaisted and Frost, these three, + The flower of New England chivalry. + +The descendants of this component of the flower of New England +chivalry occupied themselves in divers ways but kept their home-roots +within a radius of fifty miles of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His son, +the Hon. John Frost, married a sister of Sir William Pepperell who +captured Louisburg in 1745 and himself served His Majesty for a time +as Commander of the man-of-war _Edward_. Later he became a merchant +of Newcastle, New Hampshire, and a member of the Governor’s Council. +His son, William, was also a merchant of Newcastle, but apparently +not as conspicuous as his grandfather or father. The line recovers +its warlike tinge in his son, Lieutenant William Frost, an officer in +the Continental Army during the American Revolution and a resident +of Andover, Massachusetts. The sixth generation gives us Samuel +Abbot Frost, who remained in New Hampshire most of his life and was +the father of four children, among them William Prescott Frost, the +grandfather of Robert, who moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. + +For a time William Prescott Frost aspired to be a well-dressed +young blood, but New England thrift and respectability erased these +fashionable yearnings and he became instead a saver of the margins +of his income and a local pillar of respectability. He wrested a +competency from his job as overseer in a Lawrence mill and was +naturally somewhat baffled by the drifting and poetic tendencies of his +young grandson, probably never more than when he proposed to Robert, +then aged eighteen, that he should take one year to try out his poetry +and then, if that did not meet with success, why, there were plenty of +other worthy pursuits. The reply was: “Give me twenty years!” And it +was to be exactly twenty years before _A Boy’s Will_ was published in +London. + +But for all his respectability there was a liberal vein in William +Prescott Frost: otherwise he could not have tolerated the notions and +conduct of his wife. For she was one of the earliest feminists in +America. This lady, remembered as one whose stateliness was enhanced +by an habitual nodding of the head as if with dignified resentment +against the ascendency of the male, decided one day that house-work +was not exclusively the business of women and called for a division of +household tasks. And her husband acquiesced, so that, turn and turn +about, one performed the services of the establishment whilst the +other enjoyed leisure. + +This couple had a son and a daughter, and named the boy William +Prescott after the father. He was sent to Harvard, the first of the +line to receive college training, and it was hoped that he would become +a lawyer, a hope that his grandparents later cherished for Robert +Frost. But William Prescott Frost, Jr., revolted against what seven +generations of Frosts had assisted in forming: he revolted so strongly +against New England that his flight ended only when he reached San +Francisco. + +But before recording that grimly energetic career, a pause is due, +since “what counts is the ideals and those will bear some keeping +still about,” to ask concerning the congruity of Robert Frost with +his ancestry. What is noticeable first of all in this stock is +its closeness to the soil. It was given, not to wandering, but to +settling, to making a sturdy fight with local conditions, to seeing +matters through on the terms of the environment. That environment +happened to be, in its wider sense, successively colonial America, +the consolidation and growth of the United States, and the beginnings +of the industrial era. In a smaller sense, it was New England and +the family is dyed in the older qualities of both America and its +small northeastern corner--hardihood, resistance, decency and kinship +to the soil, to mention a few. One is tempted to make a second +generalization. The way the Frosts trod was the middle road. In their +family there is no touch of the eccentric or extravagant or fanatic. +They were church-going, but not zealots of puritanism. They served in +the army and navy when occasion pressed, but they were not soldiers +of fortune. They were small business men and local officeholders, but +made no unusual motions in either rôle. What stands out seems to be +a temperamental conservatism, adapting itself to changes in history +and environment, but never reactionary or radical--until we come upon +a variant in the father of Robert Frost. But Robert Frost is heir to +the progressive conservatism and the closeness to the locality of the +forebears of his father. + + + + +II. “ONCE BY THE PACIFIC” + + +Shortly after the Civil War an immigrant ship from Scotland was coming +up the Schuylkill River. It had taken weeks to cross the Atlantic and +now it was close enough to be gaily bombarded by peaches thrown from +the shore. The passengers caught the strange fruit in their hands and +learned to eat it and the taste was welcome after so protracted a spell +of ship’s provisions. + +There was a fifteen year old girl passenger from Edinburgh who did not +take part in the pastime. She came of a lowland Scotch family, a family +of seafarers: her father, a sea captain, had been lost at sea and so +also had her brother. Bred to patience, she now sat quietly watching. +But one of the men came over and dropped the peach he had caught into +her lap. “You should eat it,” he explained, and she replied, gazing at +the fruit, “It’s too bonnie to eat.” + +This Scotch girl was on her way to Columbus, Ohio, to live with an +uncle in business there. A few years later she came to Lewiston, +Pennsylvania, to teach school. And here it was that Isabelle Moody +encountered William Prescott Frost, Jr., on his rebound from New +England. Young Frost had his eye on other projects of ambition, but for +the time he too was a school teacher in Lewiston. They were married, +and the husband went on to San Francisco to work on a Democratic +newspaper, the _Bulletin_. A little later he wrote his wife that the +windows of the newspaper office had been shot out but he was unharmed. +The paper had, it seems, printed derogatory statements about some stock +and those who were interested in it had resorted to gun play. Into this +smoldering and sometimes violent community Isabelle Moody followed +her husband and there on March 26, 1875, a son, christened Robert Lee +Frost, was born. + +The christening tells the story of the father’s political sympathies. +Too young to fight in the Civil War, the boy had been an intense +copperhead and had meditated on somehow slipping South to join the +Confederates. Now he was a States’ Rights man and once he showed Robert +a map of the United States and divided it into five nations into which +he predicted the country would sometime split. + +The father liked San Francisco. He liked the spirit of plunging which +diffused through the community and he was himself always playing the +stock market. He liked to spend money liberally. And he liked the +threat of grimness which one experienced by simply observing that men +wore revolvers with the frequency New Yorkers today wear sticks. + +One Sunday afternoon Robert and several other children were permitted +to walk along the beach with his father and a few associates. A bottle +was found and stopped up and tossed into the waves. Out came the +revolvers of all the men and they fired at the floating target. It was +no more uncommon than throwing stones. + +One Christmas Eve Robert, his sister and his mother returned to their +house quite late. They were about to prepare for bed when his mother +asked Robert if he had locked the door. He answered that he had, but +it at once became indisputable that he had not, for the door was heard +to open without benefit of key and someone, to their consternation, +entered. Mrs. Frost rushed her children into a room, locked its door, +shooed them under a table, and extracted a revolver from a drawer. +“I’ll shoot if you come further!” she spoke with a quaver. There was no +answer, and she repeated her threat. Then Mr. Frost’s laugh was heard, +relieving a tension that was likely often to seize San Franciscans of +that period. + +On the Fourth of July the plunging editor broke loose. It was his day +and it was neither safe nor sane. An old fashioned celebrator, he made +the greatest racket possible, set fire to outhouses and destroyed minor +properties. He went to the limit on political celebrations, too. In +politics or the stock market he would soon make a lucky stroke if he +played hard enough. Then after success had burgeoned, he would take +care of that consumption that threatened him. He would take a trip to +“the Islands”; that is, to Hawaii, the favored resort of that time for +consumptives. In the meantime he drank liquor to keep up his pace, he +drank warm blood at the stockyards to alleviate the disease, and he +did all the celebrating possible when his party triumphed. Robert was +a celebrant too, riding, costumed, on floats in the big parades or +trudging in torchlight processions until he was sent home to bed from +weariness. + +But the political ambitions yielded only small fruits. Mr. Frost did +go as a delegate to one Democratic National Convention and he was +city campaign manager in 1884 when Cleveland was elected President. +He was defeated, however, when he ran for election as tax collector +of San Francisco. In that campaign the boy Robert was his constant +companion--his job was to visit the saloons with his father’s campaign +cards and to impale these on the ceiling by flinging upwards a card +with a tack through it and a silver dollar beneath the tack which +worked as a sort of flying mallet--and this, one fancies, remains to +this day the most active participation in politics of Robert Frost. + +In 1885 consumption won the contest for the body of William Prescott +Frost and silenced its teeming hopes and plans, its explosive moods +and tense restraints. His wife who had suffered for weeks at a time +from his gloomy silences and his son who had suffered from his grim +severities mourned for him--and found that his extravagance had led +to letting his insurance lapse. It was necessary to return to the +New England the dead man had hated, to seek refuge with Robert’s +grandparents in Lawrence. + +So the little boy relinquished the tiny chicken farm he had started +in the backyard at San Francisco and on the long ride sat beside his +surviving parent, both sunk in memories of the grim dignity of the +deceased, he who had never worn anything but a top hat, who had always +been drily polite without the least ingratiation, and yet had been +pathetic, too, since he had been _terrible_ to himself. If anything +planted tragedy in Robert Frost, it must have been, one surmises, the +vision of his father, friend on the one hand of Buckley, the notorious +blind boss of San Francisco, and on the other of Henry George with whom +for a brief time he managed a single tax newspaper. + +Perhaps from his father he acquired a certain recklessness of +temperament, less extreme, but discernible in the drifting ways of his +life: his father was energetically imprudent and the world, one knows, +judges the son gently imprudent in the affairs of practical living. But +the presence of the mother is also implied in the poetry. Her Scotch +blood, transmitted, courses perhaps in the canny good sense, in the +slightly oblique humor, and above all in the thriftiness of the poetic +productions. She was herself an occasional versifier and reviewed books +for her husband’s newspaper. In religion she was a Swedenborgian, and +these facts are sufficient to suggest that she probably awakened an +emotional area in her son that the father left untouched, that area +that was later to fructify into a new contribution to American poetry. + + + + +III. “A BOY’S WILL” + + +Robert and his sister had been trained by their father to no love +of New England. Circumstance, however, had now deposited them among +the despised children of this section, and for the first time they +saw pennies. They made up a little game. First, they would hold up +a nickel and say, “San Francisco!” Then they would exhibit a penny +and scornfully pronounce, “Boston!” But this childish snobbism soon +vanished as they became more at home in the East. + +Robert received the usual schooling and in high school clearly +outstripped his class. He was apparently in full possession of +valedictorian honors as graduation neared when a rival emerged coming +rapidly forward from a lower class. The rival was a Lawrence girl, +a descendant of the Whites of Acton who fought at Concord and of +Peregrine White on the _Mayflower_. Elinor White was completing her +high school course in two and a half years, thus catching up with +Robert’s class, and when the averages were computed it was found that +she had tied him for the honor of valedictorian. It was decided, +nevertheless, that Robert Frost should deliver the address, while on +the graduation program the names of Elinor Miriam White and Robert +Frost should appear together as holders of the office. This happened +to forecast the future, for the boy and girl, already friends, were +married in October of 1895 and their names have ever since been joined +in a union of singular idyllic beauty. + +Another courtship was developing during the same phase of Robert +Frost’s life which was also to ripen into a lifelong devotion, and that +was the courting of the Muse of Poetry. Before he left San Francisco, +he had begun a serial story. It concerned the doings of a lost and +forgotten tribe living in a ravine no one of the outside world knew +about. After he came east, he continued this serial from time to time, +filling in the details of scenery and inhabitants. + +Here we strike a master-image, one that constantly recurs in Frost’s +life, for aside from the varieties of it to be found in his poems--for +example, in such lines as “Me for the hills where I don’t have to +choose” and the first two stanzas of _Into My Own_--the poet has +confessed that often he puts himself to sleep by dreaming of this +inaccessible and sometimes happy tribe defending its canyon. One hopes +that this recurrent and dominant image will not be subjected to the +ingenious but suspect leaps to conclusions of the psycho-analysts. +Better far the slower method of the behaviorist who is in closer accord +with the commonsense of man which tells us that we do not thoroughly +know people until we have seen them in many situations over a lengthy +span of seasons. + +When fourteen Robert Frost began to open books with a new zest. +Hitherto he had been content to have his mother read to him and +his favorite story had been _Tom Brown’s School Days_ which +characteristically he had never finished--because he could not bear +the thought that he had completed the tale. But now he adventured for +himself among books. He read with eager responsiveness all of William +Cullen Bryant and Edgar Allan Poe. He went on to Shelley’s _Alastor_ +and Keats’ _Endymion_ but found them too much at the time for his +interests and resources. Edward Rowland Sill and his Emersonianism was +better adapted to his requirements, and Frost still preserves a mild +respect for this obscured Connecticut poet who in his day carried the +fruitage of New England culture to the far West. + +The following year at the age of fifteen Frost was himself trying out +his hand at writing verse, and two years later composed _My Butterfly_ +which is one of the pieces in _A Boy’s Will_ and the earliest poem he +has kept. The first stanza is quoted not only to reveal its superiority +to the poetry of adolescence at large but to explain what followed its +publication. + + Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too, + And the daft sun-assaulter, he + That frighted thee so oft, is fled or dead: + Save only me + (Nor is it sad to thee!) + There is none left to mourn thee in the fields. + +The tentative submission of _My Butterfly_ to the _Independent_ had +brought a prompt note of acceptance and a check for fifteen dollars. +It happened that William Hays Ward, the editor, was a devout student +of Sidney Lanier, a fact that explains his liking for the musical +dexterity of this poem, but though he printed some of the subsequent +poems Frost mailed him, he never liked another as well. They were not +in the Lanier vein, and that was where a young poet should be working. +But Frost was obdurate then as now in these concerns, and Ward gave him +up. + +So at seventeen Robert Frost was looking very much like the Frost +of today. He was dipping into literature apparently without system +but really reading for his own purposes as a nascent poet. He was +assimilating New England and coming close to an essence of its oldest +settlers in a girl who was to prove an ideal helpmate through the years +of unrecognition that lay ahead. He was displaying literary talent +well above the merely good for those of his years. And he was showing +a certain “set” character and pertinacity in finding out his own +direction in poetry. William Hays Ward tried to divert him and failed. +Twenty odd years later in London Ezra Pound at once recognized this +“set-ness” and did not try to instigate any changes. + + + + +IV. “THE ROAD NOT TAKEN” + + +From 1892 to 1900 life offered Robert Frost a variety of prospective +roads to travel. He refused them all after short reflection and +continued to be drawn toward the road he had already peered at as a +youth in high school. It was the road on which he should have Love and +Poetry as presiding deities. + +At the age of twenty he married Elinor White. Her father was a retired +Universalist clergyman and she had attended a Universalist college, St. +Lawrence University. But in deference to the faith of Robert Frost’s +mother, they were married by a Swedenborgian minister. + +Robert, too, had been away to college in 1892. It was Dartmouth: he +went at his grandfather’s behest: and he stayed only a few months. +Interests in him were beginning to ripen and somehow the college did +not touch these interests. That was all, and quietly he withdrew to +become for a time a bobbin boy in a Lawrence mill. + +But he had no ambition to work up in a mill. That, like college, was a +road not taken. In his pocket he carried a volume of Shakespeare which +he read during rest intervals in the mill. + +Somewhat restless, undecided and drifting those days were for him, and +perhaps they are best symbolized by a brief tramping tour which he made +down South. + +His mother was taking pupils in her little school in Lawrence and +Robert instructed there for a while in Latin. Previously he had had +a spell of making shoes. Finally, he was the reporter-editor of the +Lawrence _Sentinel_, a weekly paper. Reporting, however, was against +his temperament. One had to be active to get the news, active and +prying into the reticences of people. Robert Frost, respecting his own +reticences, respected those of others, and the occupation was extremely +distasteful. More to his liking was a germinal “column” he inaugurated, +one into which he could insert vignettes he had written: the picture of +a ragged child coal-picker in a railroad yard, the picture of the stray +eagle who lit on the top of the American flag-pole of the Lawrence Post +Office until some hours later it was shot down to Frost’s indignation. + +Marriage did not precipitate the problem of making a living. Making +a living merely continued to be a sort of hazy actuality about which +eventually something would be done. But as another preparatory step +to meeting this problem, Robert again tried college, again backed up +by his uncomprehending but sympathetic grandfather. This time it was +Harvard in the year 1897, and in the same class was another poet whose +work Frost was to like years later but whom he did not know at the +time. The other poet was Wallace Stevens. + +Frost picked up something for himself during the two years he stayed +at Harvard. He improved his acquaintance with Latin and Greek and +particularly enjoyed reading Greek with a young instructor named +Babbitt who later went to Trinity College. The ancient classics were +much to his liking and it was about this time that he found in Virgil’s +_Eclogues_ and _Georgics_ the nourishment his emotional constitution +most craved. Philosophy lured him in a general way as it continues to +lure him. Santayana gave a course which he recalls with pleasure in the +“golden speech” and the “deliberate speed, majestic instancy” of the +exposition of this brilliant thinker. + +But despite all this, college could not hold him to the end. There was +a man in Windham, New Hampshire, he had known in the interval between +Dartmouth and Harvard, a man named Charley Hall, whose speech had a +racy commonness, and the stimulus of this man’s talks was greater than +the correct speech of college instructors. On the basis of this homely, +shrewd and living talk, could not poetry be written by a good listener? +Frost deserted academic halls for his own peculiar university, a life +close to the soil among soil-tinged folk, listening to their turns of +thought and feeling and phrase. + +Journalism, handicraft, teaching, factory work, college, all were to +be roads not taken, and in 1900 his grandfather was still pondering, +perhaps more than Robert, on what was to be the career of his grandson. + + + + +V. “NEW HAMPSHIRE” + + +Grandfather Frost reached a decision that to American poetry at any +rate was fortunate. With $1800 he purchased a farm at Derry, New +Hampshire, for his grandson and thither Robert Frost transported his +family in 1900. The family now numbered four: a son, Eliot, had been +born in 1896, and a daughter, Lesley, in 1899. Eliot, however, died in +the middle of 1900. + +Derry, which is in the southeastern corner of New Hampshire almost +on a line northward from Lawrence to Kingston, New Hampshire, an old +birthplace of Frost’s ancestors, was apparently the right locality +for the nurturing of Robert Frost’s bents. Like a true New England +village it had its academy, Pinkerton Academy, standing on a hill +with Derry Village spread out below it. A mile away from that was +the comparatively recent “Depot” where most of the five thousand +inhabitants lived. But there was a breakage of character between the +village proper and the “Depot.” The latter was developing, rapidly +of course, along the lines of present-day industrial New England: +it had several shoe factories and foretold in its little way a new +and confused order of society. But Derry Village was then very much +as it had been in 1880. Its families were conservative and regarded +their religion and inherited culture very stolidly, entrenched in the +feeling that twenty or thirty years ago the satisfactory elevation in +religious thought and education had been achieved and now required only +maintenance. It had its local small scale industries, founded upon +Yankee inventiveness, particularly the Chase mill, a woodworking plant +which among other specialties turned out in large quantities the wooden +tags that nurserymen employ to identify their stock. + +All this was right for Robert Frost: a settled rooted community, its +life persisting in the presence of an enveloping alien and noisy +industrialism which has not yet succeeded in totally smothering its +vitality, and the academy on the hill as a sign, however inadequate, +that culture should keep conservatism a little worried about the large +questions of life lest conservatism fall into complacency. “I believe +in tradition and accident and a bit of an idea bothering tradition,” +Frost once remarked years after the Derry period, and Derry itself +appears to have been a living pattern of this traditionalism affected +by accident and ideas. + +Frost’s small farm was a couple of miles “down the turnpike.” Like +scores of other farms in Rockingham county it was a farm out of which +even a very experienced farmer would have had difficulty in extracting +a living. For Frost it was a downhill dogged battle. The unprolific +character of the soil was unfairly aided in its resistance to success +on the tiller’s part by the hay-fever which attacked Frost in the +middle of August each year and made him wretched for two months. In +addition, it was the child-bearing and rearing phase of his married +life. A son, Carol, born in 1902, a daughter, Irma, in 1903, and +another daughter, Marjorie, in 1905 naturally increased the strain of +his struggle.[3] In spite of all that, there was a good deal of play, +too: botanizing, making wood paths, inducting the children into outdoor +life. His farming neighbors, probably correctly, did not approve of +Frost’s methods (he could be caught milking the cows at ten at night in +order to sleep later in the morning) and the end of this venture came +in 1905 when he drove up to the butcher’s to make further purchases +on credit. The fattish butcher came brusquely out on the porch of his +store, cocked an appraising eye at Frost’s horse and inquired, none too +delicately, if anyone had a lien on it. Then Frost, with four children, +a rundown farm, and a bundle of unpublished poems (including _Black +Cottage_ which he had just written) on his hands, decided to apply for +a position at Pinkerton Academy. + +If the farm had not grudgingly yielded him a living, it had done +something else; it had toughened his respect for nature, it had +disciplined him by its immalleability to aught but extremely hard +labor. It put, in short, a fibrous quality in his living which has been +expressed in the poetry. + +It was almost literally with a poem that Robert Frost secured his +position at Pinkerton. The incident was this: he had been invited to +read a poem before the Men’s Club of the Central Congregational Church +at Derry. The reading aroused the interest of the Pinkerton trustees, +among them, John C. Chase, the head of the mill; and the pastor of the +church, Reverend Charles Merriam, used his influence in crystallizing +this interest into an offer. And so Robert Frost came to worry and +modify the traditional state of affairs at Pinkerton Academy during +the years 1906 to 1911. + +The reports of eye-witnesses have a superior validity in biography as +well as in courts of law, and the author of this study is grateful to +Mr. John Bartlett of Boulder, Colorado, for the privilege of utilizing +portions of his letter on this period in Robert Frost’s life. Mr. +Bartlett wrote: + +“I joined the class of 1910 in the fall of 1907, being rated then as +a member of the Junior Middle Class. Pinkerton had a student body of +one hundred and twenty or thereabouts, and its equipment consisted of +a modern brick building on a hill-top and facing to the east, and a +little lower on the hill the ‘old academy’ of wood, well preserved and +painted white. + +“There were several fine old teachers, excellent representatives of +the school that believed that thoroughness and hard work were the +beginning and the conclusion of the educational process. Great store +was set by Latin which was taught by George W. Bingham, the stern and +aged principal, and by Greek in which Mary Parsons, maiden member of +a distinguished Derry Village (and New Hampshire, too) family, gave +instruction. + +“The faculty was true to the good old Pinkerton tradition. The Academy +had been founded in the first years of the nineteenth century and +dedicated to the development of cultured Christian character. Old +rules governing the student body were still in effect. Card playing, +for example, was forbidden, and for a boy to escort a girl to and from +an entertainment was still a technical violation of ‘requirements.’ +There were compulsory study hours and compulsory attendance at church. +Students must be in their homes at seven p.m. and not leave thereafter +except on Friday evening when grace was extended to ten p.m. and Sunday +evening when the students were expected to attend church services. +Once a week the principal called the roll of the assembled student +body and each student reported his record of the week, thus: ‘All the +requirements,’ ‘One exception, excused,’ ‘Two exceptions.’ + +“Most of the students came from homes within a radius of fifteen miles. +A great many were from farm families, while Derry ‘Depot’ sent the +children of factory workers. An Academy-owned dormitory housed the +majority of the few boarding students. + +“I am sure that when I entered the Academy there was much faculty +hostility to Frost, and even among the older students there was some +also. I recall that the submission to Frost as the English teacher of +all prepared papers in an inter-class debate between Junior Middlers +and Seniors was objected to by the Senior team, a grossly offensive act +meriting disciplinary rebuke, but such did not follow. And I believe +that there were certain members of the faculty who had toward the new +English teacher almost a personal animosity. + +“Frost came as the representative of new things, and there was +collision. He did not arrive at the Academy in time to participate +in the morning chapel exercises; he had no classroom; he defied +the Pinkerton tradition in the informality of his presence and the +free-and-easy way he handled his classes. The fact that he had no +college degree would, for a portion of the faculty, keep him forever +outside the circle. He was younger than nearly all the others. A dozen +things made him an ‘outsider.’ He looked it and acted it. + +“The old order of things at Pinkerton went quickly. A new principal, +Ernest L. Silver (later principal of the New Hampshire State +Normal School), came in 1909. There were new teachers and new +subjects--agriculture, domestic science, and this and that. Pinkerton +in brief time was doing a lot of catching up. I believe that Frost’s +success with his English classes had a great deal to do with the +rapidity and completeness of this change. + +“No greater departure from traditional Pinkerton teaching methods could +be conceived than those of Robert Frost. A boy of sixteen or seventeen +isn’t aware in respect to much of a teacher’s pedagogy beyond knowing +whether it pleases him or not. But, looking back, I believe I know the +first great difference between Frost and the other teachers. He had far +greater interest in the individual student. He had a way of manifesting +this, of asking questions and of making observations in a few words, +all the while getting closer to the boy in question. It was not a +professional self-conscious thing, but a desire from Frost’s heart to +get closer and learn more. + +“A new member of one of his classes, I had handed in a single short +theme. Late one afternoon as a group of boys were passing a football +about on the athletic field, Frost came up. He was a frequent figure +on the athletic field and sometimes he would take off his coat and +‘make a bluff,’ as the boys put it, at playing. This afternoon he +happened to come near me. He asked several questions concerning +the Pawtuckaway Mountains where the ‘Devil’s Den’ about which I had +written was located. I answered them awkwardly: I was a shy boy. In a +matter-of-fact way he observed that I was a fellow who had ideas. + +“That was all there was to the conversation, for a spinning ball came +my way, but I can still see Frost and the fall mud and the football +bucking machine and the boys on that afternoon. He seemed to show in +this conversation several hundred times the interest in me that other +teachers had. + +“He really had this interest, I am sure, and it was not directed +toward me alone, but toward all his students. He asked them personal +questions, drew them out. + +“In those days Frost was always asking questions of people. Not the +mechanical questions of politeness, but questions that would get at +things Frost was interested in ... and he was interested in a great +deal. If we took a winter walk toward Londonderry and met a logging +team, which stopped as we came abreast, there would be a conversation +right there. Frost would have the teamster talking about logging things +and horses and wood roads and such matters. He talked with his students +in somewhat the same way. There was always something to be learned +from these New Englanders, and Frost learned it. + +“And he was interested in the boy’s problems of individuality. +Seemingly, he could like any sort of boy. He might not win a boy in the +first few months of his contact with him, but nearly always he won him +in the end. + +“The most excited boy over an English paper I ever saw was Dave +Griffith, the athlete of ’10, a magnificent halfback and sprinter. He +had written on a sport subject and had earned commendation from Frost. +Breaking the study hour rule of the dormitory, Dave stealthily went +from room to room to announce grandly his accomplishment. Dave had a +haughty disregard for scholastic honors in general (few of which he +ever received), but he knew when he had something to be proud of. + +“We had a boarding student in the Junior class, Arthur Eastman, who was +neither among the scholars on one hand nor the athletes on the other. +Arthur suddenly was famous for a four-line stanza which Frost was +commending to his classes. I believe the boy never again wrote a verse +which was praised. On the other hand, one of the older students who +turned out verse with great abundance and prided himself on his ability +received no approval whatever. The school knew that Frost considered +this student’s verse of no merit. + +“Frost’s English classes were always ‘easy’ classes. Frost had none of +the taskmaster’s attitude, yet his classes did a great deal of work +and covered fully as much ground as any ordinary class. Any feeling +for literature displayed by a student was cultivated: any talent for +writing was nursed along. A few in each class were gradually developed +who could always be counted on for lively discussion. Very frequently +departures from the regular routine were made. Often, for example, +Frost, slumped down in his chair, would read to the class. And every +time a new _Critic_ was out, Frost would discuss it with his classes. + +“The _Critic_ was the student publication, and it was better than it +had been for many years before Frost’s engagement. He let the boys and +girls run it largely themselves: faculty supervision of it was much +less than formerly. There was a good deal of comradeship between Frost +and the _Critic_ staff. Unconventional things occurred ... the _Critic_ +files may contain at least one poem the distinguished authorship +of which is not generally known. I believe the _Critic_ sometimes +contained, because of his ‘hands off’ policy, things that he would not +have passed for publication. But he knew that his policy was right and +held to it. + +“He was philosophical, too, when one of the honor members of the Senior +class, given liberty in connection with his Commencement essay not in +keeping with Pinkerton practice, read a paper at Graduation which was +a wretched failure. This boy had not been required to submit his essay +for faculty approval. And he messed the job, actually writing the final +paragraphs two hours before he was due on the platform. Frost remarked +later, ‘It sounded as though you had read one book or article and then +written your essay.’ That was all that was ever said between us, and it +was enough! Frost had divined the fact. + +“Out of the English classes came during those years several plays +coached by Frost. In one year I remember we had Marlowe’s _Dr. +Faustus_, Milton’s _Comus_ and Yeats’ _The Land of Heart’s Desire_. +The plays were a success on both sides of the footlights. Frost liked +to have his fun as much as any of the students, and the rehearsals +brought us all together in a fine way. These plays were a new thing at +Pinkerton. The Academy had presented several of Shakespeare’s plays +since the century came in but no cognizance of other drama had been +taken. + +“In 1909 the state began to be interested in Frost’s classes. He talked +at conventions, booked by Henry Morrison, the New Hampshire State +Superintendent. And from time to time educators visited our classes. +These convention talks were ordeals, and Frost always came back from +them in a condition of exhaustion. Once he made an experiment before +a talk given at Exeter, I believe. He put sharp pebbles in his shoes +and walked about for hours, painfully, hoping that physical pain would +alleviate the mental torture he was in. But it didn’t! + +“The student body was with him one hundred per cent as the fall term of +1909 opened. There was a new order of things in the school and Frost +was recognized as a big figure. + +“I do not recall just when it was that Frost first wrote a formula, +famous with his classes, upon a Pinkerton blackboard. He put forward +the following kinds of matter used for literary purposes: + + Uncommon in experience--uncommon in writing. + + Common in experience--common in writing. + + Uncommon in experience--common in writing. + + Common in experience--uncommon in writing. + +The last was the kind of material to search for, he told us. + +“We celebrated a football victory over our rival school, Sanborn +Seminary, in November, 1909, with a supper provided by the new domestic +science department. Frost was the hit of the evening with a string of +verses he put on the blackboard. This was one: + + In the days of Captain John, + Sanborn Sem had nothing on, + Pinkerton, Pinkerton. + +“A few of the boys spent considerable time with Frost out of school +hours. I remember a walk over the turnpike to Manchester twelve miles +away in the late afternoon, an hour spent in a bookstore, an oyster +stew, and then a ride home on the electric railway. Our conversation on +walks touched books only now and then. They might include reminiscences +of Frost’s early life, discussion of school affairs, aspects of farm +life in New Hampshire, some current news happening of importance, and +nearly anything else. If in passing a farmhouse the aroma of fried +doughnuts came out to us, Frost might propose that we buy some. Down +around the corner we might encounter a fern he hadn’t seen since he was +last in the Lake Willoughby region. And if darkness overtook us and +it was a favorable night for observation, Frost would be sure to take +at least five minutes to study the heavens and attempt to start our +astronomical education. + +“There was always an abundance of conversation, but almost never any +argument. Frost never argued. He knew what he knew, and never had any +interest in arguing about it. In the same way he was always willing to +let others think what they wanted to think. + +“He had a Woodrow Wilson sense of loyalty. I never knew a person who +was more sensitive to slights, rebuffs and acts of unfriendliness than +Frost or who seemed to carry the scar of them longer, and I have never +met one whose loyalty was more thoroughly of the lasting kind. + +“I remember how I came back to Derry late in 1910, having left college +‘between two days,’ defeated and defiant, meeting disapproval and +condemnation. I was a boy getting hit by life and receiving no friendly +overtures when I needed them most. Frost heard I was back and walked +miles to see me and take me over the country roads for a talk. I +remember how a few months later he speeded me on my way to British +Columbia with a handshake and a look in the eye. There was a book at +that parting, Chesterton’s _Heretics_. I read it three times on the +way out. I remember letter after letter as I sought a way to fit in at +Vancouver, and the frequent letters as I finally started in newspaper +work. Letters all about me, my problems. That was what friendship meant +to Robert Frost, help to the maximum when a boy needed it.” + +One year after John Bartlett graduated, the teacher who had impressed +him so strongly also left Pinkerton. The principal, Mr. Silver, had +been appointed head of the New Hampshire State Normal School at +Plymouth, New Hampshire, and as often happens in such cases he wished +to take the pick of his faculty with him. Frost went to Plymouth for +the school year 1911-1912, and while there formed a friendship with +a teacher in the high school, Sidney Cox, now assistant professor of +English at Dartmouth and editor of various texts. Professor Cox has +furnished certain notes on his memory of this year which, like those of +Mr. Bartlett, merit first hand presentation and thanks. + +“I met Robert Frost,” says Professor Cox, “in the fall of 1911 at +a Normal School dance where both of us were against the wall. The +next day he came to the high school to ask me to go for a walk. I +went, and when I reached home I had felt from that one talk, as I had +never done before, what the real nature of poetry is. Scales had been +gently lifted off my eyes. After that came many walks, and long casual +whole-souled talks. Mr. Frost had no congenial colleagues with whom to +walk, and for both of us it was the first, and as it turned out, the +only year in Plymouth. + +“I found that Mr. Frost was having exciting times teaching psychology, +that he wasn’t following any chart, but improvising his own courses, +and having the girls read real books. He made me interested in Plato’s +_Republic_ and Rousseau’s _Emile_ when he was in the midst of them +with one of his classes. He sometimes mentioned a student who seemed +exceptional, but he didn’t suppose he was making any great discoveries. + +“Perhaps it was on the walk at the end of which Mr. Frost treated me +at the drug store to the delectable beverage of white grape juice +that he first made me realize the absurdity of letting students write +compositions on the adventures of a penny, and gave me a realizing +sense of the distinction between unconditioned speculation and creative +imagination. He didn’t put it in any such deadly abstract terms as +that. He told me that at Derry he had directed his students to write +about what was ‘common to experience but uncommon to expression.’ + +“Sometimes we talked incidentally about things I was likely to take up +in class. I remember his praising Matthew Arnold’s _Sohrab and Rustum_, +and critically admiring the craftsmanship in Mark Twain’s _The Jumping +Frog_, Stevenson’s _The Bottle Imp_, Hawthorne’s _Mr. Higginbotham’s +Catastrophe_, and H. G. Wells’ _The Country of the Blind_. He +invariably made me see something new. I first learned of Whitman from +him, and at the same time found out that he was what I should formerly +have considered objectionable and, without the point being formulated, +that it wouldn’t do to dismiss him because my taboo was infringed. + +“One particularly beautiful snowy walk took us through an evergreen +aisle for miles, down to the Interval and so to the turnpike from +Boston. On the way up that state road to Plymouth I remember something +started us talking about sex behavior and instruction in sex hygiene. +Mr. Frost was skeptical about the latter and said he thought perhaps +reading Shakespeare was more likely to avert catastrophe than any +amount of scientific talk. Another time I told him about the jumpiness +and over-earnestness of one of the woman teachers in high school who +boarded where I did, and I was permanently convinced of the wisdom of +his remark that what she needed was an emotional education through +poetry. He was always interested in people and never spoke of anyone +slightingly. On the other hand, he was keenly aware of shams and +stupidities, and he was not tender toward them. + +“Besides the walks, there were a number of unqualifiedly delightful +evenings at his home in the little white house, which he shared with +the temporarily bachelor principal. His was a poor man’s living room, +but there was a bookcase with a lot of attractive books, many of +them thin volumes of poetry,--I remember his drawing my attention to +the exquisite Mosher books,--and there were two or three comfortable +chairs. On such evenings the children went to bed and we older ones +got comfortable, and Mr. Frost read aloud, or we talked. I suppose two +of my favorite plays will always be _Arms and the Man_ by Shaw and +the _Playboy of the Western World_ by Synge because of hearing Mr. +Frost read them. I don’t know anyone who can do the Irish so well. One +evening he read from Mr. Dooley. + +“He had supervised a triumphant production of one of Sheridan’s plays +at Derry, and he scorned the notion that good things were too exacting +for school children. The State Superintendent had discovered that he +was the best of the English teachers under his administration soon +after Mr. Frost had been invited away from his farm. And the Principal +of Pinkerton had found that he was wrong in assuming that this teacher +was hardly the man to address a farmers’ institute. Regardless of the +effort it was to overcome his nervousness before a crowd, Mr. Frost had +showed that he had something to say, and could say it well. He took +a sly pleasure in surprising people who automatically underrated him +because he didn’t have a college degree. + +“In early spring Mr. Frost, the principal of the Normal School, one of +my fellow teachers in the high school and I went a little way north to +a farm for a week-end. Our host and hostess seemed rather flashy and +hard people, New Yorkers I think they were. The woman was particularly +metallic and thick, like a successful vaudeville performer; and I +was much impressed with the considerateness and attention with which +Mr. Frost kept up a two-sided conversation with her. They agreed, I +remember, on admiring the New York skyline from the harbor. We talked +until late that night, and the next morning after breakfast we walked +over the snow to a large maple sugar camp. The religious and other +metaphorical use of the lamb has always, since that time, been affected +by the memory of Mr. Frost’s waving his hand back and forth within +an inch of the eyes of the lady’s cosset, and pointing out that it +never batted its eyes. I was unaccountably downcast on the way back to +Plymouth and mentioned my mood. Mr. Frost commented, ‘It’s well to have +all kinds of feelings, for it’s all kinds of a world.’ + +“Not long after that I had to assume the duties of baseball coach, and +Mr. Frost’s lifelong interest in baseball helped me. He often talked of +players and teams, and once he taught me how to work the short throw to +shortstop when there were runners on first and third, and so catch the +man stealing home. He was interested in tennis, too, and taught me very +clearly what he had recently learned about three different cuts to use +in serving. + +“I think his one time of attendance at church in Plymouth was so +disturbing to his sensibilities that he had a religious motive for +staying away.” + +It is clear from the notes of these two friends that this was the +crystallizing period in Robert Frost’s life. He became during it +certain of what he knew as a youth and as a matter of fact a great +deal of his published verse was written during these years. He had +formulated his central article for his private _ars poetica_--to give +an uncommon expression to what was common in experience--and he was +not to deviate from that in his future course. By adhering to this, he +was very soon after the year at Plymouth destined to be discovered and +recognized by the literary public, but essentially the rest of his life +has been a prolongation of the Derry-Plymouth phase. The enthusiasm +of his friends, Sidney Cox and John Bartlett, when multiplied to the +enthusiasms of critics, poets and readers at large did not, that is +to say, alter his habits or his aims or his quality. He has continued +to do a little farming, some teaching and some writing just as he did +between 1900 and 1912. + + + + +VI. “PAN WITH US” + + _“Pan came out of the woods one day.”_ + + +It is difficult to overestimate the aridity of the minds and feelings +of poetry editors in the United States during those years when Robert +Frost was writing and teaching and farming in New Hampshire. Not by +his own wish did he remain practically unpublished, for once a year at +least he made up packets of his verses and sent them to the editors of +_Scribner’s_, _Century_, the _Atlantic Monthly_ and one or two others. +Almost uniformly they came back: the few exceptions were the _Forum_ +and _Youth’s Companion_ whose editor, Mark de Wolfe Howe, stretched a +point or two of his editorial policy to include them. But the market +for poetry was extremely limited, and the story of the insensibility +of those who ruled the market has already been sufficiently told. Yet +looking back, one still is mildly surprised that their taste did not +welcome Robert Frost’s work. It _was_ fresh work, but yet not too far +beyond their canons, not like the verses of Ezra Pound, for instance, +who had impetuously denounced Hamilton Wright Mabie and voyaged to +Spain. + +Certainly, Frost was not a persistent and resourceful salesman for his +poems, and perhaps the fault lay partly in him for his lateness in +publication. + + No wonder poets sometimes have to _seem_ + So much more business-like than business men. + Their wares are so much harder to get rid of. + +Occasionally, he admits, he looked at the poetry printed in the +magazines, felt distaste for its mediocrity and lack of tang, and felt +likewise jealousy and envy of the author because after all he had been +published. Yet his own pride prevented him from making any energetic +plan for breaking through the editorial attitude toward his scripts. + +After the year at Plymouth he concluded that it was to be “now or +never” with him so far as the Muse was concerned. The ten year +conditions on his farm had elapsed and he succeeded in selling it. Now +he would set aside the next three or four years for complete devotion +to poetry. But where? + +John Bartlett was getting on well at Vancouver, B. C., and in +September, 1912, planned to marry a Pinkerton girl out there. Frost +hesitated between going to Vancouver and going to England, and +corresponded with his former student on the problem. But in August he +wrote that it was to be England for him. A letter about the cost of +living from the British Consul in New York and certain talk in the +family about living under a thatched roof had decided the matter: he +would spend his free time abroad. So he sailed in September, 1912, +and, as has been noted before, Harriet Monroe’s _Poetry: A Magazine of +Verse_ first appeared in October, 1912. Frost left his country just +one month before the event which is usually taken as the beginning +of a new, more enlivened and more extensive interest in contemporary +American verse, and he stepped into England during a particularly +hopeful and exciting season in the arts. + +England just before the war of 1914-1918 was full of idealistic +movements and a new era seemed about to open its buds. There was +an upper crust of writers--Shaw, Wells, Bennett, Conrad, Hudson, +Carpenter, Galsworthy, Chesterton, Cunninghame Grahame, Max +Beerbohm--that was distinguished enough or respected enough to make +it worth while to continue their work or to resist it or to try to +supplant them. There were coming up such figures as D. H. Lawrence, +Compton Mackenzie, and Gilbert Cannan for Henry James to cast a keenly +appraising eye upon. There were at least two brilliantly edited +reviews--Ford Madox Hueffer’s (now Ford) _English Review_ and A. R. +Orage’s _The New Age_--which sought for new work and instigated new +literary developments. There were the Irishmen across their Channel +working up a little re-birth on their own. Ezra Pound was everywhere, +fighting, initiating, infusing fresh vitality into poetry and poetry +discussions. Wyndham Lewis was breaking bonds in painting and prose. +Imagism and vorticism, the Bloomsbury groupings and the reactionary +schools, all made the scene stirring and great things were expected. +Then the war crashed in and the fragility of all the movements became +sooner or later apparent. But that was two years after Frost arrived. + +At first Frost was not aware of this metropolitan ferment. He repaired +to _T. P.’s Weekly_ which conducted a department of country walks and +inquired for quiet places in the countryside where he wished to live. +The conductor of this department was an ex-policeman (and therefore as +becomes a London “bobbie” intelligent in giving directions) and Frost +took a fancy to him. On his advice he settled in the little suburban +town of Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. + +One night Frost sat before his fire spreading out before him his +poems and reading them over. As was his custom, a certain number were +discarded. Of those that remained he pondered on making a selection +that might form some sort of coherent book. He shuffled through them, +arranged and rearranged, and gradually _A Boy’s Will_ came to birth. He +had a book of manuscript but no publisher in mind. + +In this pass he recalled his friend, the ex-policeman, and determined +to ask his advice on a publisher for poetry! The former policeman was +equal to the call. He suggested Elkin Matthews, but said that as a rule +he required subsidized manuscripts. Frost objected to that, and his +counsellor brought up the name of David Nutt. This appealed to Frost: +he remembered that David Nutt had been Henley’s publisher: and thither +he went one afternoon only to be told that he could not see David +Nutt that day, but if he called the next day he would be able to do +so. Coming at the time directed, he was ushered into a private office +for an interview with a lady in dark clothes who informed him she +would speak for David Nutt. Later he learned that David Nutt had been +deceased for several years, and the lady was his widow, but at this +time the whole proceeding impressed him as mysterious. + +Three days afterward he received a letter stating that the firm of +David Nutt would publish _A Boy’s Will_. The long period of twenty +years of frustrated publication was almost closed, and the first drops +of the exhilaration England was to give him had touched his lips. + +More were to follow presently. Walking in London one day he noticed +that Harold Munro’s Poetry Book Shop was opening its doors that +very evening with a reception and reading. Although uninvited, he +walked in with the crowd that night and sat on the stairs during the +festivities. A man sitting below remarked, “I see by your shoes you are +an American,” and introduced himself as F. S. Flint. Frost confided to +him his engagement in writing poetry, and Flint asked if he knew his +countryman, Ezra Pound. Frost had never heard of Pound and was promptly +cautioned not to betray that fact to Pound himself. + +Flint must have spoken to Pound about the new arrival, for shortly +there came to Frost’s suburban home a post card bearing an address, +the name of Ezra Pound, and beneath it: “At home sometimes.” + +Some months later Frost called at Pound’s address and happened to find +him at home. Piqued at first because Frost had been so leisurely in +responding to his card, Pound soon warmed to his rugged caller with the +boyish face and when he learned that possibly proof sheets of _A Boy’s +Will_ might now be secured at David Nutt’s he insisted on going at once +to the office. The proof sheets were ready, and the pair returned to +Pound’s studio. Frost was directed to occupy himself in some way while +Pound turned immediately to reading the poems. Satisfied that here was +sound poetry, Pound then dismissed his guest with the remark that he +had a review to write, and in a short time the first salutation to _A +Boy’s Will_ appeared in type over the distinguished name of Ezra Pound. + +_A Boy’s Will_ was received quickly and warmly by the literary press: +the general tenor can be felt from a quotation from the notice in the +_Academy_. It said: “We have read every line with the amazement and +delight which are too seldom evoked by books of modern verse.” The +poetry-reading public was lured. + +Pound had a new “find” and he began to take Frost here and there to +luncheons, studios and parties, and among the most delightful of the +last were the Tuesday evenings at T. E. Hulme’s. Frost was pleased and +interested, but did not change his stripe. + +All the time his capital was decreasing, for although he was now a +“success”[4] in a moderate way, he never succeeded in winning any +royalty statements from David Nutt. _A Boy’s Will_ had appeared in +1913 and the following year the same firm gladly brought out _North +of Boston_ which was greeted by the _Times Literary Supplement_ with +the statement that “poetry burns up out of it, as when a faint wind +breathes upon smoldering embers,” and there were more buyers. But only +a success of estimation for Frost. To eke out his capital, he fell +back upon farming and in the winter of 1914 leased a small farm called +Little Iddens near Leadbury in Gloucestershire. His near neighbors were +Wilfrid Wilson Gibson and Lascelles Abercrombie. + +Gibson enjoyed joshing Frost about America. It appeared that Gibson’s +poetry aroused various people in America to write him letters of +gratitude that sometimes began, “Dear Bro.,” and proceeded to give +other signs in orthography and grammar of semi-literacy and raw taste. +Frost himself now received his first letter from an American admirer. +It was on stationery of high quality from a farm in Stowe, Vermont, +called Four Winds Farm. The neat script merely informed him that the +writer and her mother had enjoyed his poetry, and the signature was +that of a lady named Holt. It was a publisher’s wife, though Frost +did not suspect the fact. But the letter did enable him to return +triumphantly Gibson’s joshing: he displayed it to him as an example of +the way farmer’s wives wrote in America as well as evidence of the kind +of people who read _his_ books. + +Gibson has commemorated this delightful time in a poem entitled _The +Golden Room_ printed some time ago in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and for +the sake of the picture the first two stanzas may well be quoted here. + + Do you remember the still summer evening + When in the cosy cream-washed living-room + Of the Old Nailshop we all talked and laughed-- + Our neighbors from the Gallows, Catherine + And Lascelles Abercrombie; Rupert Brooke; + Elinor and Robert Frost, living awhile + At Little Iddens, who’d brought over with them + Helen and Edward Thomas? In the lamplight + We talked and laughed, but for the most part listened + While Robert Frost kept on and on and on + In his slow New England fashion for our delight, + Holding us with shrewd turns and racy quips, + And the rare twinkle of his grave blue eyes. + + We sat there in the lamplight while the day + Died from rose-latticed casements, and the plovers + Called over the low meadows till the owls + Answered them from the elms; we sat and talked-- + Now a quick flash from Abercrombie, now + A murmured dry half-heard aside from Thomas, + Now a clear, laughing word from Brooke, and then + Again Frost’s rich and ripe philosophy + That had the body and tang of good draught-cider + And poured as clear a stream. + +Meanwhile the war was increasing its diabolical momentum and the arts +in England were going under. Poets went to the front instead of to +studios and review offices, and among them was Edward Thomas with whom +Frost formed his most congenial friendship on English soil. Thomas had +been a critic and author of several biographical studies and travel +books. Frost fanned the critic’s hitherto latent talent for writing +poetry to a quiet blaze and the outcome was the volume, _Poems_, by +Thomas in 1917, a volume that was gratefully dedicated to Robert Frost. +Thomas was killed on Easter Monday in 1917 and Frost has commemorated +both the poetry and his friend. + + You went to meet the shell’s embrace of fire + On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day + The war seemed over more for you than me, + But now for me than you--the other way. + +Two years before the death of Thomas, in March of 1915, Frost had left +England for America, bringing with him the fifteen year old son of his +friend. + +He had gone through years of non-recognition: in a foreign land he +had been exhilarated with a modest success and the sympathetic praise +of fellow poets: all had been engulfed in the horror and sadness +of the greatest war in our history: and now Frost faced again the +uncertainties of America. There was a surprise awaiting him. + + + + +VII. “INTO MY OWN” + + +Passing down a side street in New York as he came away from the steamer +which had brought him back from England, Robert Frost’s eyes saw +propped on a stand a magazine he had never heard of. From curiosity he +purchased it at once: it was called _The New Republic_. Inside he came +upon a page appreciation of _North of Boston_ which was signed by Amy +Lowell. But more arresting still, the book appeared to be published by +Henry Holt and Co. An American publisher! He did not know he had one. +This seemed a good omen, and the following day Frost called on the Holt +company. + +Yes, they had imported the sheets for three hundred bound copies from +David Nutt, and this small order had been very quickly exhausted. +Now they would like to publish _North of Boston_ and _A Boy’s Will_ +themselves, but David Nutt had reserved all rights. It soon appeared, +though, that David Nutt had violated the agreement, and Henry Holt +won the legal right to bring out Frost’s books in America. In quick +succession they published _North of Boston_ and _A Boy’s Will_ within +that year, 1915. + +Rapid sales followed. _North of Boston_ eventually ran around twenty +thousand copies, and the other books have done well, considering the +market for poetry, though not nearly so well as the first.[5] The +critics were exuberant: among them was Edward Garnett who contributed +an influential article on Frost, since included in _Friday Nights_, to +the _Atlantic Monthly_. Furthermore, public taste for a time appeared +to have crystallized about such work as Frost’s. The hour was right, +for there was ripening a new interest in contemporary American verse: +the critics were enthusiastic: and the character of Frost’s writing, +at once novel and conservative, pleased all camps. A great many people +agreed with Edward Garnett’s opinions: “It seemed to me that this poet +was destined to take a permanent place in American literature.... +Surely a genuine New England voice, whatever be its literary debt to +old-world English ancestry.” + +Recognition, long deferred, now heaped itself upon the quiet poet. A +chapter in Amy Lowell’s _Tendencies in Modern American Poetry_ was +given over to him and his work, Louis Untermeyer wrote a chapter on his +verse in _A New Era in American Poetry_, Llewellyn Jones did likewise +in _First Impressions_, Clement Wood in _Poets of America_, and it very +shortly came to pass that no survey of the poetry of our decades was +complete without a considerable discussion of this author. Waldo Frank +in _Our America_ introduced his passage on Frost by saying: “The poetry +of Frost is of that excellent sort which it is hard to catalogue. It is +lyrical. It is dramatic, since his books are--as he says--‘of people.’ +It is philosophic, since the tales he tells trace conscious lines about +the boundaries of life. Fully, it is poetry--and of New England.” + +Frost found himself an advisory board member of the _Seven Arts_ in +1916 and 1917, that gallant venture in behalf of our national arts +directed by Waldo Frank, Van Wyck Brooks and James Oppenheim. And +in the file of the _Seven Arts_ there rests _The Way Out_, the one +published play by Frost. Truly, he had scarcely tapped and all the +doors of literary America suddenly opened to him. + +He had come into his own, so far as eminence counts. In 1916 he was Phi +Beta Kappa poet at one of the colleges he had neglected to graduate +from, and he read at Harvard for the occasion the poem called _The +Axe-Helve_. Since then there has been a shower of honors. In the early +part of 1922 he was elected an honorary member of the International +P.E.N. Club in the company of Thomas Hardy, Anatole France, Romain +Rolland, Selma Lagerlof, and others of western world fame. This +international honor was seconded in the same year by the local action +of the Women’s Clubs of Vermont in conferring on him the title of +Poet Laureate of that state. Very quickly, too, his work has been +incorporated in the English literature courses of foreign universities: +at the Sorbonne study of Robert Frost’s books is a requirement in the +English teacher’s course and from the University of Montpellier, Jean +Catel has written, “We are going to study Frost as a poet together with +such recognized writers as Shakespeare, Milton, Thackeray, etc.” Lately +critical estimates of his poetry have appeared in Italy. + +But Robert Frost was not to be hurried. _Mountain Interval_ came out in +1916 and absorbed most of the balance of his unpublished poems. Then a +wait until 1923 when a _Selected Poems_ was brought out, and then _New +Hampshire_, the first new book in seven years. It is now four years +since _New Hampshire_ and Frost is still unwilling to release another +collection. “In a year or two I suppose I’ll have another book ready,” +he says. + +The tables have been changed since Derry days, but he continues the +pattern. Therefore, in 1915 he purchased a farm on a hill just outside +of Franconia, New Hampshire. In 1920 he moved to Vermont where he had +purchased a large farm at South Shaftsbury in the district presided +over by that ardent Vermonter, Dorothy Canfield. He is still the +farmer and poet. And teacher, too, for that element in him retains its +energy. From 1916 to 1919 he was a member of the faculty of Amherst +College, this poet without a scholarly eminence in the orthodox sense, +without a college diploma even (though now he holds honorary degrees +from three institutions of higher learning), but he was encouraged to +conduct classes in literature and philosophy in his own freehand way. +In teaching literature he assumed that the conspicuous landmarks would +be seen in other courses. He could therefore ramble in the lesser known +regions of good writing, dwelling always in his informal presentation +on the enjoyment of books and slyly encouraging honesty of initiative +in writing. + +Then President Burton of the University of Michigan called Frost to +fill the new Fellowship in the Arts which he established in 1921. The +appointment was for one year, but was extended to two, at the close of +which Robert Bridges, the British Poet Laureate, was appointed Fellow +for the following year. But in 1925, so welcome had Frost been on +the Michigan campus, he was called back to Ann Arbor to hold a life +fellowship in poetry founded entirely for him. + +It was not long, however, before the magnetic pull of New England soil +and the fact that two of his children had made their homes in the east +drew him away from the attractive post at Michigan. He resigned and +came back to the ruggedly lyrical Green Mountains of Vermont in 1926, +with the plan of distributing his “teaching” efforts among several +colleges. + +Thus during the academic year, 1926-1927, Frost was “boarded around” +by the various colleges who competed for his residence on the campus. +He traveled about, to Wesleyan University for two weeks, to Amherst +for ten, to Michigan for a few weeks, to Dartmouth for a visit, and so +on, mingling in each place with students and faculty, giving lectures +and readings, consulting with literary aspirants, imparting a fresh +emotional quality to the collegiate routine that is too usually strange +to it. But it is unlikely that he will “tramp about” so much in another +year, as Amherst claims his _presence_ (Frost does his teaching by +simply being what he is) for an entire term during the next collegiate +year. + + * * * * * + +Imagine that you have been invited to be the guest of Robert Frost +for a few days. Let the place be Amherst. He is staying there for a +month or two in a house rented from a professor now on his sabbatical +year. As you alight from your taxicab late in the afternoon, a well +filled out man of good height steps on to the porch, and you are +aware that the note this waiting personality strikes is quiet yet +vivid. A large boned rugged frame, a strong neck, and poised on its +full column a head so modeled that it gives the strength of the body +a lyrical accentuation. This head has been described as a faun’s and +the eyes and mouth are sometimes said to have an elfin quality, and +indeed it is true that one might think of faunishness and sly flitting +elves in glancing at it. That is fanciful, though, and not really in +correspondence with the sensitivity, the fluent gravity, the friendly +lines of the countenance now welcoming you. The words and manner are +simple: there is a trace of shyness which attests that the simplicity +is not an affectation and yet there is also ease. + +You enter and Mrs. Frost, quiet, sweet, intelligent and devoted, +greets you. Talk begins, dinner is served. Mr. Frost has been out of +touch with the centers of literary life. He asks questions, about the +_Dial_, about William Carlos Williams, about that and this eddy in the +literature of the day. Patently, he is out of it, he doesn’t follow +the magazines and supplements and current books with any assiduity, +apparently he prefers to hear--in country fashion--from the lips of the +people he meets what is going on. + +After coffee, you settle down in the living room for a long evening’s +talk, you playing alternately the crisp rôle of questioner and the +respectful one of listener, and Frost “in his dry, sly, halting +way,” as Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant puts it in her vivid portrait of +Frost, talks and ruminates, tells stories, offers critical notes, and +speculates. The speculative note in his conversation is important, for +it signifies that the growing ends of his mind and feelings still carry +him on. There is no impending death here of sensibility or thinking, no +dogmatism, in short, that closes off further possibilities of enlarging +his experience. + +Perhaps he speaks of his Indian-fighting ancestor, Major Charles Frost, +and how for years he looked on him with a little disapproval as a black +sheep in the family whom other people honored for his treacherous +conduct at the Indian conference. Frost, you perceive, sympathizes with +the Indians: he doesn’t like unfair play. But lately he has learned +that Major Frost objected to the stratagem and entered into it with +great reluctance: he is glad to think a little better of the early +settler. + +He drifts into reminiscence of San Francisco days and that grim father +of his. Sometimes his father would give him some change and commission +him to bring back cigarettes. But on one awful occasion the quarter +slipped from his hand as he was running to the store and fell into one +of the cracks of the board sidewalk then the prevalent style in San +Francisco. In vain did his small hands try to recover it, and passersby +were able to do no better. Frantic, he went to the store, fearfully +explained he had dropped his money, and begged for a package of +cigarettes. Laughter from the clerk and the men standing about. Nothing +to do but return home in trepidation and tell his mother. Father was +working in his study and by now no doubt impatient for a smoke. His +mother also stood in fear of father’s anger, but in the present case +she decided that Robert must go in and tell of the loss. Only first let +them pray, mother and son, that Robert should be let off easily. Then +Robert went in and reported. His father glanced up for a moment from +something he was writing, said brusquely, “Never mind,” and turned back +to complete his sentence. + +There was something deep between Frost and his father. The man was +mentally alert: he had stood second in his class at Harvard and he had +been an associate of Henry George. He was ambitious, as his political +activity reveals. And he was, despite his consumption, strenuous, +engaging in long swims and once in a six day walking race with the +champion, Dan O’Leary. He won that, too. O’Leary had sworn that he +could give him a liberal handicap and then walk him down. When O’Leary +failed to do so, he claimed that Frost’s father had violated walking +rules, but afterwards he became his friend. But above all--and this is +the really deep bond--his father seems to have planted tragedy into his +son’s view of the world: so deeply did he do this that to this day his +father’s character excites a species of awesome regard in the son. + +And now, in reply to a question, Frost is speaking of school days in +Lawrence, of first adventures in reading poets, of meeting Elinor +White who tied him for scholarship honors. And he points out how his +grandfather, according to his light, loyally stood by him, how he sent +him twice to college, backed him patiently in various endeavors to +make a living, and finally gave him a farm--which he didn’t succeed in +managing expertly. “Never earned a cent, save from and through verse. +But for my first twenty years at it I earned a total of two hundred +dollars,”[6] he remarks without bitterness. + +The poem that he read before the Men’s Club of the Central +Congregational Church at Derry, the poem that was so instrumental in +landing for him his job at Pinkerton Academy, was, he tells you, _The +Tuft of Flowers_ in _A Boy’s Will_, “Yes,” he says with a smile to +interpret the remark, “_The Tuft of Flowers_ got me my first real job. +Whole family owe their life to this poem and they’d better believe +it.”[7] _The Black Cottage_, _The House-Keeper_, and _The Death of the +Hired Man_ all date, he goes on to inform you, from 1905 before he +joined the Pinkerton faculty, and he adds that “Virgil’s _Eclogues_ may +have had something to do with them.... I first heard the voice from a +printed page in a Virgilian _Eclogue_ and _Hamlet_.”[7] + +The talk shifts the scene to London ... the fooleries of Skipwith +Cannéll and Ezra Pound ... the jiu jitsu demonstration Pound made on +Frost’s person in a restaurant..... Pound and Frost invited to luncheon +by two ladies, Pound disgusted by their shallow flow of talk on art, +Pound rising, knocking his chair over as he did so, saying haughtily, +“I leave these ladies to you,” departing to Frost’s consternation.... +Pound’s challenge to Lascelles Abercrombie to fight a duel on the score +that Abercrombie’s articles were a public offense--and the amusing +aftermath. + +We return to America and Frost tells how editors now snatched for the +opportunity to print the poems which previously for many years had +been vainly offered to their magazines. And you lead him on to tell +how liberal the colleges have been in their attitude toward his way of +conducting classes--a curious chapter in modern education. + +Frost goes on to speak of the people he knows: of Lincoln MacVeagh and +Alfred Harcourt when they worked at Holt’s, of Carl Sandburg’s work +and Louis Untermeyer’s visits, of a professor at Amherst he admires +because “he loves the classics and he is a _field_ scientist.” He +expresses his doubts of the “bunko-sciences” (mostly sociological and +psychological in character). He tells of a night spent with Paul Elmer +More at Princeton. He inserts somewhere one of Padraic Colum’s Irish +stories. He relates an experience at Vassar College. He supplied his +audience with broadsheets on which were printed several of the poems he +would read during his lecture. At the close of the talk the roomful of +girls avalanched upon him to autograph the broadsheets. After that he +no longer considered it a good idea to furnish his audiences with the +poems he intended to recite. + +The family is mentioned. His son, Carol, and one daughter, Irma, are +married: the oldest daughter, Lesley, runs a book-shop in Pittsfield +but now she is going around the world, managing a bookstall on the +liner: Marjorie has not been well for some time. + +It is past two now. One studies Frost’s face in the lamplight. His +“skin and his rebellious hair have now a fine harmony of tone, ‘the +grey of the moss of walls,’ a young and living greyness that, like a +delicate lichen, softens without hiding the hard and eternal shape of +the rock beneath.”[8] And while one studies him, he is perhaps telling +you of the friendship that existed between him and Thomas Bird Mosher. +Mosher early picked out one of Frost’s poems for affection and printed +it in his catalogue, and Frost saw him every so often, saw the sad +decline of this epicure who drolly mourned the loss of his sense of +taste and in desperation had beefsteaks specially sent from Boston to +Portland and specially prepared by the best cooks he could engage only +to find them tasteless for him. But never to the end, Frost reminds +you, did Mosher lose his fine taste for the blue china poetry of the +nineties. Or perhaps he tells you of Aroldo Du Chêne who sculpted his +head, or of J. J. Lankes whose woodcuts so appropriately join in mood +with the text of _New Hampshire_. Frost had admired the feeling for New +England landscape Lankes had revealed in some woodcuts reproduced in +the _Masses_ and the _Liberator_. And Lankes had admired Frost’s poetry +and illustrated several of the poems for his own enjoyment. Then poet +and artist were brought together by Carl Van Doren, then an editor of +the _Century_, in a fortunate collaboration for which each, unknown to +the other, was already prepared. + +Somehow the talk shifts again. “I believe,” Frost is saying, “in what +the Greeks called synecdoche: the philosophy of the part for the whole; +touching the hem of the goddess. All that an artist needs is samples. +Enough success to know what money is like; enough love to know what +women are like.”[9] Nature, he explains, does not complete things. She +is chaotic. Man must finish and he does so by making a garden and +building a wall. That garden is art. Wallace Stevens, he says, has made +a formal garden with his poetry. + +[10]“One of the real American poets of yesterday,” he goes on to +say, “was Longfellow. No, I am not being sarcastic. I mean it. It is +the fashion nowadays to make fun of him. I come across this pose and +attitude with people I meet socially, with men and women I meet in the +classrooms of colleges. They laugh at his gentleness, at his lack of +worldliness, at his detachment from the world and the meaning thereof. +When and where has it been written that a poet must be a club-swinging +warrior, a teller of barroom tales, a participant of unspeakable +experiences? That, today, apparently is the stamp of poetic integrity. +I hear people speak of men who are writing today, and their eyes +light up with a deep glow of satisfaction when they can mention some +putrid bit of gossip about them. ‘He writes such lovely things,’ they +say, and in the next breath add, half worshipfully, ‘He leads such a +terrible life.’ I can’t see it. I can’t see that a man must needs have +his feet plowing through unhealthy mud in order to appreciate more +fully the glowing splendor of the clouds. I can’t see that a man must +fill his soul with sick and miserable experiences, self-imposed and +self-inflicted, and greatly enjoyed, before he can sit down and write a +lyric of strange and compelling beauty. Inspiration doesn’t lie in the +mud; it lies in the clean and wholesome life of the ordinary man. Maybe +I am wrong. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I haven’t the +power to feel, to appreciate and live the extremes of dank living and +beautiful inspiration. + +“Men have told me, and perhaps they are right, that I have no +‘straddle.’ That is the term they use. I have no straddle. That means +that I cannot spread out far enough to live in filth and write in the +treetops. I can’t. Perhaps it is because I am so ordinary. I like the +middle way, as I like to talk to the man who walks the middle way with +me. I have given thought to this business of straddling, and there’s +always seemed to me to be something wrong with it, something tricky. +I see a man riding two horses, one foot on the back of one horse, one +foot on the other. One horse pulls one way, the other a second. His +straddle is wide. Heaven help him, but it seems to me that before long +it’s going to hurt him. It isn’t the natural way, the normal way, the +powerful way to ride. It’s a trick. + +“I am an ordinary man, I guess. That’s what’s the trouble with me. I +like my school and I like my farm and I like people. Just ordinary, you +see.” + +He pauses. “What I have said,” he reflects, “sounds a little too moral. +My point always is that a poet may live as vile a life as he pleases, +but then his poetry ought to be of a vile beauty. I hate dis-integrity. +I hope I have some range in the appreciation of beauty. I can see it +all the way from exquisite through homely and mean even to vile. What I +am unsympathetic with is a wide discrepancy between life and art.” + +The college clock strikes three. It is Frost’s usual bedtime. Tomorrow +he will be up around eleven, a student or two will call with some +writings for him to read, at one o’clock we are to be driven to a farm +house for a “real New England luncheon,” later there will be a walk. + +“Frost,” Waldo Frank has remarked, “is not only a beautiful poet. He is +a beautiful person.” + + + + +VIII. “A SENSIBILITIST” + + _“I’m what is called a sensibilitist, + Or otherwise an environmentalist.”_ + + +The poetry of Robert Frost is of one piece with his life and even with +his physical appearance. Like the latter, it makes the impression +of solid substance from which mounts a lyric flame whose light +confers meaning on the mass. And it resembles his life in that the +extraordinary in the shape of event or experience is usually quite +absent: the materials are restricted and common. “Common in experience: +uncommon in writing” is the true formula for practically all of Frost’s +poetry. + +Whence arises his distinction in expression? The answer must first be +made in terms of sensibility. The art of Robert Frost is built upon +the foundation of observation: it is the poetry of observation, an +emotional response, lyrical, dramatic, humorous, tragic, to what he has +seen and heard. + + When I see birches bend to left and right + Across the lines of straighter, darker trees, + I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. + But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay. + Ice storms do that. Often you must have seen them + Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning + After a rain. They click upon themselves + As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored + As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. + +This is the type of sheer observation that abounds in Frost’s works, +and one reads line after line that requires no help for vividness from +specially constructed images or even from simile and metaphor which are +in their turn composed of other definitely observed things. + +The temperament of Frost, as befits an observer, is passive and +plastic, and his impressionability depends in the first place for its +intensity upon the keenness of his ear and his eye. In fact, his style +can almost be entirely explained by saying that he is a remarkably +close listener and a very sharp see-er. + +Take his versification. What is it but a disciplined and ingrained +habit of listening to the tones of speech in New England from the +time he was fascinated by Charley Hall’s talk back in Windham to +the present? The poems, although they adhere to the molds of blank +verse and rhymed lyrics, are “talk poems.” The feat has been that of +conforming living speech to metrical forms by taking advantage of the +flexibility inherent in all metrical forms, so that Llewellyn Jones, a +conservative student of versification, is right when he says: + +“Technically, it is the outstanding feature of all Mr. Frost’s verse +that he makes it speak in human tones. He has never written a line of +free verse that does not scan--if the reader knows how to scan English +verse as it should be scanned and not as Latin or Greek verse should +be scanned. The reason some people have thought Mr. Frost’s verse +very licentiate and why others have said that he writes free verse +is because he subordinates his metrical pattern to the cadences of +human speech. His metrical ictus is always there but it is not always +emphasized, and he is never afraid to let a logical or word accent come +in a weak place metrically. His verse is at the opposite pole from +that of Swinburne, who gallops to an anapaestic tune in a manner which +is quite alien to human speech. On the other hand: ‘I shan’t be gone +long.--You come too’ is pure and unadulterated human speech which just +happens to fit into the metrical scheme of the poem. Only, such a thing +‘just happens’ so often in Mr. Frost’s work that we know that it does +not just happen at all but is the work of an exceptionally sensitive +and gifted poet. And indeed Mr. Frost is so sure of the natural +speech-tones in his work that he says that no one who reads his verse +naturally can read it wrong. But on the other hand those who read it +with a preconceived notion in their minds of how a verse should scan +often find it a little difficult.” + +Frost himself settled the matter when he said to Miss Sergeant: + +“They call me a dialect poet.... Not so you’d notice it. It was never +my aim to keep to any special speech unliterary, vernacular or slang. +I lay down no law to myself there. What I have been after from the +first, consciously and unconsciously, is tones of voice. I’ve wanted to +write down certain brute throat noises so that no one could miss them +in my sentences. I have been guilty of speaking of sentences as a mere +notation for indicating them. I have counted on doubling the meaning of +my sentences with them. They have been my observation and my subject +matter. + +“I know what I want to do most. I don’t do it often enough. In _The +Runaway_ I added the moral at the end just for the pleasure of the +aggrieved tone of voice. There are high spots in respect of vocal image +in _Blueberries_: + + There _had_ been some berries--but those were all gone. + He didn’t say where they had been. He went on: + ‘I’m sure--I’m sure--as polite as could be.’” + +It is plain to see why Frost calls himself an “anti-vocabularian,” for +the speech materials he attends to are limited in number of words. But +there is a gain here: the right limitation of vocabulary will produce +honesty of vocabulary, will insure, that is, some personal content in +experience for the words one employs, and this matching of vocabulary +and personal experience gives force. + +If Frost’s ear gives a natural life to his verse, his eye gives it a +clarity, a definiteness, a firmness of outline that produces a strong +feeling of actuality. Edward Garnett in his essay on Frost lifted out +from his better known poems a number of images and held them toward +the reader for inspection of their purity and hardness. We may take +a recently published poem, _Once by the Pacific_,[11] with the same +purpose in mind, the more so as this poem lies on Frost’s usual plane +of excellence and is not quite among his best. + + The shattered water made a misty din, + Great waves looked over others coming in, + And thought of doing something to the shore + That water never did to land before. + The clouds were low and hairy in the skies + Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes. + You could not tell, and yet it looked as if + The sand was lucky in being backed by cliff, + The cliff in being backed by continent. + It looked as if a night of dark intent + Was coming, and not only a night, an age. + Someone had better be prepared for rage. + There would be more than ocean water broken + Before God’s last _Put out the light_ was spoken. + +Here we _see_ rows of waves growing taller as we gaze out from the +shore, and beyond above the fitfully glowing horizon the strands of +clouds disordered by the wind. (“Great waves _looked over others_ +coming in.... The clouds were low and _hairy_ Like _locks blown +forward in the gleam of eyes_.”) Already the scene is massive, and we +are being prepared for the introduction of a cosmic word in the last +line. The rest of the poem is devoted to heightening this anticipatory +mood. We stand on the sand which is backed by a cliff which is backed +by a continent: thus the scale of the struggle is enlarged to huge +dimensions. The falling darkness of one night is similarly magnified: +“not only a night, an age.” And then the poem is ready to leave its +symbolic frame altogether in the last two lines. “There would be more +than ocean water broken Before God’s last _Put out the light_ was +spoken.” + +It is this simplicity and coherence of imagery that creates the +concreteness of Frost’s vision. At the same time, grandiose though the +theme is, the language is utterly like talk: the waves “thought of +doing something to the shore that water never did to land before ... +you could not tell, and yet it looked as if the sand was lucky” ... God +will say, “Put out the light.” + +If Frost is thus faithful in the use of his own eyes and his own ears, +it follows, since they cannot be universal in scope, that he will write +about his own locality. He will be obliged to be American, New England, +indigenous, to be an “environmentalist,” to do things with the “native +touch” Edward Garnett spoke of, because the very process of his writing +poetry commits him to it. + +But this is not all the story. The third conspicuous element in his +style is his sense of situation, his sense of drama. This, too, has +been often illustrated by the critics of Frost, and Edward Garnett has +quoted in connection with it one of Goethe’s offhand remarks: “A lively +feeling of situations and an aptitude to describe them makes the poet.” +Frost has qualified in this way many times--in _The Death of the Hired +Man_, in _Fear_, in _The Witch of Coos_, among many others. And he has +given us one “straight” example of drama in the one act play, _A Way +Out_, printed in the _Seven Arts_. + +The scene is “a bachelor’s kitchen bedroom in a farmhouse with a table +spread for supper. Someone rattles the door-latch from outside. Asa +Gorrill, in loose slippers, shuffles directly to the door and unbolts +it. A stranger opens the door for himself and walks in” and takes a +survey. “Huh,” he says. “So this is what it’s like. Seems to me you +lock up early. What you afraid of?” And Asa replies in a piping drawl: +“’Fraid of nothing, because I ain’t got nothing--nothing’t anybody +wants.” + +The situation has taken form at once: Asa Gorrill, the queer hermit, +on the defensive, and the intruder, hurried, rudely questioning and +commanding, mysterious. The dialog quickly develops both the characters +and the situation. The stranger investigates the room and the old +man’s means as though perhaps his motive might be robbery--in case his +suspicion of miserly hoardings finds evidence to go upon. He hints of +violent action, of a necessity for hurry. He is aggressive, reckless, +a factory hand in some sort of trouble. Asa trembles, wishes he were +off, doesn’t dare to resist, unwillingly answers the questions that +build up a picture of his daily life--when he goes to market and what +for, how he carries in his logs, what he believes in, what his history +has been. + +Then the stranger reveals he has committed a murder and is in flight. +He was seen once during the day by a wagonload of women. He insists on +donning some of the hermit’s extra clothes and mimicking his behavior. +The proposal is apparently that he hide here in the house and take +turns with the hermit in “stretching his legs” abroad. + +Dressed to resemble the old man, the murderer then drags Asa round and +round in a game to get themselves dizzy. “And then when we’re down,” +he says, “I want you should wait till you can see straight before you +speak and try to tell which is which and which is t’other.” + +This is the high dramatic moment of the play as they fall moaning from +their whirling and each accuses the other of the crime. The weak old +man faints from terror in the excitement, the stranger clubs him with +his fist and drags him out. The room is empty for a time. + +A posse calls and the sham hermit fools it. Its members pass on. It is +“a way out.” + +It will be noted that this play has both literary and theatrical form. +The two are not the same: for instance, Eugene O’Neill, generally rated +the best American playwright, often fails to produce a coincidence +of what is visually effective with what is psychologically and +dramatically determined. That Frost has done; the form stands up on the +printed page as well as on the boards: the psychological springs of +action are revealed: the writing is terse and necessary. + +Needless to say, these elements of his style--the gift for tones +of voice, the aptitude for concrete images, and the sense of the +dramatic--would not suffice if they did not give rise to full-bodied, +vital and corresponding emotions. Robert Frost is the type--the pure +poet. The outline of his life has shown that he has all of the poet’s +traditional impracticality, though in his case there is no indulgence +in utopian flights. Now, on the basis of his poems, we can add that he +is emotionally centered, and the world is to him predominantly a source +of emotion. It is his _sensibility_, and not ideas and his actions, +that mostly strikes at his emotions, and the result is song inspired +by _natural_ objects which include, of course, people. Yet though his +poetry is clearly not cerebral, neither is it thumpingly emotional. +His personal make-up gives it its flavor--the humor and slyness, the +sense of rural retreat, the friendliness. But to his intelligence goes +the credit for its economy and restraint, its solidity and subtlety, +for its bounding lines. Frost knows sufficiently what he is about in +writing poetry to compose his own _ars poetica_. + +“Imagery and after-imagery are about all there is to poetry. Synecdoche +and synecdoche--My motto is that something must be left to God. + +“In making a poem you have no right to think of anything but the +subject matter. After making it, no right to boast of anything but the +form. + +“A poem must at least be as good as the prose it might have been. A +poem is a box with a _set_ or assortment of sentences that just fit +together to fill it. You are rhyming sentences and phrases, not just +words. They must go into it as unchanged in size and shape as the words. + +“A straight crookedness is most to be desired in a stick or a line. +Or a crooked straightness. An absolutely abandoned zig-zag that goes +straight to the mark. + +“Sometimes I have my doubts of words altogether and I ask myself +what is the place of them. They are worse than nothing unless they +can do something, unless they amount to deeds as in ultimatums or +battle-cries. They must be flat and final like the show-down in poker, +from which there is no appeal. My definition of poetry (if I were +forced to give one) would be this: words that have become deeds. + +“All poetry is a reproduction of the tones of actual speech. + +“There are two types of realists: the one who offers a good deal of +dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one, and the one who is +satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I’m inclined to be the second +kind. To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip +it to form. + +“A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a +love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to +find fulfilment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its +thought and the thought has found the words. + + “........ the lines of a good helve + Were native to the grain before the knife + Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves + Put on it from without. And there its strength lay + For the hard work.” + + + + +IX. “AGAINST THE WORLD IN GENERAL” + + _How about being a good Greek, for instance? + That course, they tell me, isn’t offered this year._ + + +Some readers,[12] no doubt, were surprised when the poet told them in +his last book, _New Hampshire_: + + I may as well confess myself the author + Of several books against the world in general. + +There had been no protest, no satire, no revolt to be noticed in his +poetry. On the contrary, here was quietude, good humor and a certain +manly acceptance of circumstance. Yet this author who never whines, +who never seems savagely to resent the present state of affairs, this +author considers himself to have been writing against the world in +general! The surprise was salutary, for the shock directed attention to +the implications of Frost’s confession, the implications of his poetry +_in toto_, and a study of these implications will lead to the quite +sudden realization that the purest classical poet of America today is +Robert Frost. + +With Frost in the field as a classicist, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, +conspicuous rivals for the title, begin to look like something else. +Eliot’s poetry, for example, has romantic elements: his sentimental +melancholy and wistfulness, the dandyism and obfuscation that cut him +off from a more general appeal. Pound likewise seems to be hewing no +closer to a norm of thought, feeling and conduct: he does not appear +to be making a bridge from the special to the general experience, +to be achieving the “grandeur of generality”: he is given up to the +irritations and discomforts of a sensitive person. Yet a romanticist +tinge does not make a romanticist and _au fond_ Eliot and Pound are +nearer to classicism than they are to romanticism. Still there is an +important difference in kind between them and Robert Frost. + +It is this: Pound and Eliot are in the main loyal to the principle of +authority, whereas Frost depends entirely upon personal discovery. +Pound and Eliot give allegiance to literary tradition as a governing +body, seeking only to produce work that, while molded by tradition, +still has sufficient novelty of conception and style to alter somewhat +the existing body of letters. Frost is unconcerned with such a theory +of dictatorship, adjustment and modification: he does not set up a +literary authority to serve. Like the intelligent Greek, he is simply +by nature rather positive, critical and experimental. If he manifests +the classical virtues, if he achieves a nature, an imitation of it, a +probability and a decorum which can suggest those cultivated by the +classical world, it is because he has discovered them in, through and +by his own direct experience. In comparison with him, Eliot and Pound +appear formalistic, and the distinction between them and Frost is the +distinction between neo-classicism and classicism. + +It is important to see that the classicism of Robert Frost has been +evolved in a simplified world, the world of the New England farmer. +Such a farmer has a settled routine of living dependent upon the +seasons. He leads a village life in which most of the human factors +at work have the appearance of being tangible and measurable. The +intricacies of commerce and industry, the distress wrought by machines, +the flow of vast crowds, the diversity of appeals of a great city, do +not reach him. Churches are what they were, intellectual currents do +not disturb, and science, arch-upsetter of former values, finds no +opening to intrude. Frost tells of a hugger-mugger farmer who burnt his +house in order to buy a telescope with the insurance money. He gazed +with an unspoiled wonder at the heavens. But for science at large the +attitude is indifference. + + “You hear those hound-dogs sing on Moosilauke? + Well, they remind me of the hue and cry + We’ve heard against the Mid-Victorians + And never rightly understood till Bryan + Retired from politics and joined the chorus. + The matter with the Mid-Victorians + Seems to have been a man named John L. Darwin.” + “Go ’long,” I said to him, he to his horse. + +In Frost’s New England then many of the complex tormenting questions +that have arisen since the small city and agrarian communities of old +Greece have been lopped away from the problem of living. + + “Me for the hills where I don’t have to choose.” + +With this simplified world given, Frost has built his art, as +was pointed out in the preceding chapter, upon the foundation of +observation, and it is by positive and critical observation of things +conceived as discrete that Frost has discovered his Nature. + +The end reached by observation as a method, whether it is a poet or a +scientist who employs it, is dualism,--that is, a set of axioms and +laws founded on distinctions. The distinctions are based on appearances +and both they and appearances are treated as reasonably final data. +Of course, something inscrutable remains beyond, “something must be +left to God,” as Frost says, but the fundamental truth or error of +dualism is not plumbed. At any rate, whether or not the real world is +dualistic, certainly the apparent world is. + +So in Frost’s poetry we are consistently struck by his acceptance of +the dualistic world and his actual contentment with his lot of joy +and love “dashed with pain and weariness and fault.” Nature we feel +as a sort of friendly antagonist, dangerously strong sometimes, but +on the whole a fair opponent. In combat with her one cannot laze or +cheat: but honest struggle brings fair returns. Especially is the +line between Nature and Man always present in Frost’s mind, though +never insisted upon. For example, he spends no time dilating on the +aloofness or indifference of nature to man. Such a poem as _The Need +for Being Versed in Country Things_ illustrates very well the sense +of demarcation between man and nature which Frost preserves, his +acceptance of nature as lovely and fair, and his awareness of her +unconcern for man’s disasters. In this poem we hear of the burning of a +farmhouse and the decay of its barn. The birds nest in the latter. + + Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf, + And the aged elm, though touched with fire; + And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm; + And the fence post carried a strand of wire. + + For them there was really nothing sad. + But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept, + One had to be versed in country things + Not to believe the phoebes wept. + +Frost’s poetry contains no taint of the “pathetic fallacy” of the +romanticist which in these days is almost sufficient ground for +suspecting Frost’s classical tendencies. + +The man that Frost treats is situated in a tamed wilderness and is +disciplined by it. In New Hampshire the mountains are not high enough, +there is nothing extravagant or unduly wild about nature, nor are the +people of Frost’s poems grandiose or expansive. Their bodies have been +contracted and hardened by sweating toil, their emotions are rock-like, +and their minds achieve a good dogged horse sense. + + For art’s sake one could wish them worse + Rather than better. How are we to write + The Russian novel in America + As long as life goes so unterribly? + There is the pinch from which our only outcry + In literature to date is heard to come. + We get what little misery we can + Out of not having cause for misery. + It makes the guild of novel writers sick + To be expected to be Dostoievskis + On nothing worse than too much luck and comfort. + + * * * * * + + It’s Pollyanna now or death. + This, then, is the new freedom we hear tell of; + And very sensible. No state can build + A literature that shall at once be sound + And sad on a foundation of well-being. + +Out of a settled social framework, an honest necessary struggle +for existence, and a fair amount of well-being, something like a +representative man can emerge. There are balances and checks to trim +down his uniqueness while at the same time there is permitted a +moderate scope for his emotional and reflective life. In such a state +the acquisitive impulse gets no favoring head start and instead of +haste we find reticence and deliberation characteristic. + +Thus Frost discovers what Professor Irving Babbitt would call a sound +model for imitation. Professor Babbitt has labored to show that +imitation as the ancients understood it was a fresh and imaginative +process. It is just so with Robert Frost. His choice of words, his +rhymes, always escape the commonplace: we are awakened by the exact +perceptions of a new discoverer. But the more important point is that +this stirring-up is followed by a conviction of the naturalness or the +obviousness of Frost’s statements. Why, we murmur, has this not been +said before? Again we are repeating Poe’s useful test question for the +workings of the imagination. + +One cannot be certain just what content the term, the imagination, +contains today. Modern psychology has cleared away some of the rank +underbrush which has cluttered our view of the imagination, though +it has planted other bushes to confuse us at the same time: but at +least we habitually distinguish imagination from fancy. Perhaps by +pure imagination we mean something not far from a total sweeping +flash-like view taken by a human being at unusual moments. At any +rate Frost’s imagination is based on the view of a man who is using +_more_ of his equipment than most of the moderns do. The meaning is +simply that Frost does not seem to write almost exclusively from +one of three centers,--from the intellect or the emotions or the +instinctive center,--but from a sort of rude partnership of all three. +The conditions of his erstwhile livelihood (farming) brought into +at least partially coördinated play his body and his emotions, and +in addition he is capable of thought. In this growth he is again a +parallel, though distant, to the ancient writers, and gives a start to +the speculation as to how far the conditions of modern mechanized life +throw into disuse portions of the necessary equipment of a fully aware +human being. Certainly, Frost’s lines give one more of an impression +that a whole man is writing them than do the sharply intellectualized +or bubbling emotional lines of most of his contemporaries. + +The moot interpretation in the doctrine of imitation has always +been the meaning to be attached to universals. One may rightly be +skeptical as to the coincidence of the views of the idealists with the +original meaning of Aristotle. But whether Aristotle is interpreted +idealistically or not, Frost’s use of universals arising from a welter +of particulars is covered in the minimum definition that could be +offered. His poems, _Mending Wall_ and _The Grindstone_, are prime +examples: in these poems the particulars are vividly and concretely +seen and they can stand the most rigid literal interpretation. Yet no +less present and vivid in them is a wider significance or rather there +are wider significances. Thus, among other things conveyed in _The +Grindstone_, we are deeply aware that a sense of the inertia of nature +has been induced. We are aware of the aching strain of making nature +malleable and the tear and wear made on the straining human being +by time. For readers of Frost it is not necessary to add that this +creation of universal significance is accomplished directly without an +atom of didacticism. + +Although the doctrines of nature and imitation as exemplified in the +works of Robert Frost have been so briefly dwelt upon, does it seem +requisite to develop the contiguous statement that Frost is an observer +of the law of probability and the law of measure or proportion or +decorum? It is simply stating an easily recognizable fact which any +reader may verify by going through Frost’s writings that it is the +probable sequence and not the improbable but possible sequence that +he develops. He is a poet of the customary in man and nature, not the +exploiter of the remarkably arresting and wonderful. Nor does his +feeling for decorous proportion require argument beyond saying that +he does not commit the mistake of the neo-classicists who have been +properly accused by Professor Babbitt of confusing the language of the +nobility with the nobility of language. Frost’s people are humble, but +they speak a language and utter feelings appropriate to them: they are +restrained by conventions which are inherently worthy of respect, and +the result is decorum in the true sense. + +The study of these considerations should explain why Frost declares +that he has written several books against the world in general. For +since Rousseau romanticism has been in the ascendency. A new conception +of nature as impulse and temperament has supplanted the old nature as +a strict model, a “return to nature” has come to mean “letting one’s +self go.” For imitation has been substituted the self-expression of +the spontaneous original genius, for the law of probabilities has +been exchanged the law of wonderful possibilities, and for decorum we +have the doctrine of expansiveness. Science has abetted the growth +of naturalistic emotionalism, and neither humanism nor religion has +been able to stop the tide of writing designed for the expression of +uniqueness rather than of generality. + +Against this efflorescence of the interior world, the neo-classicists +have striven in vain, for their position does not rest solidly enough +upon experience and personal discovery. They have been debilitated by +the blight of Scaliger’s rhetorical question, why imitate nature when +Virgil is a second nature? + +Frost however quietly takes his place beside the antique Greeks and +against the modern world. He proves that a species of classicism +resting on personal discovery is still possible. + +Pictorially, Frost’s apartness from contemporary currents is +striking.... He came on our literary scene, this intensified and +intelligent and subtilized “ordinary man,” in very queer company. There +was Carl Sandburg with his love of the blur, his dreamy slothfulness, +his drifting impressionism, there was Vachel Lindsay, sentimental, +picturesque and declamatory, there was Amy Lowell, shallow and +decorative, there was Edgar Lee Masters, protestant and disillusioned, +and these were the poetic vanguard of Frost’s generation. In the novel +Theodore Dreiser was working up a public appetite for naturalism, and +Sherwood Anderson, recoiling in disgust from American business life, +was starting toward his present trust in objectless wandering and +instinctive laughter. Romantics all, and so were the new critics, J. +E. Spingarn with his gusty estheticism, H. L. Mencken, braying out +his prejudices, and Van Wyck Brooks with his humanitarian approach. +Frost came on with this troop, and they hailed him as a brother. He was +contemporary with them in age and public appearance, and a mistake was +made: it was taken for granted that he belonged in attitude and spirit +and general aim to the so-called “new poetry.” + +Today the Middle Generation is beginning to recede whereas Robert Frost +emerges more and more and as a poet differing at the root in substance, +craft and direction from the romantic movement of the last decade. +Where is his kinship in America? Not with that other New England +poet of parts, Edwin Arlington Robinson, for Robinson exemplifies a +withering and retrospective New England and Frost exemplifies the New +England that is still sturdily alive. No, it is rather in the Eldest +Generation in American letters that one finds a similar temper and +approach to Frost’s. One imagines that the elder critics, Paul Elmer +More and Irving Babbitt, casting skeptical eyes over our literary life +today, might single out Frost and say: “Here is a poet who has not +succumbed to the ‘law for thing’: here is a poet who has not bleached +himself with neo-classical dogma: here is a poet who sings afresh in +the great classical tradition.” + +Ultimately More and Babbitt diverge, as More seeks to sustain the +religious tradition of classicism and Babbitt to revitalize the +humanistic tradition. It is the latter tradition that includes Robert +Frost. + +For speaking in terms of psychology rather than of literature, what +distinguishes Frost is simply good sense. Good sense avoids extremes +both in what it denies and in what it accepts. It does not, for +instance, deny the bulky evidence of the senses and the man of good +sense, therefore, will not accept the lies of idealism. The external +world he will try to see and feel and otherwise sense as clearly and +tangibly as he can: “the fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.” +At the same time the man of good sense will not in his acceptance of +the practical instinctive fact as such fly to an extremely narrow +materialism and atheism. Something inscrutable and ordering very likely +remains: there are overtones in the observer of the fact that he cannot +ignore. Thus, he neither denies God nor the world: he accepts the +latter as demonstrated and the former as probable or at least possible. + +What he does trust is his own experience (having good sense he knows +that there is nothing else to trust) and his own experience happens in +Frost’s case to be mediatory in character. Being intelligent, being +deeply emotional, being obliged to make terms with practical life, the +man of good sense casts up a rough balance of the three aspects of his +life and travels, so far as he is permitted so to do, in the center of +the highway. + +A fair-minded description of a poet ought to be in itself a placement +and therefore a criticism of that poet. If Frost’s qualities pertain to +good sense, we must not expect him to write on the religious level. In +_The Trial By Existence_, one of the poems in _A Boy’s Will_, he took +up a religious theme, the gathering in heaven of the souls ready for +birth, “the trial by existence named, the obscuration upon earth,” and +the conclusion reached is sensible. As Llewellyn Jones has stated it, +it is “a recognition that suffering is always in terms of what we are, +not an alien something hitting us by chance from without but somehow or +other implicit in our very constitution.” But _The Trial By Existence_ +is exceptional in theme and treatment in all of Frost’s range. + +Nor must we expect from Frost that rarest and most difficult of +virtues that goes by the prosaic name of commonsense. Commonsense is +a _community_ of judgments, intellectual, emotional and practical, +upon life. It is an exact balance demanding the utmost strenuousness +to achieve and the perfection and harmony of our faculties. Good sense +is a gift: commonsense must be deliberately arrived at, as witness the +efforts of Socrates. + +There are certain all-important questions which only the greatest +literature raises and attempts to answer, and these questions it is +not appropriate to ask of every poet. Frost makes no pretense of great +inclusiveness and great profundities. The canniness of good sense +forbids such rash over-reachings of one’s self. But what we have always +a right to demand is that the poet should be skilled in his craft, +alive in his sensibility, and at least sensible in his conclusions. +Robert Frost is all of these, and to those questions that it is proper +to ask of him, those questions, that is, that are covered in his own +experience, he returns always an answer in true currency equal to the +demand. + +His comprehensive answer is the _natural_ (not romantic and not +religious) vision of life, and it is natural in the sense that it is +fitting to man _as he is_. “The poetry of a true real natural vision of +life,” said Goethe, “demands descriptive power of the highest degree, +rendering a poet’s pictures so life-like that they become actualities +to every reader,” and that is what Robert Frost, man of good sense and +fine sensibility, has succeeded in writing, and for that he will be +treasured in what we hope, against many odds at present, will be the +long and noble course of American literature. + + + + +APPENDIX A + +SELECTED BRITISH OPINION ON ROBERT FROST + + +The following quotations are taken from a little leaflet distributed +by David Nutt. Historically, the leaflet is interesting for showing +the quick captivation of English critics by _North of Boston_. But +more than that, the English writers appear to have succeeded better in +stating the emotional character of Frost’s verse than the Americans who +have undertaken the same task.--G. B. M. + + * * * * * + +... A unique type of eclogue, homely, racy, and touched by a spirit +that might, under other circumstances, have made pure lyric on the one +hand or drama on the other. Within the space of a hundred lines or so +of blank verse it would be hard to compress more rural character and +relevant scenery; impossible, perhaps, to do so with less sense of +compression and more lightness, unity and breadth. The language ranges +from a never vulgar colloquialism to brief moments of heightened and +intense simplicity. There are moments when the plain language and lack +of violence make the unaffected verses look like prose, except that the +sentences, if spoken aloud, are most felicitously true in rhythm to +the emotion. Only at the end of the best pieces, such as _The Death +of the Hired Man_, _Home Burial_, _The Black Cottage_, and _The Wood +Pile_, do we realize that they are masterpieces of deep and mysterious +tenderness.--_The English Review._ + + * * * * * + +... To start with, Mr. Frost is an American poet who noticeably stands +out against tradition.... We find very little of the traditional manner +of poetry in Mr. Frost’s work; scarcely anything, indeed, save a +peculiar adaption, in his usual form, of the pattern of blank verse.... +It elaborates simile and metaphor scarcely more than good conversation +does. It is apt to treat the familiar images and acts of ordinary life +much as poetry is usually inclined to treat words--to put them, that +is to say, into such positions of relationship that some unexpected +virtue comes out of them; it is, in fact, poetry composed, as far as +possible, in a language of things.... We have heard a great deal lately +of the desirability of getting back again into touch with the living +vigors of speech. This usually means matters of vocabulary and idiom; +and Mr. Frost certainly makes a racy use of New England vernacular. But +he goes further; he seems trying to capture and hold within metrical +patterns the very tones of speech--the rise and fall, the stressed +pauses and little hurries, of spoken language. The kind of metrical +modulation to which we are most accustomed--the modulations intended +for decorations or purely esthetic expressiveness--will scarcely be +found in his verses. But, instead, we have some novel inflections of +metre which can only be designed to reproduce in verse form the actual +shape of the sound of whole sentences. As a matter of technique, the +attempt is extraordinarily interesting.... Naturally, this technical +preoccupation bears strongly on the general form of Mr. Frost’s poetry. +He uses almost entirely dialogue or soliloquy; he must have somebody +talking. We might call these poems psychological idylls. Within their +downright knowledge, their vivid observation, and (more important) +their rich enjoyment of all kinds of practical life, within their +careful rendering into metre of customary speech, the impulse is always +psychological--to set up, in some significant attitude, a character or +a conflict of characters. The ability to do this can turn a situation +which is not very interesting at first into something attractive, +as when a rather protracted discourse of two distant relations on +genealogy gradually merges into a shy, charming conversation of +lovers; or, in a more striking instance, when the rambling speech of +an overtasked farmer’s wife works up into a dreadful suggestion of +inherited lunacy. If, as we have said, we cannot quarrel with this +deliberate method of exposition, it can scarcely be questioned that +Mr. Frost is at his best when he can dispense with these structural +preliminaries as in the admirable soliloquy of a farmer mending his +wall, or in the exquisite comedy of the professor sharing his bedroom +with a talkative newspaper-agent, or in the stark, formidable tragedy +called _Home Burial_. Though it is difficult to state absolutely +the essential quality of Mr. Frost’s poetry, it is not difficult to +suggest a comparison. When poetry changes by development rather than +by rebellion, it is likely to return on itself. Poetry in Mr. Frost +exhibits almost the identical desires and impulses we see in the +“bucolic” poems of Theocritus.--_The Nation._ + + * * * * * + +... There is such a thing as vers libre, which is an excellent +instrument for rendering the actual rhythm of speech. I am not in the +least suggesting that Mr. Frost should write vers libre; I am only +saying that it seems queer that he does not. There was Whitman--But +Mr. Frost’s achievement is much finer, much more near the ground, and +much more national, in the true sense, than anything that Whitman +gave the world. I guess he is afraid of the liberty of vers libre; to +shackle himself probably throws him into the right frame of mind. It +is another form of the New England conscience.... He does give you +a very excellent, a very poetic, a very real sense of his meadows +and woods and rocks and berries, and of night and of showers and of +wildnesses--of an America that really matters far more than the land of +endless trickery, make-believe, and lying and empty loquacity. That is +the face that--Heaven knows why!--America seems to like to present to +these parts of the world; but those are the least desirable features. +Anyhow, Mr. Frost has called in on us to redress the balance of that +particular New World.... He is not a remains of English culture grown +provincial and negligible. He is not, in fact, a sentimentalist. Not to +be a sentimentalist is to be already half-way towards being a poet--and +Mr. Frost goes the other half-way as well, though to describe what +that other half is beats me. Here is the little poem--rhymed for a +change--in which, as it were, he proffers his invitation to read _North +of Boston_. + + THE PASTURE + + I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; + I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away-- + And wait to watch the water clear, I may; + I shan’t be gone long--You come too. + + I’m going out to fetch the little calf + That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young + He totters when she licks it with her tongue. + I shan’t be gone long--You come too. + +Why is that beautiful and friendly and touching and all sorts +of things? I don’t know. I suppose, just because Mr. Frost is a +poet.--Ford Madox Hueffer in _The Outlook_. + + * * * * * + +This is an original book which will raise the thrilling question, +What is poetry?... Few that read it through will have been as much +astonished by any American since Whitman.... He has trusted his +conviction that a man will not easily write better than he speaks when +some matter has touched him deeply.... In his first book, _A Boy’s +Will_, there is this piece, entitled _Mowing_:-- + + There was never a sound beside the wood but one, + And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. + What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself: + Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, + Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound,-- + And that was why it whispered and did not speak. + It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, + Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: + Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak + To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, + Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers + (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. + The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. + My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make. + +Those last six lines do more to define Mr. Frost than anything I can +say. He never will have “easy gold at the hand of fay or elf”: he can +make fact “the sweetest dream.” Naturally, then, when his writing +crystallizes, it is often in a terse, plain phrase, such as the +proverb, “Good fences make good neighbors,” or-- + + Three foggy mornings and one rainy day + Will rot the best birch fence a man can build; + From the time when one is sick to death, + One is alone, and he dies more alone; + +or + + Pressed into service means pressed out of shape. + +But even this kind of characteristic detail is very much less important +than the main result, which is a richly homely thing beyond the grasp +of any power except poetry. It is a beautiful achievement, and I think +a unique one, as perfectly Mr. Frost’s own as his vocabulary, the +ordinary English speech of a man accustomed to poetry and philosophy, +more colloquial and idiomatic than the ordinary man dares to use even +in a letter, almost entirely lacking the emphatic hackneyed forms of +journalists and other rhetoricians, and possessing a kind of healthy, +natural delicacy like Wordsworth’s, or at least Shelley’s, rather than +that of Keats’.--Edward Thomas in _The New Weekly_. + + * * * * * + +In its quiet and unsensational way, Mr. Robert Frost’s _North of +Boston_ is the most challenging book of verse that has been published +for some time.... Mr. Frost has turned the living speech of men and +women into poetry.... To me it seems that _Home Burial_ and _The +Fear_ are the most absolute achievements in the book; but that may +only be because they come nearest to the kind of thing I wish to see +done in poetry; and the other pieces in the book all contain notable +qualities, and qualities which have been too long absent from English +verse. Mr. Frost has a keen, humorous sense of character.... Tales +that might be mere anecdotes in the hands of another poet take on a +universal significance, because of their native veracity and truth to +local character.--Wilfrid Wilson Gibson in _The Bookman_. + + + + +APPENDIX B + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL + + +BOOKS BY ROBERT FROST + +_A Boy’s Will_. London: David Nutt. 1913 + +_North of Boston._ London: David Nutt. 1914 + +_North of Boston._ New York: Henry Holt. 1914 + +_A Boy’s Will._ New York: Henry Holt. 1915 + +_Mountain Interval._ New York: Henry Holt. 1916 + +_Selected Poems._ New York: Henry Holt. 1923 + +_New Hampshire._ New York: Henry Holt. 1923 + + +PRINCIPAL ESSAYS ON ROBERT FROST + +Amy Lowell: _Robert Frost_ in _Tendencies in Modern American Poetry_. + +Waldo Frank: pages 158-162 in _Our America_. + +Louis Untermeyer: _Robert Frost_ in _A New Era in American Poetry_. + +Edward Garnett: _Robert Frost_ in _Friday Nights_. + +Clement Wood: _Robert Frost_ in _Poets of America_. + +Llewellyn Jones: _Robert Frost_ in _First Impressions_. + +Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant: _Robert Frost_ in _Fire Under the Andes_. + +Percy H. Boynton: _Robert Frost_ in _English Journal_, Oct., 1922. + +G. R. Elliott: _The Neighborliness of Robert Frost_ in the _Nation_, +vol. cix, p. 713-715. + +Carl Van Doren: _Quintessence and Subsoil_ in the _Century_, February, +1923. + +John Freeman: _Frost_ in the _London Mercury_, vol. xiii, pages 176-187. + +Charles Cestre: _Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson_ +in _Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine_, vol. xiv, pages 363-388. + +Jean Catel: _La Poesie americaine d’aujourd’hui_ in the _Mercure de +France_, March 15, 1920. + +Albert Feuillerat: _Robert Frost_ in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, tome +xvii, pages 185-210. + + + + +APPENDIX C + +ROBERT FROST ON EDUCATION + + +The following extracts are from a talk which Robert Frost gave at +Wesleyan University in December, 1926. They were taken down in +shorthand by a reporter for the _New Student_ and thus preserve the +exact verbal flavor of Frost’s conversation as well as the best direct +statement of his educational aim that I have encountered.--G. B. M. + +“The freedom I’d like to give is the freedom I’d like to have. That is +much harder than anything else in the world to get--it’s the freedom +of my material. You might define a school boy as one who could recite +to you, if you started him talking, everything he read last night, +in the order in which he read it. That’s a school boy. That’s just +the opposite of what I mean by a free person. The person who has the +freedom of his material is the person who puts two and two together, +and the two and two are anywhere out of space and time, and brought +together. One little thing mentioned, perhaps, reminds him of something +he couldn’t have thought of for twenty years. That’s the kind of talk +I’d rather give. + +“I’d rather be perfectly free of my material--reach down here in time +and off there in space, and here’s my two and two put together. Here’s +my idea, my thought. That’s the freedom I’d like to give. + +“It depends so much on the disconnection of things. There’s too much +sequence and logic all the time, of reciting what we learned over +night. There’s an attempt in the honor courses to get toward what I +mean. I don’t know what the honor courses will do toward it. + +“I think what I’m after is free meditation. I don’t think anybody gets +to it when he’s in anybody’s company--only when his soul’s alone. +I do it when I wake up in the morning, when I’m starting an idea, +and restarting. Sleep is probably a symbol of the interruption, the +disconnection that I want in life. Your whole life can be so logical +that it seems to me like a ball of hairs in the stomach of an angora +cat. It should be broken up and interrupted, and then be brought +together by likeness, free likeness. + +“You might ask me this question: how am I going to find time? I would +so run a course by self-withdrawal. I would begin a course by being +very present, and then slowly disappear. A sort of vanishing act. I’d +rather melt away just as I stood there, and leave a fellow more and +more alone, and let him feel deserted, like a baby in a room alone. + +“I know a good story, with a man’s name. I don’t mind using names. A +fellow named Conrad Aiken, one of our very best poets, though not one +of our most read, was once told in school to interpret something from +some French dramatist. He went home and got so much interested in doing +it that he didn’t come back to class for three weeks, but by that time +he had the whole play done in verse. He was sent to the office, on the +matter of cuts. He ran away on that. He came back afterwards to please +an uncle, he told me. We always pleased our uncles. Is that freedom to +do more than you ought to? He’d done more than a man might be asked to +do in his whole college course. If a man did that for me, I’d give him +A in every course.” + + + + +INDEX + + + Abercrombie, Lascelles, 65, 81 + + _Academy_, 64 + + _Alastor_, 29 + + Amherst, 73, 75, 81 + + Anderson, Sherwood, 110 + + Aristotle, 107 + + _Arms and the Man_, 54 + + _Atlantic Monthly, The_, 58, 66, 70 + + _Axe-Helve, The_, 72 + + + Babbitt, Irving, 34, 106, 109, 111, 112 + + Bartlett, John, 40, 51, 57, 59 + + Baseball, interest in, 56 + + Beerbohm, Max, 60 + + Bennett, Arnold, 60 + + _Black Cottage_, 39, 80 + + _Blueberries, The_, 90 + + “Bobbie,” the London, 61 + + _Bottle Imp, The_, 53 + + _Boy’s Will, A_, 18, 30, 62, 64, 65, 69, 70, 80, 113 + + Bridges, Robert, 74 + + Broadsheets, autographed, 82 + + Brooks, Van Wyck, 72, 111 + + Bryant, W. Cullen, 29 + + Buckley, blind boss, 26 + + _Bulletin_, 22 + + Burton, Pres. of Univ. of Michigan, 74 + + + Cadwalla, Bertha, 13 + + Canfield, Dorothy, 73 + + Cannan, Gilbert, 61 + + Cannéll, Skipwith, 80 + + Carpenter, E., 60 + + Catel, Jean, 73 + + _Century, The_, 58, 83 + + Chapin, James, 70 note + + Chesterton, G. K., 60 + + Chicken farm, 25 + + College, 32, 34, 72, 75 + + Colum, Padraic, 81 + + Columnist, 33 + + _Comus_, 47 + + Conrad, Joseph, 60 + + Convention talks, 48 + + _Country of the Blind, The_, 53 + + Cox, Sidney, 51 _et seq._, 57 + + _Critic_, 46 + + + Dartmouth, 32, 75 + + _Death of the Hired Man, The_, 80, 94 + + Derry, 36 _et seq._ + + _Dial, The_, 76 + + Dreiser, Theodore, 110 + + _Dr. Faustus_, 47 + + Du Chêne, Aroldo, 83 + + + _Eclogues_, 80 + + Eliot, T. S., 100, 101 + + England, trip to, 60 _et seq._ + + _English Review_, 61 + + _Emile_, 52 + + _Endymion_, 29 + + + Farming, 36, 38, 65, 73 + + _Fear_, 94 + + Fellowship at Michigan University, 74 + + _Fire Under the Andes_, 79, 80, 82, 83 + + _First Impressions_, 71 + + Flint, F. S., 63 + + Football, interest in, 43 + + Ford, Ford Madox, 61 + + Forst, 11 + + _Forum, The_, 58 + + France, Anatole, 72 + + Frank, Waldo, 71, 72, 86 + + _Friday Nights_, 70 + + Frost, Bertha, 15 + + Frost, Carol, 38, 82 + + Frost, Elinor Bettina, 38 + + Frost, Elliott, 36 + + _Frost Genealogy in Five Families_, 15 + + Frost, Henry, 12 + + Frost, Irma, 38, 82 + + Frost, John, 17 + + Frost, Lesley, 36, 38, 82 + + Frost, Lt. Wm., 17 + + Frost, Major Charles, 13, 15, 16, 77 + + Frost, Marjorie, 38, 82 + + Frost, Nicholas, 13, 14 + + Frost’s Garrison House, 13 + + + Galsworthy, John, 60 + + Garnett, Edward, 70, 71, 91, 93 + + George, Henry, 26, 78 + + Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson, 65, 66 + + Goethe, 93, 114 + + _Golden Room, The_, 66 + + Grahame, Cunninghame, 60 + + _Grindstone, The_, 107, 108 + + + Hall, Charley, 35, 88 + + _Hamlet_, 80 + + Harcourt, Alfred, 81 + + Hardy, Thomas, 72 + + Harvard, 34, 72 + + _Heretics_, 51 + + Holt, Henry and Co., 69, 81 + + Holt, Mrs., 66 + + _House-Keeper, The_, 80 + + Howe, Mark de Wolfe, 58 + + Hudson, W. H., 60 + + Hueffer, Ford Madox, 61 + + Hulme, T. E., 65 + + + _Independent, The_, 30 + + International P.E.N. Club, 72 + + _Into My Own_, 28 + + + James, Henry, 61 + + Jones, Llewellyn, 71, 89, 113 + + _Jumping Frog, The_, 53 + + + Lagerlof, Selma, 72 + + _Land of Heart’s Desire, The_, 47 + + Lanier, Sidney, 30 + + Lankes, J. J., 70 note, 83 + + Lawrence, D. H., 61 + + Lewis, Wyndham, 61 + + _Liberator, The_, 83 + + Lindsay, Vachel, 110 + + Literary formula, 48 + + Longfellow, H. W., 84 + + Lowell, Amy, 69, 71, 110 + + + Mabie, Hamilton W., 59 + + Mackenzie, Compton, 61 + + MacVeagh, Lincoln, 81 + + _Masses, The_, 83 + + Masters, Edgar Lee, 110 + + Mencken, H. L., 111 + + _Mending Wall_, 107 + + Merriam, Rev. Charles, 39 + + Michigan University, 74, 75 + + Mill, worker in, 32 + + Montpellier University, 73 + + Moody, Isabelle, 22 + + More, Paul Elmer, 81, 111, 112 + + Morrison, Henry, 48 + + Mosher, Thomas Bird, 82 + + _Mountain Interval_, 70 note, 73 + + _Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe_, 53 + + Munro, Harold, Poetry Book-Shop, 63 + + _My Butterfly_, 30 + + + _Need for Being Versed in Country Things_, 103 + + _New Age, The_, 61 + + _New Era in American Poetry, A_, 71 + + _New Hampshire_, 70 note, 73, 99 + + New Hampshire State Normal School, 51 + + _New Republic, The_, 69, 91 + + _North of Boston_, 15, 65, 69, 70 + + Nutt, David, 62, 63, 69 + + + _Old Kittery and Her Families_, 13 + + O’Leary, Dan, 79 + + _Once by the Pacific_, 91 + + O’Neill, Eugene, 96 + + Oppenheim, James, 72 + + Orage, A. R., 61 + + _Our America_, 71 + + + Pebble incident, 48 + + Pepperell, Sir William, 17 + + Phi Beta Kappa, 72 + + Pinkerton Academy, 36, 39, 40-51, 80 + + Plato’s _Republic_, 52 + + _Playboy of the Western World_, 54 + + Poe, Edgar A., 29, 106 + + Poet Laureate, 72 + + _Poetry; A Magazine of Verse_, 60, 70 note + + _Poets of America_, Politics, 25 + + Pound, Ezra, 31, 59, 61, 63, 64, 80, 100, 101 + + Princeton, 81 + + Production of plays, 47, 54 + + Pulitzer Prize, 70 note + + + Quarter, the lost, 78 + + + Reporting, 33 + + Revolvers in San Francisco, 23 + + Robinson, Edward A., 111 + + Rolland, Romain, 72 + + Rousseau, J. J., 109 + + _Runaway, The_, 90 + + + Sandburg, Carl, 81, 110 + + San Francisco, 22, 77, 78 + + Santayana, G., 34 + + _Saturday Review of Literature_, 99 + + Scaliger’s rhetorical question, 110 + + _Scribner’s_, 58 + + Sergeant, Elizabeth S., 77, 79, 82, 83 + + _Selected Poems_, 70 note, 73 + + _Sentinel_, 33 + + _Seven Arts, The_, 72, 94 + + Sex hygiene, 53 + + Shaw, G. B., 60 + + Shoe-making, 33 + + Sill, Edward R., 29 + + Silver, Ernest L., 42, 51 + + _Sohrab and Rustum_, 53 + + Sorbonne, 72 + + South, tour through, 33 + + Spingarn, 110 + + Stackpole, Everett S., 13, 15 + + Stevens, Wallace, 34, 84 + + Storer, Joseph, 16 + + Swedenborgianism, 26, 32 + + Swinburne, A. C., 89 + + + Teaching, 33, 40-51, 55, 73, 74 + + _Tendencies in Modern American Poetry_, 71 + + Tennis, interest in, 56 + + Thomas, Edward, _Poems_, 67 + + _Times Literary Supplement_, 65 + + _Tom Brown’s School Days_, 29 + + _T. P.’s Weekly_, 61 + + _Trial by Existence, The_, 113 + + _Tuft of Flowers, The_, 80 + + + Untermeyer, Louis, 71, 81 + + + Valedictorian, 27, 28 + + Van Doren, Carl, 83 + + Vassar College, 81 + + Virgil, 34, 80 + + + Ward, W. Hays, 30, 31 + + _Way Out, The_, 72, 94 + + Week-end party, 55, 56 + + Wells, H. G., 60 + + Wesleyan University, 75 + + White, Elinor, 27, 28, 32, 79 + + Williams, W. Carlos, 76 + + _Witch of Coos, The_, 70 note, 94 + + Wood, Clement, 71 + + + _Youth’s Companion_, 58 + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +[1] That of Elder Edmund Frost of Cambridge, Massachusetts. + +[2] _Frost Genealogy in Five Families_ by Norman Seaver Frost. + +[3] Elinor Bettina was born on June 20, 1907, and died on June 21. + +[4] See Appendix A. + +[5] Five printings of _North of Boston_ were called for in its first +year, and ten more have been needed since. Its sale has been phenomenal +for a book of poetry, and in 1926 it even led the author’s later books, +though each of them has been steadily in demand ever since it appeared. +_New Hampshire, A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes_, which was issued +in 1923, comes next in popularity to _North of Boston_, requiring +five large printings. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for that year, +while one of the poems included in that volume, namely, _The Witch of +Coos_, won the prize offered by _Poetry: A Magazine of Verse_ in 1922. +_Mountain Interval_ has also required five printings, and the _Selected +Poems_ are now in their fourth printing. + +In London _New Hampshire_ has appeared under the imprint of Grant +Richards, Ltd., and the _Selected Poems_ under that of William +Heinemann. + +In addition to their regular editions, a de luxe volume of _North of +Boston_, illustrated in line by James Chapin, appeared in 1919, and a +de luxe edition of _New Hampshire_, with woodcuts by J. J. Lankes, who +also decorated the regular edition, came out in 1923. + +[6] Quoted from _Fire Under the Andes_ by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant. + +[7] Quoted from _Fire Under the Andes_ by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant. + +[8] Quoted from _Fire Under the Andes_ by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant. + +[9] Quoted from _Fire Under the Andes_ by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant. + +[10] Quoted from an interview in the New York _Times_, October 21, 1923. + +[11] Published in the _New Republic_, December 29, 1926. + +[12] Page 99 to 110 appeared originally as part of an essay on Frost +published in _The Saturday Review of Literature_ for March 28, 1925. +The text has now been slightly altered. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78076 *** diff --git a/78076-h/78076-h.htm b/78076-h/78076-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..886b694 --- /dev/null +++ b/78076-h/78076-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4414 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no,date=no,address=no,email=no,url=no"> + <title> + Robert Frost: A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + + text-indent: 1.5em; + margin-top: .5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .5em; +} + +p.noindent, .footnote p { + text-indent: 0; +} + +hr, hr.tb { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +td {padding:0.5em} + +hr.chap {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +hr.poetrytb {width: 20%; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 40%; margin-right: 40%} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +ul.index { list-style-type: none; } +li.ifrst { + margin-top: 1em; + text-indent: -2em; + padding-left: 1em; +} +li.indx { + margin-top: .5em; + text-indent: -2em; + padding-left: 1em; +} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + +.tdl {text-align: left;} +.tdr {text-align: right;} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} /* page numbers */ + +blockquote { + margin-top: 0; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0;} + +.right {text-align: right;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} + +figcaption {font-weight: bold;} +figcaption p {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .2em; text-align: inherit;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} + + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + +/* Poetry */ +/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */ +.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .stanzachap {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 1.4em;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} +.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2.0em;} +.poetry .indent4 {text-indent: -1.0em;} +.poetry .indent9 {text-indent: 1.5em;} +.poetry .indent20 {text-indent: 7.0em;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78076 ***</div> + + +<p class="center" style="font-size:larger"> +THE MURRAY HILL BIOGRAPHIES<br> +<br> +ROBERT FROST +</p> +<hr> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a><a id="Page_3"></a><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span></p> + +<figure class="figcenter" id="frontis" style="max-width: 30em;"> +<img class="" src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="photographic portrait"> +<figcaption> +<p class="right" style="font-size:x-small"><i>Photo by Doris Ulmann</i></p> + +<p>ROBERT FROST</p> +</figcaption> +</figure> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span></p> + +<hr class="tb x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter center"> +<h1> +ROBERT FROST<br> + +<i>A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense</i></h1> +<br> +<br> +By<br> +<span style="font-size:x-large">GORHAM B. MUNSON</span><br> +<i>Author of</i> “<span class="allsmcap">WALDO FRANK: A STUDY</span>”<br> +<br> +<br> +GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br> +ON MURRAY HILL : NEW YORK +</div> + +<hr> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span></p> + +<div class="center" style="font-size:smaller"> +COPYRIGHT, 1927,<br> +BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br> +<br> +<br> +ROBERT FROST<br> +—A—<br> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA +</div> + + +<hr> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span></p> + + +<p class="center"> +To<br> +HART CRANE<br> +<br> +in memory of many<br> +enthusiastic conversations<br> +about poetry +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS"> + CONTENTS + </h2> +</div> + +<table> + <tr><td class="tdr">I</td><td class="tdl">“THE GENERATIONS OF MEN”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr">II</td><td class="tdl">“ONCE BY THE PACIFIC”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr">III</td><td class="tdl">“A BOY’S WILL”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr">IV</td><td class="tdl">“THE ROAD NOT TAKEN”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr">V</td><td class="tdl">“NEW HAMPSHIRE”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr">VI</td><td class="tdl">“PAN WITH US”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr">VII</td><td class="tdl">“INTO MY OWN”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr">VIII</td><td class="tdl">“A SENSIBILITIST”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr">IX</td><td class="tdl">“AGAINST THE WORLD IN GENERAL”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr"></td><td class="tdl">APPENDIX A [Selected British Opinion on Robert Frost]</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr"></td><td class="tdl">APPENDIX B [Bibliographical]</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr"></td><td class="tdl">APPENDIX C [Robert Frost on Education]</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr"></td><td class="tdl">[Index]</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#INDEX">131</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="tdr"></td><td class="tdl"><a href="#FOOTNOTES">[Footnotes]</a></td><td></td></tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><ins title="first numbered page"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></ins></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_THE_GENERATIONS_OF_MEN"> + I. “THE GENERATIONS OF MEN” + </h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanzachap"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>“But don’t you think we sometimes make too much</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Of the old stock? What counts is the ideals</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And those will bear some keeping still about.”</i></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + + +<p>New England is our association with the +name of Frost, and we are no doubt surprised +when told that it is a Scandinavian name. +Yet there are today many persons in Denmark +who hearing this sound uttered behind their backs +would turn with that sudden interest aroused by +the unexpected pronouncing of one’s name. Certain +of the remote ancestors of these Danish +Frosts may have roved into England in the ninth +century <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, or it may have been Saxons bearing +the name of Forst, which is the Saxon form +of Frost, who invaded England in the fifth century +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> and founded the line of English Frosts. +In either case, the Frosts were settled there +before the Norman Conquest and the name had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>begun to accrete sturdy Anglo-Saxon associations +about its slightly harsh sound.</p> + +<p>In 1135 Henry Frost, the probable ancestor of +the American progenitor of one line of Frosts,⁠<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +founded the Hospital of the Brothers of St. John +the Evangelist at Cambridge, England, and this +foundation became in 1509 St. John’s College, +for which reason it is said that “Henry Frost +ought never to be forgot, who gave birth to so +noted a seat of religion, and afterwards to +one of the most renouned seats of learning in +Europe.”</p> + +<p>The son of Henry Frost bore the name of the +subject of this Study and wore a coat of arms +which reads like a prophetic curio of the poetry +of his namesake. “Argent. A chevron azure +between two thistles slipped in chief, and a hind’s +head erased in base proper. Crest: a grey squirrel +sejant, semée of estoiles sable, collared and +chained or, and holding between the paws a hazel +branch fructed also proper.”</p> + +<p>Until the early seventeenth century the Frost +family spread deeper and deeper into the sub-soil +of English life. Then came the migrations of +the Puritans, crowded by unfavorable forces at +home and drawn from afar by the promises of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>New England. In an old piece of writing one +can read:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent9">“Nicholas, Marride Bertha Cadwalla,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Jan’y <span style="padding-right:8em">1630</span> ffrom Tavistock, Devon</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Bertha Cadwalla, Borne ffeb’y ye 14th, 1610</div> + <div class="verse indent4"><span style="padding-right:11em">Aprill</span> Arrived in</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sailed for <span style="padding-right:4em">America</span> June, 1634, in ye year</div> + <div class="verse indent4">In ye Shipp Wulfrana, Alwin Wellborn, Master</div> + <div class="verse indent4">ffrom Plimouth, Devon.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>It was this Nicholas Frost who founded the +line of which Robert Frost is a representative of +the ninth generation. In the interval New England +incorporated itself into the tissue, blood and +bone of these “generations of men” ultimately to +become song from the lips of Robert Frost.</p> + +<p>The history of the early generations of this +line is threaded into the history of certain old +villages in Maine—Kittery, Eliot, Wells, York—located +close to the present New Hampshire border, +and today there is an inscription on Ambush +Rock where Major Charles Frost was slain, +Frost’s Hill is still known as such, and the Frost +Garrison House, erected in 1733, is the only garrison +house that remains in Old Kittery. Everett +S. Stackpole, the patient chronicler of <i>Old Kittery +and Her Families</i>, hints that a little mythological +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>moss may have gathered about the early Frost +settlers, and believes that Nicholas Frost was on +the coast of Maine as early as 1632. He surmises +that he returned to Tiverton, Devonshire, +England, collected his wife and two sons, John +and Charles, and came back to America in 1634.</p> + +<p>Nicholas Frost appears to have landed at +Little Harbor, now Rye, New Hampshire, and +to have lived there for at least a year, since there +is record of a daughter Anna being born there +in April, 1635. Within the next two years he +removed to the head of Sturgeon Creek, in what +is now Eliot, Maine, where he made his home +until his death in 1663.</p> + +<p>His vicissitudes and achievements were of a +typical pioneer character. He acquired a fairly +large acreage of land, served as one of the first +selectmen of Kittery, signed with his son a petition +to Oliver Cromwell (signed with his mark, +a combination of N and F, for this ancestor of a +distinguished poet was illiterate), and lost his +wife and fifteen year old daughter, Anna, to the +Indians. It is said that they were captured on +July 4, 1650 “and taken to a camp at the mouth +of Sturgeon Creek. Nicholas and his son Charles +were at York at the time, and on their return +attempted to rescue them but were unsuccessful; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>Charles, however, killed a chief and a brave. +The next day Charles, his father and some of the +neighbors went back to the camp but were too +late. The camp was deserted, only the bodies of +Bertha and Anna were found there. They were +buried near the old Garrison.”⁠<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Stackpole finds +some of the details of this story scarcely credible, +but it seems clearly a fact that Bertha Frost and +her daughter were killed by the Indians.</p> + +<p>Charles Frost, already mentioned several times +in this narrative, became locally celebrated and +until <i>North of Boston</i> was imported from England +in 1915 was probably the most famous of +the American Frosts.</p> + +<p>He was noted as an Indian fighter, and bitterly +hated by his foes who finally killed him from an +ambush on July 4, 1697. The hatred of the Indians +for him went to greater lengths: they +opened his grave the night after the burial and +carried the body to the top of Frost’s hill where +it was suspended upon a stake. The reason for +this vengeance lay in an incident that occurred in +September, 1676, following the close of King +Philip’s War, an incident that is sometimes described +in the colonial and border war histories +of our early settlers.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span></p> + +<p>The Pennacooks, some of the neighboring Abenakis, +and a number of “strange Indians” (alleged +to be King Philip’s men) assembled, having been +given an express pledge of safety, at Dover, New +Hampshire, for a friendly conference with the +whites. A sham fight was instituted and using +this as a pretext the whites seized four hundred +Indians. Of these three hundred were sent to +Boston where a few were hanged and the rest sold +into slavery. It is said that Major Waldron and +Captain (later Major) Frost joined this stratagem +with reluctance, but the Indians held them +responsible for what they reasonably deemed an +atrocious and treacherous deed, bided their time +and killed Major Waldron thirteen years later +and Major Frost twenty-one years after, causing +one Joseph Storer in Wells to write: “It hath +pleased God to take a way; Major Frost, the +Indians waylad him Last Sabbath day as he was +cominge whom from meeting at night; and killed +him and John Heards wife and Denes Downing +... it is a Great Loss to the Whole Province; +and Espesely to his fameley ... mistress Frost +is very full of sory; and all her Children.”</p> + +<p>His death is said to have been the last English +blood shed in New England in King William’s +War and inspired a memento in verse which runs:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The last of that grand triumvirate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unflinching martyrs of a common fate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Waldron and Plaisted and Frost, these three,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The flower of New England chivalry.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>The descendants of this component of the +flower of New England chivalry occupied themselves +in divers ways but kept their home-roots +within a radius of fifty miles of Portsmouth, New +Hampshire. His son, the Hon. John Frost, married +a sister of Sir William Pepperell who captured +Louisburg in 1745 and himself served His +Majesty for a time as Commander of the man-of-war +<i>Edward</i>. Later he became a merchant of +Newcastle, New Hampshire, and a member of +the Governor’s Council. His son, William, was +also a merchant of Newcastle, but apparently not +as conspicuous as his grandfather or father. The +line recovers its warlike tinge in his son, Lieutenant +William Frost, an officer in the Continental +Army during the American Revolution and +a resident of Andover, Massachusetts. The sixth +generation gives us Samuel Abbot Frost, who remained +in New Hampshire most of his life and +was the father of four children, among them +William Prescott Frost, the grandfather of +Robert, who moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts.</p> + +<p>For a time William Prescott Frost aspired to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>be a well-dressed young blood, but New England +thrift and respectability erased these fashionable +yearnings and he became instead a saver of the +margins of his income and a local pillar of respectability. +He wrested a competency from his +job as overseer in a Lawrence mill and was naturally +somewhat baffled by the drifting and poetic +tendencies of his young grandson, probably never +more than when he proposed to Robert, then aged +eighteen, that he should take one year to try out +his poetry and then, if that did not meet with +success, why, there were plenty of other worthy +pursuits. The reply was: “Give me twenty +years!” And it was to be exactly twenty years +before <i>A Boy’s Will</i> was published in London.</p> + +<p>But for all his respectability there was a liberal +vein in William Prescott Frost: otherwise he +could not have tolerated the notions and conduct +of his wife. For she was one of the earliest +feminists in America. This lady, remembered as +one whose stateliness was enhanced by an habitual +nodding of the head as if with dignified resentment +against the ascendency of the male, decided +one day that house-work was not exclusively the +business of women and called for a division of +household tasks. And her husband acquiesced, so +that, turn and turn about, one performed the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>services of the establishment whilst the other enjoyed +leisure.</p> + +<p>This couple had a son and a daughter, and +named the boy William Prescott after the father. +He was sent to Harvard, the first of the line to +receive college training, and it was hoped that +he would become a lawyer, a hope that his grandparents +later cherished for Robert Frost. But +William Prescott Frost, Jr., revolted against +what seven generations of Frosts had assisted in +forming: he revolted so strongly against New +England that his flight ended only when he +reached San Francisco.</p> + +<p>But before recording that grimly energetic +career, a pause is due, since “what counts is the +ideals and those will bear some keeping still +about,” to ask concerning the congruity of Robert +Frost with his ancestry. What is noticeable first +of all in this stock is its closeness to the soil. It +was given, not to wandering, but to settling, to +making a sturdy fight with local conditions, to +seeing matters through on the terms of the environment. +That environment happened to be, +in its wider sense, successively colonial America, +the consolidation and growth of the United +States, and the beginnings of the industrial era. +In a smaller sense, it was New England and the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>family is dyed in the older qualities of both +America and its small northeastern corner—hardihood, +resistance, decency and kinship to the +soil, to mention a few. One is tempted to make +a second generalization. The way the Frosts +trod was the middle road. In their family there +is no touch of the eccentric or extravagant or +fanatic. They were church-going, but not zealots +of puritanism. They served in the army and +navy when occasion pressed, but they were not +soldiers of fortune. They were small business +men and local officeholders, but made no unusual +motions in either rôle. What stands out seems +to be a temperamental conservatism, adapting +itself to changes in history and environment, but +never reactionary or radical—until we come upon +a variant in the father of Robert Frost. But +Robert Frost is heir to the progressive conservatism +and the closeness to the locality of the forebears +of his father.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_ONCE_BY_THE_PACIFIC"> + II. “ONCE BY THE PACIFIC” + </h2> +</div> + + +<p>Shortly after the Civil War an immigrant +ship from Scotland was coming up the +Schuylkill River. It had taken weeks to cross +the Atlantic and now it was close enough to be +gaily bombarded by peaches thrown from the +shore. The passengers caught the strange fruit +in their hands and learned to eat it and the taste +was welcome after so protracted a spell of ship’s +provisions.</p> + +<p>There was a fifteen year old girl passenger +from Edinburgh who did not take part in the pastime. +She came of a lowland Scotch family, a +family of seafarers: her father, a sea captain, had +been lost at sea and so also had her brother. +Bred to patience, she now sat quietly watching. +But one of the men came over and dropped the +peach he had caught into her lap. “You should +eat it,” he explained, and she replied, gazing at +the fruit, “It’s too bonnie to eat.”</p> + +<p>This Scotch girl was on her way to Columbus, +Ohio, to live with an uncle in business there. A +few years later she came to Lewiston, Pennsylvania, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>to teach school. And here it was that +Isabelle Moody encountered William Prescott +Frost, Jr., on his rebound from New England. +Young Frost had his eye on other projects of +ambition, but for the time he too was a school +teacher in Lewiston. They were married, and the +husband went on to San Francisco to work on a +Democratic newspaper, the <i>Bulletin</i>. A little +later he wrote his wife that the windows of the +newspaper office had been shot out but he was +unharmed. The paper had, it seems, printed +derogatory statements about some stock and +those who were interested in it had resorted +to gun play. Into this smoldering and sometimes +violent community Isabelle Moody followed her +husband and there on March 26, 1875, a son, +christened Robert Lee Frost, was born.</p> + +<p>The christening tells the story of the father’s +political sympathies. Too young to fight in the +Civil War, the boy had been an intense copperhead +and had meditated on somehow slipping +South to join the Confederates. Now he was a +States’ Rights man and once he showed Robert a +map of the United States and divided it into five +nations into which he predicted the country would +sometime split.</p> + +<p>The father liked San Francisco. He liked the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>spirit of plunging which diffused through the +community and he was himself always playing +the stock market. He liked to spend money liberally. +And he liked the threat of grimness +which one experienced by simply observing that +men wore revolvers with the frequency New +Yorkers today wear sticks.</p> + +<p>One Sunday afternoon Robert and several +other children were permitted to walk along the +beach with his father and a few associates. A +bottle was found and stopped up and tossed into +the waves. Out came the revolvers of all the men +and they fired at the floating target. It was no +more uncommon than throwing stones.</p> + +<p>One Christmas Eve Robert, his sister and his +mother returned to their house quite late. They +were about to prepare for bed when his mother +asked Robert if he had locked the door. He +answered that he had, but it at once became indisputable +that he had not, for the door was +heard to open without benefit of key and someone, +to their consternation, entered. Mrs. Frost +rushed her children into a room, locked its door, +shooed them under a table, and extracted a revolver +from a drawer. “I’ll shoot if you come +further!” she spoke with a quaver. There was +no answer, and she repeated her threat. Then +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>Mr. Frost’s laugh was heard, relieving a tension +that was likely often to seize San Franciscans of +that period.</p> + +<p>On the Fourth of July the plunging editor +broke loose. It was his day and it was neither +safe nor sane. An old fashioned celebrator, he +made the greatest racket possible, set fire to outhouses +and destroyed minor properties. He went +to the limit on political celebrations, too. In +politics or the stock market he would soon make +a lucky stroke if he played hard enough. Then +after success had burgeoned, he would take care +of that consumption that threatened him. He +would take a trip to “the Islands”; that is, to +Hawaii, the favored resort of that time for consumptives. +In the meantime he drank liquor to +keep up his pace, he drank warm blood at the +stockyards to alleviate the disease, and he did all +the celebrating possible when his party triumphed. +Robert was a celebrant too, riding, costumed, on +floats in the big parades or trudging in torchlight +processions until he was sent home to bed from +weariness.</p> + +<p>But the political ambitions yielded only small +fruits. Mr. Frost did go as a delegate to one +Democratic National Convention and he was city +campaign manager in 1884 when Cleveland was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>elected President. He was defeated, however, +when he ran for election as tax collector of San +Francisco. In that campaign the boy Robert was +his constant companion—his job was to visit the +saloons with his father’s campaign cards and +to impale these on the ceiling by flinging upwards +a card with a tack through it and a silver dollar +beneath the tack which worked as a sort of flying +mallet—and this, one fancies, remains to this day +the most active participation in politics of Robert +Frost.</p> + +<p>In 1885 consumption won the contest for the +body of William Prescott Frost and silenced its +teeming hopes and plans, its explosive moods and +tense restraints. His wife who had suffered for +weeks at a time from his gloomy silences and his +son who had suffered from his grim severities +mourned for him—and found that his extravagance +had led to letting his insurance lapse. It +was necessary to return to the New England the +dead man had hated, to seek refuge with Robert’s +grandparents in Lawrence.</p> + +<p>So the little boy relinquished the tiny chicken +farm he had started in the backyard at San Francisco +and on the long ride sat beside his surviving +parent, both sunk in memories of the grim dignity +of the deceased, he who had never worn anything +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>but a top hat, who had always been drily +polite without the least ingratiation, and yet had +been pathetic, too, since he had been <i>terrible</i> to +himself. If anything planted tragedy in Robert +Frost, it must have been, one surmises, the vision +of his father, friend on the one hand of Buckley, +the notorious blind boss of San Francisco, and on +the other of Henry George with whom for a brief +time he managed a single tax newspaper.</p> + +<p>Perhaps from his father he acquired a certain +recklessness of temperament, less extreme, but +discernible in the drifting ways of his life: his +father was energetically imprudent and the world, +one knows, judges the son gently imprudent in +the affairs of practical living. But the presence +of the mother is also implied in the poetry. Her +Scotch blood, transmitted, courses perhaps in the +canny good sense, in the slightly oblique humor, +and above all in the thriftiness of the poetic productions. +She was herself an occasional versifier +and reviewed books for her husband’s newspaper. +In religion she was a Swedenborgian, and these +facts are sufficient to suggest that she probably +awakened an emotional area in her son that the +father left untouched, that area that was later +to fructify into a new contribution to American +poetry.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_A_BOYS_WILL"> + III. “A BOY’S WILL” + </h2> +</div> + + +<p>Robert and his sister had been trained by +their father to no love of New England. +Circumstance, however, had now deposited them +among the despised children of this section, and +for the first time they saw pennies. They made +up a little game. First, they would hold up a +nickel and say, “San Francisco!” Then they +would exhibit a penny and scornfully pronounce, +“Boston!” But this childish snobbism soon vanished +as they became more at home in the East.</p> + +<p>Robert received the usual schooling and in +high school clearly outstripped his class. He +was apparently in full possession of valedictorian +honors as graduation neared when a rival +emerged coming rapidly forward from a lower +class. The rival was a Lawrence girl, a descendant +of the Whites of Acton who fought at Concord +and of Peregrine White on the <i>Mayflower</i>. +Elinor White was completing her high school +course in two and a half years, thus catching up +with Robert’s class, and when the averages were +computed it was found that she had tied him for +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>the honor of valedictorian. It was decided, nevertheless, +that Robert Frost should deliver the address, +while on the graduation program the names +of Elinor Miriam White and Robert Frost should +appear together as holders of the office. This +happened to forecast the future, for the boy and +girl, already friends, were married in October of +1895 and their names have ever since been joined +in a union of singular idyllic beauty.</p> + +<p>Another courtship was developing during the +same phase of Robert Frost’s life which was also +to ripen into a lifelong devotion, and that was +the courting of the Muse of Poetry. Before he +left San Francisco, he had begun a serial story. +It concerned the doings of a lost and forgotten +tribe living in a ravine no one of the outside world +knew about. After he came east, he continued +this serial from time to time, filling in the details +of scenery and inhabitants.</p> + +<p>Here we strike a master-image, one that constantly +recurs in Frost’s life, for aside from the +varieties of it to be found in his poems—for example, +in such lines as “Me for the hills where I +don’t have to choose” and the first two stanzas +of <i>Into My Own</i>—the poet has confessed that +often he puts himself to sleep by dreaming of this +inaccessible and sometimes happy tribe defending +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>its canyon. One hopes that this recurrent and +dominant image will not be subjected to the ingenious +but suspect leaps to conclusions of the +psycho-analysts. Better far the slower method of +the behaviorist who is in closer accord with the +commonsense of man which tells us that we do not +thoroughly know people until we have seen them +in many situations over a lengthy span of seasons.</p> + +<p>When fourteen Robert Frost began to open +books with a new zest. Hitherto he had been +content to have his mother read to him and his +favorite story had been <i>Tom Brown’s School +Days</i> which characteristically he had never finished—because +he could not bear the thought +that he had completed the tale. But now he +adventured for himself among books. He read +with eager responsiveness all of William Cullen +Bryant and Edgar Allan Poe. He went on to +Shelley’s <i>Alastor</i> and Keats’ <i>Endymion</i> but found +them too much at the time for his interests and +resources. Edward Rowland Sill and his Emersonianism +was better adapted to his requirements, +and Frost still preserves a mild respect for this +obscured Connecticut poet who in his day carried +the fruitage of New England culture to the far +West.</p> + +<p>The following year at the age of fifteen Frost +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>was himself trying out his hand at writing verse, +and two years later composed <i>My Butterfly</i> which +is one of the pieces in <i>A Boy’s Will</i> and the earliest +poem he has kept. The first stanza is quoted +not only to reveal its superiority to the poetry of +adolescence at large but to explain what followed +its publication.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the daft sun-assaulter, he</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That frighted thee so oft, is fled or dead:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Save only me</div> + <div class="verse indent0">(Nor is it sad to thee!)</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There is none left to mourn thee in the fields.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>The tentative submission of <i>My Butterfly</i> to +the <i>Independent</i> had brought a prompt note of +acceptance and a check for fifteen dollars. It +happened that William Hays Ward, the editor, +was a devout student of Sidney Lanier, a fact that +explains his liking for the musical dexterity of this +poem, but though he printed some of the subsequent +poems Frost mailed him, he never liked +another as well. They were not in the Lanier +vein, and that was where a young poet should be +working. But Frost was obdurate then as now +in these concerns, and Ward gave him up.</p> + +<p>So at seventeen Robert Frost was looking very +much like the Frost of today. He was dipping +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>into literature apparently without system but +really reading for his own purposes as a nascent +poet. He was assimilating New England and +coming close to an essence of its oldest settlers +in a girl who was to prove an ideal helpmate +through the years of unrecognition that lay ahead. +He was displaying literary talent well above the +merely good for those of his years. And he was +showing a certain “set” character and pertinacity +in finding out his own direction in poetry. William +Hays Ward tried to divert him and failed. +Twenty odd years later in London Ezra Pound +at once recognized this “set-ness” and did not try +to instigate any changes.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV_THE_ROAD_NOT_TAKEN"> + IV. “THE ROAD NOT TAKEN” + </h2> +</div> + + +<p>From 1892 to 1900 life offered Robert Frost +a variety of prospective roads to travel. He +refused them all after short reflection and continued +to be drawn toward the road he had +already peered at as a youth in high school. It +was the road on which he should have Love and +Poetry as presiding deities.</p> + +<p>At the age of twenty he married Elinor White. +Her father was a retired Universalist clergyman +and she had attended a Universalist college, St. +Lawrence University. But in deference to the +faith of Robert Frost’s mother, they were married +by a Swedenborgian minister.</p> + +<p>Robert, too, had been away to college in 1892. +It was Dartmouth: he went at his grandfather’s +behest: and he stayed only a few months. Interests +in him were beginning to ripen and somehow +the college did not touch these interests. That +was all, and quietly he withdrew to become for a +time a bobbin boy in a Lawrence mill.</p> + +<p>But he had no ambition to work up in a mill. +That, like college, was a road not taken. In his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>pocket he carried a volume of Shakespeare which +he read during rest intervals in the mill.</p> + +<p>Somewhat restless, undecided and drifting +those days were for him, and perhaps they are +best symbolized by a brief tramping tour which +he made down South.</p> + +<p>His mother was taking pupils in her little +school in Lawrence and Robert instructed there +for a while in Latin. Previously he had had +a spell of making shoes. Finally, he was the +reporter-editor of the Lawrence <i>Sentinel</i>, a +weekly paper. Reporting, however, was against +his temperament. One had to be active to get +the news, active and prying into the reticences of +people. Robert Frost, respecting his own reticences, +respected those of others, and the occupation +was extremely distasteful. More to his liking +was a germinal “column” he inaugurated, one +into which he could insert vignettes he had written: +the picture of a ragged child coal-picker in +a railroad yard, the picture of the stray eagle +who lit on the top of the American flag-pole of +the Lawrence Post Office until some hours later it +was shot down to Frost’s indignation.</p> + +<p>Marriage did not precipitate the problem of +making a living. Making a living merely continued +to be a sort of hazy actuality about which +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>eventually something would be done. But as +another preparatory step to meeting this problem, +Robert again tried college, again backed up +by his uncomprehending but sympathetic grandfather. +This time it was Harvard in the year +1897, and in the same class was another poet +whose work Frost was to like years later but +whom he did not know at the time. The other +poet was Wallace Stevens.</p> + +<p>Frost picked up something for himself during +the two years he stayed at Harvard. He improved +his acquaintance with Latin and Greek +and particularly enjoyed reading Greek with a +young instructor named Babbitt who later went +to Trinity College. The ancient classics were +much to his liking and it was about this time +that he found in Virgil’s <i>Eclogues</i> and <i>Georgics</i> +the nourishment his emotional constitution most +craved. Philosophy lured him in a general way +as it continues to lure him. Santayana gave a +course which he recalls with pleasure in the +“golden speech” and the “deliberate speed, majestic +instancy” of the exposition of this brilliant +thinker.</p> + +<p>But despite all this, college could not hold him +to the end. There was a man in Windham, New +Hampshire, he had known in the interval between +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>Dartmouth and Harvard, a man named Charley +Hall, whose speech had a racy commonness, and +the stimulus of this man’s talks was greater than +the correct speech of college instructors. On the +basis of this homely, shrewd and living talk, could +not poetry be written by a good listener? Frost +deserted academic halls for his own peculiar university, +a life close to the soil among soil-tinged +folk, listening to their turns of thought and feeling +and phrase.</p> + +<p>Journalism, handicraft, teaching, factory work, +college, all were to be roads not taken, and in +1900 his grandfather was still pondering, perhaps +more than Robert, on what was to be the career +of his grandson.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V_NEW_HAMPSHIRE"> + V. “NEW HAMPSHIRE” + </h2> +</div> + + +<p>Grandfather Frost reached a decision +that to American poetry at any rate +was fortunate. With $1800 he purchased a farm +at Derry, New Hampshire, for his grandson and +thither Robert Frost transported his family in +1900. The family now numbered four: a son, +Eliot, had been born in 1896, and a daughter, +Lesley, in 1899. Eliot, however, died in the +middle of 1900.</p> + +<p>Derry, which is in the southeastern corner of +New Hampshire almost on a line northward from +Lawrence to Kingston, New Hampshire, an old +birthplace of Frost’s ancestors, was apparently +the right locality for the nurturing of Robert +Frost’s bents. Like a true New England village +it had its academy, Pinkerton Academy, standing +on a hill with Derry Village spread out below it. +A mile away from that was the comparatively +recent “Depot” where most of the five thousand +inhabitants lived. But there was a breakage of +character between the village proper and the +“Depot.” The latter was developing, rapidly of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>course, along the lines of present-day industrial +New England: it had several shoe factories and +foretold in its little way a new and confused order +of society. But Derry Village was then very +much as it had been in 1880. Its families were +conservative and regarded their religion and inherited +culture very stolidly, entrenched in the +feeling that twenty or thirty years ago the satisfactory +elevation in religious thought and education +had been achieved and now required only +maintenance. It had its local small scale industries, +founded upon Yankee inventiveness, particularly +the Chase mill, a woodworking plant which +among other specialties turned out in large quantities +the wooden tags that nurserymen employ +to identify their stock.</p> + +<p>All this was right for Robert Frost: a settled +rooted community, its life persisting in the presence +of an enveloping alien and noisy industrialism +which has not yet succeeded in totally +smothering its vitality, and the academy on the +hill as a sign, however inadequate, that culture +should keep conservatism a little worried about +the large questions of life lest conservatism fall +into complacency. “I believe in tradition and +accident and a bit of an idea bothering tradition,” +Frost once remarked years after the Derry period, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>and Derry itself appears to have been a +living pattern of this traditionalism affected by +accident and ideas.</p> + +<p>Frost’s small farm was a couple of miles “down +the turnpike.” Like scores of other farms in +Rockingham county it was a farm out of which +even a very experienced farmer would have had +difficulty in extracting a living. For Frost it was +a downhill dogged battle. The unprolific character +of the soil was unfairly aided in its resistance +to success on the tiller’s part by the hay-fever +which attacked Frost in the middle of +August each year and made him wretched for +two months. In addition, it was the child-bearing +and rearing phase of his married life. A son, +Carol, born in 1902, a daughter, Irma, in 1903, +and another daughter, Marjorie, in 1905 naturally +increased the strain of his struggle.⁠<a id="FNanchor_3_3" href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> In +spite of all that, there was a good deal of play, +too: botanizing, making wood paths, inducting +the children into outdoor life. His farming +neighbors, probably correctly, did not approve of +Frost’s methods (he could be caught milking the +cows at ten at night in order to sleep later in the +morning) and the end of this venture came in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>1905 when he drove up to the butcher’s to make +further purchases on credit. The fattish butcher +came brusquely out on the porch of his store, +cocked an appraising eye at Frost’s horse and inquired, +none too delicately, if anyone had a lien +on it. Then Frost, with four children, a rundown +farm, and a bundle of unpublished poems (including +<i>Black Cottage</i> which he had just written) +on his hands, decided to apply for a position at +Pinkerton Academy.</p> + +<p>If the farm had not grudgingly yielded him a +living, it had done something else; it had toughened +his respect for nature, it had disciplined him +by its immalleability to aught but extremely hard +labor. It put, in short, a fibrous quality in his +living which has been expressed in the poetry.</p> + +<p>It was almost literally with a poem that Robert +Frost secured his position at Pinkerton. The incident +was this: he had been invited to read a +poem before the Men’s Club of the Central +Congregational Church at Derry. The reading +aroused the interest of the Pinkerton trustees, +among them, John C. Chase, the head of the mill; +and the pastor of the church, Reverend Charles +Merriam, used his influence in crystallizing this +interest into an offer. And so Robert Frost came +to worry and modify the traditional state of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>affairs at Pinkerton Academy during the years +1906 to 1911.</p> + +<p>The reports of eye-witnesses have a superior +validity in biography as well as in courts of law, +and the author of this study is grateful to Mr. +John Bartlett of Boulder, Colorado, for the privilege +of utilizing portions of his letter on this period +in Robert Frost’s life. Mr. Bartlett wrote:</p> + +<p>“I joined the class of 1910 in the fall of 1907, +being rated then as a member of the Junior Middle +Class. Pinkerton had a student body of one +hundred and twenty or thereabouts, and its equipment +consisted of a modern brick building on a +hill-top and facing to the east, and a little lower +on the hill the ‘old academy’ of wood, well preserved +and painted white.</p> + +<p>“There were several fine old teachers, excellent +representatives of the school that believed +that thoroughness and hard work were the beginning +and the conclusion of the educational process. +Great store was set by Latin which was taught +by George W. Bingham, the stern and aged principal, +and by Greek in which Mary Parsons, +maiden member of a distinguished Derry Village +(and New Hampshire, too) family, gave +instruction.</p> + +<p>“The faculty was true to the good old Pinkerton +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>tradition. The Academy had been founded +in the first years of the nineteenth century and +dedicated to the development of cultured Christian +character. Old rules governing the student +body were still in effect. Card playing, for example, +was forbidden, and for a boy to escort +a girl to and from an entertainment was still +a technical violation of ‘requirements.’ There +were compulsory study hours and compulsory attendance +at church. Students must be in their +homes at seven p.m. and not leave thereafter +except on Friday evening when grace was extended +to ten p.m. and Sunday evening when the +students were expected to attend church services. +Once a week the principal called the roll of the +assembled student body and each student reported +his record of the week, thus: ‘All the requirements,’ +‘One exception, excused,’ ‘Two exceptions.’</p> + +<p>“Most of the students came from homes within +a radius of fifteen miles. A great many were +from farm families, while Derry ‘Depot’ sent the +children of factory workers. An Academy-owned +dormitory housed the majority of the few boarding +students.</p> + +<p>“I am sure that when I entered the Academy +there was much faculty hostility to Frost, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>even among the older students there was some +also. I recall that the submission to Frost as +the English teacher of all prepared papers in an +inter-class debate between Junior Middlers and +Seniors was objected to by the Senior team, a +grossly offensive act meriting disciplinary rebuke, +but such did not follow. And I believe that there +were certain members of the faculty who had +toward the new English teacher almost a personal +animosity.</p> + +<p>“Frost came as the representative of new +things, and there was collision. He did not arrive +at the Academy in time to participate in the +morning chapel exercises; he had no classroom; +he defied the Pinkerton tradition in the informality +of his presence and the free-and-easy way +he handled his classes. The fact that he had no +college degree would, for a portion of the faculty, +keep him forever outside the circle. He was +younger than nearly all the others. A dozen +things made him an ‘outsider.’ He looked it and +acted it.</p> + +<p>“The old order of things at Pinkerton went +quickly. A new principal, Ernest L. Silver (later +principal of the New Hampshire State Normal +School), came in 1909. There were new teachers +and new subjects—agriculture, domestic science, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>and this and that. Pinkerton in brief time was +doing a lot of catching up. I believe that Frost’s +success with his English classes had a great deal +to do with the rapidity and completeness of this +change.</p> + +<p>“No greater departure from traditional Pinkerton +teaching methods could be conceived than +those of Robert Frost. A boy of sixteen or seventeen +isn’t aware in respect to much of a teacher’s +pedagogy beyond knowing whether it pleases +him or not. But, looking back, I believe I know +the first great difference between Frost and the +other teachers. He had far greater interest in +the individual student. He had a way of manifesting +this, of asking questions and of making +observations in a few words, all the while getting +closer to the boy in question. It was not a +professional self-conscious thing, but a desire +from Frost’s heart to get closer and learn more.</p> + +<p>“A new member of one of his classes, I had +handed in a single short theme. Late one afternoon +as a group of boys were passing a football +about on the athletic field, Frost came up. He +was a frequent figure on the athletic field and +sometimes he would take off his coat and ‘make +a bluff,’ as the boys put it, at playing. This afternoon +he happened to come near me. He asked +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>several questions concerning the Pawtuckaway +Mountains where the ‘Devil’s Den’ about which +I had written was located. I answered them awkwardly: +I was a shy boy. In a matter-of-fact way +he observed that I was a fellow who had ideas.</p> + +<p>“That was all there was to the conversation, +for a spinning ball came my way, but I can still +see Frost and the fall mud and the football bucking +machine and the boys on that afternoon. He +seemed to show in this conversation several hundred +times the interest in me that other teachers +had.</p> + +<p>“He really had this interest, I am sure, and it +was not directed toward me alone, but toward all +his students. He asked them personal questions, +drew them out.</p> + +<p>“In those days Frost was always asking questions +of people. Not the mechanical questions of +politeness, but questions that would get at things +Frost was interested in ... and he was interested +in a great deal. If we took a winter walk +toward Londonderry and met a logging team, +which stopped as we came abreast, there would +be a conversation right there. Frost would have +the teamster talking about logging things and +horses and wood roads and such matters. He +talked with his students in somewhat the same +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>way. There was always something to be learned +from these New Englanders, and Frost learned it.</p> + +<p>“And he was interested in the boy’s problems +of individuality. Seemingly, he could like any +sort of boy. He might not win a boy in the first +few months of his contact with him, but nearly +always he won him in the end.</p> + +<p>“The most excited boy over an English paper +I ever saw was Dave Griffith, the athlete of ’10, +a magnificent halfback and sprinter. He had +written on a sport subject and had earned commendation +from Frost. Breaking the study hour +rule of the dormitory, Dave stealthily went from +room to room to announce grandly his accomplishment. +Dave had a haughty disregard for +scholastic honors in general (few of which he +ever received), but he knew when he had something +to be proud of.</p> + +<p>“We had a boarding student in the Junior +class, Arthur Eastman, who was neither among +the scholars on one hand nor the athletes on the +other. Arthur suddenly was famous for a four-line +stanza which Frost was commending to his +classes. I believe the boy never again wrote a +verse which was praised. On the other hand, one +of the older students who turned out verse with +great abundance and prided himself on his ability +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>received no approval whatever. The school knew +that Frost considered this student’s verse of no +merit.</p> + +<p>“Frost’s English classes were always ‘easy’ +classes. Frost had none of the taskmaster’s attitude, +yet his classes did a great deal of work and +covered fully as much ground as any ordinary +class. Any feeling for literature displayed by a +student was cultivated: any talent for writing was +nursed along. A few in each class were gradually +developed who could always be counted on for +lively discussion. Very frequently departures +from the regular routine were made. Often, +for example, Frost, slumped down in his chair, +would read to the class. And every time a new +<i>Critic</i> was out, Frost would discuss it with his +classes.</p> + +<p>“The <i>Critic</i> was the student publication, and +it was better than it had been for many years +before Frost’s engagement. He let the boys and +girls run it largely themselves: faculty supervision +of it was much less than formerly. There was a +good deal of comradeship between Frost and the +<i>Critic</i> staff. Unconventional things occurred ... +the <i>Critic</i> files may contain at least one poem the +distinguished authorship of which is not generally +known. I believe the <i>Critic</i> sometimes contained, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>because of his ‘hands off’ policy, things +that he would not have passed for publication. +But he knew that his policy was right and held +to it.</p> + +<p>“He was philosophical, too, when one of the +honor members of the Senior class, given liberty +in connection with his Commencement essay not +in keeping with Pinkerton practice, read a paper +at Graduation which was a wretched failure. +This boy had not been required to submit his +essay for faculty approval. And he messed the +job, actually writing the final paragraphs two +hours before he was due on the platform. Frost +remarked later, ‘It sounded as though you had +read one book or article and then written your +essay.’ That was all that was ever said between +us, and it was enough! Frost had divined the +fact.</p> + +<p>“Out of the English classes came during those +years several plays coached by Frost. In one +year I remember we had Marlowe’s <i>Dr. Faustus</i>, +Milton’s <i>Comus</i> and Yeats’ <i>The Land of Heart’s +Desire</i>. The plays were a success on both sides +of the footlights. Frost liked to have his fun as +much as any of the students, and the rehearsals +brought us all together in a fine way. These +plays were a new thing at Pinkerton. The Academy +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>had presented several of Shakespeare’s plays +since the century came in but no cognizance of +other drama had been taken.</p> + +<p>“In 1909 the state began to be interested in +Frost’s classes. He talked at conventions, booked +by Henry Morrison, the New Hampshire State +Superintendent. And from time to time educators +visited our classes. These convention talks +were ordeals, and Frost always came back from +them in a condition of exhaustion. Once he made +an experiment before a talk given at Exeter, I +believe. He put sharp pebbles in his shoes and +walked about for hours, painfully, hoping that +physical pain would alleviate the mental torture +he was in. But it didn’t!</p> + +<p>“The student body was with him one hundred +per cent as the fall term of 1909 opened. There +was a new order of things in the school and Frost +was recognized as a big figure.</p> + +<p>“I do not recall just when it was that Frost first +wrote a formula, famous with his classes, upon a +Pinkerton blackboard. He put forward the following +kinds of matter used for literary purposes:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Uncommon in experience—uncommon in writing.</p> + +<p>Common in experience—common in writing.</p> + +<p>Uncommon in experience—common in writing.</p> + +<p>Common in experience—uncommon in writing.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span></p> + +<p class="noindent">The last was the kind of material to search for, +he told us.</p> + +<p>“We celebrated a football victory over our +rival school, Sanborn Seminary, in November, +1909, with a supper provided by the new domestic +science department. Frost was the hit of the +evening with a string of verses he put on the +blackboard. This was one:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">In the days of Captain John,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Sanborn Sem had nothing on,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Pinkerton, Pinkerton.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>“A few of the boys spent considerable time +with Frost out of school hours. I remember a +walk over the turnpike to Manchester twelve +miles away in the late afternoon, an hour spent +in a bookstore, an oyster stew, and then a ride +home on the electric railway. Our conversation +on walks touched books only now and then. They +might include reminiscences of Frost’s early life, +discussion of school affairs, aspects of farm life +in New Hampshire, some current news happening +of importance, and nearly anything else. If +in passing a farmhouse the aroma of fried doughnuts +came out to us, Frost might propose that we +buy some. Down around the corner we might +encounter a fern he hadn’t seen since he was last +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>in the Lake Willoughby region. And if darkness +overtook us and it was a favorable night for observation, +Frost would be sure to take at least +five minutes to study the heavens and attempt to +start our astronomical education.</p> + +<p>“There was always an abundance of conversation, +but almost never any argument. Frost +never argued. He knew what he knew, and never +had any interest in arguing about it. In the same +way he was always willing to let others think what +they wanted to think.</p> + +<p>“He had a Woodrow Wilson sense of loyalty. +I never knew a person who was more sensitive to +slights, rebuffs and acts of unfriendliness than +Frost or who seemed to carry the scar of them +longer, and I have never met one whose loyalty +was more thoroughly of the lasting kind.</p> + +<p>“I remember how I came back to Derry late in +1910, having left college ‘between two days,’ defeated +and defiant, meeting disapproval and condemnation. +I was a boy getting hit by life and +receiving no friendly overtures when I needed +them most. Frost heard I was back and walked +miles to see me and take me over the country +roads for a talk. I remember how a few months +later he speeded me on my way to British Columbia +with a handshake and a look in the eye. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>There was a book at that parting, Chesterton’s +<i>Heretics</i>. I read it three times on the way out. +I remember letter after letter as I sought a way +to fit in at Vancouver, and the frequent letters +as I finally started in newspaper work. Letters +all about me, my problems. That was what +friendship meant to Robert Frost, help to the +maximum when a boy needed it.”</p> + +<p>One year after John Bartlett graduated, the +teacher who had impressed him so strongly also +left Pinkerton. The principal, Mr. Silver, had +been appointed head of the New Hampshire +State Normal School at Plymouth, New Hampshire, +and as often happens in such cases he +wished to take the pick of his faculty with him. +Frost went to Plymouth for the school year 1911–1912, +and while there formed a friendship with +a teacher in the high school, Sidney Cox, now +assistant professor of English at Dartmouth and +editor of various texts. Professor Cox has furnished +certain notes on his memory of this year +which, like those of Mr. Bartlett, merit first hand +presentation and thanks.</p> + +<p>“I met Robert Frost,” says Professor Cox, “in +the fall of 1911 at a Normal School dance where +both of us were against the wall. The next day +he came to the high school to ask me to go for +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>a walk. I went, and when I reached home I had +felt from that one talk, as I had never done before, +what the real nature of poetry is. Scales +had been gently lifted off my eyes. After that +came many walks, and long casual whole-souled +talks. Mr. Frost had no congenial colleagues +with whom to walk, and for both of us it was the +first, and as it turned out, the only year in +Plymouth.</p> + +<p>“I found that Mr. Frost was having exciting +times teaching psychology, that he wasn’t following +any chart, but improvising his own courses, +and having the girls read real books. He made +me interested in Plato’s <i>Republic</i> and Rousseau’s +<i>Emile</i> when he was in the midst of them with one +of his classes. He sometimes mentioned a student +who seemed exceptional, but he didn’t suppose +he was making any great discoveries.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps it was on the walk at the end of +which Mr. Frost treated me at the drug store to +the delectable beverage of white grape juice that +he first made me realize the absurdity of letting +students write compositions on the adventures of +a penny, and gave me a realizing sense of the distinction +between unconditioned speculation and +creative imagination. He didn’t put it in any such +deadly abstract terms as that. He told me that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>at Derry he had directed his students to write +about what was ‘common to experience but uncommon +to expression.’</p> + +<p>“Sometimes we talked incidentally about things +I was likely to take up in class. I remember his +praising Matthew Arnold’s <i>Sohrab and Rustum</i>, +and critically admiring the craftsmanship in Mark +Twain’s <i>The Jumping Frog</i>, Stevenson’s <i>The Bottle +Imp</i>, Hawthorne’s <i>Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe</i>, +and H. G. Wells’ <i>The Country of the +Blind</i>. He invariably made me see something +new. I first learned of Whitman from him, and +at the same time found out that he was what I +should formerly have considered objectionable +and, without the point being formulated, that it +wouldn’t do to dismiss him because my taboo was +infringed.</p> + +<p>“One particularly beautiful snowy walk took +us through an evergreen aisle for miles, down to +the Interval and so to the turnpike from Boston. +On the way up that state road to Plymouth I +remember something started us talking about sex +behavior and instruction in sex hygiene. Mr. +Frost was skeptical about the latter and said he +thought perhaps reading Shakespeare was more +likely to avert catastrophe than any amount of +scientific talk. Another time I told him about the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>jumpiness and over-earnestness of one of the +woman teachers in high school who boarded +where I did, and I was permanently convinced +of the wisdom of his remark that what she needed +was an emotional education through poetry. He +was always interested in people and never spoke +of anyone slightingly. On the other hand, he was +keenly aware of shams and stupidities, and he was +not tender toward them.</p> + +<p>“Besides the walks, there were a number of +unqualifiedly delightful evenings at his home in +the little white house, which he shared with the +temporarily bachelor principal. His was a poor +man’s living room, but there was a bookcase with +a lot of attractive books, many of them thin volumes +of poetry,—I remember his drawing my +attention to the exquisite Mosher books,—and +there were two or three comfortable chairs. On +such evenings the children went to bed and we +older ones got comfortable, and Mr. Frost read +aloud, or we talked. I suppose two of my favorite +plays will always be <i>Arms and the Man</i> by +Shaw and the <i>Playboy of the Western World</i> by +Synge because of hearing Mr. Frost read them. +I don’t know anyone who can do the Irish so well. +One evening he read from Mr. Dooley.</p> + +<p>“He had supervised a triumphant production +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>of one of Sheridan’s plays at Derry, and he +scorned the notion that good things were too exacting +for school children. The State Superintendent +had discovered that he was the best of +the English teachers under his administration +soon after Mr. Frost had been invited away from +his farm. And the Principal of Pinkerton had +found that he was wrong in assuming that this +teacher was hardly the man to address a farmers’ +institute. Regardless of the effort it was to overcome +his nervousness before a crowd, Mr. Frost +had showed that he had something to say, and +could say it well. He took a sly pleasure in surprising +people who automatically underrated him +because he didn’t have a college degree.</p> + +<p>“In early spring Mr. Frost, the principal of +the Normal School, one of my fellow teachers in +the high school and I went a little way north to +a farm for a week-end. Our host and hostess +seemed rather flashy and hard people, New Yorkers +I think they were. The woman was particularly +metallic and thick, like a successful vaudeville +performer; and I was much impressed with +the considerateness and attention with which Mr. +Frost kept up a two-sided conversation with her. +They agreed, I remember, on admiring the New +York skyline from the harbor. We talked until +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>late that night, and the next morning after breakfast +we walked over the snow to a large maple +sugar camp. The religious and other metaphorical +use of the lamb has always, since that time, +been affected by the memory of Mr. Frost’s waving +his hand back and forth within an inch of the +eyes of the lady’s cosset, and pointing out that it +never batted its eyes. I was unaccountably downcast +on the way back to Plymouth and mentioned +my mood. Mr. Frost commented, ‘It’s well to +have all kinds of feelings, for it’s all kinds of a +world.’</p> + +<p>“Not long after that I had to assume the duties +of baseball coach, and Mr. Frost’s lifelong interest +in baseball helped me. He often talked of +players and teams, and once he taught me how to +work the short throw to shortstop when there +were runners on first and third, and so catch the +man stealing home. He was interested in tennis, +too, and taught me very clearly what he had +recently learned about three different cuts to use +in serving.</p> + +<p>“I think his one time of attendance at church +in Plymouth was so disturbing to his sensibilities +that he had a religious motive for staying away.”</p> + +<p>It is clear from the notes of these two friends +that this was the crystallizing period in Robert +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>Frost’s life. He became during it certain of what +he knew as a youth and as a matter of fact a great +deal of his published verse was written during +these years. He had formulated his central article +for his private <i>ars poetica</i>—to give an +uncommon expression to what was common in +experience—and he was not to deviate from that +in his future course. By adhering to this, he was +very soon after the year at Plymouth destined to +be discovered and recognized by the literary public, +but essentially the rest of his life has been a +prolongation of the Derry-Plymouth phase. The +enthusiasm of his friends, Sidney Cox and John +Bartlett, when multiplied to the enthusiasms of +critics, poets and readers at large did not, that is +to say, alter his habits or his aims or his quality. +He has continued to do a little farming, some +teaching and some writing just as he did between +1900 and 1912.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI_PAN_WITH_US"> + VI. “PAN WITH US” + </h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanzachap"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Pan came out of the woods one day.”</i></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + + +<p>It is difficult to overestimate the aridity of the +minds and feelings of poetry editors in the +United States during those years when Robert +Frost was writing and teaching and farming in +New Hampshire. Not by his own wish did he +remain practically unpublished, for once a year +at least he made up packets of his verses and sent +them to the editors of <i>Scribner’s</i>, <i>Century</i>, the +<i>Atlantic Monthly</i> and one or two others. Almost +uniformly they came back: the few exceptions +were the <i>Forum</i> and <i>Youth’s Companion</i> whose +editor, Mark de Wolfe Howe, stretched a point +or two of his editorial policy to include them. +But the market for poetry was extremely limited, +and the story of the insensibility of those who +ruled the market has already been sufficiently +told. Yet looking back, one still is mildly surprised +that their taste did not welcome Robert +Frost’s work. It <i>was</i> fresh work, but yet not too +far beyond their canons, not like the verses of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>Ezra Pound, for instance, who had impetuously +denounced Hamilton Wright Mabie and voyaged +to Spain.</p> + +<p>Certainly, Frost was not a persistent and resourceful +salesman for his poems, and perhaps +the fault lay partly in him for his lateness in +publication.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">No wonder poets sometimes have to <i>seem</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0">So much more business-like than business men.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Occasionally, he admits, he looked at the poetry +printed in the magazines, felt distaste for its +mediocrity and lack of tang, and felt likewise +jealousy and envy of the author because after all +he had been published. Yet his own pride prevented +him from making any energetic plan for +breaking through the editorial attitude toward his +scripts.</p> + +<p>After the year at Plymouth he concluded that +it was to be “now or never” with him so far as +the Muse was concerned. The ten year conditions +on his farm had elapsed and he succeeded +in selling it. Now he would set aside the next +three or four years for complete devotion to +poetry. But where?</p> + +<p>John Bartlett was getting on well at Vancouver, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>B. C., and in September, 1912, planned +to marry a Pinkerton girl out there. Frost hesitated +between going to Vancouver and going to +England, and corresponded with his former student +on the problem. But in August he wrote +that it was to be England for him. A letter about +the cost of living from the British Consul in New +York and certain talk in the family about living +under a thatched roof had decided the matter: +he would spend his free time abroad. So he +sailed in September, 1912, and, as has been noted +before, Harriet Monroe’s <i>Poetry: A Magazine +of Verse</i> first appeared in October, 1912. Frost +left his country just one month before the event +which is usually taken as the beginning of a new, +more enlivened and more extensive interest in +contemporary American verse, and he stepped +into England during a particularly hopeful and +exciting season in the arts.</p> + +<p>England just before the war of 1914–1918 was +full of idealistic movements and a new era seemed +about to open its buds. There was an upper +crust of writers—Shaw, Wells, Bennett, Conrad, +Hudson, Carpenter, Galsworthy, Chesterton, +Cunninghame Grahame, Max Beerbohm—that +was distinguished enough or respected enough to +make it worth while to continue their work or +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>to resist it or to try to supplant them. There +were coming up such figures as D. H. Lawrence, +Compton Mackenzie, and Gilbert Cannan for +Henry James to cast a keenly appraising eye +upon. There were at least two brilliantly edited +reviews—Ford Madox Hueffer’s (now Ford) +<i>English Review</i> and A. R. Orage’s <i>The New Age</i>—which +sought for new work and instigated new +literary developments. There were the Irishmen +across their Channel working up a little re-birth +on their own. Ezra Pound was everywhere, +fighting, initiating, infusing fresh vitality into +poetry and poetry discussions. Wyndham Lewis +was breaking bonds in painting and prose. Imagism +and vorticism, the Bloomsbury groupings +and the reactionary schools, all made the scene +stirring and great things were expected. Then +the war crashed in and the fragility of all the +movements became sooner or later apparent. +But that was two years after Frost arrived.</p> + +<p>At first Frost was not aware of this metropolitan +ferment. He repaired to <i>T. P.’s Weekly</i> +which conducted a department of country walks +and inquired for quiet places in the countryside +where he wished to live. The conductor of this +department was an ex-policeman (and therefore +as becomes a London “bobbie” intelligent in giving +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>directions) and Frost took a fancy to him. +On his advice he settled in the little suburban +town of Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire.</p> + +<p>One night Frost sat before his fire spreading +out before him his poems and reading them over. +As was his custom, a certain number were discarded. +Of those that remained he pondered on +making a selection that might form some sort of +coherent book. He shuffled through them, arranged +and rearranged, and gradually <i>A Boy’s +Will</i> came to birth. He had a book of manuscript +but no publisher in mind.</p> + +<p>In this pass he recalled his friend, the ex-policeman, +and determined to ask his advice on a publisher +for poetry! The former policeman was +equal to the call. He suggested Elkin Matthews, +but said that as a rule he required subsidized +manuscripts. Frost objected to that, and his +counsellor brought up the name of David Nutt. +This appealed to Frost: he remembered that +David Nutt had been Henley’s publisher: and +thither he went one afternoon only to be told that +he could not see David Nutt that day, but if he +called the next day he would be able to do so. +Coming at the time directed, he was ushered into +a private office for an interview with a lady in +dark clothes who informed him she would speak +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>for David Nutt. Later he learned that David +Nutt had been deceased for several years, and +the lady was his widow, but at this time the whole +proceeding impressed him as mysterious.</p> + +<p>Three days afterward he received a letter stating +that the firm of David Nutt would publish +<i>A Boy’s Will</i>. The long period of twenty years +of frustrated publication was almost closed, and +the first drops of the exhilaration England was +to give him had touched his lips.</p> + +<p>More were to follow presently. Walking in +London one day he noticed that Harold Munro’s +Poetry Book Shop was opening its doors that very +evening with a reception and reading. Although +uninvited, he walked in with the crowd that night +and sat on the stairs during the festivities. A +man sitting below remarked, “I see by your +shoes you are an American,” and introduced himself +as F. S. Flint. Frost confided to him his +engagement in writing poetry, and Flint asked if +he knew his countryman, Ezra Pound. Frost +had never heard of Pound and was promptly cautioned +not to betray that fact to Pound himself.</p> + +<p>Flint must have spoken to Pound about the +new arrival, for shortly there came to Frost’s +suburban home a post card bearing an address, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>the name of Ezra Pound, and beneath it: “At +home sometimes.”</p> + +<p>Some months later Frost called at Pound’s +address and happened to find him at home. +Piqued at first because Frost had been so leisurely +in responding to his card, Pound soon warmed to +his rugged caller with the boyish face and when +he learned that possibly proof sheets of <i>A Boy’s +Will</i> might now be secured at David Nutt’s he +insisted on going at once to the office. The proof +sheets were ready, and the pair returned to +Pound’s studio. Frost was directed to occupy +himself in some way while Pound turned immediately +to reading the poems. Satisfied that here +was sound poetry, Pound then dismissed his guest +with the remark that he had a review to write, +and in a short time the first salutation to <i>A Boy’s +Will</i> appeared in type over the distinguished +name of Ezra Pound.</p> + +<p><i>A Boy’s Will</i> was received quickly and warmly +by the literary press: the general tenor can be felt +from a quotation from the notice in the <i>Academy</i>. +It said: “We have read every line with the amazement +and delight which are too seldom evoked by +books of modern verse.” The poetry-reading +public was lured.</p> + +<p>Pound had a new “find” and he began to take +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>Frost here and there to luncheons, studios and +parties, and among the most delightful of the last +were the Tuesday evenings at T. E. Hulme’s. +Frost was pleased and interested, but did not +change his stripe.</p> + +<p>All the time his capital was decreasing, for +although he was now a “success”⁠<a id="FNanchor_4_4" href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> in a moderate +way, he never succeeded in winning any royalty +statements from David Nutt. <i>A Boy’s Will</i> had +appeared in 1913 and the following year the same +firm gladly brought out <i>North of Boston</i> which +was greeted by the <i>Times Literary Supplement</i> +with the statement that “poetry burns up out of +it, as when a faint wind breathes upon smoldering +embers,” and there were more buyers. But only +a success of estimation for Frost. To eke out his +capital, he fell back upon farming and in the +winter of 1914 leased a small farm called Little +Iddens near Leadbury in Gloucestershire. His +near neighbors were Wilfrid Wilson Gibson and +Lascelles Abercrombie.</p> + +<p>Gibson enjoyed joshing Frost about America. +It appeared that Gibson’s poetry aroused various +people in America to write him letters of gratitude +that sometimes began, “Dear Bro.,” and +proceeded to give other signs in orthography and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>grammar of semi-literacy and raw taste. Frost +himself now received his first letter from an +American admirer. It was on stationery of high +quality from a farm in Stowe, Vermont, called +Four Winds Farm. The neat script merely informed +him that the writer and her mother had +enjoyed his poetry, and the signature was that of +a lady named Holt. It was a publisher’s wife, +though Frost did not suspect the fact. But the +letter did enable him to return triumphantly Gibson’s +joshing: he displayed it to him as an example +of the way farmer’s wives wrote in America as +well as evidence of the kind of people who read +<i>his</i> books.</p> + +<p>Gibson has commemorated this delightful time +in a poem entitled <i>The Golden Room</i> printed +some time ago in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, and for +the sake of the picture the first two stanzas may +well be quoted here.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Do you remember the still summer evening</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When in the cosy cream-washed living-room</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the Old Nailshop we all talked and laughed—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our neighbors from the Gallows, Catherine</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Lascelles Abercrombie; Rupert Brooke;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Elinor and Robert Frost, living awhile</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At Little Iddens, who’d brought over with them</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Helen and Edward Thomas? In the lamplight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We talked and laughed, but for the most part listened</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span> <div class="verse indent0">While Robert Frost kept on and on and on</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In his slow New England fashion for our delight,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Holding us with shrewd turns and racy quips,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the rare twinkle of his grave blue eyes.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">We sat there in the lamplight while the day</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Died from rose-latticed casements, and the plovers</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Called over the low meadows till the owls</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Answered them from the elms; we sat and talked—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Now a quick flash from Abercrombie, now</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A murmured dry half-heard aside from Thomas,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Now a clear, laughing word from Brooke, and then</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Again Frost’s rich and ripe philosophy</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That had the body and tang of good draught-cider</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And poured as clear a stream.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Meanwhile the war was increasing its diabolical +momentum and the arts in England were +going under. Poets went to the front instead of +to studios and review offices, and among them +was Edward Thomas with whom Frost formed +his most congenial friendship on English soil. +Thomas had been a critic and author of several +biographical studies and travel books. Frost +fanned the critic’s hitherto latent talent for writing +poetry to a quiet blaze and the outcome was +the volume, <i>Poems</i>, by Thomas in 1917, a volume +that was gratefully dedicated to Robert Frost. +Thomas was killed on Easter Monday in 1917 +and Frost has commemorated both the poetry +and his friend.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">You went to meet the shell’s embrace of fire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The war seemed over more for you than me,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But now for me than you—the other way.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Two years before the death of Thomas, in March +of 1915, Frost had left England for America, +bringing with him the fifteen year old son of his +friend.</p> + +<p>He had gone through years of non-recognition: +in a foreign land he had been exhilarated with a +modest success and the sympathetic praise of fellow +poets: all had been engulfed in the horror +and sadness of the greatest war in our history: +and now Frost faced again the uncertainties of +America. There was a surprise awaiting him.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII_INTO_MY_OWN"> + VII. “INTO MY OWN” + </h2> +</div> + + +<p>Passing down a side street in New York as +he came away from the steamer which had +brought him back from England, Robert Frost’s +eyes saw propped on a stand a magazine he had +never heard of. From curiosity he purchased it +at once: it was called <i>The New Republic</i>. Inside +he came upon a page appreciation of <i>North of +Boston</i> which was signed by Amy Lowell. But +more arresting still, the book appeared to be published +by Henry Holt and Co. An American +publisher! He did not know he had one. This +seemed a good omen, and the following day Frost +called on the Holt company.</p> + +<p>Yes, they had imported the sheets for three +hundred bound copies from David Nutt, and this +small order had been very quickly exhausted. +Now they would like to publish <i>North of Boston</i> +and <i>A Boy’s Will</i> themselves, but David Nutt had +reserved all rights. It soon appeared, though, +that David Nutt had violated the agreement, and +Henry Holt won the legal right to bring out +Frost’s books in America. In quick succession +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>they published <i>North of Boston</i> and <i>A Boy’s Will</i> +within that year, 1915.</p> + +<p>Rapid sales followed. <i>North of Boston</i> eventually +ran around twenty thousand copies, and +the other books have done well, considering the +market for poetry, though not nearly so well as +the first.⁠<a id="FNanchor_5_5" href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The critics were exuberant: among +them was Edward Garnett who contributed an +influential article on Frost, since included in <i>Friday +Nights</i>, to the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>. Furthermore, +public taste for a time appeared to have +crystallized about such work as Frost’s. The +hour was right, for there was ripening a new +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>interest in contemporary American verse: the +critics were enthusiastic: and the character of +Frost’s writing, at once novel and conservative, +pleased all camps. A great many people agreed +with Edward Garnett’s opinions: “It seemed to +me that this poet was destined to take a permanent +place in American literature.... Surely a +genuine New England voice, whatever be its literary +debt to old-world English ancestry.”</p> + +<p>Recognition, long deferred, now heaped itself +upon the quiet poet. A chapter in Amy Lowell’s +<i>Tendencies in Modern American Poetry</i> was +given over to him and his work, Louis Untermeyer +wrote a chapter on his verse in <i>A New Era +in American Poetry</i>, Llewellyn Jones did likewise +in <i>First Impressions</i>, Clement Wood in +<i>Poets of America</i>, and it very shortly came to +pass that no survey of the poetry of our decades +was complete without a considerable discussion +of this author. Waldo Frank in <i>Our America</i> +introduced his passage on Frost by saying: “The +poetry of Frost is of that excellent sort which it +is hard to catalogue. It is lyrical. It is dramatic, +since his books are—as he says—‘of people.’ It +is philosophic, since the tales he tells trace conscious +lines about the boundaries of life. Fully, +it is poetry—and of New England.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span></p> + +<p>Frost found himself an advisory board member +of the <i>Seven Arts</i> in 1916 and 1917, that gallant +venture in behalf of our national arts directed +by Waldo Frank, Van Wyck Brooks and James +Oppenheim. And in the file of the <i>Seven Arts</i> +there rests <i>The Way Out</i>, the one published play +by Frost. Truly, he had scarcely tapped and all +the doors of literary America suddenly opened +to him.</p> + +<p>He had come into his own, so far as eminence +counts. In 1916 he was Phi Beta Kappa poet at +one of the colleges he had neglected to graduate +from, and he read at Harvard for the occasion +the poem called <i>The Axe-Helve</i>. Since then there +has been a shower of honors. In the early part +of 1922 he was elected an honorary member of +the International P.E.N. Club in the company of +Thomas Hardy, Anatole France, Romain Rolland, +Selma Lagerlof, and others of western world +fame. This international honor was seconded in +the same year by the local action of the Women’s +Clubs of Vermont in conferring on him the title +of Poet Laureate of that state. Very quickly, too, +his work has been incorporated in the English +literature courses of foreign universities: at the +Sorbonne study of Robert Frost’s books is a requirement +in the English teacher’s course and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>from the University of Montpellier, Jean Catel +has written, “We are going to study Frost as a +poet together with such recognized writers as +Shakespeare, Milton, Thackeray, etc.” Lately +critical estimates of his poetry have appeared in +Italy.</p> + +<p>But Robert Frost was not to be hurried. +<i>Mountain Interval</i> came out in 1916 and absorbed +most of the balance of his unpublished +poems. Then a wait until 1923 when a <i>Selected +Poems</i> was brought out, and then <i>New Hampshire</i>, +the first new book in seven years. It is now +four years since <i>New Hampshire</i> and Frost is still +unwilling to release another collection. “In a +year or two I suppose I’ll have another book +ready,” he says.</p> + +<p>The tables have been changed since Derry +days, but he continues the pattern. Therefore, in +1915 he purchased a farm on a hill just outside of +Franconia, New Hampshire. In 1920 he moved +to Vermont where he had purchased a large farm +at South Shaftsbury in the district presided over +by that ardent Vermonter, Dorothy Canfield. +He is still the farmer and poet. And teacher, +too, for that element in him retains its energy. +From 1916 to 1919 he was a member of the +faculty of Amherst College, this poet without a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>scholarly eminence in the orthodox sense, without +a college diploma even (though now he holds +honorary degrees from three institutions of +higher learning), but he was encouraged to conduct +classes in literature and philosophy in his +own freehand way. In teaching literature he assumed +that the conspicuous landmarks would be +seen in other courses. He could therefore ramble +in the lesser known regions of good writing, +dwelling always in his informal presentation on +the enjoyment of books and slyly encouraging +honesty of initiative in writing.</p> + +<p>Then President Burton of the University of +Michigan called Frost to fill the new Fellowship +in the Arts which he established in 1921. The +appointment was for one year, but was extended +to two, at the close of which Robert Bridges, the +British Poet Laureate, was appointed Fellow for +the following year. But in 1925, so welcome had +Frost been on the Michigan campus, he was called +back to Ann Arbor to hold a life fellowship in +poetry founded entirely for him.</p> + +<p>It was not long, however, before the magnetic +pull of New England soil and the fact that two +of his children had made their homes in the east +drew him away from the attractive post at Michigan. +He resigned and came back to the ruggedly +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>lyrical Green Mountains of Vermont in 1926, +with the plan of distributing his “teaching” efforts +among several colleges.</p> + +<p>Thus during the academic year, 1926–1927, +Frost was “boarded around” by the various colleges +who competed for his residence on the +campus. He traveled about, to Wesleyan University +for two weeks, to Amherst for ten, to +Michigan for a few weeks, to Dartmouth for a +visit, and so on, mingling in each place with +students and faculty, giving lectures and readings, +consulting with literary aspirants, imparting a +fresh emotional quality to the collegiate routine +that is too usually strange to it. But it is unlikely +that he will “tramp about” so much in another +year, as Amherst claims his <i>presence</i> (Frost does +his teaching by simply being what he is) for an +entire term during the next collegiate year.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Imagine that you have been invited to be the +guest of Robert Frost for a few days. Let the +place be Amherst. He is staying there for a +month or two in a house rented from a professor +now on his sabbatical year. As you alight from +your taxicab late in the afternoon, a well filled +out man of good height steps on to the porch, and +you are aware that the note this waiting personality +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>strikes is quiet yet vivid. A large boned +rugged frame, a strong neck, and poised on its +full column a head so modeled that it gives the +strength of the body a lyrical accentuation. This +head has been described as a faun’s and the eyes +and mouth are sometimes said to have an elfin +quality, and indeed it is true that one might think +of faunishness and sly flitting elves in glancing at +it. That is fanciful, though, and not really in +correspondence with the sensitivity, the fluent +gravity, the friendly lines of the countenance now +welcoming you. The words and manner are +simple: there is a trace of shyness which attests +that the simplicity is not an affectation and yet +there is also ease.</p> + +<p>You enter and Mrs. Frost, quiet, sweet, intelligent +and devoted, greets you. Talk begins, dinner +is served. Mr. Frost has been out of touch +with the centers of literary life. He asks questions, +about the <i>Dial</i>, about William Carlos +Williams, about that and this eddy in the literature +of the day. Patently, he is out of it, he +doesn’t follow the magazines and supplements +and current books with any assiduity, apparently +he prefers to hear—in country fashion—from the +lips of the people he meets what is going on.</p> + +<p>After coffee, you settle down in the living room +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>for a long evening’s talk, you playing alternately +the crisp rôle of questioner and the respectful one +of listener, and Frost “in his dry, sly, halting +way,” as Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant puts it in +her vivid portrait of Frost, talks and ruminates, +tells stories, offers critical notes, and speculates. +The speculative note in his conversation is important, +for it signifies that the growing ends of +his mind and feelings still carry him on. There +is no impending death here of sensibility or +thinking, no dogmatism, in short, that closes off +further possibilities of enlarging his experience.</p> + +<p>Perhaps he speaks of his Indian-fighting ancestor, +Major Charles Frost, and how for years +he looked on him with a little disapproval as a +black sheep in the family whom other people honored +for his treacherous conduct at the Indian +conference. Frost, you perceive, sympathizes +with the Indians: he doesn’t like unfair play. +But lately he has learned that Major Frost objected +to the stratagem and entered into it with +great reluctance: he is glad to think a little better +of the early settler.</p> + +<p>He drifts into reminiscence of San Francisco +days and that grim father of his. Sometimes his +father would give him some change and commission +him to bring back cigarettes. But on one +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>awful occasion the quarter slipped from his hand +as he was running to the store and fell into one +of the cracks of the board sidewalk then the prevalent +style in San Francisco. In vain did his +small hands try to recover it, and passersby were +able to do no better. Frantic, he went to the +store, fearfully explained he had dropped his +money, and begged for a package of cigarettes. +Laughter from the clerk and the men standing +about. Nothing to do but return home in trepidation +and tell his mother. Father was working +in his study and by now no doubt impatient for +a smoke. His mother also stood in fear of father’s +anger, but in the present case she decided +that Robert must go in and tell of the loss. Only +first let them pray, mother and son, that Robert +should be let off easily. Then Robert went in +and reported. His father glanced up for a moment +from something he was writing, said +brusquely, “Never mind,” and turned back to +complete his sentence.</p> + +<p>There was something deep between Frost and +his father. The man was mentally alert: he had +stood second in his class at Harvard and he had +been an associate of Henry George. He was ambitious, +as his political activity reveals. And he +was, despite his consumption, strenuous, engaging +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>in long swims and once in a six day walking race +with the champion, Dan O’Leary. He won that, +too. O’Leary had sworn that he could give him +a liberal handicap and then walk him down. +When O’Leary failed to do so, he claimed that +Frost’s father had violated walking rules, but +afterwards he became his friend. But above all—and +this is the really deep bond—his father +seems to have planted tragedy into his son’s view +of the world: so deeply did he do this that to this +day his father’s character excites a species of +awesome regard in the son.</p> + +<p>And now, in reply to a question, Frost is speaking +of school days in Lawrence, of first adventures +in reading poets, of meeting Elinor White +who tied him for scholarship honors. And he +points out how his grandfather, according to his +light, loyally stood by him, how he sent him twice +to college, backed him patiently in various endeavors +to make a living, and finally gave him a +farm—which he didn’t succeed in managing expertly. +“Never earned a cent, save from and +through verse. But for my first twenty years at +it I earned a total of two hundred dollars,”⁠<a id="FNanchor_6_6" href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> he +remarks without bitterness.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span></p> + +<p>The poem that he read before the Men’s Club +of the Central Congregational Church at Derry, +the poem that was so instrumental in landing for +him his job at Pinkerton Academy, was, he tells +you, <i>The Tuft of Flowers</i> in <i>A Boy’s Will</i>, +“Yes,” he says with a smile to interpret the remark, +“<i>The Tuft of Flowers</i> got me my first real +job. Whole family owe their life to this poem +and they’d better believe it.”⁠<a id="FNanchor_7_7" href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> <i>The Black Cottage</i>, +<i>The House-Keeper</i>, and <i>The Death of the +Hired Man</i> all date, he goes on to inform you, +from 1905 before he joined the Pinkerton faculty, +and he adds that “Virgil’s <i>Eclogues</i> may have +had something to do with them.... I first +heard the voice from a printed page in a Virgilian +<i>Eclogue</i> and <i>Hamlet</i>.”⁠<a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p> + +<p>The talk shifts the scene to London ... the +fooleries of Skipwith Cannéll and Ezra Pound +... the jiu jitsu demonstration Pound made on +Frost’s person in a restaurant..... Pound and +Frost invited to luncheon by two ladies, Pound +disgusted by their shallow flow of talk on art, +Pound rising, knocking his chair over as he did +so, saying haughtily, “I leave these ladies to you,” +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>departing to Frost’s consternation.... Pound’s +challenge to Lascelles Abercrombie to fight a duel +on the score that Abercrombie’s articles were a +public offense—and the amusing aftermath.</p> + +<p>We return to America and Frost tells how +editors now snatched for the opportunity to print +the poems which previously for many years had +been vainly offered to their magazines. And you +lead him on to tell how liberal the colleges have +been in their attitude toward his way of conducting +classes—a curious chapter in modern education.</p> + +<p>Frost goes on to speak of the people he knows: +of Lincoln MacVeagh and Alfred Harcourt when +they worked at Holt’s, of Carl Sandburg’s work +and Louis Untermeyer’s visits, of a professor at +Amherst he admires because “he loves the classics +and he is a <i>field</i> scientist.” He expresses his +doubts of the “bunko-sciences” (mostly sociological +and psychological in character). He +tells of a night spent with Paul Elmer More at +Princeton. He inserts somewhere one of Padraic +Colum’s Irish stories. He relates an experience +at Vassar College. He supplied his audience with +broadsheets on which were printed several of the +poems he would read during his lecture. At the +close of the talk the roomful of girls avalanched +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>upon him to autograph the broadsheets. After +that he no longer considered it a good idea to +furnish his audiences with the poems he intended +to recite.</p> + +<p>The family is mentioned. His son, Carol, and +one daughter, Irma, are married: the oldest +daughter, Lesley, runs a book-shop in Pittsfield +but now she is going around the world, managing +a bookstall on the liner: Marjorie has not been +well for some time.</p> + +<p>It is past two now. One studies Frost’s face +in the lamplight. His “skin and his rebellious +hair have now a fine harmony of tone, ‘the grey of +the moss of walls,’ a young and living greyness +that, like a delicate lichen, softens without hiding +the hard and eternal shape of the rock beneath.”⁠<a id="FNanchor_8_8" href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> +And while one studies him, he is perhaps telling +you of the friendship that existed between him +and Thomas Bird Mosher. Mosher early picked +out one of Frost’s poems for affection and printed +it in his catalogue, and Frost saw him every so +often, saw the sad decline of this epicure who +drolly mourned the loss of his sense of taste and +in desperation had beefsteaks specially sent from +Boston to Portland and specially prepared by the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>best cooks he could engage only to find them tasteless +for him. But never to the end, Frost reminds +you, did Mosher lose his fine taste for the blue +china poetry of the nineties. Or perhaps he tells +you of Aroldo Du Chêne who sculpted his +head, or of J. J. Lankes whose woodcuts so +appropriately join in mood with the text of <i>New +Hampshire</i>. Frost had admired the feeling for +New England landscape Lankes had revealed in +some woodcuts reproduced in the <i>Masses</i> and +the <i>Liberator</i>. And Lankes had admired Frost’s +poetry and illustrated several of the poems for +his own enjoyment. Then poet and artist were +brought together by Carl Van Doren, then an +editor of the <i>Century</i>, in a fortunate collaboration +for which each, unknown to the other, was +already prepared.</p> + +<p>Somehow the talk shifts again. “I believe,” +Frost is saying, “in what the Greeks called synecdoche: +the philosophy of the part for the whole; +touching the hem of the goddess. All that an +artist needs is samples. Enough success to know +what money is like; enough love to know what +women are like.”⁠<a id="FNanchor_9_9" href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Nature, he explains, does not +complete things. She is chaotic. Man must +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>finish and he does so by making a garden and +building a wall. That garden is art. Wallace +Stevens, he says, has made a formal garden with +his poetry.</p> + +<p>⁠<a id="FNanchor_10_10" href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>“One of the real American poets of yesterday,” +he goes on to say, “was Longfellow. No, +I am not being sarcastic. I mean it. It is the +fashion nowadays to make fun of him. I come +across this pose and attitude with people I meet +socially, with men and women I meet in the classrooms +of colleges. They laugh at his gentleness, +at his lack of worldliness, at his detachment from +the world and the meaning thereof. When and +where has it been written that a poet must be a +club-swinging warrior, a teller of barroom tales, +a participant of unspeakable experiences? That, +today, apparently is the stamp of poetic integrity. +I hear people speak of men who are writing today, +and their eyes light up with a deep glow +of satisfaction when they can mention some +putrid bit of gossip about them. ‘He writes +such lovely things,’ they say, and in the next +breath add, half worshipfully, ‘He leads such +a terrible life.’ I can’t see it. I can’t see that +a man must needs have his feet plowing through +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>unhealthy mud in order to appreciate more +fully the glowing splendor of the clouds. I can’t +see that a man must fill his soul with sick and +miserable experiences, self-imposed and self-inflicted, +and greatly enjoyed, before he can sit +down and write a lyric of strange and compelling +beauty. Inspiration doesn’t lie in the mud; it +lies in the clean and wholesome life of the ordinary +man. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there +is something wrong with me. Maybe I haven’t +the power to feel, to appreciate and live the extremes +of dank living and beautiful inspiration.</p> + +<p>“Men have told me, and perhaps they are +right, that I have no ‘straddle.’ That is the +term they use. I have no straddle. That means +that I cannot spread out far enough to live in filth +and write in the treetops. I can’t. Perhaps it is +because I am so ordinary. I like the middle way, +as I like to talk to the man who walks the middle +way with me. I have given thought to this business +of straddling, and there’s always seemed to +me to be something wrong with it, something +tricky. I see a man riding two horses, one foot +on the back of one horse, one foot on the other. +One horse pulls one way, the other a second. His +straddle is wide. Heaven help him, but it seems +to me that before long it’s going to hurt him. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>It isn’t the natural way, the normal way, the +powerful way to ride. It’s a trick.</p> + +<p>“I am an ordinary man, I guess. That’s what’s +the trouble with me. I like my school and I like +my farm and I like people. Just ordinary, you +see.”</p> + +<p>He pauses. “What I have said,” he reflects, +“sounds a little too moral. My point always is +that a poet may live as vile a life as he pleases, +but then his poetry ought to be of a vile beauty. +I hate dis-integrity. I hope I have some range in +the appreciation of beauty. I can see it all the +way from exquisite through homely and mean +even to vile. What I am unsympathetic with is a +wide discrepancy between life and art.”</p> + +<p>The college clock strikes three. It is Frost’s +usual bedtime. Tomorrow he will be up around +eleven, a student or two will call with some writings +for him to read, at one o’clock we are to be +driven to a farm house for a “real New England +luncheon,” later there will be a walk.</p> + +<p>“Frost,” Waldo Frank has remarked, “is not +only a beautiful poet. He is a beautiful person.”</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII_A_SENSIBILITIST"> + VIII. “A SENSIBILITIST” + </h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanzachap"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>“I’m what is called a sensibilitist,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or otherwise an environmentalist.”</i></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + + +<p>The poetry of Robert Frost is of one piece +with his life and even with his physical appearance. +Like the latter, it makes the impression +of solid substance from which mounts a lyric +flame whose light confers meaning on the mass. +And it resembles his life in that the extraordinary +in the shape of event or experience is usually quite +absent: the materials are restricted and common. +“Common in experience: uncommon in +writing” is the true formula for practically all of +Frost’s poetry.</p> + +<p>Whence arises his distinction in expression? +The answer must first be made in terms of sensibility. +The art of Robert Frost is built upon the +foundation of observation: it is the poetry of +observation, an emotional response, lyrical, +dramatic, humorous, tragic, to what he has seen +and heard.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">When I see birches bend to left and right</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Across the lines of straighter, darker trees,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span> <div class="verse indent0">I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ice storms do that. Often you must have seen them</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning</div> + <div class="verse indent0">After a rain. They click upon themselves</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">This is the type of sheer observation that abounds +in Frost’s works, and one reads line after line that +requires no help for vividness from specially constructed +images or even from simile and metaphor +which are in their turn composed of other +definitely observed things.</p> + +<p>The temperament of Frost, as befits an observer, +is passive and plastic, and his impressionability +depends in the first place for its intensity +upon the keenness of his ear and his eye. In fact, +his style can almost be entirely explained by saying +that he is a remarkably close listener and a +very sharp see-er.</p> + +<p>Take his versification. What is it but a disciplined +and ingrained habit of listening to the +tones of speech in New England from the time +he was fascinated by Charley Hall’s talk back in +Windham to the present? The poems, although +they adhere to the molds of blank verse and +rhymed lyrics, are “talk poems.” The feat has +been that of conforming living speech to metrical +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>forms by taking advantage of the flexibility inherent +in all metrical forms, so that Llewellyn +Jones, a conservative student of versification, is +right when he says:</p> + +<p>“Technically, it is the outstanding feature of all +Mr. Frost’s verse that he makes it speak in human +tones. He has never written a line of free verse +that does not scan—if the reader knows how to +scan English verse as it should be scanned and +not as Latin or Greek verse should be scanned. +The reason some people have thought Mr. +Frost’s verse very licentiate and why others have +said that he writes free verse is because he subordinates +his metrical pattern to the cadences of +human speech. His metrical ictus is always there +but it is not always emphasized, and he is never +afraid to let a logical or word accent come in a +weak place metrically. His verse is at the opposite +pole from that of Swinburne, who gallops +to an anapaestic tune in a manner which is quite +alien to human speech. On the other hand: ‘I +shan’t be gone long.—You come too’ is pure and +unadulterated human speech which just happens +to fit into the metrical scheme of the poem. Only, +such a thing ‘just happens’ so often in Mr. Frost’s +work that we know that it does not just happen +at all but is the work of an exceptionally sensitive +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>and gifted poet. And indeed Mr. Frost is so +sure of the natural speech-tones in his work that +he says that no one who reads his verse naturally +can read it wrong. But on the other hand those +who read it with a preconceived notion in their +minds of how a verse should scan often find it a +little difficult.”</p> + +<p>Frost himself settled the matter when he said +to Miss Sergeant:</p> + +<p>“They call me a dialect poet.... Not so +you’d notice it. It was never my aim to keep to +any special speech unliterary, vernacular or slang. +I lay down no law to myself there. What I have +been after from the first, consciously and unconsciously, +is tones of voice. I’ve wanted to write +down certain brute throat noises so that no one +could miss them in my sentences. I have been +guilty of speaking of sentences as a mere notation +for indicating them. I have counted on +doubling the meaning of my sentences with them. +They have been my observation and my subject +matter.</p> + +<p>“I know what I want to do most. I don’t +do it often enough. In <i>The Runaway</i> I added the +moral at the end just for the pleasure of the aggrieved +tone of voice. There are high spots in +respect of vocal image in <i>Blueberries</i>:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">There <i>had</i> been some berries—but those were all gone.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He didn’t say where they had been. He went on:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">‘I’m sure—I’m sure—as polite as could be.’”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>It is plain to see why Frost calls himself an +“anti-vocabularian,” for the speech materials he +attends to are limited in number of words. But +there is a gain here: the right limitation of vocabulary +will produce honesty of vocabulary, will +insure, that is, some personal content in experience +for the words one employs, and this matching +of vocabulary and personal experience gives +force.</p> + +<p>If Frost’s ear gives a natural life to his verse, +his eye gives it a clarity, a definiteness, a firmness +of outline that produces a strong feeling of +actuality. Edward Garnett in his essay on Frost +lifted out from his better known poems a number +of images and held them toward the reader +for inspection of their purity and hardness. We +may take a recently published poem, <i>Once by the +Pacific</i>,⁠<a id="FNanchor_11_11" href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> with the same purpose in mind, the more +so as this poem lies on Frost’s usual plane of excellence +and is not quite among his best.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The shattered water made a misty din,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Great waves looked over others coming in,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span> <div class="verse indent0">And thought of doing something to the shore</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That water never did to land before.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The clouds were low and hairy in the skies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">You could not tell, and yet it looked as if</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sand was lucky in being backed by cliff,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The cliff in being backed by continent.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It looked as if a night of dark intent</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Was coming, and not only a night, an age.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Someone had better be prepared for rage.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There would be more than ocean water broken</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Before God’s last <i>Put out the light</i> was spoken.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Here we <i>see</i> rows of waves growing taller as +we gaze out from the shore, and beyond above +the fitfully glowing horizon the strands of clouds +disordered by the wind. (“Great waves <i>looked +over others</i> coming in.... The clouds were +low and <i>hairy</i> Like <i>locks blown forward in the +gleam of eyes</i>.”) Already the scene is massive, +and we are being prepared for the introduction of +a cosmic word in the last line. The rest of the +poem is devoted to heightening this anticipatory +mood. We stand on the sand which is backed +by a cliff which is backed by a continent: thus the +scale of the struggle is enlarged to huge dimensions. +The falling darkness of one night is +similarly magnified: “not only a night, an age.” +And then the poem is ready to leave its symbolic +frame altogether in the last two lines. “There +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>would be more than ocean water broken Before +God’s last <i>Put out the light</i> was spoken.”</p> + +<p>It is this simplicity and coherence of imagery +that creates the concreteness of Frost’s vision. +At the same time, grandiose though the theme is, +the language is utterly like talk: the waves +“thought of doing something to the shore that +water never did to land before ... you could +not tell, and yet it looked as if the sand was +lucky” ... God will say, “Put out the light.”</p> + +<p>If Frost is thus faithful in the use of his own +eyes and his own ears, it follows, since they cannot +be universal in scope, that he will write about +his own locality. He will be obliged to be American, +New England, indigenous, to be an “environmentalist,” +to do things with the “native touch” +Edward Garnett spoke of, because the very process +of his writing poetry commits him to it.</p> + +<p>But this is not all the story. The third conspicuous +element in his style is his sense of situation, +his sense of drama. This, too, has been +often illustrated by the critics of Frost, and Edward +Garnett has quoted in connection with it one +of Goethe’s offhand remarks: “A lively feeling of +situations and an aptitude to describe them makes +the poet.” Frost has qualified in this way many +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>times—in <i>The Death of the Hired Man</i>, in <i>Fear</i>, +in <i>The Witch of Coos</i>, among many others. And +he has given us one “straight” example of drama +in the one act play, <i>A Way Out</i>, printed in the +<i>Seven Arts</i>.</p> + +<p>The scene is “a bachelor’s kitchen bedroom in +a farmhouse with a table spread for supper. +Someone rattles the door-latch from outside. Asa +Gorrill, in loose slippers, shuffles directly to the +door and unbolts it. A stranger opens the door +for himself and walks in” and takes a survey. +“Huh,” he says. “So this is what it’s like. Seems +to me you lock up early. What you afraid of?” +And Asa replies in a piping drawl: “’Fraid of +nothing, because I ain’t got nothing—nothing’t +anybody wants.”</p> + +<p>The situation has taken form at once: Asa Gorrill, +the queer hermit, on the defensive, and the +intruder, hurried, rudely questioning and commanding, +mysterious. The dialog quickly develops +both the characters and the situation. The +stranger investigates the room and the old man’s +means as though perhaps his motive might be +robbery—in case his suspicion of miserly hoardings +finds evidence to go upon. He hints of violent +action, of a necessity for hurry. He is aggressive, +reckless, a factory hand in some sort +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>of trouble. Asa trembles, wishes he were off, +doesn’t dare to resist, unwillingly answers the +questions that build up a picture of his daily life—when +he goes to market and what for, how he carries +in his logs, what he believes in, what his history +has been.</p> + +<p>Then the stranger reveals he has committed +a murder and is in flight. He was seen once during +the day by a wagonload of women. He insists +on donning some of the hermit’s extra +clothes and mimicking his behavior. The proposal +is apparently that he hide here in the house +and take turns with the hermit in “stretching his +legs” abroad.</p> + +<p>Dressed to resemble the old man, the murderer +then drags Asa round and round in a game to +get themselves dizzy. “And then when we’re +down,” he says, “I want you should wait till you +can see straight before you speak and try to tell +which is which and which is t’other.”</p> + +<p>This is the high dramatic moment of the play +as they fall moaning from their whirling and each +accuses the other of the crime. The weak old +man faints from terror in the excitement, the +stranger clubs him with his fist and drags him out. +The room is empty for a time.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span></p> + +<p>A posse calls and the sham hermit fools it. Its +members pass on. It is “a way out.”</p> + +<p>It will be noted that this play has both literary +and theatrical form. The two are not the same: +for instance, Eugene O’Neill, generally rated the +best American playwright, often fails to produce +a coincidence of what is visually effective with +what is psychologically and dramatically determined. +That Frost has done; the form stands +up on the printed page as well as on the boards: +the psychological springs of action are revealed: +the writing is terse and necessary.</p> + +<p>Needless to say, these elements of his style—the +gift for tones of voice, the aptitude for concrete +images, and the sense of the dramatic—would +not suffice if they did not give rise to full-bodied, +vital and corresponding emotions. Robert +Frost is the type—the pure poet. The outline of +his life has shown that he has all of the poet’s +traditional impracticality, though in his case there +is no indulgence in utopian flights. Now, on the +basis of his poems, we can add that he is emotionally +centered, and the world is to him predominantly +a source of emotion. It is his <i>sensibility</i>, +and not ideas and his actions, that mostly +strikes at his emotions, and the result is song inspired +by <i>natural</i> objects which include, of course, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>people. Yet though his poetry is clearly not cerebral, +neither is it thumpingly emotional. His +personal make-up gives it its flavor—the humor +and slyness, the sense of rural retreat, the friendliness. +But to his intelligence goes the credit for +its economy and restraint, its solidity and subtlety, +for its bounding lines. Frost knows sufficiently +what he is about in writing poetry to compose his +own <i>ars poetica</i>.</p> + +<p>“Imagery and after-imagery are about all there +is to poetry. Synecdoche and synecdoche—My +motto is that something must be left to God.</p> + +<p>“In making a poem you have no right to think +of anything but the subject matter. After making +it, no right to boast of anything but the form.</p> + +<p>“A poem must at least be as good as the prose +it might have been. A poem is a box with a <i>set</i> +or assortment of sentences that just fit together +to fill it. You are rhyming sentences and phrases, +not just words. They must go into it as unchanged +in size and shape as the words.</p> + +<p>“A straight crookedness is most to be desired in +a stick or a line. Or a crooked straightness. An +absolutely abandoned zig-zag that goes straight +to the mark.</p> + +<p>“Sometimes I have my doubts of words altogether +and I ask myself what is the place of them. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>They are worse than nothing unless they can do +something, unless they amount to deeds as in +ultimatums or battle-cries. They must be flat +and final like the show-down in poker, from which +there is no appeal. My definition of poetry (if +I were forced to give one) would be this: words +that have become deeds.</p> + +<p>“All poetry is a reproduction of the tones of +actual speech.</p> + +<p>“There are two types of realists: the one who +offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show +that it is a real one, and the one who is satisfied +with the potato brushed clean. I’m inclined to +be the second kind. To me, the thing that art +does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form.</p> + +<p>“A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a +home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out +toward expression; an effort to find fulfilment. +A complete poem is one where an emotion has +found its thought and the thought has found the +words.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“........ the lines of a good helve</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Were native to the grain before the knife</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Put on it from without. And there its strength lay</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For the hard work.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IX_AGAINST_THE_WORLD_IN_GENERAL"> + IX. “AGAINST THE WORLD IN GENERAL” + </h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanzachap"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>How about being a good Greek, for instance?</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>That course, they tell me, isn’t offered this year.</i></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + + +<p>Some readers,⁠<a id="FNanchor_12_12" href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> no doubt, were surprised +when the poet told them in his last book, +<i>New Hampshire</i>:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">I may as well confess myself the author</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of several books against the world in general.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">There had been no protest, no satire, no revolt +to be noticed in his poetry. On the contrary, here +was quietude, good humor and a certain manly +acceptance of circumstance. Yet this author who +never whines, who never seems savagely to resent +the present state of affairs, this author considers +himself to have been writing against the +world in general! The surprise was salutary, for +the shock directed attention to the implications +of Frost’s confession, the implications of his +poetry <i>in toto</i>, and a study of these implications +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>will lead to the quite sudden realization that the +purest classical poet of America today is Robert +Frost.</p> + +<p>With Frost in the field as a classicist, T. S. +Eliot and Ezra Pound, conspicuous rivals for the +title, begin to look like something else. Eliot’s +poetry, for example, has romantic elements: his +sentimental melancholy and wistfulness, the +dandyism and obfuscation that cut him off from +a more general appeal. Pound likewise seems to +be hewing no closer to a norm of thought, feeling +and conduct: he does not appear to be making +a bridge from the special to the general experience, +to be achieving the “grandeur of generality”: +he is given up to the irritations and discomforts +of a sensitive person. Yet a romanticist +tinge does not make a romanticist and <i>au fond</i> +Eliot and Pound are nearer to classicism than +they are to romanticism. Still there is an important +difference in kind between them and +Robert Frost.</p> + +<p>It is this: Pound and Eliot are in the main +loyal to the principle of authority, whereas Frost +depends entirely upon personal discovery. Pound +and Eliot give allegiance to literary tradition as +a governing body, seeking only to produce work +that, while molded by tradition, still has sufficient +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>novelty of conception and style to alter +somewhat the existing body of letters. Frost is +unconcerned with such a theory of dictatorship, +adjustment and modification: he does not set up +a literary authority to serve. Like the intelligent +Greek, he is simply by nature rather positive, +critical and experimental. If he manifests the +classical virtues, if he achieves a nature, an imitation +of it, a probability and a decorum which can +suggest those cultivated by the classical world, it +is because he has discovered them in, through and +by his own direct experience. In comparison +with him, Eliot and Pound appear formalistic, +and the distinction between them and Frost is the +distinction between neo-classicism and classicism.</p> + +<p>It is important to see that the classicism of +Robert Frost has been evolved in a simplified +world, the world of the New England farmer. +Such a farmer has a settled routine of living dependent +upon the seasons. He leads a village life +in which most of the human factors at work have +the appearance of being tangible and measurable. +The intricacies of commerce and industry, the +distress wrought by machines, the flow of vast +crowds, the diversity of appeals of a great city, +do not reach him. Churches are what they were, +intellectual currents do not disturb, and science, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>arch-upsetter of former values, finds no opening +to intrude. Frost tells of a hugger-mugger +farmer who burnt his house in order to buy a +telescope with the insurance money. He gazed +with an unspoiled wonder at the heavens. But +for science at large the attitude is indifference.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“You hear those hound-dogs sing on Moosilauke?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Well, they remind me of the hue and cry</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We’ve heard against the Mid-Victorians</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And never rightly understood till Bryan</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Retired from politics and joined the chorus.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The matter with the Mid-Victorians</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Seems to have been a man named John L. Darwin.”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“Go ’long,” I said to him, he to his horse.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">In Frost’s New England then many of the complex +tormenting questions that have arisen since +the small city and agrarian communities of old +Greece have been lopped away from the problem +of living.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Me for the hills where I don’t have to choose.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>With this simplified world given, Frost has +built his art, as was pointed out in the preceding +chapter, upon the foundation of observation, and +it is by positive and critical observation of things +conceived as discrete that Frost has discovered +his Nature.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span></p> + +<p>The end reached by observation as a method, +whether it is a poet or a scientist who employs it, +is dualism,—that is, a set of axioms and laws +founded on distinctions. The distinctions are +based on appearances and both they and appearances +are treated as reasonably final data. Of +course, something inscrutable remains beyond, +“something must be left to God,” as Frost says, +but the fundamental truth or error of dualism +is not plumbed. At any rate, whether or not the +real world is dualistic, certainly the apparent +world is.</p> + +<p>So in Frost’s poetry we are consistently struck +by his acceptance of the dualistic world and his +actual contentment with his lot of joy and love +“dashed with pain and weariness and fault.” +Nature we feel as a sort of friendly antagonist, +dangerously strong sometimes, but on the whole +a fair opponent. In combat with her one cannot +laze or cheat: but honest struggle brings fair +returns. Especially is the line between Nature +and Man always present in Frost’s mind, though +never insisted upon. For example, he spends no +time dilating on the aloofness or indifference of +nature to man. Such a poem as <i>The Need for +Being Versed in Country Things</i> illustrates very +well the sense of demarcation between man and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>nature which Frost preserves, his acceptance of +nature as lovely and fair, and his awareness of her +unconcern for man’s disasters. In this poem we +hear of the burning of a farmhouse and the decay +of its barn. The birds nest in the latter.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the aged elm, though touched with fire;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the fence post carried a strand of wire.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">For them there was really nothing sad.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One had to be versed in country things</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not to believe the phoebes wept.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Frost’s poetry contains no taint of the “pathetic +fallacy” of the romanticist which in these days is +almost sufficient ground for suspecting Frost’s +classical tendencies.</p> + +<p>The man that Frost treats is situated in a +tamed wilderness and is disciplined by it. In New +Hampshire the mountains are not high enough, +there is nothing extravagant or unduly wild about +nature, nor are the people of Frost’s poems +grandiose or expansive. Their bodies have been +contracted and hardened by sweating toil, their +emotions are rock-like, and their minds achieve a +good dogged horse sense.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">For art’s sake one could wish them worse</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rather than better. How are we to write</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Russian novel in America</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As long as life goes so unterribly?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There is the pinch from which our only outcry</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In literature to date is heard to come.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We get what little misery we can</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of not having cause for misery.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It makes the guild of novel writers sick</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be expected to be Dostoievskis</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On nothing worse than too much luck and comfort.</div> + </div> +<hr class="poetrytb"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent20">It’s Pollyanna now or death.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This, then, is the new freedom we hear tell of;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And very sensible. No state can build</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A literature that shall at once be sound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sad on a foundation of well-being.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Out of a settled social framework, an honest +necessary struggle for existence, and a fair +amount of well-being, something like a representative +man can emerge. There are balances +and checks to trim down his uniqueness while at +the same time there is permitted a moderate scope +for his emotional and reflective life. In such a +state the acquisitive impulse gets no favoring head +start and instead of haste we find reticence and +deliberation characteristic.</p> + +<p>Thus Frost discovers what Professor Irving +Babbitt would call a sound model for imitation. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>Professor Babbitt has labored to show that imitation +as the ancients understood it was a fresh and +imaginative process. It is just so with Robert +Frost. His choice of words, his rhymes, always +escape the commonplace: we are awakened by +the exact perceptions of a new discoverer. But +the more important point is that this stirring-up is +followed by a conviction of the naturalness or the +obviousness of Frost’s statements. Why, we +murmur, has this not been said before? Again +we are repeating Poe’s useful test question for the +workings of the imagination.</p> + +<p>One cannot be certain just what content the +term, the imagination, contains today. Modern +psychology has cleared away some of the rank +underbrush which has cluttered our view of the +imagination, though it has planted other bushes +to confuse us at the same time: but at least we +habitually distinguish imagination from fancy. +Perhaps by pure imagination we mean something +not far from a total sweeping flash-like view +taken by a human being at unusual moments. At +any rate Frost’s imagination is based on the view +of a man who is using <i>more</i> of his equipment than +most of the moderns do. The meaning is simply +that Frost does not seem to write almost exclusively +from one of three centers,—from the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>intellect or the emotions or the instinctive center,—but +from a sort of rude partnership of all three. +The conditions of his erstwhile livelihood (farming) +brought into at least partially coördinated +play his body and his emotions, and in addition +he is capable of thought. In this growth he is +again a parallel, though distant, to the ancient +writers, and gives a start to the speculation as to +how far the conditions of modern mechanized +life throw into disuse portions of the necessary +equipment of a fully aware human being. Certainly, +Frost’s lines give one more of an impression +that a whole man is writing them than do the +sharply intellectualized or bubbling emotional +lines of most of his contemporaries.</p> + +<p>The moot interpretation in the doctrine of +imitation has always been the meaning to be attached +to universals. One may rightly be skeptical +as to the coincidence of the views of the +idealists with the original meaning of Aristotle. +But whether Aristotle is interpreted idealistically +or not, Frost’s use of universals arising from a +welter of particulars is covered in the minimum +definition that could be offered. His poems, +<i>Mending Wall</i> and <i>The Grindstone</i>, are prime +examples: in these poems the particulars are vividly +and concretely seen and they can stand the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>most rigid literal interpretation. Yet no less present +and vivid in them is a wider significance or +rather there are wider significances. Thus, among +other things conveyed in <i>The Grindstone</i>, we are +deeply aware that a sense of the inertia of nature +has been induced. We are aware of the aching +strain of making nature malleable and the tear +and wear made on the straining human being by +time. For readers of Frost it is not necessary to +add that this creation of universal significance is +accomplished directly without an atom of didacticism.</p> + +<p>Although the doctrines of nature and imitation +as exemplified in the works of Robert Frost +have been so briefly dwelt upon, does it seem +requisite to develop the contiguous statement that +Frost is an observer of the law of probability and +the law of measure or proportion or decorum? +It is simply stating an easily recognizable fact +which any reader may verify by going through +Frost’s writings that it is the probable sequence +and not the improbable but possible sequence that +he develops. He is a poet of the customary in +man and nature, not the exploiter of the remarkably +arresting and wonderful. Nor does his feeling +for decorous proportion require argument beyond +saying that he does not commit the mistake +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>of the neo-classicists who have been properly accused +by Professor Babbitt of confusing the language +of the nobility with the nobility of language. +Frost’s people are humble, but they speak +a language and utter feelings appropriate to +them: they are restrained by conventions which +are inherently worthy of respect, and the result +is decorum in the true sense.</p> + +<p>The study of these considerations should explain +why Frost declares that he has written +several books against the world in general. For +since Rousseau romanticism has been in the ascendency. +A new conception of nature as impulse +and temperament has supplanted the old +nature as a strict model, a “return to nature” has +come to mean “letting one’s self go.” For imitation +has been substituted the self-expression of +the spontaneous original genius, for the law of +probabilities has been exchanged the law of wonderful +possibilities, and for decorum we have the +doctrine of expansiveness. Science has abetted +the growth of naturalistic emotionalism, and +neither humanism nor religion has been able to +stop the tide of writing designed for the expression +of uniqueness rather than of generality.</p> + +<p>Against this efflorescence of the interior world, +the neo-classicists have striven in vain, for their +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>position does not rest solidly enough upon experience +and personal discovery. They have been +debilitated by the blight of Scaliger’s rhetorical +question, why imitate nature when Virgil is a second +nature?</p> + +<p>Frost however quietly takes his place beside +the antique Greeks and against the modern world. +He proves that a species of classicism resting on +personal discovery is still possible.</p> + +<p>Pictorially, Frost’s apartness from contemporary +currents is striking.... He came on our +literary scene, this intensified and intelligent and +subtilized “ordinary man,” in very queer company. +There was Carl Sandburg with his love +of the blur, his dreamy slothfulness, his drifting +impressionism, there was Vachel Lindsay, sentimental, +picturesque and declamatory, there was +Amy Lowell, shallow and decorative, there was +Edgar Lee Masters, protestant and disillusioned, +and these were the poetic vanguard of Frost’s +generation. In the novel Theodore Dreiser was +working up a public appetite for naturalism, and +Sherwood Anderson, recoiling in disgust from +American business life, was starting toward his +present trust in objectless wandering and instinctive +laughter. Romantics all, and so were the +new critics, J. E. Spingarn with his gusty estheticism, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>H. L. Mencken, braying out his prejudices, +and Van Wyck Brooks with his humanitarian +approach. Frost came on with this troop, and +they hailed him as a brother. He was contemporary +with them in age and public appearance, +and a mistake was made: it was taken for granted +that he belonged in attitude and spirit and general +aim to the so-called “new poetry.”</p> + +<p>Today the Middle Generation is beginning to +recede whereas Robert Frost emerges more and +more and as a poet differing at the root in substance, +craft and direction from the romantic +movement of the last decade. Where is his kinship +in America? Not with that other New England +poet of parts, Edwin Arlington Robinson, +for Robinson exemplifies a withering and retrospective +New England and Frost exemplifies the +New England that is still sturdily alive. No, it is +rather in the Eldest Generation in American letters +that one finds a similar temper and approach +to Frost’s. One imagines that the elder critics, +Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt, casting +skeptical eyes over our literary life today, might +single out Frost and say: “Here is a poet who has +not succumbed to the ‘law for thing’: here is a +poet who has not bleached himself with neo-classical +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>dogma: here is a poet who sings afresh +in the great classical tradition.”</p> + +<p>Ultimately More and Babbitt diverge, as More +seeks to sustain the religious tradition of classicism +and Babbitt to revitalize the humanistic +tradition. It is the latter tradition that includes +Robert Frost.</p> + +<p>For speaking in terms of psychology rather +than of literature, what distinguishes Frost is +simply good sense. Good sense avoids extremes +both in what it denies and in what it accepts. It +does not, for instance, deny the bulky evidence of +the senses and the man of good sense, therefore, +will not accept the lies of idealism. The external +world he will try to see and feel and otherwise +sense as clearly and tangibly as he can: “the fact +is the sweetest dream that labor knows.” At the +same time the man of good sense will not in his +acceptance of the practical instinctive fact as such +fly to an extremely narrow materialism and +atheism. Something inscrutable and ordering +very likely remains: there are overtones in the +observer of the fact that he cannot ignore. Thus, +he neither denies God nor the world: he accepts +the latter as demonstrated and the former as +probable or at least possible.</p> + +<p>What he does trust is his own experience (having +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>good sense he knows that there is nothing else +to trust) and his own experience happens in +Frost’s case to be mediatory in character. Being +intelligent, being deeply emotional, being obliged +to make terms with practical life, the man of good +sense casts up a rough balance of the three aspects +of his life and travels, so far as he is permitted +so to do, in the center of the highway.</p> + +<p>A fair-minded description of a poet ought to be +in itself a placement and therefore a criticism of +that poet. If Frost’s qualities pertain to good +sense, we must not expect him to write on the religious +level. In <i>The Trial By Existence</i>, one of +the poems in <i>A Boy’s Will</i>, he took up a religious +theme, the gathering in heaven of the souls ready +for birth, “the trial by existence named, the obscuration +upon earth,” and the conclusion reached +is sensible. As Llewellyn Jones has stated it, it is +“a recognition that suffering is always in terms +of what we are, not an alien something hitting +us by chance from without but somehow or other +implicit in our very constitution.” But <i>The Trial +By Existence</i> is exceptional in theme and treatment +in all of Frost’s range.</p> + +<p>Nor must we expect from Frost that rarest and +most difficult of virtues that goes by the prosaic +name of commonsense. Commonsense is a <i>community</i> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>of judgments, intellectual, emotional and +practical, upon life. It is an exact balance demanding +the utmost strenuousness to achieve and +the perfection and harmony of our faculties. +Good sense is a gift: commonsense must be deliberately +arrived at, as witness the efforts of +Socrates.</p> + +<p>There are certain all-important questions which +only the greatest literature raises and attempts to +answer, and these questions it is not appropriate +to ask of every poet. Frost makes no pretense +of great inclusiveness and great profundities. +The canniness of good sense forbids such rash +over-reachings of one’s self. But what we have +always a right to demand is that the poet should +be skilled in his craft, alive in his sensibility, and +at least sensible in his conclusions. Robert Frost +is all of these, and to those questions that it is +proper to ask of him, those questions, that is, that +are covered in his own experience, he returns +always an answer in true currency equal to the +demand.</p> + +<p>His comprehensive answer is the <i>natural</i> (not +romantic and not religious) vision of life, and it +is natural in the sense that it is fitting to man <i>as +he is</i>. “The poetry of a true real natural vision +of life,” said Goethe, “demands descriptive +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>power of the highest degree, rendering a poet’s +pictures so life-like that they become actualities +to every reader,” and that is what Robert Frost, +man of good sense and fine sensibility, has succeeded +in writing, and for that he will be treasured +in what we hope, against many odds at +present, will be the long and noble course of +American literature.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_A"> + APPENDIX A + <br> + <span class="smcap">Selected British Opinion on Robert Frost</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p>The following quotations are taken from a +little leaflet distributed by David Nutt. Historically, +the leaflet is interesting for showing the +quick captivation of English critics by <i>North of +Boston</i>. But more than that, the English writers +appear to have succeeded better in stating the +emotional character of Frost’s verse than the +Americans who have undertaken the same task.—G. +B. M.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>... A unique type of eclogue, homely, racy, +and touched by a spirit that might, under other +circumstances, have made pure lyric on the one +hand or drama on the other. Within the space +of a hundred lines or so of blank verse it +would be hard to compress more rural character +and relevant scenery; impossible, perhaps, to do +so with less sense of compression and more lightness, +unity and breadth. The language ranges +from a never vulgar colloquialism to brief moments +of heightened and intense simplicity. +There are moments when the plain language and +lack of violence make the unaffected verses look +like prose, except that the sentences, if spoken +aloud, are most felicitously true in rhythm to the +emotion. Only at the end of the best pieces, such +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>as <i>The Death of the Hired Man</i>, <i>Home Burial</i>, +<i>The Black Cottage</i>, and <i>The Wood Pile</i>, do we +realize that they are masterpieces of deep and +mysterious tenderness.—<i>The English Review.</i></p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>... To start with, Mr. Frost is an American +poet who noticeably stands out against tradition.... +We find very little of the traditional +manner of poetry in Mr. Frost’s work; scarcely +anything, indeed, save a peculiar adaption, in +his usual form, of the pattern of blank verse.... +It elaborates simile and metaphor scarcely +more than good conversation does. It is apt +to treat the familiar images and acts of ordinary +life much as poetry is usually inclined to +treat words—to put them, that is to say, into such +positions of relationship that some unexpected +virtue comes out of them; it is, in fact, poetry +composed, as far as possible, in a language of +things.... We have heard a great deal +lately of the desirability of getting back again +into touch with the living vigors of speech. This +usually means matters of vocabulary and idiom; +and Mr. Frost certainly makes a racy use of New +England vernacular. But he goes further; he +seems trying to capture and hold within metrical +patterns the very tones of speech—the rise and +fall, the stressed pauses and little hurries, of +spoken language. The kind of metrical modulation +to which we are most accustomed—the +modulations intended for decorations or purely +esthetic expressiveness—will scarcely be found in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>his verses. But, instead, we have some novel inflections +of metre which can only be designed to +reproduce in verse form the actual shape of the +sound of whole sentences. As a matter of technique, +the attempt is extraordinarily interesting.... +Naturally, this technical preoccupation bears +strongly on the general form of Mr. Frost’s +poetry. He uses almost entirely dialogue or +soliloquy; he must have somebody talking. We +might call these poems psychological idylls. +Within their downright knowledge, their vivid +observation, and (more important) their rich enjoyment +of all kinds of practical life, within their +careful rendering into metre of customary speech, +the impulse is always psychological—to set up, +in some significant attitude, a character or a conflict +of characters. The ability to do this can +turn a situation which is not very interesting at +first into something attractive, as when a rather +protracted discourse of two distant relations on +genealogy gradually merges into a shy, charming +conversation of lovers; or, in a more striking instance, +when the rambling speech of an overtasked +farmer’s wife works up into a dreadful +suggestion of inherited lunacy. If, as we have +said, we cannot quarrel with this deliberate +method of exposition, it can scarcely be questioned +that Mr. Frost is at his best when he can +dispense with these structural preliminaries as in +the admirable soliloquy of a farmer mending his +wall, or in the exquisite comedy of the professor +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>sharing his bedroom with a talkative newspaper-agent, +or in the stark, formidable tragedy called +<i>Home Burial</i>. Though it is difficult to state absolutely +the essential quality of Mr. Frost’s +poetry, it is not difficult to suggest a comparison. +When poetry changes by development rather than +by rebellion, it is likely to return on itself. Poetry +in Mr. Frost exhibits almost the identical desires +and impulses we see in the “bucolic” poems of +Theocritus.—<i>The Nation.</i></p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>... There is such a thing as vers libre, +which is an excellent instrument for rendering the +actual rhythm of speech. I am not in the least +suggesting that Mr. Frost should write vers libre; +I am only saying that it seems queer that he does +not. There was Whitman—But Mr. Frost’s +achievement is much finer, much more near the +ground, and much more national, in the true +sense, than anything that Whitman gave the +world. I guess he is afraid of the liberty of vers +libre; to shackle himself probably throws him into +the right frame of mind. It is another form of +the New England conscience.... He does +give you a very excellent, a very poetic, a very +real sense of his meadows and woods and rocks +and berries, and of night and of showers and of +wildnesses—of an America that really matters +far more than the land of endless trickery, make-believe, +and lying and empty loquacity. That is +the face that—Heaven knows why!—America +seems to like to present to these parts of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>world; but those are the least desirable features. +Anyhow, Mr. Frost has called in on us to redress +the balance of that particular New World.... +He is not a remains of English culture grown +provincial and negligible. He is not, in fact, a +sentimentalist. Not to be a sentimentalist is to +be already half-way towards being a poet—and +Mr. Frost goes the other half-way as well, though +to describe what that other half is beats me. Here +is the little poem—rhymed for a change—in +which, as it were, he proffers his invitation to read +<i>North of Boston</i>.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0 center">THE PASTURE</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And wait to watch the water clear, I may;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I shan’t be gone long—You come too.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">I’m going out to fetch the little calf</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He totters when she licks it with her tongue.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I shan’t be gone long—You come too.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Why is that beautiful and friendly and touching +and all sorts of things? I don’t know. I suppose, +just because Mr. Frost is a poet.—Ford Madox +Hueffer in <i>The Outlook</i>.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>This is an original book which will raise the +thrilling question, What is poetry?... Few +that read it through will have been as much +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>astonished by any American since Whitman.... +He has trusted his conviction that a man +will not easily write better than he speaks when +some matter has touched him deeply.... In +his first book, <i>A Boy’s Will</i>, there is this piece, +entitled <i>Mowing</i>:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">There was never a sound beside the wood but one,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And that was why it whispered and did not speak.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers</div> + <div class="verse indent0">(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">Those last six lines do more to define Mr. Frost +than anything I can say. He never will have +“easy gold at the hand of fay or elf”: he can +make fact “the sweetest dream.” Naturally, +then, when his writing crystallizes, it is often in +a terse, plain phrase, such as the proverb, “Good +fences make good neighbors,” or—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Three foggy mornings and one rainy day</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Will rot the best birch fence a man can build;</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span> <div class="verse indent0">From the time when one is sick to death,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One is alone, and he dies more alone;</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">or</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">But even this kind of characteristic detail is +very much less important than the main result, +which is a richly homely thing beyond the grasp +of any power except poetry. It is a beautiful +achievement, and I think a unique one, as perfectly +Mr. Frost’s own as his vocabulary, the ordinary +English speech of a man accustomed to +poetry and philosophy, more colloquial and idiomatic +than the ordinary man dares to use even in +a letter, almost entirely lacking the emphatic +hackneyed forms of journalists and other rhetoricians, +and possessing a kind of healthy, +natural delicacy like Wordsworth’s, or at least +Shelley’s, rather than that of Keats’.—Edward +Thomas in <i>The New Weekly</i>.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>In its quiet and unsensational way, Mr. Robert +Frost’s <i>North of Boston</i> is the most challenging +book of verse that has been published for some +time.... Mr. Frost has turned the living +speech of men and women into poetry.... +To me it seems that <i>Home Burial</i> and <i>The Fear</i> +are the most absolute achievements in the book; +but that may only be because they come nearest +to the kind of thing I wish to see done in poetry; +and the other pieces in the book all contain notable +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>qualities, and qualities which have been too +long absent from English verse. Mr. Frost has +a keen, humorous sense of character.... +Tales that might be mere anecdotes in the hands +of another poet take on a universal significance, +because of their native veracity and truth to local +character.—Wilfrid Wilson Gibson in <i>The Bookman</i>.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_B"> + APPENDIX B + <br> + <span class="smcap">Bibliographical</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Books by Robert Frost</span></h3> + + +<p><i>A Boy’s Will</i>. London: David Nutt. 1913</p> + +<p><i>North of Boston.</i> London: David Nutt. 1914</p> + +<p><i>North of Boston.</i> New York: Henry Holt. 1914</p> + +<p><i>A Boy’s Will.</i> New York: Henry Holt. 1915</p> + +<p><i>Mountain Interval.</i> New York: Henry Holt. 1916</p> + +<p><i>Selected Poems.</i> New York: Henry Holt. 1923</p> + +<p><i>New Hampshire.</i> New York: Henry Holt. 1923</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Principal Essays on Robert Frost</span></h3> + +<p>Amy Lowell: <i>Robert Frost</i> in <i>Tendencies in +Modern American Poetry</i>.</p> + +<p>Waldo Frank: pages 158–162 in <i>Our America</i>.</p> + +<p>Louis Untermeyer: <i>Robert Frost</i> in <i>A New Era +in American Poetry</i>.</p> + +<p>Edward Garnett: <i>Robert Frost</i> in <i>Friday Nights</i>.</p> + +<p>Clement Wood: <i>Robert Frost</i> in <i>Poets of +America</i>.</p> + +<p>Llewellyn Jones: <i>Robert Frost</i> in <i>First Impressions</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span></p> + +<p>Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant: <i>Robert Frost</i> in +<i>Fire Under the Andes</i>.</p> + +<p>Percy H. Boynton: <i>Robert Frost</i> in <i>English Journal</i>, +Oct., 1922.</p> + +<p>G. R. Elliott: <i>The Neighborliness of Robert +Frost</i> in the <i>Nation</i>, vol. cix, p. 713–715.</p> + +<p>Carl Van Doren: <i>Quintessence and Subsoil</i> in the +<i>Century</i>, February, 1923.</p> + +<p>John Freeman: <i>Frost</i> in the <i>London Mercury</i>, +vol. xiii, pages 176–187.</p> + +<p>Charles Cestre: <i>Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and +Edwin Arlington Robinson</i> in <i>Johns Hopkins +Alumni Magazine</i>, vol. xiv, pages 363–388.</p> + +<p>Jean Catel: <i>La Poesie americaine d’aujourd’hui</i> +in the <i>Mercure de France</i>, March 15, 1920.</p> + +<p>Albert Feuillerat: <i>Robert Frost</i> in <i>Revue des +Deux Mondes</i>, tome xvii, pages 185–210.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_C"> + APPENDIX C + <br> + <span class="smcap">Robert Frost on Education</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p>The following extracts are from a talk which +Robert Frost gave at Wesleyan University in +December, 1926. They were taken down in +shorthand by a reporter for the <i>New Student</i> and +thus preserve the exact verbal flavor of Frost’s +conversation as well as the best direct statement +of his educational aim that I have encountered.—G. +B. M.</p> + +<p>“The freedom I’d like to give is the freedom +I’d like to have. That is much harder than anything +else in the world to get—it’s the freedom of +my material. You might define a school boy as +one who could recite to you, if you started him +talking, everything he read last night, in the order +in which he read it. That’s a school boy. That’s +just the opposite of what I mean by a free person. +The person who has the freedom of his material +is the person who puts two and two together, +and the two and two are anywhere out of space +and time, and brought together. One little thing +mentioned, perhaps, reminds him of something +he couldn’t have thought of for twenty years. +That’s the kind of talk I’d rather give.</p> + +<p>“I’d rather be perfectly free of my material—reach +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>down here in time and off there in space, +and here’s my two and two put together. Here’s +my idea, my thought. That’s the freedom I’d like +to give.</p> + +<p>“It depends so much on the disconnection of +things. There’s too much sequence and logic all +the time, of reciting what we learned over night. +There’s an attempt in the honor courses to get +toward what I mean. I don’t know what the +honor courses will do toward it.</p> + +<p>“I think what I’m after is free meditation. I +don’t think anybody gets to it when he’s in anybody’s +company—only when his soul’s alone. I +do it when I wake up in the morning, when I’m +starting an idea, and restarting. Sleep is probably +a symbol of the interruption, the disconnection +that I want in life. Your whole life can be +so logical that it seems to me like a ball of hairs +in the stomach of an angora cat. It should be +broken up and interrupted, and then be brought +together by likeness, free likeness.</p> + +<p>“You might ask me this question: how am I +going to find time? I would so run a course by +self-withdrawal. I would begin a course by being +very present, and then slowly disappear. A sort +of vanishing act. I’d rather melt away just as I +stood there, and leave a fellow more and more +alone, and let him feel deserted, like a baby in +a room alone.</p> + +<p>“I know a good story, with a man’s name. I +don’t mind using names. A fellow named Conrad +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>Aiken, one of our very best poets, though not +one of our most read, was once told in school to +interpret something from some French dramatist. +He went home and got so much interested in doing +it that he didn’t come back to class for three +weeks, but by that time he had the whole play +done in verse. He was sent to the office, on the +matter of cuts. He ran away on that. He came +back afterwards to please an uncle, he told me. +We always pleased our uncles. Is that freedom +to do more than you ought to? He’d done more +than a man might be asked to do in his whole +college course. If a man did that for me, I’d +give him A in every course.”</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX"> + INDEX + </h2> +</div> + + +<ul class="index"> + <li class="ifrst">Abercrombie, Lascelles, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Academy</i>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Alastor</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Amherst, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Anderson, Sherwood, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Aristotle, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Arms and the Man</i>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Atlantic Monthly, The</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Axe-Helve, The</i>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Babbitt, Irving, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Bartlett, John, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Baseball, interest in, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Beerbohm, Max, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Bennett, Arnold, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Black Cottage</i>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Blueberries, The</i>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> + + <li class="indx">“Bobbie,” the London, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Bottle Imp, The</i>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Boy’s Will, A</i>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, + <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Bridges, Robert, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Broadsheets, autographed, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Brooks, Van Wyck, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Bryant, W. Cullen, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Buckley, blind boss, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Bulletin</i>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Burton, Pres. of Univ. of Michigan, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Cadwalla, Bertha, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Canfield, Dorothy, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Cannan, Gilbert, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Cannéll, Skipwith, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Carpenter, E., <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Catel, Jean, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Century, The</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Chapin, James, <a href="#Page_70">70</a> note</li> + + <li class="indx">Chesterton, G. K., <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Chicken farm, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + + <li class="indx">College, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Colum, Padraic, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Columnist, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Comus</i>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Conrad, Joseph, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Convention talks, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Country of the Blind, The</i>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Cox, Sidney, <a href="#Page_51">51</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Critic</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>Dartmouth, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Death of the Hired Man, The</i>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Derry, <a href="#Page_36">36</a> <i>et seq.</i></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Dial, The</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Dreiser, Theodore, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Dr. Faustus</i>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Du Chêne, Aroldo, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst"><i>Eclogues</i>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Eliot, T. S., <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> + + <li class="indx">England, trip to, <a href="#Page_60">60</a> <i>et seq.</i></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>English Review</i>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Emile</i>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Endymion</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Farming, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Fear</i>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Fellowship at Michigan University, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Fire Under the Andes</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>First Impressions</i>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Flint, F. S., <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Football, interest in, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Ford, Ford Madox, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Forst, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Forum, The</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + + <li class="indx">France, Anatole, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frank, Waldo, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Friday Nights</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Bertha, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Carol, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Elinor Bettina, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Elliott, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Frost Genealogy in Five Families</i>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Henry, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Irma, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, John, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Lesley, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Lt. Wm., <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Major Charles, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Marjorie, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Frost’s Garrison House, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Galsworthy, John, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Garnett, Edward, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> + + <li class="indx">George, Henry, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Goethe, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Golden Room, The</i>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Grahame, Cunninghame, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Grindstone, The</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Hall, Charley, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Hamlet</i>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Harcourt, Alfred, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Hardy, Thomas, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Harvard, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Heretics</i>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Holt, Henry and Co., <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Holt, Mrs., <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>House-Keeper, The</i>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>Howe, Mark de Wolfe, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Hudson, W. H., <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Hueffer, Ford Madox, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Hulme, T. E., <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst"><i>Independent, The</i>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + + <li class="indx">International P.E.N. Club, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Into My Own</i>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">James, Henry, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Jones, Llewellyn, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Jumping Frog, The</i>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Lagerlof, Selma, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Land of Heart’s Desire, The</i>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Lanier, Sidney, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Lankes, J. J., <a href="#Page_70">70</a> note, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Lawrence, D. H., <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Lewis, Wyndham, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Liberator, The</i>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Lindsay, Vachel, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Literary formula, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Longfellow, H. W., <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Lowell, Amy, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Mabie, Hamilton W., <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Mackenzie, Compton, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx">MacVeagh, Lincoln, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Masses, The</i>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Masters, Edgar Lee, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Mencken, H. L., <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Mending Wall</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Merriam, Rev. Charles, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Michigan University, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Mill, worker in, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Montpellier University, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Moody, Isabelle, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> + + <li class="indx">More, Paul Elmer, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Morrison, Henry, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Mosher, Thomas Bird, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Mountain Interval</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a> note, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe</i>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Munro, Harold, Poetry Book-Shop, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>My Butterfly</i>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst"><i>Need for Being Versed in Country Things</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>New Age, The</i>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>New Era in American Poetry, A</i>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>New Hampshire</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a> note, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + + <li class="indx">New Hampshire State Normal School, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>New Republic, The</i>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>North of Boston</i>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Nutt, David, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst"><i>Old Kittery and Her Families</i>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> + + <li class="indx">O’Leary, Dan, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Once by the Pacific</i>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>O’Neill, Eugene, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Oppenheim, James, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Orage, A. R., <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Our America</i>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Pebble incident, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Pepperell, Sir William, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Phi Beta Kappa, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Pinkerton Academy, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40–51</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Plato’s <i>Republic</i>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Playboy of the Western World</i>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Poe, Edgar A., <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Poet Laureate, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Poetry; A Magazine of Verse</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a> note</li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Poets of America</i>, Politics, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Pound, Ezra, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, + <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Princeton, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Production of plays, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Pulitzer Prize, <a href="#Page_70">70</a> note</li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Quarter, the lost, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Reporting, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Revolvers in San Francisco, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Robinson, Edward A., <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Rolland, Romain, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Rousseau, J. J., <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Runaway, The</i>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Sandburg, Carl, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + + <li class="indx">San Francisco, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Santayana, G., <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Saturday Review of Literature</i>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Scaliger’s rhetorical question, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Scribner’s</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Sergeant, Elizabeth S., <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Selected Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a> note, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Sentinel</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Seven Arts, The</i>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Sex hygiene, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Shaw, G. B., <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Shoe-making, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Sill, Edward R., <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Silver, Ernest L., <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Sohrab and Rustum</i>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Sorbonne, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> + + <li class="indx">South, tour through, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Spingarn, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Stackpole, Everett S., <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Stevens, Wallace, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Storer, Joseph, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Swedenborgianism, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Swinburne, A. C., <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Teaching, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40–51</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Tendencies in Modern American Poetry</i>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>Tennis, interest in, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Thomas, Edward, <i>Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Times Literary Supplement</i>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Tom Brown’s School Days</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>T. P.’s Weekly</i>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Trial by Existence, The</i>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Tuft of Flowers, The</i>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Untermeyer, Louis, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Valedictorian, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Van Doren, Carl, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Vassar College, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Virgil, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst">Ward, W. Hays, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Way Out, The</i>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Week-end party, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Wells, H. G., <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Wesleyan University, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> + + <li class="indx">White, Elinor, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Williams, W. Carlos, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> + + <li class="indx"><i>Witch of Coos, The</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a> note, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + + <li class="indx">Wood, Clement, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + + + <li class="ifrst"><i>Youth’s Companion</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> +</ul> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES"> + FOOTNOTES + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> That of Elder Edmund Frost of Cambridge, Massachusetts.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> <i>Frost Genealogy in Five Families</i> by Norman Seaver Frost.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3" href="#FNanchor_3_3" class="label">[3]</a> Elinor Bettina was born on June 20, 1907, and died on +June 21.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4_4" href="#FNanchor_4_4" class="label">[4]</a> See Appendix A.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5_5" href="#FNanchor_5_5" class="label">[5]</a> Five printings of <i>North of Boston</i> were called for in its first +year, and ten more have been needed since. Its sale has been +phenomenal for a book of poetry, and in 1926 it even led the +author’s later books, though each of them has been steadily +in demand ever since it appeared. <i>New Hampshire, A Poem +with Notes and Grace Notes</i>, which was issued in 1923, comes +next in popularity to <i>North of Boston</i>, requiring five large +printings. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for that year, +while one of the poems included in that volume, namely, <i>The +Witch of Coos</i>, won the prize offered by <i>Poetry: A Magazine +of Verse</i> in 1922. <i>Mountain Interval</i> has also required five +printings, and the <i>Selected Poems</i> are now in their fourth +printing.</p> + +<p>In London <i>New Hampshire</i> has appeared under the imprint +of Grant Richards, Ltd., and the <i>Selected Poems</i> under that of +William Heinemann.</p> + +<p>In addition to their regular editions, a de luxe volume of +<i>North of Boston</i>, illustrated in line by James Chapin, appeared +in 1919, and a de luxe edition of <i>New Hampshire</i>, with woodcuts +by J. J. Lankes, who also decorated the regular edition, +came out in 1923.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6_6" href="#FNanchor_6_6" class="label">[6]</a> Quoted from <i>Fire Under the Andes</i> by Elizabeth Shepley +Sergeant.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7_7" href="#FNanchor_7_7" class="label">[7]</a> Quoted from <i>Fire Under the Andes</i> by Elizabeth Shepley +Sergeant.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8_8" href="#FNanchor_8_8" class="label">[8]</a> Quoted from <i>Fire Under the Andes</i> by Elizabeth Shepley +Sergeant.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9_9" href="#FNanchor_9_9" class="label">[9]</a> Quoted from <i>Fire Under the Andes</i> by Elizabeth Shepley +Sergeant.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10_10" href="#FNanchor_10_10" class="label">[10]</a> Quoted from an interview in the New York <i>Times</i>, October +21, 1923.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11_11" href="#FNanchor_11_11" class="label">[11]</a> Published in the <i>New Republic</i>, December 29, 1926.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12_12" href="#FNanchor_12_12" class="label">[12]</a> Page 99 to 110 appeared originally as part of an essay on +Frost published in <i>The Saturday Review of Literature</i> for +March 28, 1925. 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