The Letters of Robert Frost: 1929–1936 9780674259065

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THE LETTERS OF

ROBERT FROST VO LU M E 3

THE LETTERS OF

ROBERT FROST V olum e 3  

•

  192 9 – 1 9 36

Edi t ed by

Mark Richardson Donald Sheehy Robert Bernard Hass Henry Atmore

the belknap press of harvard university press

Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts London, ­England 2021

 Copyright © 2021 by The Robert Frost Copyright Trust All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca First printing Cover design by Tim Jones Jacket photo courtesy of the Library of Congress 9780674259058 (EPUB) 9780674259065 (PDF) The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Frost, Robert, 1874–1963.  [Correspondence]   The letters of Robert Frost / edited by Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Robert Faggen.   v. cm   Includes bibliographical references and indexes.   Contents: Volume 1. 1886–1920   ISBN 978-0-674-05760-9 (v. 1)   ISBN 978-0674-72664-2 (v. 2)   ISBN 978-0674-72665-9 (v. 3)   1.  Frost, Robert, 1874–1963—­Correspondence.  2.  Poets, American—20th ­century—­Correspondence.  I.  Sheehy, Donald Gerard.  II.  Richardson, Mark, 1963–­  III.  Faggen, Robert.  IV.  Title.   PS3511.R94Z48 2014  811'.52—­dc23  [B]  2013015203

 For the Chief, Pat Alger—­a true Frost Hall of Famer, whose aim has always been song; with enduring gratitude for his contributions to our endeavor.

Contents Preface xi Abbreviations xv Editorial Princi­ples xxi

Introduction 1. The “Big Book”: Collected Poems (1930)

1 25

J A N UA RY   19 2 9 – ­O C T OBE R   19 3 0

I want to tell you how perfect a book I think you have made for me. I wouldnt have a ­thing dif­fer­ent in the make-up, what­ever I might want to blot or alter in the content. . . . ​I ­tremble and am never too happy at being exposed to the public with another book. I hope this one ­won’t be badly received. I should like to know in general, though it is better for me to shut my eyes and ears to the details. —­Robert Frost to Richard Thornton, October 31, 1930

2. A Frost F ­ amily Diaspora

157

O C T OBE R   19 3 0 – ­J U N E  19 3 2

We are back from having sown c­ hildren broadcast over the West. One ­thing it does for us what­ever it may do for them: it makes us feel as if we inhabited the w ­ hole country and not just New ­England: and it reassures us of the uniformity of the American ­people, East and West. —­Robert Frost to Richard Thornton, October 5, 1931

3. G ­ oing to California J U N E  19 3 2 – ­O C T OBE R   19 3 2

Where we are not native-­sonning ourselves but looking a­ fter Carol and Lillian in ­g reat retirement. —­Robert Frost to J. J. Lankes, September 1932

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4. “The temptation of the times is to write politics . . .”

287

NOV E M BE R   19 3 2 –­M A RC H   19 3 4

I’m glad if I still can please you. I need all the encouragement you can give me in that kind of poetry to hold me to it. The temptation of the times is to write politics. But I ­mustn’t yield to it, must I? Or if I do, I must burn the results as from me likely to be bad. Leave politics and affairs to Walter Lipp­mann. Get sent to Congress if I w ­ ill and can (I have always wanted to), but stick to the kind of writing I am known for. —­Robert Frost to Wilbur Cross, February 17, 1934

5. Marj

387

M A RC H   19 3 4 – ­J U N E  19 3 4

I told you by letter or tele­g ram what was hanging over us. So you know what to expect. Well the blow has fallen. The noblest of us all is dead and has taken our hearts out of the world with her. —­Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer, May 15, 1934

6. FERA and Loathing in Key West

405

J U LY   19 3 4 –­M A RC H   19 3 5

Well one hundred and fifty miles south of Miami, six hundred south of Los Angeles, three hundred south of Cairo in Egypt and sixty miles at sea we reached Key West by train over a string of keys and bridges. . . . ​T he only ­thing at all socially disturbing is the presence in force of Franklin D. Roo­se­velt’s FERA. This has been one of the Administrations pet rehabilitation proj­ects. . . . ​ Their ­g reat object they say is to restore the p­ eople to their civic virtue. When in history has any power ever achieved that? —­Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer, January 10, 1935

7. Further Ranges and a Harvard Year A PR I L   19 3 5 –­D E C E M BE R   19 3 6

As you may imagine, I should be most happy to be your Charles Eliot Norton Professor next spring; and that not alone for the

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honor of the appointment. I should value also the compulsion the lectures would put me ­under to assem­ble my thinking right and left of the last few years and see what it comes to. I have reached a point where it would do me good. —­Robert Frost to John Livingston Lowes, December 18, 1935 Biographical Glossary of Correspondents 705 Chronology: January 1929–­December 1936 759 Acknowl­edgments 775 Index 785

Preface If volumes 1 and 2 of The Letters of Robert Frost ­were about the making of Frost as a man of letters, the pre­sent book, The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 3: 1929– 1936, is about Frost as a made man. In 1926, he took a post at Amherst College that required him to be on campus only three months a year. And in 1928, he renegotiated his contract with Henry Holt and Com­pany on terms any poet would envy: 15 ­percent royalties on the first 5,000 copies of his fifth volume, West-­Running Brook (1928), 20 ­percent on copies sold thereafter, and a $2,000 advance against it all; the publication of fine-­press ­limited editions to be issued alongside each trade edition of West-­Running Brook and f­ uture books; the release of a new Selected Poems (issued in November 1928); a monthly stipend of $250, to be paid through 1933; the promise of a Collected Poems scheduled for release in 1930; and, in 1929, a gift of stock in Henry Holt and Com­pany. Frost’s timing was uncanny. About a year a­ fter he signed his new contract, the stock market crashed. He was as Depression-­proof (capital D) as any poet could be. But even as FDR’s administration sought, ­after it was installed in March 1933, to secure the fortunes of as many American citizens as it could, Frost—­who could look on with a mea­sure of detachment at po­liti­cal affairs, even as he mocked the New Deal in letters to Louis Untermeyer and o ­ thers—­k new as well as any writer how hard it is to “secure” what he would call, in a 1939 essay, any “stay” against “confusion,” economic, psychological, social, or other­wise (CPPP, 777). Confusion is our baseline, diversions from it, temporary felicities. Frost’s conservatism is in no small mea­sure explained by how generalizable—­and immutable—he considered this state of affairs to be. In counterpoint to his prosperity in poetry, he and his f­ amily suffered a series of misfortunes from which Frost and Elinor strug­gled to recover: lesser ones, such as Lesley’s divorce; larger ones, such as life-­threatening lung infections contracted by Marjorie and by Carol’s wife Lillian; ominous ones, such as the death, in 1929, of Frost’s s­ ister Jeanie, who nine years ­earlier had been confined to an asylum for the insane in Augusta, Maine (Irma and Carol had begun to show signs that they, too, would be incapacitated, to one degree or another, by m ­ ental illness); and then the heaviest blow of all when, in April 1934, childbed fever claimed the life of Marjorie, the Frosts’ youn­gest ­daughter. “His Rosiness,” as Frost sometimes dubbed that professional optimist,

xii  Preface

FDR, had nothing to offer in his new po­liti­cal economies and social securities to such suffering parents as Elinor and Robert. The latter’s often dark, and at times cryptic, view of life would only come more sharply into focus in such poems as “Provide, Provide,” “Design,” “Neither Out Far Nor in Deep,” and “Desert Places,” and in such essays as his introduction to Edwin Arlington Robinson’s King Jasper (1935): “What I like is griefs and I like them Robinsonianly profound. I suppose ­there is no use in asking, but I should think we might be indulged to the extent of having grievances restricted to prose if prose ­will accept the imposition, and leaving poetry f­ ree to go its way in tears.” “Give us immedicable woes,” Frost concludes the essay, “woes that nothing can be done for—­woes flat and final. And then to play” (CPPP, 743, 747–748). Frost then quotes the last line and a half of Robinson’s “Dark Hills,” which we provide ­here in its entirety: Dark hills at eve­ning in the west, Where sunset hovers like a sound Of golden horns that sang to rest Old bones of warriors ­under ground, Far now from all the bannered ways Where flash the legions of the sun, You fade—as if the last of days ­Were fading, and all wars ­were done. Prompting Frost to the envoi: “As if they w ­ ere. As if, as if!” (CPPP, 748). B ­ ecause all wars, all strife, and all the insecurities that attend them, s­ hall never be done. Frost writes in a March 1935 letter to the Amherst Student, a campus newspaper: “All ages of the world are bad—­a ­g reat deal worse anyway than Heaven. If they w ­ eren’t the world might just as well be Heaven at once and have it over with. One can safely say a­ fter from six to thirty thousand years of experience that the evident design is a situation h ­ ere in which it w ­ ill always be about equally hard to save your soul. What­ever pro­g ress may be taken to mean, it ­can’t mean making the world any easier a place in which to save your soul” (CPPP, 739–740; and in this volume). And yet salvation, however fleeting and hard to hold, is accorded us only to this extent and in this manner: ­ here is at least so much good in the world that it admits of form T and the making of form. And not only admits of it, but calls for it. We ­people are thrust forward out of the suggestions of form in the

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rolling clouds of nature. In us nature reaches its height of form and through us exceeds itself. When in doubt t­ here is always form for us to go on with. Anyone who has achieved the least form to be sure of it, is lost to the larger excruciations. I think it must stroke faith the right way. The artist, the poet might be expected to be the most aware of such assurance. But it is r­ eally every­body’s sanity to feel it and live by it. Fortunately, too, no forms are more engrossing, gratifying, comforting, staying than t­ hose lesser ones we throw off, like vortex rings of smoke, all our individual enterprise and needing nobody’s cooperation; a basket, a letter, a garden, a room, an idea, a picture, a poem. For ­these we ­haven’t to get a team together before we can play. Putting t­ hings in order, taking satisfaction in the sanity of “form,” do engross and gratify us; they “stroke faith” and make it purr (a curious phrase for a curious paragraph). It is as if—as if!—we achieve thereby some purchase on life, however of the earth earthy and bound for a fall we remain. Vortex rings of smoke are made to dissipate; letters often miss their mark (“A Missive Missile”); and even the best-­kept gardens “tarnish with weed” (“Putting in the Seed”—­a poem of husbandry, marriage, and child-­bearing). It is just as Frost says so comprehensively in one of his shortest lyr­ics: “nothing gold can stay”—­not Marjorie, not the sanity that makes life manageable, nor the satisfactions of Pulitzer Prizes and popu­lar acclaim. If The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 3: 1929–1936 has a story to tell, let it be the one laid out with force in “Provide, Provide”: No memory of having starred Atones for ­later disregard, Or keeps the end from being hard. Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship at your side Than none at all. Provide, provide! (CPPP, 280) “Dignified” with boughten friendship at your side? “Boughten!” indeed. The archaism undermines our faith in the sincerity of the per­for­mance, suggesting it is all a (very) dark joke. But a­ fter all, what dignity is t­ here in the pride that would spurn “interested” friendship and have us die alone? Frost was never one to trade realities for sentiment, however stony the realities.

Abbreviations ABW: A Boy’s W ­ ill, Robert Frost (London: David Nutt, 1913). ACL: Amherst College Library, Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts. AFR: A Further Range, Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1936). Agnes Scott: Special Collections and Archives, McCain Library, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia. Alger: Private collection of Pat Alger, Nashville, Tennessee. AL: Autograph letter, unsigned. ALS: Autograph letter, signed. ALS-­photostat: Autograph letter, signed, photostat. AAP: Acad­emy of American Poets, New York, New York. AWT: A Witness Tree, Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1942). Bauman: Bauman Rare Books, New York. Berkeley: Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Bodleian: Special Collections, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Bowdoin: Bowdoin College, George. J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives. BPL: Boston Public Library, Boston, Mas­sa­chu­setts. BU: Boston University, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. Chicago: University of Chicago, Special Collections Research Center, Chicago, Illinois. Columbia: Columbia University Library, New York. Cornell: Cornell University, Rare and Manuscript Collection, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York.

xvi  Abbreviations

CP 1930: Collected Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1930). CP 1939: Collected Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1939). CP 1949: Complete Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1949). CPPP: Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose and Plays, ed. Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson (New York: Library of Amer­i­ca, 1995). CPRF: The Collected Prose of Robert Frost, ed. Mark Richardson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). Crane: Robert Frost: A Descriptive Cata­logue of Books and Manuscripts in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Joan St. C. Crane (Charlottesville: University of ­Virginia Press, 1975). DCL: Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, New Hampshire. Duke: David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University Libraries, Durham, North Carolina. Emory: Emory University Libraries, Special Collections and Archives, Atlanta, Georgia. EY: Robert Frost: The Early Years, 1874–1915, Lawrance Thompson (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970). Fenimore: Fenimore Art Museum Research Library. FL: The F­ amily Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost, ed. Arnold Grade (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1972). Harvard: Harvard University Archives and Special Collections, Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts. Hollins: Special Collections, Wyndham Robertson Library, Hollins University, Roanoke, V ­ irginia. HRC: Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Huntington: Huntington Library, Pasadena, California. Indiana: Indiana University, Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives, Bloomington. Iowa: Special Collections and University Archives, University of Iowa, Ames.

Abbreviations  xvii

ITC: In the Clearing (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1962). Jones: Jones Library, Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts. LoC: Library of Congress, Washington, DC. LRF-1: The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 1: 1886–1920, ed. Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Robert Faggen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014). LRF-2: The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 2: 1920–1928, ed. Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, Robert Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016). Mass. Hist.: Mas­sa­chu­setts Historical Society, Boston. MI: Mountain Interval, Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1916). Middlebury: Middlebury College Libraries, Middlebury, Vermont. Milton Acad­emy: Cox Library, Milton Acad­emy, Milton, Mas­sa­chu­setts. NB: North of Boston, Robert Frost (London: David Nutt, 1914). NBRF: The Notebooks of Robert Frost, ed. Robert Faggen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). Newberry: The Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois. NH: New Hampshire, Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1923). NHHS: New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, New Hampshire. Northwestern: Northwestern University Library, Special Collections, Evanston, Illinois. NYPL: New York Public Library, New York. OED: Oxford En­glish Dictionary. Ohio State: Ohio State University Libraries, Special Collections, Columbus. Pittsburgh: Archives and Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. RFJB: Robert Frost and John Bartlett: The Rec­ord of a Friendship, Margaret Bartlett Anderson (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963).

xviii  Abbreviations

RFLU: The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer, ed. Louis Untermeyer (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963). RFSC: Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship, ed. William R. Evans (Hanover, NH: University Press of New E ­ ngland, 1981). Rollins: Rollins College, Olin Library, Winter Park, Florida. SB: Steeple Bush, Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1947). SL: Selected Letters of Robert Frost, ed. Lawrance Thompson (New York: Henry Holt, 1964). Smith: Neilson Library, Special Collections, Smith College, Northampton, Mas­sa­chu­setts. SP 1923: Selected Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1923). SP 1928: Selected Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1928). SP 1934: Selected Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1934). Stanford: Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, California. St. Lawrence: Owen D. Young Library, Special Collections, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York. ­Temple: Special Collections Research Center, ­Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. TG: Tele­g ram. TG-­C: Tele­g ram, copy. TLS: Typed letter, signed. TLS-­C: Typed letter, signed (copy). Trinity: Trinity College, Watkinson Library, Hartford, Connecticut. UCLA: Library Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles. UM: University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor. UNH: University of New Hampshire, Douglas and Helena Milne Special Collections and Archives, Durham, New Hampshire.

Abbreviations  xix

UVA: University of ­Virginia, Charlottesville. Vassar: Vassar College, Catherine Pelton Durrell Archives and Special Collections Library, Poughkeepsie, New York. VHS: Vermont Historical Society, Barre, Vermont. Wellesley: Wellesley College, Special Collections, Margaret Clap Library, Wellesley, Mas­sa­chu­setts. Wisconsin–­Eau-­Claire: Special Collections and Archives, McIntyre Library, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. WRB: West-­Running Brook, Robert Frost (New York: Henry Holt, 1928). Wyoming: Emmet D. Chisum Special Collections, University of Wyoming, Laramie. Yale: Yale University, Beinecke Library, New Haven, Connecticut. YT: Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915–1938, Lawrance Thompson (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970).

Editorial Princi­ples The Letters of Robert Frost, of which this volume is the third, is without pre­ce­ dent. All of the poet’s letters of which we have a rec­ord—­including the 601 letters and tele­g rams collected h ­ ere, 425 (about 70 ­percent) for the first time—­ will now be presented in a single, uniform edition, consistently and fully annotated, with fidelity to the manuscripts and typescripts from which they derive. The pre­sent volume is considerably more extensive than Lawrance Thompson’s The Selected Letters of Robert Frost (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1964), as ­were The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 1: 1886–1920 and The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 2: 1920–1928. And yet it takes the reader only from January 1929 through 1936, the year Frost’s sixth book, A Further Range, appeared, when the poet was sixty-­t wo years of age.1 Our edition provides voice-­verified transcripts of the letters, gathered from more than ninety archives and private collections. Most of Frost’s handwritten letters, and nearly all of his typed ones (of which ­there are very few in this volume), exist in a form common to letter writing of the period: date and place of inditing in the upper-­r ight corner of the first page; salutation below and flush left; body of the letter following in conventionally paragraphed form, with lineation determined by the size of the paper and with text flowing from sheet to sheet, or, on pre-­folded stationery, from first page to second page, and 1. ​In his SL, Thompson includes a number of letters written by persons other than Frost. We do not print incoming correspondence, though on occasion we quote from it in annotations. ­Were we to include even a modicum of incoming letters, the edition, already slated for five volumes, would lose all bounds. For the same reason we typically do not reprint enclosures (including fair copies of poems) when ­t hese are not integral to a given letter, though we usually describe them. What constitutes a “letter” is not always easy to determine, given (to take one example) Frost’s habit of inscribing books in quasi-­ epistolary ways. We take a practical approach, as we have in volumes 1 and 2: the letters reprinted ­here are, almost without exception, conventionally “epistolary” in nature. One ­t hing more bears mentioning: Publication of the pre­sent, multivolume edition, as it unfolds, ­w ill bring to light additional letters held in private hands, or in archives where they have gone uncata­logued. The first two volumes have already done so. An appendix in the last volume of the edition w ­ ill pre­sent letters of which we became aware subsequent to the publication of all volumes that precede it.

xxii  Editorial Princi­ples

then to the back of the first page, and so on; and with a signature following the ­whole with a customary (if often whimsical) valediction. When Frost adds a postscript, he does that, too, in the usual way: below the signature (though sometimes in the margins or at the head of the first sheet of a letter, if he has run out of space at the bottom of the last sheet). In other words, the disposition of the text on the pages of Frost’s manuscript and typescript letters is almost never a significant feature of their meaning. For t­ hese reasons we have produced not type facsimiles but clean transcripts of the letters. Our interests are, on the w ­ hole, ­limited to the intended content of each letter. When Frost makes a correction, he typically does so by striking out a word and continuing, or by striking out a word or phrase and inserting a correction interlinearly. Our practice (­unless special circumstances apply) is to produce the single text that any corrections pre­sent in the document plainly require. When Frost inserts, say, the conjunction “that” interlinearly, we simply produce the sentence as he intended it to read without the special markings (carets or arrows, for example) that he employed to make it read that way. We have, within limits, a­ dopted a policy of s­ ilent correction. When Frost has unintentionally repeated a word (for example, when he carries a sentence over from one sheet to the next, or from the front of a sheet to the back), we have omitted the repetition. We also correct silently t­ hose few occasions on which Frost drops a letter from a word in ways uncharacteristic of his manuscripts generally, as in this January 22, 1936, letter to his son-­in-­law Willard Fraser: “I won­der what kind of man Franklin D. [Roo­se­velt] ­really is. Of the three judges that took his radical side in the AAA case, one, Cardoza, was appointed by Hoover, another, Stone, by Coo­lidge. ­Those two Presidents certainly showed a lofty disinterestedness far above packing the court with a view to having their own way. Would Franklin D. be as good? He o ­ ught to set judicial ability above every­thing ­else in making his appointments. Hoover appointed on [sic] conservative (Roberts) and one radical Cardoza [sic].” We supply the missing letter so the last sentence reads: “Hoover appointed one conservative (Roberts) and one radical Cardoza.” Another such case occurs in Frost’s September 1932 letter to his friend and collaborator in bookmaking, the woodcut artist J. J. Lankes: “Carl [Ruggles] might possibly have had a job in the new college for ­women at Bennington Vermont if he hadnt felt the heroic and superior need of talking himself out befor [sic] he got his invitation.” We supply the “e” in “before.” On a few other occasions, Frost inadvertently adds a letter, thereby changing the word he plainly meant to another that

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xxiii

d­ oesn’t fit the case. Consider this sentence—­italicized for emphasis—­f rom a June 27, 1930, letter to Frost’s protégé Wade Van Dore, whose manuscript Frost would place with the publisher Coward-­McCann: “­We’ll talk about it again latter. Business is depressed, I’m depressed a l­ ittle. Coward McCann has been having a hard time. So have a lot of publishers. It is a won­der any of them ­will touch poetry.” In this instance we ­simple silently correct “latter” to “­later.” When typographical errors occur in tele­grams, we correct ­these silently, given that the errors are likely, and at times certainly, the telegrapher’s, not Frost’s. For example, on June 8, 1934, Frost sent a tele­g ram to his friend Lawrence Conrad at “74 BELLEUE AVE UPPER MONCLAIR NJ.” We supply the “V” for BELLVUE AVE (where Conrad then resided). In the 1920s and 1930s, telegraphers inconsistently used “STOP” as punctuation. In How to Write Tele­grams Properly (Girard, KS: Haldeman-­Julius Publications, 1928), Nelson Ross offers this advice: “If you do not intend to stipulate that marks of punctuation be transmitted, write your message without punctuation and read it carefully to make sure that it is not ambiguous. If it seems impossible to convey your meaning clearly without the use of punctuation, use may be made of the celebrated word ‘stop,’ which is known the world over as the official telegraphic or cable word for ‘period’ ” (15). In a July 17, 1936, letter to Leonidas Payne, Frost named it among his “prides” that he could “write a fifty word tele­gram without having to use a single ‘Stop’ for the sense.” Nevertheless, we have chosen not to regularize, by omission, the use of “STOP” in Frost’s tele­grams. At times Frost w ­ ill drop a word, as ­here, when he moves from the second to the third sheet of a March 30, 1932, letter to Sidney Cox: “responses are better than rec­ords b­ ecause include [sic] rec­ords and much besides.” “­Because” is the last word on sheet two of the letter, “include” the first on sheet three. In this case we make a bracketed (not ­silent) correction: “But responses are better than rec­ords ­because [they] include rec­ords and much besides.” On very rare instances Frost seems to have hesitated such that he conflates two pos­si­ble phrasings. He writes on September 15, 1930, to Frederic Melcher, head of Publishers Weekly and a ­family friend (the poet is seeking advice about a lecture series he’d been invited to give): “What I want to know is, do you think I would be cheapen myself in some way.” Clearly, “do you think I would cheapen myself ” and “do you think I would be cheapening myself ” are both, in a sense, evoked. We correct this slip of the pen using brackets, favoring the construction we regard as uppermost (given the presence of “be”): “What I want to know is, do you think I would be [cheapening] myself in some

xxiv  Editorial Princi­ples

way.” One final example: Several times Frost appears to have in mind two pos­si­ble syntactical / sentence structures, and leaves evidence of hesitation between them. On November 29, 1935, he writes to Norman Foerster: “I have been trying to think when I could get in such a long stay away from home as you propose. I have never been ten days at any college but Amherst; and at Amherst I have my wife is [sic] with me and I have a home.” In that latter clause, the construction uppermost seems to be parallel: “I have my wife with me and I have a home,” not “my wife is with me and I have a home.” ­Here we strike the “is” as almost certainly a vestige of some halting as Frost laid the sentence down. We also add quotation marks and parentheses when Frost opens a quotation or parenthesis but forgets to close it. When Frost sets off parenthetical text with a comma and then neglects to close it with one, we correct that silently, too. At other times Frost w ­ ill drop a comma from a series that other­ wise includes them, as in his September 19, 1929, letter to Sidney Cox: “Im never so desperate for material that I have to trench on the confidential for one ­thing, nor on the private for another nor on the personal, nor in general on the sacred.” We supply the missing comma ­after “for another.” Our general aim is to rectify manifestly inadvertent slips of the pen, while reserving “[sic]” indications for the many occasions on which this or that irregularity is, in fact, a characteristic feature of Frost’s handwritten prose (misspelled names, words, ­etc.). Frost uses apostrophes inconsistently and haphazardly, often within a single sentence (where, for example, one may find both “­don’t” and “couldnt”). Editors of Frost’s letters have, for de­cades, respected t­ hese inconsistencies, and we do too—­w ith one exception: we correct “Ill” to “I’ll” ­because the apostrophe makes a contraction for “I ­will,” while omitting it produces a dif­fer­ent word entirely (“ill”). We have left untouched most misspellings of proper names, supplying an explanatory footnote only where the error might lead to confusion. Another idiosyncrasy of Frost’s is to use both “judgment” and (more often) “judgement.” The former spelling is the one generally accepted, but both are correct; we do not use “[sic]” when Frost spells the word with the extra “e.” Another category of ­silent interventions (though not corrections) concerns the date on which, and place where, each letter was written. More or less coincident with his move to Ann Arbor in September 1921, Frost began, inconsistently, to give his address and the date on which he was writing below the signature, rather than at the head of the letter. We have standardized all letters, placing the address and date always at the head (­unless special circum-

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xxv

stances make placement below the signature an expressive ele­ment of the letter in question). Headnotes to the letters identify the recipient and indicate, with an abbreviation, w ­ hether the letter is an autograph letter signed (ALS), a typed letter signed (TLS), a tele­g ram (TG), and so on, and then give the location of the archive now holding the manuscript (or an indication, where needed, that it remains in private hands). Headnotes also register all cases where the dating of a letter is editorially supplied, ­whether from internal evidence or from a postmarked envelope. The section preceding this statement of editorial princi­ ples provides a key to all abbreviations used in the book. When Frost has dictated a letter to someone ­else (his wife Elinor, for example), this, too, is indicated e­ ither in the headnote or a footnote, as con­ve­n ience suggests. For the most part, we rely on footnotes to identify—­when identification proved pos­si­ble: in a few cases it did not—­persons, poems, and events alluded to or mentioned in the letters. Our purpose is to provide on each page, alongside each letter, all information about it that a reader may want to know. Sometimes we repeat footnotes naming persons already identified, when a reader might need a reminder; and if no dates of birth or death, or other identifying data, appear in t­ hese secondary notes, the reader need only consult the index to locate it. At the end of the book the reader w ­ ill find a biographical glossary of all recipients, both as an aid to memory and as a resource for better understanding the range, in vocation and experience, of Frost’s correspondents. We also include in the backmatter a detailed chronology covering Frost’s life from January 1929 through December 1936, with apposite passages from the letters laid in for color. The general aim is to produce a book whose contents are readable consecutively. As vari­ous persons become involved in Frost’s life, e­ ither as the recipient or the subject of a letter, the reader is made acquainted with them, so that at any given point in the volume, if a reader has been moving through it page by page, they w ­ ill have in mind every­thing required to read the letters with ease. Of course, some p­ eople ­w ill not read the volume from beginning to end. They w ­ ill instead consult it looking for letters to specific persons, references to specific writers or events, or for discussions of par­tic­u ­lar topics—­for example, Frost’s ideas about poetics, education, or politics. Readers using the volume in this way ­w ill find a comprehensive index directing them not simply to names of persons and titles of poems and books but also to impor­tant recurrent themes in the letters and to information contained within the headnotes and footnotes.

THE LETTERS OF

ROBERT FROST VO LU M E 3

Introduction

1. “Thank you for noticing,” Frost wrote Helen McAfee on July 28, 1923. What had she noticed? That in “I ­Will Sing You One-­O,” published in the Yale Review (of which McAfee was managing editor), Frost had rhymed a plural noun with a singular: “constellations / Speculation.” “My betters have sometimes taken the liberty of rhyming singular and plural,” Frost pointed out. “I dont believe I mind it for once in a way and I hope you dont.” We hear no more sarcasm in his “Thank you for noticing” than we do in the rest of this short letter (nearly the entirety of which ­we’ve just quoted). Noticing in poetry was all for Frost. That occasion in 1923 ­wouldn’t be the last time McAfee “noticed” something for him. “I d­ on’t believe I could bear to see t­ hose two so-­different rhymes with ‘pause’ so close together,” he wrote her on August 16, 1934, again with reference to poems that would appear in the Yale Review. “­Isn’t poetry ­really ridicu­ lous a­ fter all.” The first of the poems in question, “Moon Compasses,” contains the couplet, “I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause / Between two downpours to see what ­there was.” And in the second, “Afterflakes,” we find: “And the thick flakes floating at a pause / ­Were but frost knots on an airy gauze.” Frost was sensitive to anything a sharp reader might take as a fault or indelicacy in his rhymes, even across dif­fer­ent poems. Here the problem is presumably one of bringing too closely together the slightly off rhyme “pause”/“was” and the much fuller rhyme “pause”/“gauze” (and of affiliating such differing states of H2O as water and ice, or, to be exact, rain and snow).

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McAfee saved him, h ­ ere, from an embarrassment the likes of which only she and Frost, if few o ­ thers, would have “noticed.” In the event, all three poems ­were published in the Autumn 1934 issue of the Yale Review, with “A Missive Missile,” a longish poem, in the ­m iddle so as not to give the reader too much “pause.” Questions to do with rhyme—­w ith craft—­arise repeatedly in the pre­sent volume. In a December 1932 letter to his son Carol, he writes: “Sometimes I ­don’t think ­there is any other test of a good poem than to see that not a single rhyme in it has hurt it.” An example of how infelicities in rhyme could not just hurt but mortally wound a poem was presented by a young poet named Arthur Pound, whose poem “Mountain Morning” Frost read in manuscript. It ran to eight pages in rhyming (heroic) couplets, and although Frost was careful to leaven his harshness with praise—so as not to be too discouraging to a neophyte whose ­labour had been honest—­the criticisms are nonetheless damning. “What your poem is all about moves me. . . . ​­There’s not the least affectation of sentiment or phraseology. And I can excuse the inexpertness of the ­handling. I have to admit against my prejudice in your ­favor that what I might call your seconds ­aren’t as good as your firsts in your couplets. That is to say in the first of the pair where you are f­ ree from having to think of the rhyme, you are better than in the second line where you are not so f­ ree. We all have the same defect in greater or less degree. It might be said that the ­whole ­battle of art is waged to make the second lines of couplets as honest as the first lines.” Essentially, Frost says to Pound what Alexander Pope says of lesser poets in his Essay on Criticism: . . . ​they ring round the same unvaried chimes, With sure returns of still expected rhymes. Where’er you find “the cooling western breeze,” In the next line, it “whispers through the trees”: If “crystal streams with pleasing murmurs creep.” The reader’s threaten’d (not in vain) with “sleep.” Unfortunately, Frost is not wrong in his judgment of “Mountain Morning.” The poem has an Augustan savor that even in the eighteenth-­century would have been off, with its epithets (the sun is “the lamp of hope,” a “soaring monarch,” “the kindly master of our paradise,” or simply a “sun-­ball” that “rides the skies”), its high proportion of closed couplets to open ones, its abstractions, and its at times archaic elisions, used to keep the meter exact (“e’re” for

Introduction  3

“ever,” and so on). As for Pound’s “seconds,” Frost is correct about the abundance of “expected rhymes”: “hill” gives us “still,” “bird” gives us “heard,” “face” gives us “place” (Byron’s coupling, of course, in “She walks in beauty . . .”), “view,” “new”—­and so on. What the poem is “all about” may “move” Frost—­the exhilaration of a morning swim in a mountain stream. But such couplets as this, penned in 1932, would certainly have left him cold: “And none by guile can hasten or delay / The calm insistent coming of the day!” In an October  1934 letter to his eldest d­ aughter Lesley, discussing a dif­ fer­ent, somewhat weightier Pound (Ezra), Frost writes: “One of the first t­ hings Pound thought of was that rhyme and meter made you use too many words and even subsidiary ideas for the sake of coming out even.” This is why Pound and the Imagists jettisoned rhyme and meter, for the most part. Frost did not disagree with the insight. He’d had it himself: rhyme, meter, stanza, form—­a ll can compel a poet to use shopworn or ill-­fitting words and subsidiary ideas to “come out even.” The greater t­ hing, he thought, was to retain rhyme, meter, and stanza and still not allow any of them to take the wheel of the poem away from the poet and drive it off the road. And the poems Frost wrote and published in the years covered by the pre­sent volume show him, even as he entered his sixties, very much at the wheel.

2. But it would not be right to suggest that concerns with craft and c­ areer characterize the pre­sent volume, as they might be said to characterize so much of his ­earlier correspondence. The alert reader of previous volumes of The Letters of Robert Frost ­w ill have noticed the letter just quoted to Carol Frost, the poet’s only surviving son, b­ ecause no letters to him appear in volumes 1 and 2. Why? U ­ ntil the 1930s, f­ ather and son w ­ ere seldom far enough or long enough apart to occasion correspondence. But with the years covered in this volume, we find the Frost ­family scattered from New ­England to Colorado to Montana to California (where Carol was when Frost wrote this par­tic­u ­lar letter). It was a diaspora the likes of which the ­family would never again experience. So the book now before you is to a greater degree than previous volumes about the Frost ­family—­about Robert and Elinor’s ­children and grandchildren, their aspirations, their successes and setbacks, and, in one case, an almost unendurable tragedy: Marjorie Frost Fraser’s death in 1934 from puerperal fever. Robert Frost did, in the end, find ways to endure it. He wrote his friend Otto Manthey-­Zorn on June 19, 1934: “We’ve been having it borne in on us by the

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general experience all along the way that compassion means only partly ­dying with t­ hose who die. We may never laugh as well again, but we ­shall live to laugh. We s­ hall rejoice, if never again to the point of elation. But I was long since non-­elatable. The spirit is only somewhat subdued and deadened so that when we have to die in full ourselves we wont have quite so far to descend into the valley.” Elinor, for her part, would never recover from the blow. She suffered an attack of angina pectoris in the summer of 1934—­a hint, though none could then know it, of the heart failure that would take her life four years ­after Marjorie died. Frost wrote Carol on April 18, 1934, from Billings, Montana, where Marjorie lay in her sickbed: You realize by this time that Marjorie’s sickness is that worst disease of all, child-­bed fever, and her chances of recovery are small. Our best hope is her having lasted as long as she has. The doctors and vari­ous p­ eople tell us that patients who stand the fever a month very often get the better of it. Marjorie has stood it a month and three days now. Several times she has been at the point of death. Nothing has kept her alive so far but blood-­transfusions. Willard’s friends have come forward in a host to give their blood for her. I never ­imagined anything like it for kindness and friendship. But I try not to give way to ­either hope or fear. I am simply determined in my soul my bones or somewhere that our side s­ hall win. Reason is no help. She is a terribly sick girl. She has been out of her mind most of the time for a week and never completely in her mind, though she seems to recognize us and says some t­ hings more or less intelligible. Yesterday was one of her most desperate days. She sank into a stupor that I could see scared the doctors. T ­ oday she has rallied again a­ fter another blood-­transfusion. All her three doctors are with her several times a day and she has three splendid nurses. It’s a fight. She’s keeping it up for her part with a noble courage that breaks our hearts. We all admire her. Elinor can hardly bear the sadness of it. Within days, the ­family had Marjorie flown to Minnesota for treatment at the Mayo Clinic. But “their side” did not “win.” On May 2, Frost cabled his eldest ­daughter, Lesley: “NO MORE MARJORIE IN THIS WORLD EXCEPT MEMORIES.” Two weeks ­later he wrote about Marjorie’s last days to his old friend Louis Untermeyer. The letters to Untermeyer have a flavor all their own: al-

Introduction  5

lusive, ribald, funny, scathing, admonitory (Untermeyer’s goatishness led him into extraordinary romantic convolutions). But this letter is raw—­eruditely raw, b­ ecause that is the language the two men habitually used with one another, and, erudition notwithstanding, it gets us to the marrow of Robert Frost. “The noblest of us all is dead and has taken our hearts out of the world with her. It was a terrible seven weeks’ fight—­too indelibly terrible on the imagination. No death in war could more than match it for suffering and heroic endurance. Why all this talk in ­favor of peace? Peace has her victories over poor mortals no less merciless than war.” “We ­were torn afresh ­every day between the temptations of letting her go untortured or cruelly trying to save her,” he continued. “The only consolation we have is the memory of her greatness through all. Never out of delirium for the last four weeks, her responses ­were of course incorrect. She got ­little or nothing of what we said to her. The only way I could reach her was by putting my hand backward and forward between us, as in counting out and saying with overemphasis You—­and—­Me.” Marjorie was in a place language c­ ouldn’t penetrate, so her f­ather fell back on an essential princi­ple of his craft—­what he called, in his introduction to E. A. Robinson’s King Jasper, written a year ­after Marj’s death, “correspondence”: We began in infancy by establishing correspondence of eyes with eyes. We recognized that they ­were the same feature and we could do the same ­things with them. We went on to the vis­i­ble motion of the lips—­smile answered smile; then cautiously, by trial and error, to compare the invisible muscles of the mouth and throat. They ­were the same and could make the same sounds. We ­were still together. So far, so good. From ­here on the won­der grows. It has been said that recognition in art is all. Better say correspondence is all. Mind must convince mind that it can uncurl and wave the same filaments of subtlety, soul convince soul that it can give off the same shimmers of eternity. At no point would anyone but a brute fool want to break off this correspondence. It is all ­there is to satisfaction; and it is salutary to live in the fear of its being broken off. (CPPP, 742) Frost, Elinor, Willard, and Willard’s f­ amily all endured six weeks of this “fear” in its worst pos­si­ble form; such “shimmers of eternity” and “correspondence” as passed between them and Marjorie, as they attended her, faded, at last, to black, even as what “began in infancy” between Marjorie and her parents was so terribly “broken off.” Bear in mind Marjorie’s childhood, her horrible

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ordeal, and her death, and it is easier to see why Frost would arrive at his theory of “correspondence” in art through recourse to his experience in child-­ rearing. In any case, as he wrote to Untermeyer, the man with whom he enjoyed perhaps his most immediate “correspondence” in letters (their minds waved the same “filaments of subtlety”): “We thought to move heaven and earth—­heaven with prayers and earth with money. We moved nothing. And ­here we are Cadmus and Harmonia not yet placed safely in changed forms.” The allusion is to Matthew Arnold’s “Cadmus and Harmonia”: And t­ here, they say, two bright and aged snakes, Who once ­were Cadmus and Harmonia, Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-­shore, In breathless quiet, a­ fter all their ills; Nor do they see their country, nor the place Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills, Nor the unhappy palace of their race, Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more. ­T here ­those two live, far in the Illyrian brakes! They had stay’d long enough to see, In Thebes, the billow of calamity Over their own dear ­children roll’d, Curse upon curse, pang upon pang, For years, they sitting helpless in their home, A grey old man and w ­ oman; yet of old The Gods had to their marriage come, And at the banquet all the Muses sang. Arnold was the laureate of helplessness in the teeth of a god-­vacated universe; Frost could have counted on Untermeyer to know this, and to feel the full poignancy of the allusion. As to money not moving earth, or at least not securing from it the desired effect: that, of course, is politics, and politics—­the politics of the New Deal and of “security”—­form the strongest counterpoint to f­ amily in the fugue of t­ hese difficult years. But the Muses did sing for and through Marjorie: in 1936 her parents honored the memory of their youn­gest ­daughter with the publication of Franconia, a collection of her poems designed and printed (in a small edition not for sale) by Frost’s friend and, by that date, frequent collaborator in publishing, Joseph Blumenthal, head of the Spiral Press. Taking this slim, elegant volume in hand can still send tremors through any reader aware of the circumstances out of which it arose.

Introduction  7

3. But what of the son? The pre­sent volume reprints almost all of the extant letters the f­ ather wrote to Carol (a few more date to the late 1930s and ­w ill appear in volume 4). They are notably unlike ­those written to his eldest d­ aughter, Lesley, whom Frost addresses freely, almost as a peer, and ­those to Marjorie, whom both he and Elinor cherished. In fact, Frost is almost never at a loss as to how to “carry himself ” in letters, except when writing to Carol, to whom his manner of address is seldom sure. Frost often shows signs of a strain to strike the right note. What troubled the son, in the early 1930s, was not yet entirely clear. Carol himself speaks of his “nerves,” of being in a “rut,” and of “slumps and blues.” And he always addresses himself to “Papa and Mama,” never to one of them alone (again, in such letters as survive). As for uncertainty in tone, consider the turnabout in the last two paragraphs in this September 9, 1933, father-­to-­son letter: I forgot to say I wish I had in one holder the ­whole set of your poems to look over when inclined. Would it be too much trou­ble to make me a loose-­leaf note book of them sometime this winter? The depth of feeling in them is what I keep thinking of. I’ve taken ­great satisfaction in your having found such an expression of your life. I hope as you go on with them, ­they’ll help you have a good winter in the midst of your ­family. One ­thing I noticed in your hand written letter I never noticed before. You dont use a capital I in speaking of yourself. You write i which is awfully wrong. You begin a sentence with a small i too. You ­mustn’t. Our best to you all three Affectionately Papa. One can imagine that the son might have found this off-­putting or confusing. In the first of the paragraphs his ­father writes to him in his capacity as a man who might rightly aspire, as Carol’s letters make clear he did, to publish a book of poetry, while in the second Frost cannot refrain from striking a tone at once distressed and scolding. The distress, we suppose, arises from the fact that Carol’s having minisculed himself may have struck his ­father as symptomatic less of a fault in En­glish usage than of a son already subject to alarming fits of self-­doubt, and implying some diminishment of self as would lead, as

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in fact it ultimately did, to suicide. Yet the correction is, in a sense, uncalled for by the documentary evidence: it is only in handwritten letters that Carol appears as an “i.” In typewritten ones he is always an “I,” which leaves no doubt that Carol knew the protocols. And ­after all, Frost’s own letters are everywhere marked by misspellings and by the most casual use of punctuation. True, his sentences almost never fail in force or miss their mark; he has one of the more distinctive prose styles in American letters. But as regards what textual scholars call “accidentals” (vagaries in punctuation and spelling that are not “substantive” in meaning), Frost was no stickler. Carol’s typed letters are often cleaner in punctuation—­a lbeit, it must be admitted, even more vagrant in spelling—­than his f­ ather’s pen-­and-­i nk ones. And Frost well knew, when he reproached his son for his use of “i” in 1933, how self-­conscious about such ­matters and easily upset by them Carol was. He writes his parents in December 1932 (this letter is typed): As you see I am getting more serious about writing, with an intent to publish. I now have twenty two typewritten with out [sic] any ­m istakes that we can find but that ­doesn’t prove ­there ­aren’t any. ­A fter Lillian has read them over I have found ­mistakes, as Poor [sic] as I am at spelling. I’m trying not to get commercial. Just as soon as one thinks of g­ oing into print it seems the situation tends to change the writing. Three of t­ hose I sent last week or maybe only two, w ­ ere ones I thought w ­ ere correct u ­ ntil I noticed my wrong ways of using till; ’till, ’til, so t­ here may be other m ­ istakes. What with mixing my studies [of poetry], walks down town, writing, and ­house­hold jobs, (not too closly) [sic] I find I am able to do It [sic] with out [sic] upsetting my system. If I do that and not keep too long hours my enthusiasm seems not have many slumps. What to make of this confusion of concerns about writing for the market (getting “commercial”) and worries that being “correct” in a poem has to do with w ­ hether or not to write till, ’till, or ’til? “Slumps” is a many-­shaded word in this context. We may form some idea of the delicacy of balance in Carol’s system from what he next writes: We had a nice quiet Christmas. It’s almost a relief to be quiet. That’s one time that I ­don’t seem to be able to appreciate a ­family gathering. I may learn again yet. I am coming to learn more than I ever thought

Introduction  9

I would, or thought of learning. I feel as though I was getting better able to make my slumps or blues shorter than they used to be. The quiet Christmas spoken of h ­ ere comprised three p­ eople: Carol, Lillian, and their son Prescott. Carol refers, by contrast, to the larger—­and by implication unquiet—­family gatherings the Frosts often had during the Christmas holidays in Vermont (or, ­later, in Key West, South Miami, and San Antonio). At t­ hese gatherings, in addition to Carol, Lillian, and Prescott, ­t here ­were Frost and his wife; Lesley; her ­daughters Elinor and Lesley Lee; Marjorie (­a fter 1934, her widower Willard Fraser and their ­daughter Robin); and, when in Vermont, Irma, John Cone, and their son Jack—­a dozen or more. All this is what Carol had yet to “appreciate.” A straightforward and understandable incapacity, but the way he says it is strange: “I am coming to learn more than I thought I would, or thought of learning.” The difficulty of learning how to appreciate one’s larger f­ amily—­what an odd and telling ­t hing it is for Carol to put it like this, given the paramount importance of education to the Frost ­family, its paterfamilias preeminently. And the roots of the disquiet become clearer as he proceeds: “I feel as though I was getting better able to make my slumps or blues shorter than they used to be.” It is a ­matter of making the blues “shorter.” The heartbreaking fact is that Carol ascribes it all to ­w ill, which is a way of blaming himself for a ­t hing over which he had no control: his moods. And ­here we might see why the iron-­w illed, worldly, fêted f­ ather never, as he ­later confessed, had good answers for the unhappy, rudderless son. Fi­nally, ­there is a sense in which this sentence might be taken alone as more general in implication than it appears to be ­here: “It’s almost a relief to be quiet.” Almost. Relief was not so easy to come by b­ ecause the clamour, one must assume, was as much inside Carol as it was external to him. Then comes a swerve: “Quite often I can control my speed on the typewriter to do perfect work, but not ­today.” How many ­people have difficulty “controlling” their “speed” on “the typewriter”? Carol was a driven man, ­whether at the typewriter or at the wheel of his automobile. His f­ ather marveled at (and worried about) the speed at which Carol drove from coast to coast. Frost writes, again in that September 9, 1933, letter: It cuts down the size of the United States to have someone in our own ­family cross it in a small car on the highway in ten or twelve days the way you do. You go sadly out of the door yard [in South

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Shaftsbury, Vermont] Monday morning and in two days you are in the m ­ iddle of Ohio in four days in the ­m iddle of Illinois, having seen both Niagara and the Worlds Fair, and before we know it are past the place where we hoped to have a letter in the general delivery waiting for you. “You go sadly”—­yes, and at a speed, for 1933, that beggars belief. It takes some endurance in 2020 to drive the more than 2,248 miles from South Shaftsbury, Vermont, to the western verge of New Mexico in eight days on interstate highways. And to do it in 1933, when the miles to go before he slept would have been considerably higher than 2,248, and with an eight-­ year-­old boy riding shotgun, was to court danger.1 Had Carol been in flight from that South Shaftsbury “­family gathering,” and was the sadness at his departure not his but his ­father’s?—as it most certainly was his ­mother’s? To return to Carol at his typewriter: “Quite often I can control my speed on the typewriter to do perfect work,” he writes, “but not t­ oday. T ­ here has just been a bunch of boys playing on a piece or [sic] the larger section of the lawn I have spent all week spading and getting mellow for new seed, which has me riled up so I ­can’t keep my mind on the work. That seems to be the big difficulty, as one learns ones [sic] speed increases thereby making just as many ­m istakes, control of ones nerves is the main ­factor.” The move out of the personal pronoun and into the impersonal (from “I” to “one’s”) is in some way aspirational, as if to suggest the prob­lem ­were general, not peculiar to Carol. And he ends with an apology that evades precisely that point. The prob­lem was not the boys on the lawn, but the fact that Carol was hurrying to get the letter in the day’s mail: “I wrote this letter in some what [sic] of a hurry on the spur of the moment to take down and mail ­today. ­There are a few more m ­ istakes than usual”—­always that concern with perfection, or perfection of a kind, where none is warranted. Then, ­after acknowledging a gift of $25 from Edith Fobes, a ­family friend of de­cades’ standing, he types his envoy and signs his name: “Affictinately [sic] / Carroll.” From the “f ” on a QWERTY keyboard to an “e” is but a step northwest; “affictin” is a strange

1. ​On his way east, Carol got into an automobile accident in Missouri that flattened the trunk of his car and shoved the rear seat into the front. “Luckily Prescott ­wasn’t in it [the back seat],” Carol assured his parents.

Introduction  11

error to make. And stranger still is Carol’s idée fixe that “correctness” of the kind he speaks of in the letter has anything at all to do with poetry. T ­ here is poetry in the way he describes his yardwork, if not always in the poems he wrote: he’d been getting the lawn “mellow for new seed,” a phrase that would not have been out of place in Mountain Interval (1916), his ­father’s third book. And it must be said that his f­ather tried to encourage him in the art.2 Frost writes him in March 1933: Your Stratton3 poem is power­f ul and splendid. You have hammered it close and hard and you have rammed it full of all sorts of t­ hings, observations both of nature and of h ­ uman nature—­and humor and picturesqueness too. And best of all, as Marge4 says, it is no sissy poem such as I get from poetic boys generally. It is written with a man’s vigor and goes down in to a man’s depth . . . ​t he poem is richly attractive, not repulsive and ugly the way so many think they have to describe life now-­a-­days to be honest. You are not always quite clear to me, but I can put up with some obscurity where t­ here is so much solid truth, such condensation and intense feeling. . . . ​I dont quite know for instance what touch ­here and ­there is needed in that remarkably in­ter­est­ing passage about the officers in Stratton. But it is a ­l ittle too hard just as it is—­a ­little too puzzling. . . . ​I n

2. ​As to this m ­ atter, Lawrance Thompson, in his “official” biography, is misleading. Relying on the evidence of Raymond Holden’s unpublished “Reminiscences of Robert Frost” (Holden knew the ­family when they lived in Franconia from 1915 to 1920), he writes: “During the Franconia years . . . ​Mrs. Frost became increasingly critical of her husband b­ ecause she thought he did not help his c­ hildren with their writing as much as he should” (YT, 560). As evidence he quotes Holden, who writes without nuance, long ­a fter the period in question: “Robert did his best to crush the poetic instinct in Carol and Lesley” (quoted in YT, 560). Holden, it should be noted, is not an impartial witness; he had a score to s­ ettle with Frost as to the details of his purchase, from the poet, of the Franconia farm, for which see Thompson (YT, 136–145)—­bearing in mind that by the time he published his biography, Thompson had come to regard Frost with considerable, if confused, animosity. See Donald G. Sheehy “The Poet as Neurotic: The Official Biography of Robert Frost,” American Lit­er­a­ture 58.3 (October 1986): 393–410. 3. ​There are towns named Stratton in both Vermont and Colorado, but the place evoked in the poem (on the evidence of what Frost quotes from it) indicates that it was about the town in Vermont. 4. ​Marjorie. Carol’s was not the only f­ amily name Frost spelled variously.

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straightening it out, t­ here would be danger of losing some of the charming twists and turns and kinks. I shouldnt want to lose t­ hose of course. How I like the smooth clarity and high sentiment of “The place for me” “And me” and from ­there on a way.

I think the best of all may be the passage

replenished clean And cold from mountain streams that ever hear Proceeding ­waters calling from below.

Well you are getting a firmer grip on the art now in e­ very way—­ from rhyming up to packing in the ideas. . . . ​It is a question how you can arrange your life to give yourself further opportunities to develope [sic] your poetry. Y ­ ou’re sure, are you, that you want to come east this summer? ­You’ve got a lot out of your enforced freedom from heavy farming. Two t­ hings are notable. First, the strongly gendered terms in which Frost praises the poem, and by extension the poet. This is a man’s poem, and a man’s art.5 Second, the delicacy with which the ­father attempts to determine what is best for Carol. Is it ­really best that he break off his work in poetry to “come east” for a gathering? Or o ­ ught Carol park his car and remain in Monrovia? Frost seems to won­der (tacitly, of course) w ­ hether living among the larger ­family was in Carol’s best interests, presumably regarding his ­mental health and happiness as much as his poetry. The letters exchanged while Carol and his ­family lived in Monrovia often touch on ­whether they ­ought to sell the place in South Shaftsbury. At times Frost seems to suggest that this would be the natu­ral ­thing for Carol to do, and if he expresses no forthright enthusiasm at the prospect, he ­isn’t notably unenthusiastic ­either. As it happened, Carol ­d idn’t sell the ­house and moved back into it in 1934, once Lillian regained her health. Thereafter the f­ ather’s counsel to the son was to hold fast to the heavy farming, while writing whenever the work, in some way, occasioned it: “Your true way,” Frost tells his son, “is straight ahead as you are g­ oing in farm work and as it affects you in thought and emotion. You are bound to achieve a difference from other writers if you can stick to both the farm work and the po5. ​Frost himself often expressed worries that his vocation was gendered feminine.

Introduction  13

etic art. Anyway that is my opinion. The two ­things firmly kept should be good fun and should land you somewhere . . . ​the best life of all I should think would be a life of business and the f­amily expressing itself in one art or another.” In “one art or another”: maybe in poetry, maybe not, but in any case not so as to make a living out of art. Y ­ ou’re a farmer, Carol, and a good one; but keep your head clear as to poetry. Take all the letters from f­ ather to son together, and that is what they say. In any case, for Carol Frost, “controlling his speed” amounts to controlling himself. He fairly “races”—in his thoughts, on the road, at his desk, and at (or away from) ­family gatherings. But Carol was much more a farmer than his f­ather ever had been, or indeed was ever capable of being, as his ­father well knew.6 He had a touch with animals that his f­ ather deeply admired. This must explain why, in the following letter to Carol, written on September 18, 1933, all uneasiness seems to drop from Frost’s prose, as he writes as thrilling and straightforward and heartbreaking a passage as one ­w ill find anywhere outside the letters concerning Marjorie: You manage to cross the w ­ hole continent without making any ­m istake. And I cant stay in one place three weeks without making one of the worst m ­ istakes I ever made. I let Winnie out when I 6. ​In After ­noon Neighbors (New York: Macmillan, 1934) a book framed out of his diaries, Hamlin Garland describes a July 30, 1926, visit to the Stone House in South Shaftsbury. At that date Carol and Lillian owned it, though Frost and Elinor still lived t­ here. He writes: “In his visits to us Robert Frost has had much to say of his ‘farm,’ and though I had taken this to mean a suburban garden plot, I was mildly curious to see him in his country habitat rather than in Amherst or New York City” (336–337). And so he did, ­a fter speaking at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Middlebury College president Paul Dwight Moody drove Garland down to the Frost place. “The ­house was low and not very large,” writes Garland, “and Robert confessed that it was overfilled at the moment with his son’s ­family and his own. ‘Our farm is a very real farm and my son is a sure-­enough farmer,’ he asserted as he showed us about the place” (337). And in one of the first letters Frost wrote his son ­a fter Carol moved to Monrovia—­a letter full of farm talk—he says: “Before I forget it: a nice t­ hing you could do for the Shaws would be to write them out very carefully and clearly all you know and think they should know about raising cultivating h ­ andling and selling sweet peas. I can see they are inclined to go on with your business. Make it s­ imple and easy to follow. Emphasize the impor­tant ­t hings. Tell them about the rotation you planned and about the brush string and wire supports. I tried to tell them a ­little but I didnt know enough.” Frost refers to Bennington real estate agent Walter H. Shaw (1883–1934) and his wife Esther (1896–1982). Walter comes up again in Frost’s October 30, 1932, letter to Carol.

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shouldnt have in the late eve­ning when the porcupines are all round the ­house. She went for one and got her face so full of quills ­there seemed nothing for it but to cloroform [sic] her to get them out. She bit so and suffered when we tried it at first without the cloroform. But I over did the dose and killed her. That spoils this place forever. I s­ hall never come ­here again. I ­shall miss her too much at the Gulley to want to linger ­there very long this fall. Another year I ­shall have forgotten the bloody and fatal night I had over her. It was a lot my fault. I lost my head seeing her suffer and e­ very body suffer on her account. We did our best to try to get veterinaries. They wouldnt come in the night—­not for p­ eople they didnt know. I can see now that I should have roped her ­whole body to a board and put her through without the cloroform. I wish you had been h ­ ere to help me judge. It was a bad ­thing. ­ ere the ­father leans on, and fully yields to, the authority of the son, who H would have known when not to let Winnie out, and what to do about ­those quills, and how rightly to dose the chloroform. All of which speaks so well of Carol’s best qualities, as a man and as a farmer, that it must have filled “Papa and Mama” with apprehension to see their son stake so much on the writing of poetry. As noted already Carol did return to Vermont from California, and to the Stone House his ­father had given him when he married Lillian Labatt in 1923. This was in 1934: he took up farming again right where he’d begun it. ­There he remained ­until, in October 1940, he burned his poems, retrieved a deer ­rifle he had once given his wife, and turned it on himself.

4. On December 17, 1934, Frost wrote his Amherst colleague Otto Manthey-­Zorn from Key West, where Frost and Elinor had gone to winter: “I am writing this on a nice piece of driftwood. I dont mean sitting astride it in the Gulf of Mexico. It is not as bad as that and if it ­were I shouldnt have to worry much with the w ­ hole US Govt concentrated h ­ ere in force to rescue any body in any kind of trou­ble whatsoever. So help me I didnt know the safety I was getting into in coming to Key West. Elinor w ­ ill absolve me of having got her involved more or less personally in the New Deal on purpose. But it is a portentous fact that I have brought her to the pet salvation proj­ect of her President and mine. It’s the damndest joke yet. T ­ here’s fatality in it.” Key West was in the

Introduction  15

fond embrace of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Two-­ thirds of its inhabitants w ­ ere on relief, the local government was bankrupt, and the island’s infrastructure was in shambles. On July 2, Florida governor David Scholtz had declared a “civil emergency” and transferred authority to FERA, u ­ nder the direction of its regional administrator, Julius F. Stone. Stone appropriated more than $1 million in FERA funds to revitalize the town and attract capital. Frost had never liked Roo­se­velt or the New Deal, but Elinor hated both with a ferocity unmitigated by the humor Frost often brought to bear on the subject. When FDR was elected in 1932, Elinor began keeping a box labeled “­T hings Against Roo­se­velt,” in which she gathered newspaper clippings.7 By the time the ­couple reached Key West, Elinor’s hatred of the president and his officials was perfect. She wrote Ethel Manthey-­Zorn in December 1934: “[The] U.S. Government took [the island] over last July. So, if you please, I am living ­u nder a ‘dictator’ who is Administrator of the Federal Relief of the State of Florida”—­Julius Stone. “He wears white shorts and has very fuzzy legs” and “­w ill do as well as anyone, I suppose, in spending U.S. millions” (Katz, 145–146). When FDR won a second term in the landslide election of 1936, she despaired, writing (again to Ethel Manthey-­Zorn): “What a horror of falsity and deceit Roo­se­velt is proving himself! Not to my surprise, however. If he gets his way I am g­ oing to move to Canada” (Katz, 151). Frost opposed and ridiculed FDR and the New Deal, but ­there was some daylight between him and his wife. Nothing FDR did or proposed to do ever much troubled him personally, and his response in both letters and poems was rather more satirical than doctrinaire. To him, the m ­ atter, as David Evans 8 has pointed out, was one of “security,” as he indicated in the letter to Otto Manthey-­Zorn quoted above: “I shouldnt have to worry much with the w ­ hole US Govt concentrated ­here in force to rescue any body in any kind of trou­ble whatsoever. So help me I didnt know the safety I was getting into in coming to Key West.” In a preface to Threescore (1936), a memoir by the Vermont poet and radical Sarah Cleghorn (an adherent of the New Deal), Frost writes: “Security, security! We run in all directions for security in the game of Pussy-­ wants-­a-­corner.” He calls Cleghorn “Saint, poet—­and reformer.” “­There is,” 7. ​See Sandra Katz, Elinor Frost: A Poet’s Wife (Westfield, MA: Westfield State College, 1988): 139. 8. ​See his “Frost and the ­Great Depression,” in Robert Frost in Context, ed. Mark Richardson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014): 171–179.

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he adds, “more high explosive for righ­teousness in the least ­little line of Cleghorns’s poem about the ­children working in the mill where they could look out the win­dow at their grown-up employers playing golf than in all the prose of our radical bound-­boys pressed together u ­ nder a weight of several atmospheres of revolution.9 The reformer has to be taken with the rest of it,” he says. “And why not? Some of us have developed a habit of saying we ­can’t stand a reformer. But we d­ on’t mean it except where the reformer is at the same time a raw convert to the latest scheme for saving the soul or the state.” Then the preface takes a strange turn, tarnishing progressive social policies by association with the Demo­cratic Party, at that date still the party of white supremacy, northern, liberal New Dealers notwithstanding: Just ­after the ­g reat Demo­cratic victory of 1932 I made occasion to bring the election into conversation with a Negress who had come to our door soliciting alms for a school for Negroes in the deep south. “My ­people ­don’t very much like the Demo­crats in power again,” she said. “Surely you a­ ren’t afraid of them anymore!” “I ­wouldn’t just say we w ­ eren’t afraid of them. You w ­ ouldn’t think t­ here was much they could do. But t­ here’s small t­ hings an outsider ­wouldn’t notice.” She was a poor creature, poorly clothed, but she touched her wrists with a pretty pathos for this: “­Here a shackle, t­ here a shackle, and before we know it w ­ e’re back in slavery.” “Not while Sarah Cleghorn lives in Manchester, Vermont,” I answered. Then I went on to explain that Sarah Cleghorn was an abolitionist as of 1861. (CPPP, 750–751) Let’s suppose this encounter ­really did happen—­and in fall 1932, some months before the new administration took office. Frost’s “Negress” would have had reason enough to fear the Demo­cratic Party, which had won the White House

9. ​Cleghorn’s “The Golf Links,” published in the New York Tribune in 1915: The golf links lie so near the mill That almost e­ very day The laboring ­children can look out And see the men at play.

Introduction  17

only two times since 1856.10 The co­a li­t ion FDR carried to victory included southern racists—­Georgia Senator Richard Russell and his ilk—­whom northern liberals had to placate by excluding African Americans from most New Deal programs.11 The equation left implicit is that such “security” as the New Deal afforded was something worse than paternalism—­a paternalism that shaded off, by degrees (a shackle ­here and a shackle ­there) into “slavery.” This, to put it charitably, was disingenuous of Frost; doubly so if, as one must won­der, the encounter with the “Negress” was in­ven­ted for the purpose. But it is of a piece with the dialectical view often ­adopted by Frost that any philosophical or po­liti­cal position contains and brings out its “cancellation”;12 and that we are forever oscillating between competing and incompatible claims (justice / mercy, regimentation / libertarianism, evil / good, militancy / pacifism, internationalism / isolationism, and so on)—or, in this instance, the claims of racial and economic justice. In closing the essay Frost distinguishes his position from Cleghorn’s: A phi­los­o­pher may worry about a tendency that, if run out to its logical conclusion, might ruin all; but he worries only till he can make out in the confusion the par­tic­u ­lar c­ ounter tendency that is ­going to collide with it to the cancellation of both. Formidable equa-

10. ​Technically three times, but by only two men: Grover Cleveland (who served two nonconsecutive terms: 1885–1889 and 1893–1897) and Woodrow Wilson (in office from 1913 to 1921); the first was a New Yorker and fiscal conservative who accorded African Americans benign neglect, the second an avowed white supremacist. 11. ​See Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial In­equality in Twentieth-­Century Amer­i­ca (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005). Not ­u ntil the United States’ entry into the war necessitated full employment on relatively fair terms did A. Philip Randolph and other civil rights activists prevail upon FDR to issue, in 1941, executive order 8802, mandating nondiscrimination in all industries ­u nder federal contract. And Frost’s “Negress” ­isn’t “soliciting alms for a school for Negroes in the deep south” for nothing (this detail is the best evidence that the encounter actually happened): southern states deliberately underfunded them, the federal government had long since declined to intervene, so the m ­ atter was left largely to charity. 12. ​One of the poems in A Further Range (1936) is titled “Evil Tendencies Cancel”: ­ ill the blight end the chestnut? W The farmers rather guess not. It keeps smoldering at the roots And sending up new shoots Till another parasite ­Shall come to end the blight.

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tions often resolve into no more information than that nothing equals nothing. It is a common question: What has become of the alarming old tendency to come to grief from each one’s minding his own business? Oh, if I remember rightly, that bumped head on into the tendency to come to grief from minding each other’s business. The phi­los­o­pher values himself on the inconsistencies he can contain by main force. They are two ends of a strut that keeps his mind from collapsing. He may take too much satisfaction in having once more remarked the two-­endedness of t­ hings. To a saint and a reformer like Sarah Cleghorn the ­great importance is not to get hold of both ends, but of the right end. She has to be partisan and even a trifle grim. I heard a clergyman say she is the kind we need most of to get the world forward.13 (CPPP, 751–752) Frost sought to grasp both ends of the “strut,” whereas reformers held fast only to the “good” end, or to what they took to be the good end. To Frost ­there is no “good” end. Sometimes—­but not consistently—­this leads to outright cynicism about the po­liti­cal proj­ect of Amer­i­ca, as in “In Divés Dive”: It is late at night and still I am losing, But still I am steady and unaccusing. As long as the Declaration guards My right to be equal in number of cards, It is nothing to me who runs the dive. Let’s have a look at another five. (CPPP, 283) 13. ​You can hear “a clergyman” say so about another reformer—­the abolitionist w ­ idow of a Union Army soldier—in Frost’s poem “The Black Cottage,” collected in North of Boston: She had some art of hearing and yet not Hearing the latter wisdom of the world. White was the only race she ever knew. Black she had scarcely seen, and yellow never. But how could they be made so very unlike By the same hand working in the same stuff? She had supposed the war de­c ided that. What are you ­going to do with such a person? Strange how such innocence gets its own way. I ­shouldn’t be surprised if in this world It ­were the force that would at last prevail.

Introduction  19

Few poems get so much of Amer­i­ca into so few lines, nor with such wile. Amer­i­ca is a cheap gambling “dive,” the ­house always wins, and talk of the Declaration of In­de­pen­dence is a smokescreen. But as with the best of the more serious lyr­ics in A Further Range it is hard to know exactly where Frost stands in this “dive,” and the reason is that, like the phi­los­o­pher in the preface to Threescore, he’d got hold of both ends of the “strut.” Sure, Amer­i­ca had been a g­ amble. Calvin Coo­lidge and Herbert Hoover’s laissez-­faire policies, “run out to [their] logical conclusion,” had “ruined all,” and had proved self-­canceling in what succeeded them: FDR’s turn ­toward a planned economy. Sure: “Let’s have a look at another five,” i.e., at a “new deal,” but with no hope seriously entertained of the fresh hand being a winning one. This brings us to the introduction Macmillan, with a dentist’s effort, managed to extract from Frost in late summer 1935 for Edwin Arlington Robinson’s swan song, the book-­length po­liti­cal poem King Jasper. It is remarkable in that Frost manages never to mention the poem he is ostensibly introducing. In the draft he first sent Macmillan he chose not to mention any of Robinson’s poems. What he first delivered was a defense of “old ways to be new,” which he associated with his and Robinson’s work, against “new ways to be new,” which he associated with high modernism (as it is sometimes called). He names no names, but the main suspects would be T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. He sent an early draft of the essay to Louis Untermeyer with a mixture of grumbles and caveats on August 14, 1935: “Macmillans . . . ​may not like it. If not it w ­ ill save me the trou­ble of deciding what I ­ought to charge for it. I hope you’ll like it a l­ ittle. ­T here is some high some low and some Jack (Frost) in it. Game (by which I choose to mean ‘evaluation’) is purposely left out.” He was right. Macmillan ­d idn’t like it and asked that he revise and lengthen it, and that he actually quote, and say a few words about, Robinson’s poetry—in a word, that he be a ­l ittle more game for the sake of his ­g reat New ­England rival. He failed, at least as Robinson’s literary executor, Louis Ledoux, saw it. Ledoux wrote George Brett, president of Macmillan, on September 30: “I must say that Frost’s introduction to King Jasper seems to me about as bad as it could be. . . . ​Nearly ninety ­percent of what Frost has written seems to me an expression of his own personal ‘grievances’ against the pre­sent economic, social and financial regime of the Government, and his irritability with modernistic trends in con­temporary verse.” But the sales department at Macmillan thought an introduction by Frost would help promote the book. Commerce prevailed—­but on one condition: that Frost remove a

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mocking reference to the New Deal.14 Quoting from Robinson’s “The Mill”, Frost had written: “­There are no millers any more.” It might be an edict of the New Deal against pro­cessors (as we now dignify them).15 But no, it is of wider application. It is a sinister jest at the expense of all investors of life or capital. The market shifts and leaves them with a car-­barn full of dead trolley cars. At twenty I commit myself to a life of religion. Now, if religion should go out of fashion in twenty-­five years, ­there would I be, forty-­five years old, unfitted for any­thing e­ lse and too old to learn anything ­else. It seems immoral to have to bet on such high ­t hings as lives of art, business, or the church. But in effect, we have no alternative. None but an all-­w ise and all-­powerful government could take the responsibility of keeping us out of gambling or of insuring us against loss once we w ­ ere in. (CPPP, 746–747) It seems “immoral” to take the ­gamble out of life? Many would say it seems immoral not to. We find ­here, as in the Cleghorn essay, and in several letters ­toward the end of this volume,16 evidence to support Richard Poirier’s indictment of Frost’s “most disabling intellectual weakness”: “he could look into nature but was blind to social systems.”17 But ­there is, for the most part, nothing blind, nothing bluff and incurious, in Frost’s sense of the “two-­ endedness” of all ­human enterprise. Consider the remarkable letter Frost wrote Louis Untermeyer on November  25, 1936, shortly a­ fter FDR been reelected: The national mood is humanitarian. Nobly so. I ­wouldn’t take it away from them. I am content to let it go at one philosophical observation: isnt it a poetical strangeness that while the world was 14. ​For a detailed account of the composition of Frost’s introduction, see CPRF, 282–284. 15. ​In the 1935 published text, this sentence reads: “It might be an edict of some power against industrialism” (xii). It is not clear w ­ hether Frost made this change, or simply allowed the editors at Macmillan to make it for him. What­ever the case, we have no evidence that he was unaware (prior to publication) that it had, in fact, been made. 16. ​See, for example, the letter to Willard Fraser of January 22, 1936. 17. ​Poirier, Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977): 231.

Introduction  21

g­ oing full blast on the Darwinian meta­phors of evolution, survival values and the Devil take the hindmost, a polemical Jew in exile was working up the meta­phor of the state’s being like a ­family to displace them from mind and give us a new figure to live by! Marx had the strength not to be overawed by the meta­phor in vogue. Life is like ­battle. But so is it also like shelter. Apparently we are now ­going to die fighting to make it a secure shelter. The model is the ­family at its best. At the height of the Darwinian meta­phor, writers like Shaw and Butler ­were found to go the length of saying even the f­ amily within was strife and perhaps the worst strife of all. We are all toadies to the fash­ion­able meta­phor of the hour. G ­ reat is he who imposes the meta­phor. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. Except ye become as l­ittle ­c hildren, ­under a good f­ ather and m ­ other! I’m not ­going to let the shift from one meta­phor to another worry me. You’ll notice the shift has to be made rather abruptly. ­There are no logical steps from one to the other. ­There is no logical connection. Frost’s observation about the oscillation between the two extremes of Marx and Darwin strikes hard. H ­ ere he is at his best and most concessive, as regards FDR’s New Deal and its promise to take the g­ amble out of life, or at any rate mitigate the injustice of so many of its outcomes. Under­lying his contention that Darwin and Marx w ­ ere the most consequential poets of the nineteenth ­century—­the greatest imposers of “metaphor”—­are arguments he had made six years e­ arlier in “Education by Poetry,” an address delivered before the Amherst Alumni Council in 1930: “I have wanted in late years to go further and further in making meta­phor the ­whole of thinking. I find someone now and then to agree with me that all thinking, except mathematical thinking, is meta­phorical, or all thinking except scientific thinking. The mathematical might be difficult for me to bring in, but the scientific is easy enough.” Frost then makes a very high claim for poetry: “I do not think anybody ever knows the discreet use of meta­phor, his own and other ­people’s, the discreet h ­ andling of meta­phor, ­unless he has been properly educated in poetry” (CPPP, 719–720). Frost was quite at ease with contraries; and at ease with what now might be called a species of anti-­foundationalism—­a pragmatic ease with it. Marx may or may not have gotten his meta­phor wrong (life is, or should be, like shelter, and politics ­ought to provide it); but Frost is willing to let t­ hose who f­ avor the meta­phor, or who take the idea under­lying

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it seriously, go their way: “The national mood,” as FDR’s remarkable victory showed, “is humanitarian. Nobly so. I ­wouldn’t take it away from them.” Frost could, then, play the “tease” with FDR and the New Deal, as his wife, for the most part, could not. Even the most stridently po­liti­cal poems in A Further Range are touched by satire, ambiguity, or both. The playful epithet he gives FDR in the letter to Untermeyer—­“ his Rosiness”—­a llows for the suggestion that what troubled Frost most about the New Deal was the optimism that so colored its motivating belief: namely, the idea that social arrangements ­were, if not perfectible, at least nearly so. Frost writes in his March 1935 open letter to the Amherst Student: “All ages of the world are bad—­a g­ reat deal worse anyway than Heaven. If they ­weren’t the world might just as well be Heaven at once and have it over with. One can safely say a­ fter from six to thirty thousand years of experience that the evident design is a situation h ­ ere in which it ­w ill always be about equally hard to save your soul. What­ever pro­g ress may be taken to mean, it c­ an’t mean making the world any easier a place in which to save your soul.” The world neither can nor ever w ­ ill be made much “easier,” “secure,” or “sheltered” than it was in 1935. Why? ­Because its “background is hugeness and confusion shading away from where we stand into black and utter chaos” (CPPP, 739–740). Many of the poems in A Further Range are both troubled and troubling: “Lost in Heaven,” “Desert Places,” “Leaves and Flowers,” “They ­Were Welcome to Their Belief,” “The Strong Are Saying Nothing,” “Neither Out Far Nor in Deep,” “Design,” “Provide, Provide” (perhaps the darkest of them all), and even the light-­verse satire of “Departmental.” Would anyone suppose that the author of “Desert Places” might find congenial a president who averred, in his first inaugural address, that we have “nothing to fear but fear itself—­nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance”?18 No. Nameless terror is Frost’s bailiwick. And “lonely as it is” just generally speaking on earth, that loneliness ­ ill be more lonely ere it ­w ill be less— W A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no h­ uman race is. 18. ​Franklin D. Roo­se­velt, inaugural address, ­Great Speeches (New York: Dover Publications, 1999): 29.

Introduction  23

I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. (CPPP, 269). The poem privatizes “nameless fear,” even as FDR sought to dispel it by socializing national losses. Frost remarks, in a January 10, 1935, letter to Untermeyer, written from Key West: the “­g reat object” of the New Dealers “is to restore the ­people to their civic virtue. When in history has any power ever achieved that?” The saving grace of Frost’s response to the New Deal, in letters and verse, was to hold always in view the essential permanence of suffering, and the hard limits of ­human reason per se. And ­there was then, and is now, no mere modicum of danger in any government’s attempt to regiment the life of its citizens, to what­ever happy end. It is salutary to have, among our best poets, so anti-­systematic a thinker as Robert Frost—­a poet who wrote of the value of waste, of the good that comes of refusing to go to market; and who wrote not simply of allowing resources, h ­ uman and other­wise, to remain “unharvested,” but of asking, as if in prayer (he was writing in the 1930s) that “much stay out of our stated plan, / Apples or something forgotten and left, / So smelling their sweetness would be no theft” (CPPP, 277). Always that vagueness: something—­whether it does or ­doesn’t love a wall, or lies forever at the bottom of a well, just out of sight.

1

The “Big Book” Collected Poems (1930) January 1929–­October 1930 I want to tell you how perfect a book I think you have made for me. I wouldnt have a t­ hing dif­fer­ent in the make-up, what­e ver I might want to blot or alter in the content. . . . ​I ­tremble and am never too happy at being exposed to the public with another book. I hope this one ­won’t be badly received. I should like to know in general, though it is better for me to shut my eyes and ears to the details. —­Robert Frost to Richard Thornton, October 31, 1930

[To Wade Van Dore. This letter has been mutilated, and parts of it are torn away (rendering one sheet unreadable); in a few instances, names have been cut out, and it is not clear ­whether or not entire sheets are missing. The redactions ­were made at RF’s request; see his November 18, 1929, letter to Van Dore. The topic of the letter is the prospect of Van Dore gathering his poems into a volume for publication (which he did in 1930, u­ nder the title Far Lake) and advice he had been getting about the m ­ atter from Lawrence H. Conrad (1898–1982), a novelist and instructor at the University of Michigan.1 See Van Dore’s somewhat dif­fer­ent version of the letter in Life of the Hired Man (Dayton, OH: Wright State University Press, 1986): 85–86. What follows is the best reconstruction of the letter we can now offer. Ellipses enclosed within brackets indicate text Van Dore physically excised. Text within brackets is pre­sent in Life of the Hired Man but absent from the manuscript. Date derived from postmark (the envelope survives and is addressed to Van Dore where he lived at 3335 Scovel Place in Detroit). ALS. BU.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [January 1, 1929] [. . .] [Man can be at once religious and unspiritual. You have spiritual beginnings to refer to constantly in what­ever predicament of success or unsuccess

1. ​Van Dore explains: “When Frost asked me to destroy this letter, I obeyed only to the extent of cutting it to pieces with scissors and burning all the parts relating directly to the man I still considered my friend [i.e., Conrad]. ­There ­were so many fine ­t hings in it I could not bring myself to destroy ­t hose also” (Life of the Hired Man, 85). Van Dore includes in his transcription two sentences not pre­sent in the manuscripts held at Boston University. We place them ­here in brackets. He also excludes sentences pre­sent in the surviving manuscript, but which we include h ­ ere; ­t hese concern Conrad. RF met Conrad during his first stint at Michigan (1921–1923). Mentioned also on one sheet of the letter so torn as to be un-­reconstructable is University of Michigan professor James Hanford, a scholar of Milton with whom Van Dore had become acquainted.

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you find yourself. You] w ­ ill always act with reference to the spirit. I found you in your devotions you remember. Then it was to Gandhi and Thoreau.2 Let it always be to something outside of yourself for safety from the vanities of art and society. Then I’ll like you and at least have hopes of your soul which is more to me than your poetry. One looks amused into the unfathomable vulgarity of ambitious l­ittle natures. I have often said that my definition of style would be the way a man takes himself.3 [. . .] He4 is right enough in saying the time must come when you must come to grips with your fate. (Though of course it never came for Emily Dickinson.)5 I want you to find a vent. Dont you get up any ­t hing in your mind about my frowning severely on g­ oing to market with poetry. Havent I written it out: the trial by market every­thing must come to?6 Only t­ here is a way to go and a way not to go remember. [. . .] My upbringing was gentle.7 I won­der if it may not come down to this: [Conrad]8 might tell you how to “break in” as a novelist or as a poet of the value of a novelist. He seems to have no idea of what it is to live poetically breathing poetry.9 The t­ hing I find I have to plan for is to be so far ahead with my poetry that I cant feel the market backing up into any poem I am writing at. [. . .]

2. ​See RF to Van Dore, June 24, 1922, LRF-2, 257–258; see also YT, 285. 3. ​For a fuller exposition of this idea, see RF to Untermeyer, March 10, 1924 (LRF-2, 401–402 or CPPP, 702–704). The implication ­here—­a nd what RF warns Van Dore about— is that con­spic­u­ous displays of ambition are “vulgar” and that this vulgarity ­w ill be registered (however indirectly) in style. 4. ​Conrad. 5. ​Van Dore omits this sentence. The parentheses are RF’s. 6. ​In “Christmas Trees,” collected first in MI. See CPPP, 104. 7. ​A reference to his remarkable advent (1913–1915) and subsequent c­ areer as a published poet, not to his difficult childhood. Van Dore omits this sentence. 8. ​Our addition. 9. ​Compare RF’s remarks about his wife Elinor in a letter to Louis Untermeyer dated November 7, 1917: “She seems to have the same weakness I have for a life that goes rather poetically. . . . ​It i­sn’t what might be expected to come from such a life—­poetry that she is a­ fter. And it ­isn’t that she doesnt think I am a good poet ­either. She always knew I was a good poet, but that was between her and me and t­ here I think she would have liked it if it had remained at least ­u ntil we ­were dead.” See LRF-1, 588–589.

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I often think of the rather long poem you once wrote for me.10 Dont you ever have a subject for a philosophical descriptive narrative poem of some length. Wasnt t­ here ever an episode down t­ here north of Superior you felt like turning into a poetic significance.11 I wish you could show me something like that soon. Then we could see what we could do with the short ones in a first book. I d­ on’t want you pared down to the quick. [. . .] I’ve heard publishers say they like virgin material for a book. You must see it your own way. I think you have a book written. It would be comforting to me if we foresaw your next book. I’d like to have some notion of how the second was ­going to differ in some outward aspect at least from your first. I believe you said your first book would be called Far Lake.12 Suppose we plan for it next spring.13 Keep writing to me this winter. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To James Lukens McConaughy (1887–1948), president of Wesleyan University. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont January 2 1929 Dear Mr McConaughy: I must of course stay till Wednesday so as to have the chance to read some of my new poems in Chapel and see something of your other visitors.14 I wish 10. ​Van Dore begins his transcription ­here, but in fact this section of the letter appears on its last sheet (at the bottom of which RF signs off). 11. ​Van Dore, who quit formal schooling a­ fter ninth grade, spent a good deal of time roughing it in the forests of northern Michigan. Van Dore did eventually write a long poem more or less of the kind RF speaks of h ­ ere. See RF to Van Dore, July 28, 1936. 12. ​The book bore that name when it was published by Coward-­McCann (New York) in 1930. 13. ​They did; see RF to Van Dore, March 7, 1929. During the late spring and summer Van Dore lived and worked on the Gully Farm, which RF purchased in December 1928 for $5,000. The place needed considerable renovation, and RF offered to pay Van Dore for what work he chose to do and gave him the use of the h ­ ouse other­w ise as a place to work on his poetry. 14. ​A n article in the Hartford Courant indicates that RF opened the George Slocum Bennett Foundation lecture series at Wesleyan on Monday, February 11. On Wednesday the thirteenth he gave a reading in Wesleyan’s Memorial Chapel.

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I might stay longer. But t­ here is the obligation to Amherst to be thought of. I can make up the three days I s­ hall be away, but three days is as much as it ­ought to be. Thank Mrs McConaughy for the invitation to live with you at the Mansion.15 You may be sure I ­shall enjoy that. This ­w ill be my first time at Wesleyan. I look forward to it with plea­sure. Snow tells me Woodbridge is away. I ­shall miss him.16 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton (1888–1977), head of the trade department at Henry Holt and Com­pany. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont January 3 1929 Dear Thornton: The certificates came t­ oday.17 I did not fail to remark the sentimental and honorary value they had extra in both being numbered one. You may remember what I said last spring about feeling the need of some admixture of friendship in my business relations.18 You and I and the firm of Henry Holt and Com­pany have come a long way together since then. We are off for the groves of Academe Monday. Amherst (where we ­shall be glad to see you at any time) ­w ill be our address till April 1st. ­A fter that we ­shall be coming back to a newly boughten19 farm, 150 acres, 50 woodland, ­here at South Shaftsbury. (Of course it is much more impor­tant that you should visit us ­there and bring your f­ amily with you than that you should visit us at Amherst. T ­ here ­will be all the pastoral details to show you of rough mountain

15. ​Elizabeth Townsend Rogers McConaughy; “the Mansion” must be the Coite-­ Hubbard House, official residence of the president of Wesleyan University since 1904. 16. ​Wilbert Snow (1884–1977), American poet and academic, professor of English at Wesleyan since 1921, l­ater lieutenant-­governor of Connecticut, 1945–1946; Homer Edwards Woodbridge (1882–1958), professor of En­g lish lit­er­a­ture at Wesleyan since 1920. For further remarks about the visit, see the February 13, 1929, letter to Melcher. 17. ​Stock certificates in Henry Holt and Com­pany (SL, 352). 18. ​When RF was renegotiating his contract with Holt and arranging for publication of WRB. 19. ​A n archaism RF sometimes favored, as in the last stanza of “Provide, Provide” (CPPP, 280).

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land flowing with springs and an old old cottage full of fireplaces and half-­ hinges.20) But it w ­ ill be rather indirectly we come home by way of the University of ­Virginia, Pittsburgh College for ­Women,21 some Nashville club22 and prob­ably Chicago University (William Vaughan Moody Foundation)23 and maybe one or two more colleges. I must give you a list of dates as soon as I know them definitely. I may go to Dartmouth for one of my stays this year. Lankes tells me he has just been given an exhibition up ­there in which I figured to a certain extent.24 The latest bulletin is that Benchley is ­r unning out ahead of me.25 ­There is only one t­ hing to be done. You must speed me up. You have me g­ oing now about as fast as is good for me to go. The one t­ hing to do is to slow up Benchley. A good jockey knows how to “pull” a h ­ orse that isnt wanted to win. The two copies of the Updyke [sic] Special for my ­children havent arrived.26 I had the bill that seemed to show they ­were sent all right. I must have a ­couple. Sincerely yours, Robert Frost

[To Henrietta Reeves (1871–1968), a patron of the arts in Nashville and amateur poet. ALS. Tennessee State Library.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont January 6 1929 Dear Mrs Reeves At last the ­thing begins to take shape. It now looks as if it would [be] best for me to come to you from Chicago and go on from Nashville to my engage20. ​Half-­h inges are H-­L hinges (see the August 12, 1929, letter to Untermeyer). 21. ​Pennsylvania College for ­Women, now Chatham University (in Pittsburgh). 22. ​The Ladies of the Centennial Club in Nashville, where RF gave a reading on April 11, 1929. 23. ​William Vaughn Moody (1869–1910), American poet, deceased husband of RF’s friend Harriet Moody. He had been a professor of En­g lish at the University of Chicago at the time of his death, aged 41, in 1910. 24. ​J. J. Lankes had indeed been given an exhibition—­a nd realized (as he reported to RF in a December 27, 1928, letter) $200 in sales. 25. ​Robert Charles Benchley (1889–1945), essayist, whose 20,000 Leagues U ­ nder the Sea, or David Copperfield had been published by Holt in 1928. 26. ​A ­l imited edition of WRB designed by Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860–1941), founder of the Merrymount Press.

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ments at Pittsburg [sic] and the University of V ­ irginia. The 12th would be the right day. Then I could have Saturday with you for the luncheon and seeing the city. It w ­ ill be a g­ reat plea­sure to meet Ransom and Davidson whose work I have so much admired.27 I had an in­ter­est­i ng talk with another of your Fugitives Allen Tate in London the other day.28 I suppose the reading w ­ ill be in the eve­n ing. If so please protect me from any dinner party before it, however small or informal. Anything a­ fter the reading and all day Saturday! ­Will you let me know if April 12th ­w ill do? Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer (1885–1977), American poet, anthologist, critic, and editor. In SL, Lawrance Thompson cut all but the last paragraph (though Untermeyer had previously published the letter in its entirety in RFLU). ALS. LoC.]

South Shaftsbury Vt January 6 1929 Dear Louis: I didnt half see you in New York.29 I’m still sad and unsatisfied about you.30 I stick to it that talk does no good. It isnt talking with you I feel the need of but just being round with you till the pre­sent obliterates the past. Nothing I 27. ​John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974) and Donald Davidson (1893–1968) ­were American poets both living in Nashville. Ransom taught at Vanderbilt University and Davidson edited the book page of the Nashville Tennessean. 28. ​A llen Tate (1899–1979) was another poet associated with the Fugitives, a group that formed around Ransom at Vanderbilt in the early 1920s and included Davidson, Merrill Moore, and Robert Penn Warren. All contributed work to the Fugitive, a literary magazine that ran from 1922 u ­ ntil 1925. In 1928, Tate had traveled to London and Paris and apparently met with RF (when he, Elinor, and Marjorie made their trip to France and the UK in the summer and fall of 1928). 29. ​­A fter returning from ­England, RF briefly visited Untermeyer in New York City in early December 1928. 30. ​­Because of Untermeyer’s marital history (which perplexed and angered RF in the late 1920s). Untermeyer married the poet Jean Starr (1886–1970) in 1906, divorced her in 1926, married poet V ­ irginia Moore (1903–1993) the same year, divorced her in November 1928 in order to remarry Jean—­whom he would divorce again in 1933 to marry Esther Antin (1895–1983), an Ohio attorney (whom he would divorce in 1944). See also RF’s May 13, 1933, letter to Untermeyer.

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said down t­ here had finality. Nothing was a solution for you. You had no idea I thought it was. It’s lucky you havent been seeing me or hearing from me the last two years or you would have had as many false solutions as I have had phases. I c­ an’t help seeking a solution for anybody in your predicament. But its just as well I shouldnt be where I could propose e­ very solution I think of. I mean I shouldnt be encouraged or allowed to propose e­ very one. I dont believe in myself as a prob­lem solver. Honestly. Though I cant help thinking at this moment that if Jean only had the self-­respect to act out in good faith her in­de­pen­dence of you you might, left to your own freedom of movement, find that she was the only girl you wanted to live with. She drains you insensible with her desperate demands on you. I told her that. I ­ought not to be telling it to you: it might make the remedy less effective for you to know about it. But never mind: nothing I say ­matters in a situation that I thought in the first place was none of my business and have now pretty well proved to have been none of my business. I’d just like to see you adopting four c­ hildren to run your Adarondac [sic] farm with. But you wouldnt gratify me that much. You’d be afraid you ­were amusing me.31 Well to hell with nearly every­thing—­w ith every­thing but poetry politics and true religion—­and a few friends and relatives—­a very few. And I forgot farming. I bought a farm for myself for Christmas. One hundred and fifty three acres in all, fifty in woods. The ­house a poor ­little cottage of five rooms, two ordinary fireplaces and one large kitchen fireplace all in one central chimney as it was in the beginning. The central chimney is the best part of it—­that and the woods. You mustnt be jealous, though jealousy is a passion I approve of and attribute to angels. May I be guarded and watched over always by the jealousy of a strong nature. It is better than arms around the body. Jealousy alone gives me the sense of being held. My farm prob­ably ­doesn’t compare with yours for view. But it looks away north so that you would know you w ­ ere in the mountains. We have no trout brook, but ­there is a live spring that I am told should be made into a trout pond.32 ­There is a small grove of white paper birches doubling daylight.33 The woods are a l­ittle too far from 31. ​Louis and Jean Starr Untermeyer did indeed subsequently adopt ­c hildren, two infant boys, Joseph and Larry. 32. ​Untermeyer’s farm, Stony ­Water, had two trout streams. 33. ​See the opening lines of RF’s “A Young Birch”: The birch begins to crack its outer sheath Of baby green and show the white beneath,

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the h ­ ouse. I must bring them nearer by the power of ­music like Amphion or Orpheus.34 It is an old occupation with me. The trees have learned that they have to come where I play them to. I enjoy the power I find I have over them. You must see us together, the trees dancing obedience to the poet (so called). You’ll exclaim. I ­ain’t g­ oing to mention books this time. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Herschel Brickell (1889–1952), general editor (replacing Lincoln MacVeagh) at Henry Holt and Com­pany, 1928–1933. ALS. Alger.]

Amherst Mass January 16 1929 Dear Mr Brickell: Do you mean that I can have all twenty-­t wo of ­those firsts?35 I can use as many as you w ­ ill spare me. I seem always hard up for copies to give away. You might send them to me ­here at Amherst.

As whosoever likes the young and slight May well have noticed. Soon entirely white To double day and cut in half the dark It ­w ill stand forth, entirely white in bark . . . (CPPP, 339) 34. ​Orpheus could charm creatures and inanimate objects with his lyre and song. Amphion and Zethus, the shepherd sons of Antiope, conquered Thebes and fortified the city with a stone wall. Amphion was so gifted with the lyre that, when he played, stones moved of their own accord and fitted themselves into the walls surrounding the city. Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) appropriated and revised this myth in his “Amphion”: O had I lived when song was g­ reat In days of old Amphion . . . And had I lived when song was g­ reat, And legs of trees w ­ ere limber, And ta’en my fiddle to the gate, And fiddled in the timber! 35. ​That is, first editions of WRB, published by Holt in November 1928, and referred to at the close of the letter.

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I wish I might see more of Percy.36 I took such a liking to him. Sometime wouldnt it be fun if you and Mrs Brickell could bring him to our Vermont mountainy farm?37 Id like to show such lowlanders from where the big river ends what the highlands are like where the l­ ittle rivers start. I’ve just bought a new cheap farm with three or four ­actual sources on it.38 We must tell Cox that not satisfied with having originated poems or ideas or what­ever it is he thinks I have originated, I am ­going into the business of originating streams as something more definite and mea­sur­able.39 The buildings are rather down now, but we s­ hall be up t­ here and at them in May. I can hardly keep hands off them till then. A l­ ittle old cottage with central chimney, three fireplaces three or four sources, and fifty acres of woods, partly paper birch! Your success with West-­r unning Brook has done this for us.40 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To John Julius Lankes (1884–1960), woodcut artist, illustrator, and author. He had provided woodcuts for RF’s NH and WRB. The two men would work together often in the coming years. Date derived from notes supplied on the manuscript by Lankes’s partner (Madeleine Schuermann) when she arranged his papers for sale to the University of Texas. ALS. HRC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [January 29, 1929] Dear Lankes: The place in Connecticutt [sic] sounds well to me for business. You’d like to make that your headquarters perhaps and stay t­ here a good part of 36. ​Likely William Alexander Percy (1885–1942), a poet and native of Mississippi. In 1929, he inherited his f­ather’s Trail Lake plantation (3,000 acres along the lower Mississippi River). 37. ​Brickell’s wife was Norma Long Brickell, born, like her husband, in Mississippi. 38. ​Again, the Gully Farm (with its springs). The renovations spoken of h ­ ere would take months, during which RF and his wife lived in a cottage in North Bennington; they moved into the Gully farm­house in October 1929. 39.  Sidney Cox. In 1928 he had informed RF of his plans to write a book about him, Robert Frost: Original Ordinary Man, which the poet temporarily headed off; Holt published it in 1929. See RFSC, 185–193. Cox had also sent an essay on RF to the head of the trade department at Holt in 1928. 40. ​RF typically neglects to capitalize “­r unning” (the title is West-­Running Brook).

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the year but when you got all you could stand of the 1000 visitors a day have a shack up our way where you could come for a rest.41 ­You’ve got to be where you can sell pictures. I c­ an’t exactly make out from what you say how well or ill off you are in the land of cotton42 —­you are such a natu­r al born kicker you’d kick more or less anywhere—­but apparently you need more sales than you are getting. I should think an exhibition place of resort would be just the ­t hing for part of the time at least. I ­mustn’t go too far in advising you.

41. ​In the December 27, 1928, letter to which RF h ­ ere replies, Lankes writes: “Dard Hunter has started a hand-­made paper mill in Lime Rock, Conn. This is about 6 miles from both the New York State and Mas­sa­chu­setts borders. . . . ​Hunter is anxious to have me come t­ here to help build up the spirit of the place. He means to install his paper museum ­t here. When he had a very small paper mill at Marlborough, N.Y., he sometimes had 300 visitors a day. He expects to get something like 1,000 a day at Lime Rock when ­things get g­oing. I am to peddle my wares to the unsuspecting and innocent bystander. . . . ​Lime Rock looks like salvation to me—if, if, if. I do not like colonies of any kind. It is the lamb that wants to flock; the lion does not need protection. He wants the feeding ground. ­Shall I feed upon the poor lambies? I should ­really like your part of the country better” (original held at DCL). William Joseph “Dard” Hunter (1883–1966) was a distinguished type designer and paper maker. An artists’ colony had developed around his mill at Lime Rock (in Salisbury, Connecticut): The Lime Rock Artists’ Association. Lankes had spent August  1928 ­there, during which time he had worked on the four woodcuts that decorate WRB. But he would decide against joining Hunter at Lime Rock in 1929, instead living and working on RF’s newly purchased farm (see above), where he completed woodcuts for American poet Lizette Woodworth R ­ eese’s memoir A Victorian Village (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1929), and twenty-­eight illustrations commissioned by Rockwell Kent (mentioned l­ater in the letter; for more on Lankes’s work for Kent, see RF to Lankes, December 15, 1929). RF would l­ater (in 1932) persuade Lankes to take—­a nd assist him in securing—­a teaching position at Wells College in Aurora, New York, solving, in large mea­sure, his financial difficulties. We thank Welford Taylor for his assistance in composing this note, and for his advice in all m ­ atters involving Lankes. 42. ​Lankes playfully signed his letter to RF “Joe Johnston Lee,” conflating the names of two of the most celebrated Confederate generals. RF had prompted the joke by writing Lankes, on December 22, 1928: “What you ­doing away off down ­t here in a part of the state of ­Virginia that God alone can picture you in. I hear (from you) that you have gone over to the unreconstructed Secessionists: which if true would seem to indicate that you ­were stealing my singularity and the next t­ hing you ­w ill be saying your initials J. J. stand for Joe Johnson [sic] the same as mine (RL.) authentically do for Robert Lee. That wont be tolerated” (LRF-2, 690).

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Just for a beginning about places in the Shaftsbury neighborhood, let me tell you about one lying right between Carol and me.43 You can say whats the ­matter with it and that ­w ill give me some idea of what to suggest next. When Rockwell Kent came into Arlington (12 or 15 miles north) prices ­were lower than now and he was willing to go into the back woods and Ford it in and out for school and society. I ­shouldn’t say he realized what he was in for or that it worked out well for his ­family. It must have been worse for them than for him. His vigor makes an advantage of anything. But I more or less blame geography for the break that came between him and his wife. It would prob­ably have been the same in any case. Leaving her and the ­c hildren off ­t here alone in the wilderness was only one of his cruelties and perhaps the smallest.44 The first place that comes to mind is rather retired but not terribly so. I’ll map it roughly for you.45 The ­house is not one of the old-­t imers but fairly old. It prob­ably has five or six good rooms in it. ­Water is near it but not ­r unning in it. Both ­house and land face the west and have the higher mountains ­behind them. They are higher than Carols farm over-­looking him. My new place would be north of you adjoining. I think the farm could be bought as a ­whole for 5000 or in part or rented in part. The w ­ hole would be a good deal to swing. Ever yours R.F. The pictures ­were both good blacks.46

43. ​RF’s son Carol (1902–1940). 44. ​In 1919, American artist Rockwell Kent (1882–1971) and his wife Kathleen Whiting Kent purchased an Arlington, Vermont, farm named Egypt for $2,300. From 1922 to 1924 Kent traveled alone to Tierra del Fuego, leaving his wife and ­children on the farm. The marriage ended in divorce in 1925. 45. ​RF enclosed a hand-­d rawn map of his h ­ ouse, Carol’s h ­ ouse, the local high school, an A & P grocery store, and environs. 46. ​Woodcut prints sent by Lankes as a gift (the two men occasionally swapped poems for prints, prints for poems). As for “good blacks”: see the February 13, 1936, letter to Untermeyer about RF’s color blindness (and consequent preference for black-­a nd-­ white images).

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[To Francis G. Blair (1864–1942), Illinois State Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1907–1935. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass February 2 1929 Dear Mr Blair: I should be glad to have you use The Cocoon in your Arbor and Bird Day circular.47 You ­w ill be helping me reach the young ­people I like to reach. Thank you for the f­ avor. Sincerely yours, Robert Frost.

[To J. J. Lankes. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. HRC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa early February 1929] Dear J. J. Elinor and I both take sides with your wife. ­Don’t jump from the frying pan onto the floor.48 Stay where it’s warm ­until y­ ou’re done.49 If I weakened for a moment I should give way and seek warmth myself. Whats the use of freezing when you can cook for less money? You ­don’t say, but I suppose your rent is cheap down ­there. (Your milk is dearer than ours: your eggs are too.) You get a lot of school cheap b­ ecause near at hand. Have you a high school in town? You have small fuel bills. My notion would be for you [to] hang on t­ here—­and come up and camp out on our land in the summer.50 You could build yourself a shack out of some 47. ​Illinois celebrated Arbor and Bird Days in mid-­April (in 1929, on April 12) and mid-­ October. The choice of poems is curious: “The Cocoon,” from WRB, is an autumnal (and quite strange) poem, about neither birds nor trees (although it does refer to an “elm-­t ree meadow”). 48. ​Lankes had complained that his home in Hilton Village, V ­ irginia, was no suitable place for him to work. 49. ​With his book ­Virginia Woodcuts (Newport News: V ­ irginia Press, 1930). 50. ​Lankes accepted the offer, and summer 1929 turned out to be one of his most productive phases. He would produce at least four woodcuts of the Gully Farm, one of which we reproduce h ­ ere. See Figure 1.

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of the material of the buildings we are g­ oing to tear down. You could all come in a car. Why not? We’d like to see something of you and you o ­ ught to see something of New ­England. The place in Connecticutt [sic] sounds lucretive [sic].51 I dont see why you shouldnt take that in on the way. You could leave an exhibition ­behind you ­there. Far be it from me to press advice. Come up for a visit in the summer anyway. Wouldnt it be good if you could pick up the painting again. Ever yours R.F. Why in hell dont you build a shed down t­ here to work in. You cant work in a small h ­ ouse with a f­ amily. Maybe your ­house isnt so small. R.

[To Frederic Melcher (1879–1963), American publisher, editor, and bookseller. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] February 9 1929 Dear Melcher! I’m glad Vachel is out of debt, glad you are ­going to do my bibliography for the Colophon, and glad you are coming to pass judgement on our new farm.52 You remember what the farmers did to the monkeys in Kiplings poetic evolution? Cut off their tails and put them to work.53 And you remember what 51. ​See also RF to Lankes, January 29, 1929, and June 21, 1930. 52. ​Poet Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) was perpetually in debt ­u ntil an extensive reading tour in 1929 briefly allowed him to pay his bills. He would soon fall into debt again and, in 1931, he committed suicide by drinking a ­bottle of Lysol (see RF to Melcher, January 16, 1932). For the bibliography, see Melcher (and H. S. Boutell), “Robert Frost and His Books,” Colophon: A Book Collectors’ Quarterly 1.2 (April 1930): 67–78. 53. ​See the first of two poems ranged u ­ nder the title “The Legends of Evil” (1890), where Kipling draws on ancient Indian folklore (which held that monkeys could speak— if they dared). The farmers, seeing the monkeys frisking about, Set them to work in the cornland   With ploughs and sickles and flails, Put them in mud-­walled prisons   And—­c ut off their beautiful tails!

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Figure 1. “December Dawn.” © Estate of J. J. Lankes. Used by permission.

the monkeys are in Kipling’s symbolism?54 Henry Ford says he w ­ ill save the world by putting it to work for him.55 Whats to forbid my saving it by putting it We may not speak to our ­fathers,   For if the farmers knew They would come up to the forest   And set us to ­labour too . . . 54. ​In his Handbook to the Poetry of Rudyard Kipling (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1914)—­a book RF may well have read—­Ralph Durand writes of “The Legends of Evil”: “Hanuman, the Hindoo monkey god, is thought by many scholars to be meant to represent the aboriginal tribes of southern India” (82)—­subjugated by the ­peoples of the (northern) Indo-­Gangetic Plain. 55. ​Ford (1863–1947) was much in the news in February 1929—­i ndeed, spiritually so (as RF soon suggests). Coward-­McCann had just published his Beatitude-­quoting My Philosophy of Industry, chapter 2 of which is titled “Machinery: the New Messiah” (“Thus may

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to work for me. My god I hate to have to listen to Cal and Henry laying it down to us spiritual and aesthetic.56 Some words ­ought to be copyrighted so that successful dubs shouldnt profane them. But I was g­ oing to say: anyone that comes to make fun of my farm this year may have to stay and improve it. Marj has taken the plunge into the nursing.57 She may not be able to stand it. We all think it w ­ ill do her good if she is. I have a small edition of one copy of an early book of mine that nobody but Elinor and I and the printer ever saw.58 You’ll have to say if it counts in my bibliography. Ever yours Robert Frost

we vision a United States of the World. Ultimately it w ­ ill come!” [45]). As RF wrote this letter, Ford had embarked in South Amer­i­ca on a mission to supplant a native Brazilian rubber baron called in the US press the King of Xingu. This Brazilian enterprise did not succeed, but in 1929 the evangelical Ford had subsidiary operations in Asia, Eu­rope, South Amer­i­ca, Mexico, Australia, Canada, and the Philippines, and was in negotiations with the Soviet Union to provide technical aid to its nascent automobile industry. Ford had, of course, been an early proponent of “welfare capitalism,” providing employees some of the best salaries and benefits packages in the automobile industry (though he vigorously opposed u ­ nions). 56. ​Calvin Coo­lidge (1872–1933)—­US president from 1923 to 1929 and a devout f­ree marketeer—­famously quipped: “The business of Amer­i­ca is business.” In Have Faith in Mas­sa­chu­setts: A Collection of Speeches and Messages (Boston: Highton Mifflin, 1919), Coo­ lidge celebrated American capitalism “spiritually”: “I agree that the mea­sure of success is not merchandise but character. But I do criticize ­those sentiments, held in all too respectable quarters, that our economic system is fundamentally wrong, that commerce is only selfishness, and that our citizens, holding the hope of all that Amer­i­ca means, are living in industrial slavery. I appeal to Amherst men to reiterate and sustain the Amherst doctrine, that the man who builds a factory builds a t­emple, that the man who works ­t here worships ­t here, and to each is due not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise” (14). The remarks are part of an address Coo­l idge first delivered before the Amherst College Alumni Association in Boston on February  4, 1916 (when he was governor of Mas­sa­c hu­setts). 57. ​Marjorie Frost (1905–1934), RF’s youn­gest ­daughter, had enrolled in nursing school at Johns Hopkins. Within two years, she would contract tuberculosis, which put an end to her aspirations. 58. ​RF privately printed two copies of his first book, Twilight (Lawrence, MA: American Printing House, 1894). He gave one copy to Elinor Miriam White (his f­ uture wife) and destroyed the other when she refused to leave college (at St. Lawrence University) and marry him. See EY, 173–176. See also LRF-1, 35.

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[To Frederic Melcher. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst Mass February 13 1929 Dear Fred (if you ­w ill permit me henceforth): I left your letter somewhere in my travels yesterday: so I lack the name to inscribe in ­these two firsts you sent. I think the ­owners name should go in as well as mine and perhaps a verse of my poetry if you say so. All this devotion to my works seems to me to deserve some special reward. I was amused by Joe’s poems in the Weekly.59 ­Shouldn’t you say the Holts had done pretty well by the book this time—­nay very well? I’m just back from an orgy of apparent popularity in Middletown Conn—­ Wesleyan. The book has certainly made some difference. Let me know the man’s name. Ever yours Robert Frost Feb’s half gone.

[To Reginald  B. Haselden (1881–1952), curator of manuscripts at the Huntington ­Library. ALS. Huntington.]

Amherst Mass February 20 1929 Dear Mr Haselden: I recognize just four of your list by the names you give them, the first, second, fourth and ninth. Are you sure I wrote the rest? I won­der if somebody h ­ asn’t been imposing on you. Do you know the history of the manu59. ​ P ublishers Weekly (which Melcher edited). RF refers to a suite of four satirical poems about the book trade by novelist Joseph Anthony (1900–1991); they appeared—­ under the general title “The Making of a Book”—in the February 2, 1929, number of the Weekly (504–505). The first of the four, subtitled “Editorial,” begins: “First ­you’ve got to catch your writer. / Armed with flask and Dunhill lighter, / You search the literary byways, / The tea rooms, gin mills, and the highways. . . .” Anthony once worked in the publicity department at Harper and ­Brothers. RF had known him since 1920.

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scripts? If they are r­ eally mine, they are prob­ably very early and more than prob­ably bad: in which case I d­ on’t see why you should want to trea­sure them against me. I ­don’t know the ethics of ­these t­ hings as well as you must; so do you tell me. Suppose some friend of my youth died (I had only one or two friends it could have been) and some heartless and undiscriminating heir or executor found among his papers the unguarded poems I may have sent him in letters, would they be legitimate merchandise?60 Would it be all right for the heir to sell them and for you to preserve them without consulting my wishes in the ­matter? You ­shall instruct me. I confess that array of forgotten works scares me. Please treat me with consideration. Why, if you are out for a poet’s manuscript, ­don’t you come to headquarters and ask for the manuscript of approved poems? Perhaps you got ­these you have cheap or for nothing—or paid so much for them that you c­ an’t afford to throw them away. I have no objection to keeping the four I identify. And I’m glad to help you with them. The Blue Bird to Lesley was written in about 1903,61 Clear and Colder—­Boston Common in about 1891, The Flower Boat in about 1894 or 5, Nature’s Neglect in about 1901.62 Now be fair to me about the ­others. Let me 60. ​In October 1923, P. K. Foley, a Boston bookdealer, sold a number of manuscripts of RF’s earliest published poems, together with a sheaf of his letters, to the Huntington Library. The papers ­were from the files of Susan and William Hayes Ward, editors of the In­de­pen­dent, the New York weekly in which RF’s poetry first appeared before a national audience in 1894. Haselden had written RF, requesting that he date fourteen of the manuscript poems. When RF acknowledged only four of the poems as his (in the pre­sent letter), Haselden wrote him back: “I am afraid you w ­ ill have to plead guilty to more than four of the poems on the list I sent you. . . . ​Suppose some of ­t hese poems of yours are what you call bad; why worry? You thought well enough of them once to put your name to them.” See Leslie Monsour, “Robert Frost at the Huntington” (Web). 61. ​That is, to Lesley Frost (1899–1983), RF’s eldest ­daughter. 62. ​“The Blue Bird” became “The Last Word of a Blue Bird (As Told to a Child),” collected in MI (CPPP, 130); RF collected “The Flower Boat” in WRB (CPPP, 241). “Nature’s Neglect” he l­ater substantially revised as “On ­Going Unnoticed” (also collected in WRB [CPPP, 226]). The first two quatrains of “Nature’s Neglect” ­were retained as is. The first couplet of the third quatrain of “Nature’s Neglect” (“You linger your l­ittle hour . . .”) forms the first couplet of the fourth quatrain of “On G ­ oing Unnoticed,” but the second couplet was discarded; the final two quatrains of “Nature’s Neglect” w ­ ere also discarded and never published: You linger your l­ittle hour and are gone, And still the wood sweeps leafily on;

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have copies of them if you w ­ ill. Then I w ­ ill tell you if they are mine and which I should be pleased or pained to have you keep. Then you can do by me as you find it in your heart to do. I am very curious about it all. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Albert J. Caplan (1908–1994), editor at the Scriptorium Press, which produced signed ­limited editions of prominent writers. ALS. ­Temple.]

Amherst Mass March 5 1929 Dear Mr Capla [sic]: I’m sorry but what you propose is impossible. I c­ ouldn’t undertake prose for anyone and any poetry I write belongs to Henry Holt or James R. Wells—­ most of it of course to Henry Holt. Thank you for [your] interest—­very much. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

And you would not have it other­w ise In this one place beneath the skies. You cannot carry away a flower From the merest passing whim of the hour, But ­there are ­those that wait afar To make it tell them what you are. They choose to forget in the thought of you The love of the ­thing you bid them to: And this is a weariness of the soul, Which nothing but nature can make ­whole. RF never published “Clear and Colder—­Boston Common” (it is in CPPP, 493). The manuscripts of all the poems mentioned in this letter are held at the Huntington Library.

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[To Anna Hempstead Branch (1875–1937), poet and reformer. ALS. Smith.]

Amherst Mass March 7 1929 Dear Miss Branch: I was sorry I was ashamed not to [be] with you at your recent meeting a­ fter I had promised to be. Another time I mustnt fail you. Mrs Frost and I mean to use your Club Residence when we are down if only for the chance it w ­ ill give us to see something of you. I am always proud to have my name connected with the Christodora House.63 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Clifford Richardson Bragdon (1906–1973), a young schoolteacher in Cleveland, Ohio. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass March 7 1929 Dear Bragdon: What you need is someone to be severe with you, someone intimate enough to know how much punishment you can take and still live. If you want my sympathy you shouldnt have told me you had written a good story and almost had it published.64 What more do you want so soon

63. ​At 143 Ave­nue B in the East Village, Manhattan. Founded in 1897 and, in 1928, installed in its new building on Ave­nue B, Christodora House served as a residence for the poor and for immigrants. It also provided educational programs, athletic facilities, health care, and other community ser­v ices. As for the “Club” spoken of: Branch had established, at Christodora, the Poets’ Guild, which taught classes and or­ga­n ized writers’ groups, before whom she often brought established poets. RF belonged to the guild, as did E. A. Robinson (and a number of other poets). In 1930, RF granted permission for the guild to reprint “A Hillside Thaw,” “The Runaway,” and “My November Guest” in its Unbound Anthology series, which republished poems on single sheets of paper—­the idea being that readers of the poems could shuffle them around, making “anthologies” of their own. The series dates to 1920. 64. ​Edward O’Brien chose one of Bragdon’s stories (“Suffer the C ­ hildren”) for The Best American Short Stories in 1930 (New York: Dodd, Mead); and then again, in the same

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a­ fter getting loose? I want to see you fight it out where you are. Your good beginning gives me hope for you. ­You’ve got more chance in my opinion teaching some of the time than you would have reading bad manuscript for a publisher in New York. But lit­er­a­t ure takes courage and endurance. It takes fool hardiness. The wife of a distinguished British poet told me this summer it was not for married men. Their wives I suppose she meant cut off their hair so they couldnt carry gates.65 You have to stop to consider. Maybe thats what you are ­doing in your letter. The road ahead scares you. Well you know best what you can stand. But I should have thought you had done very well so far. You evidently have gifts. I should be inclined to bet on you. I dont set my heart on you mind you. I can get all the disappointment I need in life setting my heart on myself. Come lets take a hitch in our trousers which is a trick all seamen larn.66 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To James R. Wells (1898–1971), American boutique publisher (founder of the Fountain Press and the Slide Mountain Press). Since the summer of 1928 Wells had been negotiating with RF about the publication of l­imited editions of his plays and poetry. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass March 11 1929 Dear Wells: ­Here is every­thing you left ­behind but your first edition of me which was to be found neither ­here nor at the Lord Jeff.67 I’ve touched up the Introduction a ­little. I de­cided not to add to it. Brevity becomes it I think.68 series, for the anthology issued in 1932 (Bragdon’s “Love’s So Many ­Things”). Bragdon never published a book of fiction in his own right. 65. ​Judges 16:1–18. 66. ​From W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911), “The Yarn of the Nancy Bell,” published first in 1866 (in Fun magazine) and ­later collected in Bab Ballads, which went through numerous editions (RF assigned Bab Ballads to his students at Pinkerton Acad­emy): “Then he gave a hitch to his trousers, which / Is a trick all seamen larn.” 67. ​The Lord Jeffery Inn, adjoining the Amherst campus. 68. ​The “Introduction” to The Cow’s in the Corn, published by Wells’s Slide Mountain Press in 1929, amounts to forty-­six words: “This my sole contribution to the Celtic Drama (no one so unromantic as not to have made at least one) illustrates the latter-­day tendency of all drama to become smaller and smaller and to be acted in smaller and smaller

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You should have stayed longer. We made the m ­ istake of too much com­ pany in for the time you w ­ ere ­here. We didnt half have our talk. Well, w ­ e’ll all meet again soon. Ever yours Robert Frost Thanks for that to Evans.69 I ­shall requite it.

[To Wade Van Dore. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass till April 3rd70 [circa March 14, 1929] Dear Wade: I won­der what you would say to taking charge of my farm for a year. You would have to keep ­house for yourself entirely and you would be alone up the gulch. The work could be as much or as ­little as you cared to make it. ­There would be tree-­planting and tree-­moving. ­There would be tearing down some of the old buildings we want to get rid of. T ­ here would be some trench digging and stream damming. ­There would be some repairing and ­doing over of the old h ­ ouse (a real antique but in only a so-so state of preservation) and ­there would be some improving of the road in to attend to. T ­ here would be or could be; as I say you could decide for yourself how much of anything you cared to give time to. The first ­thing to do would be to fix up one room in the ­house homelike for you to live in. I dont mean the h ­ ouse is open to the weather. ­People are now living in it. But I expect them to leave it somewhat dilapidated and anyway of course empty of furniture. I would pay you forty cents an hour (or more if you say so) for such time as you worked. You could take all the time you pleased for your writing.

theatres to smaller and smaller audiences” (CPRF, 98). Brevity also “becomes” the play, which clocks in at some 160 words. 69. ​Charles Seddon Evans (1883–1944), managing director at Heinemann. (Heinemann had issued the British edition of SP 1923.) Presumably Evans had sent RF a book via Wells. 70. ​On April 3, RF embarked on an extended lecture / reading tour that took him to Philadelphia, Chicago, Nashville, Pittsburgh, and Charlottesville, ­Virginia. He returned to North Bennington, Vermont, on May 1.

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My son Carol might be with you a ­little or have you over to help him a ­little on his place if you found you could be good friends. I hope you w ­ ill like him for all his reserve and timidity. You wont find him bookish, but you w ­ ill find him fond of the land. I ­shall be around more or less puttering and overseeing the carpenters’ work on the h ­ ouse. (­There ­w ill be a bathroom to put in.) ­We’ll be living in our old ­house when in S. Shaftsbury at all. Perhaps we might get round to spend a month in the ­house up the gulch in the late fall if I am not too buried in my own writing. I want a fearfully carefree year. You give me very poor directions for finding you. I hope this catches you at the Bronx Post Office. Ever yours Robert Frost ­ e’ll talk about the publication of the book when you get h W ­ ere.71 I feel sure someone ­w ill want it. I’ll send you to friends in New York ­later.

[To Wade Wan Dore. Date derived from postmark. The letter is addressed: “Mr Wade Van Dore / General Delivery / Bronx Post Office / New York City.” ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass [March 19, 1929] Dear Wade: This is just to tell you I have written you a longer letter I hope you w ­ ill get. Make them give you all that is coming to you. Hurry along to Amherst Mass. I am leaving for a two weeks tour April 3rd. Many plans to talk over. Ever yours R.F.

71. ​Again, Far Lake, published in 1930 by Coward-­McCann (New York).

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[To Wade Van Dore. Date derived from postmark. ALS. BU.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [March 19, 1929] Dear Wade: I have a plan for you to take possession of my farm and work on it a l­ittle for a year. You could be very in­de­pen­dent ­there and perhaps get some writing done. Ive sent one letter to the Bronx Post Office. I dont quite know how to reach you.72 Ever yours Robert Frost By April 3rd I s­ hall be leaving Amherst for a two weeks tour; so write soon.

[To William Griffith (1876–1936), American poet and anthologist. ALS. Jones.] Amherst [Massachusetts] March 23 1929 Dear Mr Griffith: I look at it as you do: the ­favor is all from your side. I should like to have you use both se­lections and particularly the lines from the long poem where so few ­people would trust themselves to go delving.73 I’ll write to Richard Thornton and see if they wont see it as we see it. I was alone at home with my small descendant the other day or I should have gotten away for another glimpse of you in Morton’s class.74 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

72. ​Hence two letters written on the same day. The second letter was mailed to Van Dore’s Detroit address, 3335 Scovel Place, with a request on the envelope that it be forwarded “at once.” 73. ​In fact, Griffith used only one poem by RF: “Lodged” (from WRB). It appears in “Book One: Of American Gardens” in The Garden Book of Verse (New York: William Morrow, 1932): 64. Griffith included “Spring Pools” in his 1930 American Scrapbook (New York: Forum Press, 1930). We have not identified the “long poem” of which RF speaks. 74. ​RF’s Amherst colleague, the poet David Morton. The “descendant” is John “Jack” Cone Jr., eldest son of Irma Frost Cone (1903–1981) and John Paine Cone (1903–1991), born in 1926.

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[To David McCord (1897–1997), American poet and director of the Harvard College Fund. ALS. Private.]

Amherst [Mas­sa­chu­setts] March 23 1929 Dear Mr McCord: I should of course like that very much.75 We could have it out on a number of subjects alone together and with the boys. Poetry gets lost between the academic and the commercial in colleges. Right now I have my ­house full of a ­g reat young artist and his work to help me forget what is ­going on around me in Amherst.76 We’ve been analogizing across to each other from art to art experience to experience. His talk always sounds more like [poetry]77 than anything I hear from my fellow teachers; whose one idea in class seems to be to get up something laborious enough for comparison with the work in Latin and science. I have proposed to lecture in Chicago next month on How to Make Keats Hard (­There are ways: I’ve thought of one.)78 But I mustnt spend my wrath all in a letter. I’ll tell you all about Edward Thomas.79 ­Will you write again and say what day in May? I ­shall be back in Vermont (in South Shaftsbury) by then up to my eyes in farming. My address till April 3rd ­w ill continue Amherst Mass. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

75. ​McCord had invited RF to speak at Harvard ­u nder the auspices of the Morris Gray Fund, bequeathed by Gray (1856–1931) to purchase books of con­temporary verse for addition to the Amy Lowell collection at the Widener Library, and, on occasion, to bring in poets to read (RF would be the first). 76. ​J. J. Lankes. 77. ​Conjectural. RF omitted a word ­here, almost certainly by accident. 78. ​The Chicago Tribune for April 7, 1929, reported that RF would speak to the Chicago ­Women’s Club on April 10, 1929. The subject of his talk was not announced. 79. ​Edward Thomas (1878–1917), En­glish poet and close friend of RF during the latter’s time in ­England (1912–1915). RF is credited with having encouraged Thomas to start writing poetry, but Thomas’s poetic c­ areer was cut short by his death at the B ­ attle of Arras in April 1917.

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[To Richard Thornton. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass (till April 3rd) March 23 1929 Dear Mr Thornton: I havent known what to say about your invitation to go south with you and Mrs Thornton at Easter. We’d both like nothing better than to go if we could leave ­things ­here with a clear conscience. But I’m afraid we cant. Our conscience grows on us not so much from living in New ­England as from having grand-­children.80 They make us feel more than middle-­aged and serious; and I dont see what remedy ­t here is ­u nless it is to adopt the grand-­c hildren as ­children. That might create the illusion of setting us back a generation. It is worth trying. It w ­ ill have to be ­later if we have the plea­sure of seeing V ­ irginia with your eyes. Let me tell you just what my times and seasons are. Perhaps I had better give you my callendar [sic] for April for your publicity department. I’ll enclose it on a slip. You’ll see from that that I am to be a very busy man in April. I hope such exertions ­w ill help you sell my books. I ­haven’t got round to a complete understanding with Quinn of Pennsylvania yet. I think we want to let him have a creditable repre­sen­ta­tion of me.81 About the enclosed letter from Griffith:82 ­here also I think indulgence would pay us. I should be in f­ avor of letting him have the two poems he asks for for nothing. I hate to have him feel miffed. He always treats me friendly. I ­shall be seeing you soon I hope, in one way or another. Ever yours Robert Frost

80. ​A reference to E. A. Robinson’s 1923 poem “New E ­ ngland” in which “Conscience always has the rocking chair, / Cheerful as when she tortured into fits / The first cat that was ever killed by care.” 81. ​Arthur H. Quinn (1873–1960), professor of history and En­glish at the University of Pennsylvania. He had asked permission to reprint thirteen poems by RF in The Lit­er­a­ture of Amer­i­ca: An Anthology of Prose and Verse, Volume 2: From the Civil War to the Pre­sent (New York: Scribner’s, 1929), which Quinn edited with Albert Croll Baugh and ­Will David Howe. The acquaintance with Quinn was of fairly long standing; he had helped arrange a talk given by RF in Philadelphia on February 13, 1920 (LRF-2, 23). 82. ​See letter to Griffith above.

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[To Richard Thornton. TG. Prince­ton.]

[Nashville, Tennessee] [April 13, 1929] MUST SEE YOU SOON ANXIOUS ABOUT MIX UP IN ­ENGLAND HAVE DEFINITE OFFER FROM LONGMANS EXPECT ANOTHER FROM HEINEMANN LONGMANS HAS FIRST CLAIM ­U NLESS EVANS INSISTS ON RIGHT TO ­E ARLIER BOOKS HOPE BRICKELL ­W ILL MOVE VERY CAUTIOUSLY83 ROBERT FROST

[To Lincoln MacVeagh (1890–1972). MacVeagh had been RF’s editor at Henry Holt before leaving to found the Dial Press in 1923. In SL, Lawrance Thompson reports that the manuscript of this letter is held at the Jones Library, in Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts. ­Either he erred, or it has since gone missing; no such manuscript is held ­there now. We rely on Thompson’s transcription (357–358), though not on his dating (he places the letter in June). Date derived from internal evidence.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa May 9, 1929] Dear Lincoln: Welcome back, to modern times.84 And ­don’t get b­ itter and sarcastic about having to come back. Occupy your mind with looking for beauty in the New Architecture. I have a book by Frank Lloyd Wright to lend you on the subject in which you w ­ ill read that the new h ­ ouse ­w ill be of glass iron and cement and flowed into shape whereas the old of stone and wood had to be cut into shape.85 You can see the gain of the new in suavity and sensuousness. That is to say you can when I can point you out examples of the new. H ­ ere’s a h ­ ouse, 86 you can imaginate me saying, that was cast. H ­ ere’s one that was poured.

83. ​Again, Charles Seddon Evans, of Heinemann. The British edition of CP 1930 was published by Longmans Green. 84. ​MacVeagh had just returned from Greece (arriving in New York on May 6). An accomplished classicist, the polyglot MacVeagh was expert also in architecture and archaeology; he conducted extensive fieldwork in Greece. 85. ​Presumably Frank Lloyd Wright: The Life-­Work of the American Architect Frank Lloyd Wright (Santpoort, Holland: C. A. Mees, 1925), by H. T. Wijdeveld and Frank L. Wright. It went through numerous editions. 86. ​Scottish dialect.

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And ­here’s one that was blown or blowed and you’ll be blowed says you if you likes it. But wait till you have a talk with me when I am down next week before you do anything about it. I ­shall be in town on Monday on my way to Montauk to have another grand­child. But what it ­w ill be, boy or girl, no one can tell beforehand and it doesnt m ­ atter b­ ecause it wont be named Frost 87 anyway but Francis. Tell me every­thing about every­thing. I must review my Grecian history. It’s got so I hardly know a Pyrric [sic] victory from a Parthian shot.88 Is Tyrtaeus much read in Sparta?89 The honey is just in time: the effects of the last you brought have about worn off.90 I knew ­there was something the ­matter with me. It seems as if t­ here was with every­body ­else in the f­ amily too. We are all sick. I hope you are all well.91 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Leonidas W. Payne Jr. (1873–1945), professor of En­glish at the University of Texas. TG. HRC.]

BENNINGTON VERMONT MAY 29 1929 PROF L W PAYNE JR LETTER JUST RECEIVED PLEASE DO SEND MISS NICHOLSON’S THESIS92 ROBERT FROST

87. ​Lesley Frost Francis’s first child, Elinor, was born in Montauk, New York, on Saturday, May 11, 1929, some days e­ arlier, it seems, than RF expected. 88. ​A cavalry maneuver developed by the ancient Parthians of Persia, in which mounted archers in retreat (often feigned) turn to their rear and fire at ­enemy ­horse­men; by figurative extension, a parting insult. 89. ​Tyrtaeus (fl. mid-­seventh ­century BCE) was an elegiac poet from Sparta. 90. ​A gift shipped back from Greece (renowned for its honey). 91. ​MacVeagh was married to Margaret Charlton Lewis; the c­ ouple had one child, Margaret Ewen MacVeagh. 92. ​An unsigned note written on the tele­g ram reads: “We sent a bound copy of the thesis, and Frost begged to be allowed to keep it. Miss Nicholson had an unbound copy left, and so she gave the copy to Frost.” The MA thesis in question—­“ The Art of Robert Frost” (spring 1929)—­was by Lillian Louise Nicholson (1897–1993). See also RF to Payne, October 27, 1930.

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[To Sydney Seymour Alberts (1906–1982), American book collector, writer, inventor, and bibliographer. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont June 15 1929 Dear Mr Alberts I am sorry to have caused you anxiety for your four valuable books. (It stands to reason that they would be far more valuable in my eyes than they could possibly be in yours). They are not lost. They are right ­here on my t­ able among a number of o ­ thers that have been piling up against me during my absence in Baltimore.93 I ­w ill tend to yours this minute and send them hopefully along to your doubting cousin.94 More or less hopefully. I ­can’t pretend to be a conqueror of any very rooted prejudices. You’ll have done all you could, I trust, to help me with your cousin—­told her the right poems to read first and how they are to be taken. I w ­ ill inscribe the books as ingratiatingly as you say. The rest ­we’ll just have to leave to fate. Sincerely yours Robert Frost I could have done the inscribing better if you had thought to give me your cousin’s first name. R.F.

[To James R. Wells. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. BU.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [August 1929] Dear James: I hope Thornton sees it your way—­our way—­I was the first one to think of it.

93. ​To visit his d­ aughter Marjorie, enrolled in the Johns Hopkins Nurses Training School. 94. ​We have been unable to identify the cousin or her doubts. (Alberts’s parents immigrated from Rus­sia; census rec­ords for their extended ­family are scarce.)

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We should be back from Franconia by September or very soon afterward. Come see us if you can do so not too pollenated from Peterboro to be presentable.95 ­We’ll at least talk about your ­doing a poem for me.96 Auchenclauss [sic] doesnt have to give me any books.97 My regards to him. Be good. R.F.

[To Sydney Seymour Alberts. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 9 1929 Dear Mr Alberts: Thanks for what you say about the play.98 I am always on the verge of writing more plays and adventuring on the stage.99 You may have gathered from the date in the dedication that A Way Out is not recent.100 ­There should 95. ​Peterborough, New Hampshire, where the MacDowell Artist Colony (founded in 1908 by American composer, Edward MacDowell, and his wife, Marian) was located. 96. ​Wells’s Slide Mountain Press issued RF’s whimsical playlet The Cow’s in the Corn in 1929, though incoming correspondence suggests Wells had much more ambitious plans. A May 9, 1929, letter expresses regret that RF had neglected to reply to several inquiries and speaks of publishing a Frost poem titled “The Light of the World” (the title appears among a group of poems, mostly from WRB, in RF’s notebooks, though nothing suggests what its content is [NBRF, 246]; it was perhaps at one point an alternative name for “Sitting by a Bush in Broad Sunlight” [CPPP, 244], also in WRB). Other letters dating to 1929 indicate that Wells hoped to have a book at least seventy-­t wo pages long or, if all the poems ­were new, a book of fifty pages. 97. ​Charles Crooke Auchincloss (1881–1961), a Manhattan attorney and avid book collector. RF would ­later inscribe a copy of Three Poems (1935) to him. He and RF ­were named honorary pallbearers at E. A. Robinson’s funeral in 1935. 98. ​The Harbor Press (New York) had just issued RF’s one-­act play, A Way Out, as a book (it was published first in The Seven Arts in 1917). See CPPP, 565–575, for the play, and CPPP, 713, for the preface RF wrote for the 1929 edition. Alberts was himself an aspiring, if never successful, playwright. 99. ​R F wrote two additional one-­act plays, In an Art Factory and The Guardeen, but never published them. See CPPP, 576–625. His only other ventures into the theater are A Masque of Reason (New York: Holt, 1945) and A Masque of Mercy (New York: Holt, 1947). 100. ​The dedication reads: “To Roland A. Wood / Who created the part of Asie / Acad­emy of ­Music / Northampton, Mass. / 1919.” Wood also ran the Harbor Press.

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have been something in the book to show that the play was first published in The Seven Arts, a magazine now defunct. It has been acted h ­ ere and t­ here with some success in spite of its puzzle ending, which, of course, anybody but a reviewer could see was intentional, though prob­ably (I should agree) not quite justifiable. To make the puzzle depend on a minimum for its solution, I used the name Asa for the survivor in the last two speeches of the Hermit.101 I think it would have been better to confine myself to calling him The Hermit. ­Will you make the correction in your copy? Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Rita  A. Foehrenbach (1912–2001), at the time a secretary in the offices of a New York publisher. ALS. Private.]

S. Shaftsbury Vt August 9 1929 Dear Miss Foehrenbach: Lesley is slightly mistaken about my play. It wasnt that I gave it and then took it back. I merely promised it and never gave it.102 And now ­there is no such play for anybody to publish the shame of. It is wiped out. Thanks for your interest. Maybe someday I s­ hall have a play for somebody. One good ­thing about your cele­bration of your first birthday.103 You ­were all old enough to do it justice. Imagine a child celebrating his first birthday. Best wishes for your second year. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

101. ​Actually, the last utterance in the play, as originally published (and in the 1929 edition), is assigned to “The Hermit.” See CPPP, 575. 102. ​Likely (again) a reference to one of RF’s two unpublished plays (see note above). 103. ​Meaning obscure. Forenbach was born on December 2, 1912.

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[To William Stanley Braithwaite (1878–1962), American poet, literary critic, editor, and anthologist. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 10 1929 My dear Braithwaite: Thanks for your good words about A Way Out. ­There was nothing in the book except the dedication to tell you that the play was not recent. I happen to be harboring for the moment a young poet who I hope you ­will find some mild plea­sure in when he appears with Coward-­McCann next spring. I must give you his name anyway so that you can give him one look for yourself and another for me: Wade Van Dore. He lives most of the time north of Lake Superior. I’ve made one change in The Middletown Murder I’d like you to observe.104 Best wishes to you and your department in The Transcript.105 Sincerely Yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. RF enclosed a fair copy of “The Egg and the Machine.” Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [August 12, 1929] Dear Louis: My farm is fast ­going back to wilderness—as fast as can be expected, the doctor and nurse would say. How is your farm? I ask out of politeness more than any real interest. My farm has got a considerable start of the cows in its pasture trees. Give it a year or two more unpastured and I doubt if it ­w ill ever 104. ​The poem was published first in the Saturday Review of Lit­er­at­ ure, October 13, 1928. Braithwaite reprinted it in his Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry (New York: George Sully, 1929). Enclosed with the letter is a corrected proof sheet, where the second line is changed, in ink, from “And drove away to the lumber job” to “And was off through snow to the lumber job.” For the poem as it originally appeared, see CPPP, 538–541. RF never collected it. 105. ​The Boston Eve­ning Transcript, of which Braithwaite was literary editor.

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be overtaken. Seventy five years from now it ­will show a sugar bush to match yours.106 You wait! You are younger than I am, so I leave it to you to do the waiting. Mean while [sic] you o ­ ught to have to see all the H-­L hinges t­ here 107 are in our farm h ­ ouse. In ­those we XL.108 In ­those we superiorate. Our barns are coming down l­ittle by l­ittle a board at a time as the mood comes over Wade our poet in ­labour—at, I mean. And as the barns come down the view comes out. Our trickle (as compared with your torrent) has held its own through the drought with pristine vitality.109 Some are in ­favor of calling the farm The Trickle. Marjorie wants it called Nine Barns in memory of the barns it once had. But Prescott has become accustomed to The Gully and one hates to undeceive a child.110 ­We’re to meet them on and around the 27th. I had difficulty in fixing on a date b­ ecause I hate to face eventualities at this time of year. I’ll have to write you out a copy of The Egg and the Machine:111 I have no one to type for me. Lankes is over at the Gully camping out.112 But I am afraid we are not giving him just the com­pany he wants in Wade Van Dore. Wade has a good deal of the Wobbly in him.113 He is burly but he has a principled objection to work 106. ​A “sugar bush” is a stand of sugar maples to be harvested for maple syrup. 107. ​H-­L hinges ­were common on New ­England doors in the eigh­teenth ­century. The Gully farm­house dated to 1790. 108. ​That is, excel. 109. ​On August 7, 1929, the Brattleboro (Vermont) Daily Reformer ran an article ­u nder the heading, “Drought Reduces New E ­ ngland Field Crops”: “Brown cornstalks, dead lawns, drying streams, sere gardens and ­dying fish and birds mark the Mas­sa­chu­setts landscape as one of the worst droughts in the history of the commonwealth goes into its third blistering month” (6). 110. ​William Prescott Frost (1924–1989), RF’s grand­son (and known by his ­m iddle name); son of Carol and Lillian LaBatt Frost (1905–1995). RF sometimes spells the name given the farm “Gully” (the form favored by his biographers), but he is hardly consistent and often spells it “Gulley.” We have not attempted to regularize the spelling. 111. ​The “Egg and the Machine” was first published in 1928 as “The Walker” in The Second American Caravan (New York: Macauley) and ­later brought into the contents of WRB for CP 1930. The 1928 text and the manuscript as sent to Untermeyer vary from the final form. RF revised line nine from “Too late, though, now to throw it down the bank” to: “Too late though, now, he had himself to thank.” U ­ nder the poem as mailed to Untermeyer, RF strikes his m ­ iddle name (“Lee”) from his signature—­a curious gesture given that RF almost never wrote his ­m iddle name on manuscripts. 112. ​J. J. Lankes. See RF to Lankes, January 29, 1929. 113. ​“Wobbly”: nickname for a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, established in 1905.

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and the courage and ingenuity to dodge it. Lankes has a ­family of four to work for and Wades emancipation rouses his wrath and jealousy.114 Also I’m afraid my moderate interest in Wade rouses his jealousy. It ­ought not to. My interest in Lankes is such a very dif­fer­ent ­thing. Lankes is a wood-­c utter and no ­mistake. Poor Wade has his place all to make. He is a strange boy. His ­mother tells us that his obediently ­doing what he is asked to do throws him into long cataleptic sleeps afterward. I gather that his verse comes out of some such sleeps. He says nothing about such t­ hings. I gather from watching him. He ­w ill go back to Kashabowie his settlement north of Superior in the fall and I ­shall have less to worry about.115 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To John Bartlett (1892–1941), a Frost ­family friend and student of RF’s at Pinkerton Acad­emy, Derry, New Hampshire, class of 1910. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. UVA.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [circa September 1, 1929] Dear John: The Palmer Twins sound almost as if ­there might be some truth in Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry ­after all. I cant help thinking though that as you describe them they [are] more comical than disgusting. Of course they are disgusting too. I mean they are disgusting enough to be funny. They are bad enough to be good for our purposes. Still a l­ ittle of them goes a long way. Once in a lifetime would give you the hint. You can do the rest for yourself by logical development. They somehow dont surprise me. They werent quite right even when they ­were young and boyish. ­There was an off note. They ­were

114. ​For an account of the difficulties between Van Dore and Lankes, see Welford Taylor, Robert Frost and J. J. Lankes: Riders on Pegasus (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Library, 1996): 50–51. Lankes had dubbed Van Dore “Boobus Detroitus” (in honor of the young poet’s birthplace). For Van Dore’s side of the story, see his Life of the Hired Man (Dayton, OH: Wright State University Press, 1986): 103–105. 115. ​K ashabowie is located northwest of Thunder Bay, Lake Superior, in Ontario, Canada.

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rank bold Christians even in the pitchers box and at first base. Coarse flowers.116 I’d like the engagement at your writers institute as an excuse to visit you.117 But I dont know about pulling out at that time of year and taking Elinor to the altitude of one mile for any length of time. That would have to be honestly enquired into. I ­don’t suppose Colorado is specially recommended for the weak in heart.118 ­We’re not the strength we ­were, you have to remember, and cant do all sorts of t­ hings the way we used to. We had thought of taking you in for a brief visit on a winter tour we ­were asked to consider by some agent in Denver. It would be mostly on the coast and it would be through the mountains and not in them to stay. We h ­ adn’t even made up our minds to the pos­si­ble hardships of that. The agent’s (Theodore Fisher—­you may know him) letter—­second letter—­has been lying on my t­ able unanswered since early August.119 You’d prob­ably prefer us for the summer engagement if only for the longer visit it would mean. It w ­ ill have to be thought about hard. If we decide I o ­ ught to come, I’ll do it for anything you say, but if its left to me to say, ­really for my self-­respect I should ask for rather more than $600. I say self-­respect when I mean the public re­spect. It is a miserable business being a poet among professors and businessmen. The only way to make them re­spect you is to make them pay. ­We’re off ­here in Franconia (altitude of ­house site 1700 ft) for my nose more as a ­matter of form than necessity for I seem to have lost my nose for hay fever. At least we think I have. Next year we may stay in the lowlands to find out for sure. It would make a g­ reat difference in our outlook.

116. ​Elmer Drew (1893–1979) and Elwin True Palmer (1893–1973), Pinkerton class of 1911. They played on the baseball team, with Elwin playing first base and Elmer pitching. Both students had a reputation for being pious, and, a­ fter graduating from Boston University, became Methodist clergymen. One of the Palmer twins (it is unclear which) showed up at RF’s door in South Shaftsbury, began preaching to him, and ceased only ­a fter RF had agreed to purchase a Bible. Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry, a bestseller in 1927, satirizes American religious fundamentalism. The editors thank Derry historian Richard Holmes for help with this note. 117. ​Bartlett had invited RF to Boulder to lecture and read at the inaugural Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference in the summer of 1930. RF eventually agreed to come in the summer of 1931. 118.  Elinor suffered from angina pectoris. 119. ​Theodore M. Fisher (1882–1971) established the Theodore Fisher Intimate Series for Adults in the early 1930s. See also RF’s letter to Fisher, September 28, 1930.

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Marj is in hospital in Baltimore where she lay a hopeless invalid two years ago, now training to be a nurse. Lesley is in New York with her husband and her baby.120 Carol is farming at the stone h ­ ouse where you saw him. Irma is ­going to college at Mass Agricultural College next year with her husband and her baby. Her husband has been farming near us but is turning to landscape architecture so called.121 We have three grandchildren in three dif­fer­ent families.122 One of the grandchildren starts school this year and so begins again the endless round.123 The first school I went to at his age was in San Francisco along about fifteen years a­ fter the Civil War (­We’re almost that far from the World War). I cried (wept) myself out of that first school in one day not ­because the teacher was a negress (which she was) but on general princi­ples.124 I didnt get back again for two years. I’ve been jumping school ever since. Affectionately R.F.

[To Lew Sarett (1888–1954), American poet, scholar, and public speaker. ALS. Northwestern.]

Franconia N.H. September 2 1929 Dear Lew: That makes two letters of yours to none of mine. Time something was done about it. McCole, who bore your second, proved as good as your word.125 I couldnt see enough of him at a place like the Bread Loaf Summer School; 120. ​Dwight Francis (1897–1988) and Elinor (born May 11, 1929). Francis had a place on Sniffen Court, off East Thirty-­Sixth Street. 121. ​John Cone enrolled in the landscape architecture program at Mas­sa­c hu­setts State College (now the University of Mas­sa­c hu­setts–­A mherst) in the fall of 1930. He transferred to the regular architecture program at Yale two years ­later, in 1932, and did so well during his first term as to win a scholarship. ­A fter graduating with honors in 1935, he and Irma lived briefly in Granby, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, before moving, in 1936, to Hanover, New Hampshire, where John joined an architectural firm, working as a draftsman. 122.  In addition to Elinor Francis (mentioned above), Carol’s son, Prescott, and Irma’s son, John “Jack” Cone Jr. 123. ​Prescott, born in 1924. 124. ​On RF’s early education, see EY, 21–23. 125. ​Camille John McCole (1905–1939) had completed BA and MA degrees at Notre Dame University and was teaching ­t here at the time RF met him.

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but what I saw I liked.126 I wish you had been in his boots. I need to see you again soon. I believe I remember every­thing we said and did the time you visited me at Ann Arbor and the time we ­were together at Harriet’s rebeginning benefit in Chicago.127 I should think t­hose memories could safely be added to now—­I mean without danger of being crowded out of mind—by a few new ones. Next time I go to Chicago I am g­ oing to let you know and see if we cant arrange a meeting.128 I look on the Laona Forest County Wisconsin of your letterhead with longing eyes as a place where I might find refuge with you from the world the mail and the telephone. But I suppose it is a fallacy of distance. You could prob­ably promise me no more freedom than I have ­here—­unless you took me tracking robbers on the Belly River ranges.129 You’d have had to take me younger for that. Your big mountains would scare me ­after so many years among my lesser mountains. I doubt if I was ever equal to scrambling on h ­ orse­back up and down loose ledges. Your h ­ orse sits down on his haunches, I suppose, stiffens his two legs in front and in a few minutes coasting raises your aneroid by several pounds of pressure. I guess raises your barometer and lowers your aneroid would be the right way to say it.130 Never mind—­I am not writing poetry; so technical accuracy is not demanded of me. In a poem of Markham’s I read yesterday I found him speaking of the robin starling and sparrow as having migrated for the winter from ­England. I’m no authority on En­glish birds, but I’m very sure he chose the

126. ​RF spoke at the Bread Loaf School of En­glish on July 30 in a series that included Percy MacKaye and Sinclair Lewis. 127. ​The benefit in Chicago (on December 2, 1925) honored Harriet Monroe and raised funds for Poetry. 128. ​RF had read at the Chicago ­Woman’s Club on April 10. 129. ​Dissatisfied with life in Evanston, Illinois, and determined to live closer to nature, Sarett moved his f­amily to the woods of northern Wisconsin and lived in Laona from 1928 u ­ ntil 1932. He retained his position at Northwestern and spent three months a year in residence t­ here. RF’s observations about mountains and h ­ orse­manship refer to Sarett’s ­earlier experiences as a part-­t ime ranger in national parks in Wyoming and Montana. The Belly River in northern Montana winds through the Lewis and Livingston ranges in Glacier National Park. 130. ​A descent in altitude would, as RF notes, result in an increase in air pressure and cause the mercury level in a traditional barometer to rise; in an aneroid, or fluidless, ­barometer, the increase in air pressure would cause the covering disk or membrane to move from convex t­ oward concave.

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three that just dont migrate.131 The worst of such falseness to fact is that it makes all poets look as if they said anything the rhyme made them say. We wont do anything to bring our craft into such disrepute ­w ill we? No, ­we’ll be good boys—­and w ­ e’ll be good friends what­ever distance separates us. Always yours Robert Frost

[To James R. Wells. ALS. ACL.]

Franconia New Hampshire September 7 1929 Dear Wells: For gods’ sake dont give up writing to me simply b­ ecause I d­ on’t write to you or anybody ­else. Prob­ably I am not to blame for not writing letters. Prob­ ably it is something in my inheritance diet poverty training and luck; for all of which I should be treated at the root instead of made fun of, imprisoned and slighted, or legislated against. Law, I’m pretty sure, w ­ ill not help in the ­matter. It has been tried already in a small way to no avail. We made a rule in the ­family that I should take the first Sunday (if any) ­after the fourth Monday of e­ very month to write letters and u ­ ntil I wrote them I should not be allowed on that day to attend worship, divine or h ­ uman.132 I have suffered cruelly from the ordinance but, as I have said, to no purpose—­I have gained no relief in the social pressure that sometimes makes us feel as if we would fly without wing or aeroplane, and the church has gained nothing in attendance, in fact has steadily lost, I learn indirectly, in late years—­and none so wise as to know 131. ​See the second stanza of “How Oswald Dined with God” in Edwin Markham’s 1915 volume The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems (Garden City, NY: Doubleday): Frosty and stiff by the gray York wall Stood the rusty grass and the yarrow: Gone wings and songs to the southland, all— Robin and starling and sparrow. RF is correct in his ornithology: the birds h ­ ere named typically remain in the UK during winter. 132. ​A regime that, if adhered to, would have given RF on average two letter-­w riting days a year. Wells had written several unanswered letters in the previous months.

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what to do about it. And I leave it to [the] League of Nations if ­there is any more la­men­ta­ble spectacle short of war itself than a man of my sensibility suffering alone in the foreground to no purpose. Do you nothing to add to my contorted suffering with your ironies about my being all abroad, but send the ­really beautifully written printed and bound books along for me to sign and so earn a maximum royalty on the retail published price.133 I need all the money I can lay hands on without seeming to grab it. We are away up in the mountains for my hay-­fever and s­ hall be for at least two weeks more. Could you send the books h ­ ere at once? The address is Franconia, New Hampshire. Ever yours Robert Frost

133. ​ T he Cow’s in the Corn: see RF to Wells, July 14, 1928 (LRF-2, 648–650). ­Here RF appears to reply to Wells’s May 9, 1929, plea for copy. See also RF to Wells, October 11, 1929. In any case, the contract RF had signed in March 1928 with Wells (and Crosby Gaige) called for 600 copies of a book to be priced at $10. Wells advanced RF $300 at the time he signed the contract, which stipulated that $900 more would follow thirty days ­a fter publication—­t hough at that point, Wells expected the book to contain much more than The Cow’s in the Corn, and indeed expected the playlet to succeed a book of poems. Wells was, without entirely being aware of it, placing himself in competition with Joseph Blumenthal for publication of all of RF’s ­f uture “­limited” editions; the latter won. A July 3, 1928, letter from Wells (on Crosby Gaige letterhead) to RF reads, in part: “It would seem to me that if you are willing to give us your l­imited editions to be published—­a nd that means that not even the Harbor Press [which Roland Wood operated, and which had printed the second edition of A Way Out] should bring out any ­l ittle signed publication of yours—we would be in a position to guarantee you in the next five years on the material you have on hand at this time, the sum of approximately $6000.00 or more” (letter held at DCL). A July 23, 1929, letter from Wells to RF indicated that he hoped RF would leave Holt and join Crosby Gaige on a stipend of $4,000 a year (letter held at DCL). At the end of the last sheet of that letter—­w ritten from Nevada where Wells had gone to secure a divorce—­R F adds this remark (presumably to send by tele­g ram, though we have not located one): “Your kindness and reasonableness ­g reat relief / ­Will send something immediately to print in Reno” (DCL).

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[To Wade Van Dore. Date derived from postmark. ALS. BU.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [September 9, 1929] Dear Wade: You speak of the hope of so conducting your f­uture life as to please me. You can please me only by pleasing yourself. I have ­little use for any who ­haven’t seen a way of their own to live. But we ­w ill talk about ­these ­things once or twice when I get back. In the large you must make your own c­ areer. In ­here and ­there a detail you might show your friendship for me by deferring to my wishes—as in the ­matter of Walter Hendricks.134 You have a right to have him at the Gully since I have made it your home for the summer as much as if you rented or owned it. But I am a trifle pained that you should want him ­there ­after what I said about him. You ­can’t tell him not to come now that you have invited him. I ­don’t want him affronted or hurt. I dont want a case or an issue made of his visit. But please for my sake say nothing to Carol of his visit and dont take him near the other ­houses.135 You surely cant mean to make me real trou­ble. I assume that he is only with you for a day or at most over night. ­We’ll let it go at that. I cant understand his persistance [sic] in keeping on my trail. We ran plump into him h ­ ere and he immediately set to forcing us to call on his wife. Elinor so far gave in as to say we would call for a few minutes on our way somewhere. He tried to make it for supper. We called for the minute or 134. ​Hendricks had become a ­family friend when RF taught him at Amherst (class of 1917). So trusted was he that, in March 1919, with RF still in Amherst, Elinor asked him to look ­a fter Carol, Marjorie, and Irma during her brief absence from the Franconia farm. When RF reached Franconia on March 19, Irma reported that Hendricks had made improper sexual advances to her, which occasioned considerable awkwardness, as Hendricks remained in or near Franconia through mid-­May 1919. RF did not confront Hendricks about the ­matter, but he did quietly cut his ties to the young man. Over the years, as I­rma’s ­mental health deteriorated, it became clear that she suffered from paranoid fantasies, often of sexual predation, and RF concluded that Hendricks had been wrongly accused. Nevertheless, relations between the two men remained difficult, partly ­because none of the Frost c­ hildren (with the exception of Lesley) had ever been made fully aware of the nature and complexity of ­Irma’s prob­lems, and partly ­because the presence of Hendricks, in or around South Shaftsbury, might well have upset them (­because, of course, they took I­ rma’s interests to heart). For further details, see LRF-1, 656; LRF-2, 76, 90. 135. ​In one of which Irma lived with her son and husband.

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two. It was so reluctant and awkward on our part that I should have thought he would have felt snubbed. He is harder to snub than any Jew I ever heard of. Well, do the best you can for me without his noticing too much. Thats all I ask. We are g­ oing to let you and Olin tear down the big North barn. W ­ e’ll see about the corn barn when we get home. You and Olin can start on the North barn at once. This is your authority. I understand Olin expects 45 cents an hour.136 OK. Cheer up. I’ll see you soon. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Theodore Baird (1901–1996), professor of En­glish at Amherst. ALS. ACL.]

Franconia NH Sept 16 1929 but South Shaftesbury Vt by Sept 24th My dear Baird: The difficulty is the lecture comes at a time of year when I am deep in my own selfish affairs and hate to be drawn to the surface.137 You could make me give the lecture by exaggerating its importance to t­ hose small boys or to you. But you must let me off painlessly. ­A fter leaving Amherst I give April to audiences; and then I think I ­ought to be ­f ree for some months to write anything that may happen into my head. I can see and hear you agreeing with me in that considerate way of yours. Dont think I d­ idn’t appreciate your having thought of me. It ­won’t be long now before ­we’ll be sitting for a talk again. Always yours Robert Frost

136. ​A rchibald “Archie” Kimball Olin (1882–1934), a farmhand living in West Shaftsbury, Vermont. 137.  The matter likely involved the innovative course—much talked of in Amherst College lore—Baird had designed for freshmen (“small boys”): English 1. See William Pritchard, English Papers: A Teaching Life (1995): 21–25.

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[To Sidney Cox (1889–1951), American scholar, critic, and educator. Date derived from postmark. This and the following letter ­were mailed together. ALS. DCL.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [September 19, 1929] Dear Sidney: I may want to write you two or three letters as I think over all you came up ­here with yesterday—­and I may not. One ­thing I w ­ ill write about at once that I didnt quite bring myself to talk about face to face. It reaches me from many directions sometimes with the kind of smile I ­don’t care for and sometimes with an out-­a nd-­out sneer that I am too much with you in the class room.138 I am sure you have used me to your own hurt at Dartmouth. I’d just like to see what leaving me entirely out of it for a year or two would do—­not severely alone and out of it but just ­gently and unobtrusively out of it, so that no one would notice the omission till some day ­toward the end of the two years someone uncommonly observing should wake up and exclaim “Let’s see! Whats become of Frost in this course?”139 I doubt if our friends, wives, ­children, or even ourselves are to be looked on as resources in classroom work. Offhand you might think it was an advantage in teaching con­temporary lit­ er­a­ture to be personally acquainted with me. On the contrary it is a ­great disadvantage in my way of looking at it. It keeps you from talking about me as modestly as you could talk about Mrs William Rose Benet for instance.140 Every­body knows something has to be kept back for pressure and to anybody puzzled to know what I should suggest that for a beginning it might as well be his friends, wife, ­c hildren, and self. That would be the part of mature wisdom. Poetry is mea­sured in more senses than one: it is mea­sured feet but more impor­tant still it is a mea­sured amount of all we could say an 141 we 138. ​Cox’s friendship with RF had been instrumental in his appointment to the Dartmouth faculty in 1926. 139. ​Cox was a provocative and popu­lar teacher, qualities that did not endear him to all his colleagues. He seems not only to have taught RF’s poetry, but also to have invoked the man frequently in conversation, and this too was resented by some. It is pos­si­ble that, as RF suggests, all this was holding him back from what would other­w ise have been a deserved promotion. See RFSC, 166–168. 140. ​Elinor Wylie (1885–1928), poet, who had married William Rose Benét (1886–1950), also a poet, in 1923. 141. ​With the archaic (but in the sixteenth to eigh­teenth centuries commonplace) sense of “if.”

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would. We ­shall be judged fi­nally by the delicacy of our feeling of where to stop short. The right ­people know, and we artists should know better than they know. T ­ here is no greater fallacy g­ oing than that art is expression— an undertaking to tell all to the last scrapings of the brain pan. I neednt qualify as a specialist in botany and astronomy for a license to invoke flowers and stars in my poetry. I neednt have scraped ­t hose subjects to the point of exhaustiveness. God forbids that I should have to be an authority on anything even the psyche before I can set up for an artist. A ­little of anything goes a long way in art. Im never so desperate for material that I have to trench on the confidential for one ­t hing, nor on the private for another, nor on the personal, nor in general on the sacred. A l­ittle in the fist to manipulate is all I ask. My object is true form—is was and always w ­ ill be—­form true to any chance bit of true life. Almost any bit w ­ ill do. I dont naturally trust any other object. I fight to be allowed to sit cross-­legged on the old flint pile and flake a lump into an artifact. Or if I dont actually fight myself, the soldiers of my tribe do for me to keep the unsympathetic off me and give me elbow room. The best hour I ever had in the class room was good only for the shape it took. I like an encounter to shape up, unify, however roughly. ­T here is such a ­t hing as a random talk, but it is to be valued as a scouting expedition for coinable gold. I may say this partly to save myself from being misunderstood; I say it partly too to help you what I can ­toward your next advance in thought if not in office. You’ll find yourself most effective in t­ hings ­people find out by accident you might have said but didnt say. ­Those are the ­t hings that make ­people take a good reestimating look at you. You have to refrain from saying many t­ hings to get credit for refraining from a few. T ­ here is a discouraging waste t­ here as everywhere ­else in life. But never mind: t­ here is a sense of strength gained in not caring. You feel so much in having something to yourself. You have added to the mass of your private in reserve. You are more alluring to your friends and baffling to your foes. Ever yours you know, Robert Frost.

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[To Sidney Cox. Date derived from postmark. See headnote to previous letter. ALS. DCL.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [September 19, 1929] Dear Sidney Take another letter in the same envelope. You may have been right in having searched yourself and in having helped ­others search you for certainties. You may be the better in what comes next for having gone into yourself as you have. But you w ­ ill be wrong if you continue in that phase to forty.142 Your helpless immersion in the phase proves your real­ity. But all this to-do about it must make you too self-­ conscious for real­ity. You are in transition plainly. You could only turn backward on principal [sic] from obstinate policy. Onward is into a phase more objective. This is all that is critical in your situation. You are perfectly right about a lot of ­t hings. ­There is no knowledge without thinking. Stick to that. You have them ­t here. The kind of person who would know what was good in lit­er­a­t ure—­that is the person we aim to cultivate. How I like to hear you say such t­ hings. Fight it out on ­t hose lines. But dont compromise a good cause with personalities. R.F.

[To James R. Wells. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont October 11 1929 My dear Wells: A thousand thanks for the check or rather six thousand one hundred and forty two thanks—­one for ­every cent in the check.143 But I dont want any pay for my part in the small book. It’s only a joke. You keep the money and, if you

142. ​Cox had turned forty just over three weeks e­ arlier, on August 25, 1929. 143. ​Royalties on The Cow’s in the Corn: $61.42, which Wells had sent on September 26. He had de­cided to lower the price of the booklet to $4.50. Vide RF’s ­earlier statement to Wells on this publishing venture, that “Money is nothing to me” (LRF-2, 650). See also the notes to RF’s September 7, 1929, letter to Wells.

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like, send me ten more copies of the book instead. ­They’ll be something for a visitor now and then to remember his visit by. I feel awfully afraid in the dark sometimes, especially ­after too hard a day on the farm, that $4.50 is too big a price for our trifle. You might not think my judgement was worth as much as yours in a ­matter of business. But let me tell you in all modesty, I am a pretty shrewd old boy for a countryman two hundred miles from New York. My instinct or what­ever it is might well be trusted. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To James R. Wells. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. Yale.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [mid-­November 1929] Dear James: Come along and ­don’t sit ­there writing about it.144 You’ll be welcome if it ­were only to satisfy our curiosity. I bet you want me to autograph a book. Come any way. But bring your own makings. Our vineyard disappointed us this year. Every­thing ­else on the place was a success. I certainly have a knack of farming. Ever yours Robert Frost

144. ​Presumably RF h ­ ere replies to a short note from Wells dated November 10, 1929: “Something has come up that I want very much to see you about. It has nothing to do with publishing or any gainful ­thing. If I motor up [from Gaylordsville, Connecticut, where the Slide Mountain Press was headquartered] could I see you for an hour. I beg you not to fail me” (DCL). The ­matter likely concerned Wells’s complicated marital and business affairs in the late 1920s; see the notes to RF’s May 25, 1931, letter to Lankes.

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[To Lawrence Conrad (1898–1982), American writer and educator. RF met him when Conrad was working on his MA at the University of Michigan (1921–1923). At the time, RF had a fellowship at the university. He read Conrad’s work in manuscript and took an abiding interest in his literary ­career. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury VT November 18 ’29 Dear Lawrence: You are a funny boy and you mustnt mind being smiled at for your cool calculation. You seem to be able to look and talk forward the way anybody ­else is lucky if he can see backward. ­Every ­l ittle while you give me a strange picture of myself in something you say. You must be mistaken in thinking of me as ever having known what I was about. The pre­sent is the least of the three times I live in. The f­ uture comes next. I live in that by a number of beliefs I want left vague—­God-­man-­and self-­beliefs.145 I never know what is ­going to happen next ­because I dont dare to let myself formulate a foolish hope. Much less do I know what is happening now: I am too flooded with feeling to know.146 I suppose I live chiefly in the past, in realizing what happened and taking credit for it just as if I had predetermined it and consciously carried it out.147 But Lord Lord—­I am never the creature of high resolve you want to have me. I have simply [gone] the way of the dim beliefs I speak of dimly b­ ecause I dont want them brought out into the light and examined too exactly. They w ­ on’t bear it I may as well admit to forestall ridicule. So much for myself. Now about you in briefer. Anybody can see looking in from the outside that you o ­ ught not to stay very long where you are. I dont understand such a man as your Boss.148 All my bosses from the very begin145. ​See RF’s remarks in “Education by Poetry”: “We cannot tell some ­people what it is we believe partly ­because we are too proudly vague to explain” (CPPP, 727–728). 146. ​As for the “three times” we live in (past, pre­sent, ­f uture): out of t­ hese thoughts RF would write “Carpe Diem,” collected first in AWT. See CPPP, 305–306. The poem reads, in part: “The pre­sent / Is too much for the senses, / Too crowding, too confusing—­ / Too pre­sent to imagine.” 147. ​An idea as old (with RF) as the last stanza of his “The Trial by Existence” (published first in 1906) and one he would develop further in his 1939 essay “The Figure a Poem Makes.” See CPPP, 30, for the first, and CPPP, 777, for the second. 148. ​Wilford M. Aikin, headmaster at the John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri, from its founding in 1923 u ­ ntil 1935. He was a very energetic leader, increasing enrollment fourfold during his tenure, and impressing upon the institution his vision of

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ning have valued me as I had something to say for myself. One of the most autocratic of them, a state superintendant [sic] reputed a tyrant, let me into the secret of why he didnt tell me what to say and do. He said he never undertook to supply ­people with ideas who had ideas of their own. I might not believe it from what I had heard of him but such was the fact. His name was Morrison and he stirred my life.149 I’m afraid your Boss is not quite a large man—­though he has his points. You must go back to Michigan when you can reach an understanding with the powers.150 You should be accepted primarily as a writer. You want some time to yourself for your books what­ever they may happen to be.151 You o ­ ught not to have more than a nine-­hour week of teaching. By rights you should have less and you could afford to sacrifice somewhat in salary to get less. Start high enough in the salary to trade for less. But tell me more about it. Maybe I could speak for you if you referred the powers to me. I am to be in Ann Arbor in early April.152 I heard favorably of your story in The Caravan when I was down t­ here with Kreymborg Mumford Rosenfeldt [sic] last week.153 Always yours Robert Frost

progressive education. Conrad chaired the En­glish Department at John Burroughs from 1928 to 1930. 149. ​Henry C. Morrison (1871–1945), superintendent of the New Hampshire State Department of Public Instruction. Morrison visited RF’s classroom at Pinkerton Acad­emy in 1909, and was so impressed by what he saw that he invited RF to speak at a convention of educators in Exeter, New Hampshire. See EY, 348–349. 150. ​Conrad had taught rhe­toric at the University of Michigan from 1923 to 1928, but he did not return to Michigan a­ fter leaving John Burroughs. Instead, he took a job at the Montclair State Teachers College (now Montclair State University), where he taught American lit­er­a­t ure and creative writing from 1930 ­u ntil 1963. 151. ​To date, Conrad had published a novel, Temper (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924) and a textbook, Descriptive and Narrative Writing (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927). 152. ​RF held a brief residency at the University of Michigan from April 7 to 14, 1930. 153. ​Likely an error: Alfred Kreymborg (1883–1966), Lewis Mumford (1895–1990), and Paul Rosenfeld (1890–1946) edited several anthologies ­u nder the title American Caravan: A Yearbook of American Lit­er­a­ture (1927, 1928, 1929, and 1931), but Lawrence Conrad contributed to none of them (though Conrad Aiken did: perhaps RF misremembers the name he heard spoken of while passing through New York on his way back from speaking engagements in the South).

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[To Wade Van Dore. Date derived from the postmark. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vt. [November 18, 1929] Dear Wade: I wrote you a letter last year, a ­little unconsidered and severe, about your friend and mine Lawrence Conrad which I now wish out of existance [sic].154 You know the one I mean and why I wrote it. I was put out with Lawrence for the uncanny deliberation with which he urged your g­ oing about the business of fame. He is uncannily deliberate. You should see the cool letter I have from him about his own f­ uture. But when I call him your friend and mine I mean it: I am sure he has you at heart and wants to win you the victory. I find myself wishing him back in Ann Arbor where he could help you personally with ideas and stimulation.155 He’d be good for you to have near to visit and talk ­things out with—­better than I ever could be ­because a more indefagtiguable [sic] teacher. I w ­ on’t follow pupils up. He w ­ ill. I’d like you to have him for a neighbor and perhaps you ­w ill. I ­really think a lot of him for all his egotism. I ­don’t want that letter of last year to stand of rec­ord against him or me ­either. So if you ­w ill be kind enough to tell me you have destroyed it, I w ­ ill be satisfied. No need to send it to me to destroy. Just destroy it yourself and lets forget it. You havent written to say if you got the books I sent you from New York. Carol seems to want a word from you. Let me know if you receive the enclosed check for $125.00 and what luck you are having in prose or rhyme. Remember me to your m ­ other. Always yours Robert Frost The ­house is painted outside. The spring is lower than it has been. I’ll be having a book next spring too—my collected poems.156 I’m looking forward to your book.

154. ​See RF to Van Dore, January 1, 1929. Van Dore did not entirely destroy the letter, though he did cut out most of the text that referred to Conrad. 155. ​Van Dore was again living in nearby Detroit. 156. ​Actually, the book was issued on November 7, 1930 (priced at $5.00 in the trade edition).

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[To Herschel Brickell. ALS. Alger.]

South Shaftsbury Vt November 30 1929 Dear Mr Brickell: Of course give any permission you please like that. You know what’s good for my cause. I’m only too glad to have “Christmas Trees” singled out for attention.157 Always yours Robert Frost

[To Marion Elza Dodd (1883–1961), proprietor of the Hampshire Bookshop in Northampton, Mas­sa­chu­setts. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt December 3 1929 Dear Miss Dodd: I ­shall be in with my views on every­thing before long now. We go to Amherst for our three months on January 1st. And I’ll bring along some of my back manuscript for your inspection. I warn you I d­ on’t make very pretty manuscript. Possibly my worst fault in life is that I w ­ ill write poetry in ordinary 158 ­children’s composition books. But that is as I might well have planned it. I should be afraid to start having every­thing worthy of poetry lest I should end by thinking I c­ ouldn’t write it except on vellum in eve­n ing clothes in the parlor. ­We’ll talk about the Heavy Hand in teaching poetry. I suppose I could write the idea out for you in a letter and you could print it as an excerpt so that I could keep on saying with pride or humility that I never wrote an article.

157.  The poem, first published in MI, was issued by Holt (and designed by Joseph Blumenthal of the Spiral Press) as the first Christmas card in what would become a yearly, if irregular, tradition. Thirty-five RF Christmas cards were eventually printed for private circulation, twenty-five by the Spiral Press. For descriptions of all the cards, see Crane, 108–144. See also RF’s February 14, 1930, letter to Blumenthal. 158. ​Indeed an accurate description of the notebooks RF typically used.

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You’ll be more interested than most to know that by this time next year you’ll be having my collected to deal with and in. But you have asked for it. Always yours sincerely Robert Frost

[To J. J. Lankes. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. HRC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa December 15, 1929] Dear J. J. Gee Whillikins d­ idn’t I give you a copy of a way out?159 No one should be without it in t­ hese bad days.160 I dont claim that it is the only way out, merely suggest it as a way out, namely, to kill someone ­else and become him, or say rather, become someone ­else and then kill him to avoid duplication. The only prob­lem is deciding who or whom to become. I should ill-­become most ­people, I fear.161 You s­ hall have a copy of A Way Out at once, also a copy of The Cow’s in the Corn—­a nd any other play I may write between now and the day of mailing—­write and publish. It grieves me hard that ­people dont give you enough to do. ­Don’t you think the g­ reat Kent ­w ill keep his promises sooner or ­later.162 The excitement of

159. ​Again, RF’s A Way Out. RF lowercases the title of the play because, with the onset of the Depression, everyone needed a way out. 160. ​The Wall Street Crash of 1929 had just occurred (October 24–29). 161. ​See also RF’s comments on the ending of A Way Out in letters to Roland Holt on December 16, 1920 (LRF-1, 117–118) and to Alberts on August 9, 1929. 162. ​Rockwell Kent commissioned Lankes to make eight large woodblocks derived from his “Mad Hermit” drawings in Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920): “Pelagic Reverie,” “­Running ­Water,” “The Vision,” “Prison Bars,” “The Hermit,” “Ecstacy,” “Immanence,” and an untitled “Tailpiece.” (Kent writes, in Wilderness: “All about me stand the drawings of my series, the ‘Mad Hermit.’ They look mighty fine to me. Myself with whis­kers and hair!” [180].) Lankes notes in his personal ledger: “Kent has blocks never paid for work and my outlay for phot’ng and blocks at least 35 dollars.” The editors thank Pat Alger and Welford Taylor for their help in annotating this letter.

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having got onto the front page with a shipwreck has prob­ably dislocated his ego momentarily.163 Just as soon as he gets re­oriented he ­w ill realize his relative importance to Byrd as a Polar explorer and humbly resume his ­every day obligations.164 ­There’s a kind of t­ hing I’ve been wondering if you couldnt work up in this country—­the decoration of title pages with line figure and pattern. I dont see that t­ hese special fine printed editions have much but the fine printing with us. I’m no authority on what I’m talking about. Maybe I dont even make myself distinct. I know Beardsly [sic] made more and less elaborate designs for covers as well as title pages. Lovatt [sic] Fraser did all sorts of ­things.165 What you did for Miss R ­ eese is nearer it than what you have done for me.166 I must talk to Wells or some of t­ hose Random House fellows and find out if t­ here is any merit in my idea. Carol has put in a cement reservoir and laid iron pipes for the w ­ ater at the Gully. The barns still stand. We talk of having a few horned Dorset sheep. Fifteen below zero night before last. To­n ight raining and a snow fog on the frozen world. I dont want to prejudice you against Vermont Freestate. I was

163. ​T he AP ran the following item in papers across the United States on July  20, 1929: “The American yacht Direction, in which Rockwell Kent, painter of the wild and bleak places of the earth, was cruising with two companions, was wrecked last Sunday near Godthaab, Greenland.” Kent and his crew ­were not injured, but the yacht was destroyed. 164.  Kent was an avid explorer and duly chronicled his many adventures. His account of the Greenland voyage was published in 1930 as N by E (New York: Brewer & Warren). Admiral Richard E. Byrd (1888–1957) had flown his Fokker F-VII plane over the North Pole in 1926 and was, in 1929, in the midst of an expedition to the Antarctic. 165. ​En­glish Art Nouveau illustrator Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898), illustrator of editions of Malory, Poe, and Wilde, among ­others, and editor and illustrator of the Yellow Book, an avant-­garde literary quarterly published in ­Great Britain in the 1890s. En­glish illustrator Claud Lovat Fraser (1890–1921) designed and illustrated books for Harold Monro’s Poetry Bookshop. 166. ​See the notes to RF’s January 29, 1929, letter to Lankes.

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just reading that Yucatan almost joined Texas when it revolted from Mexico.167 I’m always interested in Texas as another freestate like Vermont.168 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Lincoln MacVeagh. In SL, Lawrance Thompson reports that the manuscript of this letter is held at the Jones Library in Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts. E­ ither he erred, or it has since gone missing; no such manuscript is held ­there now. We rely on Thompson’s transcription (362).]

South Shaftsbury December 15 1929 Dear Lincoln: [. . .]169 I’ve been East lecturing since I got better and you ­ought to see the vast book of Catherwood’s architectural drawings of ancient Mayapan I picked up at Goodspeeds.170 The first poem I ever wrote was on the Maya-­ Toltec-­A ztec civilization171 and ­there is where my heart still is while outwardly 167. ​R F refers to the Second Republic of Yucatán (1841–1848). (The province had declared itself in­de­pen­dent once before, as the Federated Republic of Yucatán, on May 29, 1823, only to rejoin the United Mexican States on December 23 of the same year.) The architects of the Second Republic followed the Republic of Texas (1836–1846) out of Mexico, and, in due course, accorded it diplomatic recognition (as only five other nations did). Notably, the first vice president of the Republic of Texas, Lorenzo de Zavala, was from Yucatán. 168. ​In 1777, Vermont established itself as an in­de­pen­dent republic, though the Continental Congress never accorded it recognition. The “republic” ceased to exist when, in 1791, Vermont became the ­fourteenth state admitted to the u ­ nion. 169. ​Thompson does not indicate why he omits, as he evidently does, a portion of the letter; the ellipsis is his. 170. ​Mayapan: the ancient capital of the Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula (ca. 1220– 1440). Goodspeeds: Goodspeed’s Bookshop in Boston, founded by Charles Eliot Goodspeed (1867–1950). RF refers (­earlier in the sentence) to Views of Ancient Monuments in Central Amer­ i­ ca, Chiapas and Yucatan (London: Vizetely ­ Brothers, 1844) by Frederick Catherwood (1799–1854). The book is illustrated with tinted lithographs made from the author’s watercolor paintings. 171. ​“La Noche Triste,” printed in the Lawrence, Mas­sa­chu­setts, High School Bulletin in April  1890 (CPPP, 485–488). The poem, a narrative, details Hernán Cortés’s retreat

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I profess an interest more or less perfunctory in New ­England. Never mind, I’m lucky to be allowed to write poetry on anything at all. I wish you a Merry Christmas sale172 and the rest of the f­ amily just a Merry Christmas.173 I ­shall see you soon. Always yours Robert Frost

[To Mortimer Robinson Proctor (1889–1968), Vermont businessman and politician, and president of the Green Mountain Club. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt December 20 1929 My dear Mr Proctor: I want very much to write you a poem about the Long Trail for the anniversary of the Green Mountain Club.174 I confess contracting for a poem as yet unwritten scares me and makes me hesitate for a moment—or a month is it? But the distance of the day of delivery ­ought to give me courage. So also ­ought the cordiality of your invitation. And it is not as if I had never written a poem for an occasion before. I have written one and just one, but though it was on shorter notice than you are giving me now, it was rather a success.175 Surely sometime in a year I can count on catching myself in just the right mood for the appropriate ode. You wont be too par­tic­u­lar about the form. You know how to allow for the artist. You may remember what happened to the from Tenochtitlan—on the “night of sorrows” (June 30–­July 1, 1520)—­during which the Aztecs ravaged his army. 172. ​MacVeagh was proprietor of the Dial Press in New York. 173. ​For the ­family, see the notes to RF’s (circa) May 9, 1929, letter to MacVeagh. 174. ​The Long Trail hiking route, in construction since 1912 ­u nder the aegis of the Green Mountain Club, was nearing completion. At the same time the club was due to celebrate its twenty-­fi rst birthday in 1930. RF, Lesley, Carol, Marjorie, Lillian Labatt, and Edward Ames Richards had hiked the Long Trail (as much of it as was then finished) in the summer of 1922. See LRF-2 (268–273) for letters and notes discussing the adventure (or, in the case of RF himself, something of a misadventure). 175. ​“The Bonfire,” which RF read at Harvard on June 19, 1916, as Phi Beta Kappa Poet. He never wrote the Long Trail poem, though he would ­later encourage his son to write about it in prose (see RF to Carol, December 1932).

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ode the distinguished British poet intended. Someone merely crossed the road to rhyme with ode and the ode turned to a sonnet to rhyme with her bonnet.176 My enthusiasm for the Long Trail w ­ ill be the main consideration. You can count on that. I sometimes say trails, state forests, parks, and play grounds are the only certain good. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Frederic Melcher. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. UVA.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa December 20, 1929] Dear Fred: Stop press! I thought ­there’d be no harm in letting Goodspeed177 know of my needs lacks and wants and lo a flood of Americana especially a g­ reat big portfolio of “Chatherwoods [sic] Views in Central Amer­i­ca Chiapas and Yucatan.”178 Did you ever see it? Now if I only owned Audubons [sic] Birds Audubon’s Animals and Catlin’s Indians wouldnt I be a gentleman?179 The 176. ​See Henry Austin Dobson (1840–1921), “Urceus Exit,” a triolet: I intended an Ode,   And it turn’d to a Sonnet. It began à la mode, I intended an Ode; But Rose cross’d the road   In her latest new bonnet; I intended an Ode;   And it turn’d to a Sonnet. The poem is mentioned again in RF’s 1946 essay “The Constant Symbol” (CPPP, 789). 177. ​­Either the aforementioned Charles Goodspeed or his son, George Talbot Goodspeed (1903–1997), who, a­ fter graduating from Harvard, joined his f­ ather in r­ unning the ­family bookshop. 178. ​Again, Views of Ancient Monuments in Central Amer­i­ca, Chiapas and Yucatan. The book is dedicated to John L. Stephens, whom RF subsequently mentions. 179. ​The Goodspeeds ­were among the first booksellers fully to appreciate the value of the work of John James Audubon (1785–1851). RF refers to Audubon’s Birds of Amer­ic­ a, published in series from 1827 to 1838, and to his Viviparous Quadrupeds of North Amer­i­ca,

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Catherwood is a defective copy or maybe I couldnt have afforded it. We poor have to put up with the orts.180 Carol is off at this minute buying three or four pedigreed sheep for a start.181 He has to be satisfied with bottle-­fed orphans and unnatural ­mothers. I still want a Stephen’s Yucatan if its in good condition and doesnt cost over five dollars.182 I’m all supplied with Stephens Central Amer­i­ca. Dal Hitchcock sent me a good book that I must thank him for when I am sure of his first name.183 Dal isnt a name is it—­not the w ­ hole of a name. So he signs himself. The Pueblo Potter is the ­thing.184 Thanks for it. The pictures are wonderful. The text is an amusing professorial attempt to be behavioristic in dealing with art.185 We live and experience. Best wishes to you all for Christmas. Ever yours Robert Frost

prepared with the help of his son John Wood­house Audubon (1812–1862). In 1852, George Catlin (1796–1872) published the first volume of his Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians; with Letters and Notes Written During Eight Years of Travel and Adventure Among the Wildest and Most Remarkable Tribes Now Existing. Copies of the first editions of t­ hese works are extremely rare and often fetch astronomical prices; hence RF’s “­wouldn’t I be a gentleman.” 180. ​Scraps and remainders (of a meal); now archaic. 181. ​A number of articles touting Vermont as an ideal place to raise sheep had appeared in local newspapers in 1929. 182. ​See RF to Melcher, January 7, 1930. RF once placed Incidents of Travel in Yucatán (1843), by John L. Stephens (1805–1852)—­t he original edition of which was illustrated by engravings made from paintings by Frederick Catherwood—on a list of his “five favorite books” (CPRF, 199). Stephens’s Incidents of Travel in Central Amer­i­ca, Chiapas and Yucatán first appeared in 1841. 183. ​The name is, in fact, given fully. In a note penciled in on the manuscript, Melcher identifies Hitchcock as “an assistant editor in [the] Bowker office.” R. R. Bowker (based in New Providence, New Jersey) issued Publishers Weekly, which Melcher edited. 184. ​ T he Pueblo Potter: A Study of Creative Imagination in Primitive Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929), by Ruth L. Bunzel. 185. ​R F has in mind such remarks as t­hese, from Bunzel’s introduction: “Like language and social organ­ization, art . . . ​has accompanied man since the dawn of history. Its origin is veiled in mystery; it lies ­behind the earliest known rec­ords. What­ever it may be, to what­ever biological or psychological need of the organism art is the response, it must be recognized as one of the most constant forms of ­human be­hav­ior” (1).

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[To Arthur Stanley Pease (1881–1964), American scholar, professor of classics, and president of Amherst College from 1927 u­ ntil 1932. ALS. Harvard.]

South Shaftsbury Vt December 24 1929 Dear Mr Pease: Perhaps that would be a good idea. Thanks for your forethought. I s­ hall report to Mr Whicher as soon as I get to town.186 The game with Williams was on my side of the mountains this year and you w ­ ere all down t­ here. I didnt hear of it till it was over and lost, or I might have been ­there with you.187 You w ­ ere only half an hour away. The season’s greetings from us to you and Mrs Pease.188 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Herschel Brickell. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Prince­ton.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [late December 1929] Dear Mr Brickell: I am coming along in a few days with the few additionals to the Big Book.189 That was a lovely booklet Blumenthal made of my Christmas Trees and au186. ​Reference unclear, but perhaps a response to an invitation to attend (which RF did) the annual dinner of the Amherst Alumni Association in New York City on January 20, 1930. As for “reporting to” his Amherst colleague George Frisbie Whicher (1889– 1954), professor of En­glish (a man very much involved in the Alumni Association): RF arrived in Amherst on New Year’s Day. 187. ​The Willams–­A mherst football game was played in Williamstown, Mas­sa­c hu­ setts, on November 16, 1929; Williams College won 19–0. South Shaftsbury and Williamstown are both west of the Green Mountains / Berkshires. 188. ​Henrietta Faxon Pease (1876–1951). 189. ​The forthcoming CP 1930. The book cuts (from ABW) “Asking for Roses,” “In Equal Sacrifice,” and “Spoils of the Dead.” Added to the contents of ABW is “In Hardwood Groves” (published first as “The Same Leaves” in the Dearborn In­de­pen­dent for December 18, 1926). To the text of MI RF adds “Locked Out” (published first in the Forge in February 1917), and to WRB he adds two poems: “The Lovely S­ hall Be Choosers” (first printed in Poetry Quartos in 1929) and “The Egg and the Machine” (first printed as “The

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gers well.190 I must write and tell him so. I had a copy from him too. The Christmas Trees was originally written on purpose for a Christmas card my ­children did by hand to send to friends.191 They got but a short way with it—­too much work. Speaking of a portrait for the book to come, what should you say [to] James Chapin as a pos­si­ble doer of it?192 I’m told he has the best [one]193 of me in his studio 212 W 17th St N.Y.C. right now. Mrs Frost and I mean to see it soon. Once before James did a fine ­thing of me as I was when younger.194 The best of him is he knows all my books and makes the picture as much from them as from me. That may not be fair but I like it. He might like to do something in line drawing fresh from me or from the painting. He might be willing to have the painting reproduced in some way. No one is likely to do me prouder.195 ­Will you have the business department notice that I ­shall be in Amherst for all of January February and March. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

Walker” in the Second American Caravan [1928]). Published for the first time in CP 1930 are “The Last Word of a Bluebird” (now in MI) and “What Fifty Said” (now in WRB). Fi­nally, “The Pasture,” which had served as a kind of epigraph to NB, now appears as introductory to the volume as a ­whole (but, as had been the case with NB, it is not listed in the ­table of contents). All subsequent collected editions of RF’s work would feature “The Pasture” in the same way. 190. ​Joseph Blumenthal (1897–1990), founder of the Spiral Press, which would print the Random House ­limited edition of CP 1930 (1,000 copies), to be published in conjunction with the Henry Holt trade edition. For “Christmas Trees,” see RF to Brickell, November 30, 1929. 191. ​A copy of the poem, illustrated in watercolor by Lesley Frost—in 1916, when the ­family lived in snowy Franconia, New Hampshire—­survives among the Untermeyer papers at the Library of Congress. 192. ​James Chapin (1887–1975), American painter and illustrator and friend of RF since 1917. He illustrated a l­ imited edition of NB (New York: Holt, 1919). 193. ​The page is torn h ­ ere, over a space indicative of a three-­or at most four-­letter word. We insert “one” as the likeliest candidate. 194. ​The frontispiece of the 1919 edition of NB. 195. ​R F and his wife did visit Chapin at his studio in January 1930; the three agreed that a photo­g raph of the painting would not serve as a portrait for CP 1930 (see RF to Lynn Carrick, February 4, 1930; and Elinor Frost to R. H. Thornton, January 30, 1930, Prince­ton).

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[To Frederic Melcher. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst Mass January 7 1930 Dear Fred: ­Isn’t it terrible?—­f rom [a] collectors point of view. I find that I have no first edition of the American North of Boston in blue myself.196 What do you say we advertise for it? I’ll buy if I can afford it. My nearest seems to be a second edition. The En­glish “A Boys ­Will” pebbled cloth has two fly leaves in front and in the back one blank leaf and one next inside covered with advertising on one side and making acknowledgements for permission to print on the other side. The other A Boys ­Will, brick red on white, is exactly the same as to fly leaves. Its page mea­sure­ments are 7 ¼ × 4 ¾ . I have sent for the copy of the American edition done from En­glish sheets.197 I hope Carol can find the one I mean. You seem to have most of the articles about me.198 Garnett, Sergeant, Elliott, Van Doren, Untermeyer, Lowell and Untermeyer’s. You might add Sydney Cox’s small book (by Henry Holt) Albert Feuillerat’s article in Revue de Deux Mondes and Percy Boynton’s article in his book “Some Americans.” Let’s leave Gorham B. Munsons book out of it if only on account of all that nonsense about my noble ancestry.199 I am more and more taken with Barrett

196. ​For details, see Crane, 15. RF refers, h ­ ere, to what Crane terms “binding D” of the book—an edition of one hundred copies of the original sheets printed by David Nutt in 1914 but bound in blue by Simpkin, Marshall (of London) ­a fter the firm of David Nutt went bankrupt. 197. ​For a detailed history of the several bindings of ABW and NB, see LRF-2, 272n207 (a note prepared with invaluable advice from Pat Alger, collector, bibliographer, and member of the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame). 198. ​For the bibliography of RF that Melcher was preparing for the Colophon. See RF to Melcher, February 9, 1929. 199. ​See Edward Garnett, “A New American Poet,” Atlantic Monthly (August  1915); Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, “Robert Frost, a Good Greek out of New E ­ ngland,” New Republic (September 30, 1925); George Roy Elliott, “The Neighborliness of Robert Frost,” The Nation (December 6, 1919); Carl Van Doren, “The Soil of the Puritans: Robert Frost, Quintessence and Subsoil,” ­Century Magazine (February 1923); Amy Lowell, Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (New York: Macmillan, 1917); Sidney Cox, Robert Frost: Original “Ordinary” Man (New York: Henry Holt, 1929); Albert Feuillerat, “Poètes américains

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Wendels [sic] idea that the Puritans ­were all Jews who having been forced in the early sixteenth ­century to become Christians got even with the church by making schism.200 Have that pair of Yucatan books sent to me ­here w ­ ill you if they h ­ aven’t already gone to South Shaftsbury. I enclose my wife’s check for five dollars.201 It is hers but I stand b­ ehind it. And thanks for many many ­things. Ever yours Robert Frost

d’aujourd’hui: Robert Frost,” Revue des Deux Mondes (September–­October  1923); Percy Boynton, Some Con­temporary Americans: the Personal Equation in Lit­er­a­ture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924); and Gorham B. Munson, Robert Frost: A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense (New York: George H. Doran, 1927). (Munson discusses RF’s “ancestry” on pages 11, 12–14, 19, and 71, tracing it back improbably to 1135.) It is not clear which of Untermeyer’s several essays on his work RF has in mind. The likeliest candidate is “The New Spirit in American Poetry,” issued first as a pamphlet by Henry Holt and Com­pany (1916) and ­later incorporated into Untermeyer’s The New Era in American Poetry (New York: Henry Holt, 1919). 200. ​Barrett Wendell (1855–1921), American literary critic and professor of En­g lish at Harvard (during RF’s time t­ here as a student, 1897–1899). As for his “idea” about the Puritans: see t­ hese remarks in an October 18, 1891, letter Wendell wrote his f­ ather: “I heard a queer theory the other day about the Yankee Puritans, whose religious views ­were so strongly Hebraic. They came chiefly, it seems, from Norfolk and Lincolnshire. ­T hese counties, some two or three centuries before the Reformation, had been the chief strongholds of the En­glish Jews, who w ­ ere fi­n ally expelled from the kingdom by one of the Plantagenet kings. At the time of the expulsion, many changed their faith and remained to be absorbed in the native population. It is wholly pos­s i­ble, then, that the Yankee Puritan, with all his Old Testament feeling, was r­ eally, without knowing it, largely Jewish in blood. T ­ here is in the Yankee nature much that would give color to the theory; but of course it is very far from being a proved fact” (Barrett Wendell and His Letters, ed. Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe [Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1924]: 104). 201. ​For “the Yucatan books,” see RF to Melcher, December 20, 1929.

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[To Richard Thornton. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass January 7 1930 and ­until April 1st Dear Mr Thornton: Of course let Carlyle Scott set anything I ever wrote to ­music.202 He and I struck up an acquaintance as babies in 1877 when I was on from San Francisco for a six months’ visit with my grand­father in Lawrence Mass.203 We renewed the friendship some years l­ater when I came east for good. The first time I ever saw sparks fly out of my hair was when I was pulling my shirt over my head one winter night in his bathroom in the dark. I remember tending goal at hockey on the ice in a pair of his rubber boots that winter before I learned to skate. His request takes me back to the reign of Shub Ad and Mes Kalam Dug.204 I must write to him one of ­t hese days. I had the pleasantest time with you on the outskirts that night.205 Always yours Robert Frost

202. ​Carlyle MacRoberts Scott (1873–1945), professor of m ­ usic at the University of Minnesota (1905–1942). Scott was four months RF’s se­n ior, having been born in Lawrence, Mas­sa­chu­setts, on December 1, 1873. 203. ​RF’s dating is one year off; the sojourn in Mas­sa­chu­setts was in 1876, not 1877. 204. ​Shub-ad (Puabi) and Mes-­K alam-­dug, potentates of the Sumerian city of Ur. RF would have read about them in the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley’s account of excavations at Ur, Ur of the Chaldees (London: Ernest Benn ­Limited, 1929). 205. ​Presumably during a visit to the Thorntons’ residence in Scarsdale (a suburb of New York City).

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[To Frederic Melcher. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst Mass January 30 1930 Dear Fred: ­Don’t forget to lend me your copy of “The Lovely ­Shall Be Choosers” rather soon.206 I may not keep it. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Lynn Carrick (1899–1965), American publisher and, in 1930, an editorial assistant at Henry Holt and Com­pany. TG. Prince­ton.]

AMHERST MASS 1930 FEB 4 PLEASE DO NOTHING ABOUT PICTURE TILL I SEE YOU EVERY­ONE INCLUDING JAMES CHAPIN HIMSELF SEEMS AGAINST USING IT IN BOOK 207 ROBERT FROST

[To Joseph Blumenthal (1897–1990), American printer, book-­designer, and typographer. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass February 14 1930 Dear Mr Blumenthal: You’ll have to bear with a bad letter writer. I’ve been meaning to tell you ever since Christmas how your fine printing renewed my Christmas Trees for me. I’ll try to do better than this might lead you to expect of me with all the shipments of proof I am g­ oing to have to make in the next few months. Lets see, ­there’ll be at least ten of them—at thirty pages a shipment. That’s ­going 206. ​ T he Lovely ­Shall Be Choosers was published in Random House’s Poetry Quarto series, designed, illustrated, and printed by Paul Johnston (New York: Random House, 1929). RF would add it to the contents of WRB in CP 1930. 207. ​See RF to Henry Brickell, late December, 1929.

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to be a tremendous test of my devotion.208 But I’m delighted with the pages you have let us see.209 So is Mrs Frost. I s­ hall have to show my appreciation by ­doing my part. ­T here ­w ill be six or seven poems to add to the collection.210 I may as well make you copies of them now. I’ll indicate on them where I want them brought in. On seven-­and-­seventieth thought I have de­cided to withdraw Asking for Roses from the book. ­Will you take it out of what you have set up. I’m sorry not to have known my own mind sooner.211 To business then. The best time to catch me at home in Amherst Mass ­w ill be between now and March 26th. I s­ hall be wandering in April, hard to reach and hard to interest. In May I ­shall be all right again—­back on the farm in South Shaftsbury, Vermont. With thanks and best wishes I’m Sincerely yours Robert Frost

208. ​Blumenthal explains, in Robert Frost and His Printers (Austin, TX: W. Thomas Taylor, 1985): “At that time, the cost of setting verse by hand in a special shop, although extravagant, was not prohibitive. We had enough Lutetia type in our cases to be able to set about thirty-­two pages, and I had expected that we would be able to buy enough additional type to set half the book. We planned to make electro-­plates, then distribute and set further pages, as had been done in the days before machine composition. But for some reason I can no longer recall, t­ here was no Lutetia type immediately available. The news was a cruel blow b­ ecause reading ten separate sets of proofs would be a ­g reat burden for any author” (12–13). See also RF’s late March 1930 letter to Blumenthal. 209. ​Blumenthal had ordered a special paper for the edition from the Pannekeok mill in the Netherlands; no American-­made ink suited its peculiar density, so Blumenthal asked Lewis Roberts, an ink manufacturer, to develop a new ink of appropriate viscosity. Blumenthal named it “Frost Black.” The ink was still in use when Blumenthal published his book about RF in 1985. 210. ​See RF to Brickell, June 27, 1930, where mention is made of a poem that might have gotten lost; only six poems ­were added, not seven, and several ­were removed (for details, see RF’s late December 1929 letter to Brickell, and the notes thereto). If a seventh poem was to have been added, we do not now know what it was: CP 1939 matches the 1930 volume, with of course the text of AFR brought in. 211. ​In the margin of the letter RF writes: “It is out I see.”

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[To Joseph Blumenthal. This letter, though nearly identical to the foregoing one, was also mailed to Blumenthal. He quotes both in his Robert Frost and His Printers (1985). We reproduce both h­ ere in their entirety so the interested reader can compare the slight differences in phrasing. Presumably the redundancy was inadvertent and perhaps reflects RF’s ner­vous agitation at the prospect of his first collected edition. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass February 18 1930 Dear Mr Blumenthal: You must bear with a bad letter writer. I’ve been meaning ever since Christmas to tell you how your fine printing renewed “Christmas Trees” for me. I’ll try to do better than this might lead you to expect with all the shipments of proof I am ­going to have to make in the next few months. Let’s see, at thirty pages a shipment, t­ here’ll be at least ten of them wont ­there? That is ­going to be a tremendous strain on the weakest part of my nature. But Mrs Frost and I are both delighted with the pages you have let us see. I s­ hall have to show my appreciation by ­doing my part. I ­ought to say that the best time to catch me at home ­here in Amherst Mass ­w ill be between now and March 26th. I ­shall be wandering in April, hard to reach and hard to interest.212 In May I ­shall be all right again—­back on the farm and settled down in South Shaftsbury, Vermont. I’m enclosing copies of all the extra poems that get by me at pre­sent. If any more do l­ater, t­ hey’ll go in late in the last book. You may not know it, but my sympathies have long been enlisted on the side of small presses and hand setting. My heart ­will be with you in your work. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

212. ​A n April lecture tour took RF to Philadelphia, Chicago, Nashville, Pittsburgh, and Charlottesville (­Virginia).

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[To Joseph Blumenthal. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass March 4 1930 Dear Mr Blumenthal: I have had to be away a week. At this rate of exchange between us I must say the prospect is discouraging. But as I have just written Henry Holt & Co I like this type so well and also the idea of the hand-­setting so well that it would go against the latent craftsman in me to give them up.213 What do you say to putting in now and seeing how much we can get done in March. I w ­ ill out do myself in the promptness with which I w ­ ill send proof back. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Edward Morgan Lewis (1872–1936), Welsh-­born American professional baseball player, educator, and president of the University of New Hampshire, 1927–1936. ALS. Jones.]

Amherst Mass March 18 1930 Dear President Lewis: I always like to have something very pleasant and impor­tant happen to me in March as a sort of birthday pre­sent from Fortune. Your letter is it this year with your promise to give me the highest honorary degree in your command if I w ­ ill come to visit you on June 16.214 ­Will I? I w ­ ill. I s­ hall be doubly honored in any honor I may receive at your hands. Your remembering me this way makes me remember you the first time I ever saw you—it was at another

213. ​See (again) Blumenthal’s Robert Frost and His Printers: “For the Frost pages I fi­nally chose Lutetia, a con­temporary typeface by Jan Van Krimpen, designer at the ancient Dutch Enschedé type foundry in Haarlem, where type was then cast only for hand composition” (12). 214. ​The University of New Hampshire—of which Lewis was president—­awarded RF a LittD degree (doctor of letters) on June 16.

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President’s house215—­and the last time I saw you—it was in this ­house, in this very room in fact: you had called to tell me something ­g rand about the University of New Hampshire. Both of us send our very best to both of you.216 Faithfully yours Robert Frost

[To Joseph Blumenthal. Dated by Blumenthal in his Robert Frost and His Printers. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont [late March 1930] Dear Mr Blumenthal: Thanks to your close proof reading, I should have an almost exact text this time. I like an exact text as much as any body but I should hate to have it left too much to me to achieve one.217 I reread my own poems, when I have to, with a kind of shrinking eye that ­doesn’t see very well. I doubt if it’s inattention I suffer from. It may be love-­blindness. Two ­favors I’d like to ask if I’m not too late, one is that the book contain some acknowledgement to my friend Frank Waugh 218 for the portrait (which

215. ​In 1917, RF met Lewis at the home of President Alexander Meiklejohn of Amherst College. At the time, Lewis was a professor of En­glish and dean at Mas­sa­chu­setts Agricultural College (­later the University of Mas­sa­c hu­setts–­A mherst). See YT, 465–466. 216. ​Lewis married Margaret H. Williams in 1896. 217. ​Blumenthal explains: “In order to make t­ hings easier all around, and to keep the work moving on a normal schedule I proposed that except for the new poems we would send Frost no further proofs, but assured him a professional proofreading. The readers would be Random House, Holt, our own staff reader, and a free-­lance editor we would employ. To my knowledge, only one error was ever found a­ fter publication. On page 128 [in “Good Hours”], ‘­faces’ had become ‘laces’ ­because a plate had been damaged on press and the letter incorrectly replaced” (15)—­a singularly unfortunate error, resulting in the following couplet: “I had a glimpse through curtain laces / Of youthful forms and youthful laces.” In subsequent printings, the line was put right. 218. ​Frank Albert Waugh (1869–1943), landscape architect, horticulturalist, and photographer. He spent the better part of his ­career as head of the Division of Horticulture

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you found such a good place for on the title page); and the other is that the first stanza of “In Hardwood Groves” be changed to read The same leaves over and over again! They fall from giving shade above To make one texture of faded brown And fit the earth like a leather glove.219 I hope we may meet sometime soon. I ­don’t like ­these ­things done too impersonally. Could we induce you up our Gully for a day and a night?220 Or ­shall I have to come to New York for our better acquaintance? Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Herschel Brickell. TG. Prince­ton.]

SOUTH SHAFTSBURY VERMONT 1930 APR 18 HOME AGAIN AND GLAD TO BE HURRY PROOFS ALONG GREETINGS ROBERT FROST

and of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Mas­sa­chu­setts–­ Amherst. His photo­g raph of RF is not, however, featured in CP 1930; Doris Ulmann’s is. 219. ​When the poem first appeared in the Dearborn In­de­pen­dent on December 18, 1926 (­u nder the title “The Same Leaves”), the first line of this stanza (the poem’s first) ended with a period, not an exclamation point—­t hough given that that is the sole textual difference between the first appearance and the stanza as given ­here, it seems likely that RF had tinkered with it more substantially, and then opted to return it to its original state, with an exclamation point added where, indeed, one is called for, since the opening line is so clearly exclamatory. 220. ​RF and Elinor had moved into the Gully Farm in December 1929. For the visit, see RF to Blumenthal, August 1, 1930.

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[To Marion Elza Dodd. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt May 8 1930 Dear Miss Dodd: We are both very sorry, but I ­shall be a long way from ­here on some of my engagements at the time of your cele­bration; so I am afraid we ­can’t be with you. Best wishes for the occasion and may you make Emily’s ghost walk.221 ­Don’t take too much thought for my manuscript. I want you to have two or three pieces as a gift to do what you please with.222 But the more I think of it the less I like the idea of parting with the long New Hampshire poem and that earliest one of all, Now Close the Win­dows. Always yours faithfully Robert Frost

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt June 5 1930 My dear Lewis Elinor seems to have said about all t­ here was to say.223 The very best of the ­whole pleasant affair, believe me, is that it is ­going to keep us with the Lew-

221. ​On May 10, 1930, as part of a cele­bration of the centenary of Dickinson’s birth, The Hampshire Bookshop held an exhibition and published Alfred Leete Hampson’s Emily Dickinson: A Bibliography, which included a brief essay by Dodd. 222. ​RF gave her fair copies of two poems, which Dodd displayed in her shop in a section devoted to “Manuscripts of New ­England’s Famous Authors of T ­ oday.” 223. ​In a June 4 letter to Margaret Lewis, specifying the train they planned to take, on Saturday, June 14, to Durham, New Hampshire, where RF would be awarded a degree two days ­later. She added: “Robert has several hoods, but he has never possessed a cap and gown. ­Will it be pos­si­ble for him to rent one ­t here, or are ­t here odd ones around for such as he? His head size is 7 ¼ and his height is 5 ft. 10 ½ in. and his coat size 42” (letter held at the Jones Library).

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ises for a few days. You mustnt fail to provide us a ball game for Monday after­noon.224 Always your friend Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark, though it seems plain that RF actually wrote the letter before the one that h­ ere succeeds it. We reverse the order to reflect the likeliest chronology of the composition as against the mailing of ­these two letters to Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [June 6, 1930] Dear Louis I am just starting to write letters again, letters or anything ­else, a­ fter a long sickness of public life; and my first halting letter ­shall be to you. I hardly know my own handwriting. I hardly know myself seated at a desk. Where have I been the last six months in abeyance? But where was I the eigh­teen years just preceding—­the years I mean from 1912 to 1930? In no very real dream. The book of all I ever wrote, when it comes out this fall, o ­ ught to do something ­toward accounting to me for t­ hose false years.225 But I have seen it in proof and it looked like no child of mine. I stared at it unloving. And I wondered what next. I dont want to raise sheep I dont want to keep cows I dont want to be called a farmer. Robinson spoiled farming for me when, by doubting my farm he implied a greater claim on my part to being a farmer than I had ever made. The ­whole damn ­thing became disgusting in his romantic mouth.226 How utterly romantic the ennervated [sic] old soak is. The way he thinks of poets in the Browningese of “Ben Johnson [sic]”! the way he thinks of cucolding [sic] 224. ​Lewis had a ­career 3.53 ERA during his six seasons pitching for the Boston Beaneaters and the Boston Americans (1896–1901); in 1898, his best year, he won twenty-­six games. RF—­who learned to pitch when twelve years old, in Salem Depot, Mas­sa­c hu­setts—­ loved to talk baseball with Lewis. 225. ​The “false years” extend from RF’s departure for London in 1912—­h is first two books w ­ ere published t­ here, in 1913 and 1914—to the upcoming publication of his CP 1930. RF would write some fourteen letters over the next three weeks, as excitement about the autumn advent of his first collected edition caught hold of him. 226. ​E. A. Robinson (1869–1935). RF had met him in Boston in 1915, and it may be that RF is recalling comments from that (famously awkward) conversation. See YT, 44–45.

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lovers and cucold husbands in “Tristram”!227 Literary conventions! I feel as if I had been somewhere on hot air like a fire-­balloon. Not with him altogether. I ­haven’t more than half read him since The Town Down the River.228 I simply couldnt lend a w ­ hole ear to all that Arthurian Twaddle twiddled over ­after the Victorians.229 A poet is a person who thinks ­there is something special about a poet and about his loving one unattainable w ­ oman. You’ll usually find he takes the physical out on whores. I am defining a romantic poet—­and ­there is no other kind. An unromantic poet is a self contradiction like the demo­cratic aristocrat that reads the Atlantic Monthly. Ink, mink, pepper, stink, I, am, out!230 I am not a poet. What am I then? Not a farmer—­ never was—­never said I was. I’ve stayed your friend through several vicissitudes. A friend is something to be. Roy Elliot the Humanist professional asked me if I had written anything since I came home in April.231 Me! Write anything in two months! It used to take me ten years to write anything. And

227. ​Robinson’s “Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford” is a dramatic monologue of some twelve pages in length; it was collected first in The Man Against the Sky (New York: Macmillan, 1916). Tristram (New York: Macmillan, 1927) won the Pulitzer Prize—as RF’s WRB, published the subsequent year, did not—­a nd sold more than 75,000 copies. 228. ​Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1920. 229. ​In addition to Tristram, Robinson published two other book-­length poems based on the Arthurian lore that Tennyson had drawn on for Idylls of the King (Merlin [1917] and Lancelot [1920]). Macmillan, Robinson’s publisher, issued all three poems in a special edition in 1927 (even as Tristram appeared as a single volume). In his biography of Robinson, Scott Donaldson tells of an autumn 1933 dinner—­hosted by Merrill Moore, and with RF and Robinson as his only guests—at which RF “[berated] EAR for having wasted so much of his time retelling Arthurian tales. But Robinson ­gently deflected any hostility by talking of Frost poems he admired. It was like a grownup dealing with a child’s petulance, Moore thought” (Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet’s Life [New York: Columbia University Press, 2007]: 457–458). Robinson then reported that he had the final stanza of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­n ing” printed and framed and hung above his bed and, “­a fter that,” as Donaldson puts it, “good feeling prevailed for the rest of the eve­ ning” (458). 230. ​See “Counting Out Rhymes,” in The Games and Diversions of Argyleshire, ed. Robert Craig Maclagan (London: David Nutt, 1901): “Ink, pink, pepper-­stink, half a glass of brandy / One for you and one for me, and one for U ­ ncle Sandy” (249). 231. ​George Roy Elliott (1883–1963), RF’s friend and colleague at Amherst College.

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now that I have found myself out for an unromantic and so have no incentive, it should take me not less than twice as long. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. Notwithstanding that RF mailed this letter on the fifth, it seems clear that he wrote it ­after the one mailed on the sixth (immediately above). ALS. LoC.]

Glengulch* South Shaftsbury Vermont [June 5, 1930] Dear Louis I’d just like to know the man that wrote some of the pages in King Mob. I won­der if I do. Come ahead and tell me.232 He certainly swings his metaphysics like not many we have, as where he says, all so easy-­like, the only m ­ ental ­thing in the w ­ hole universe that isnt an analogy is a formula.233 It doesnt m ­ atter 232. ​King Mob: A Study of the Present-­Day Mind (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1930), by Romanian-­born author Maurice Samuel (1895–1972), who used the pseudonym Frank K. Notch (and got his title from Shelley’s scandalously radical Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem with Notes [1813]). 233. ​RF may have the following remarks about science in mind, and they are worth quoting at length, since he would echo them a few months ­later in “Education by Poetry” (given as an address to the Amherst Alumni Council in November): “Suppose ­matter is not m ­ atter, and suppose space is not space (that is, extension). We have, indeed, ­every reason (­every scientific reason, that is) to suppose that ­t hese ­t hings are not themselves at all. What are they then? We do not know. We cannot know. We can give only figures and formulas. To direct apprehension (that is, to knowing) the figures and formulas mean nothing. Thought is now groping in phenomenal reaches which it can sense only by inference. ­There is (prob­ably) a real­ity somewhere in the structure of ­t hings, but it reaches us as a framework of highly useful and highly unintelligible symbols. Space is a number of mea­sure­ments, ­matter a pyramid of formulas. The world of science has dissolved terrifically into a new metaphysics. The more we become acquainted with it, the more alien it becomes to knowability. . . . ​It has been revealed to us that we prob­ably ­shall never push our way ­behind the curtain of the phenomenal which closes us off from the structure of the world. We know now that in the most impor­tant sense (that of knowing) science stubbornly and repeatedly sets its limitations upon itself. . . . ​I am not

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that he doesnt come out anywhere. That would be to take sides for or against rain. We must go into t­ hese questions when we meet this summer—­dont count on it to be at Breadloaf [sic].234 Spank Joseph one for me and dont run the risk of erring on the wrong side.235 Ever yours Robert Frost Elinor says say exactly when you three and the nurse are coming to visit us—­after June 25. This is serious or getting to be. *Glen is Scotch, gulch is Californian.

[To Hervey Allen (1889–1949), American novelist, poet, and educator. ALS. Pittsburgh.]

South Shaftsbury, Vermont June 7 1930 Dear Hervey: I commend your pains. I can commend your plans too for the most part. (It warms me to the heart to be assured that ­t here w ­ ill be no manifesto.) Only you ­couldn’t have chosen the time more effectually to leave me out, if you had chosen the first ten days of September on purpose. That’s when I’m a fugitive from hay-­fever in the higher mountains. I havent been below the rag weed line for anybody or anything between August 20th and September 15th since the year 1905. It wasnt just that the fever was unendurable, at all depressed by the accolade of perpetual ignorance laid on our shoulders, for the richness of life does not lie in the multiplication of mechanical ingenuities. And what excites me most is the confirmation of man’s in­de­pen­dence of Nature, the hanging up of the sign, ‘Keep Out’ ” (King Mob, 128–131). 234. ​In fact, RF spoke at Bread Loaf School of En­glish on July 21 and 22, 1930. The first of t­ hese talks was given at the dedication of the Davison Memorial Library (located on Middlebury’s Bread Loaf campus) and published in a pamphlet (see CPRF, 100–101). RF had been a friend (if not always an admirer) of Wilfred  E. Davison (1887–1929), who founded the Bread Loaf School of En­glish in 1921. En route to Bread Loaf, RF spoke on July 18 before a meeting of the Poetry Society of Southern Vermont in Rutland. RF did not, however, remain in Middlebury to speak at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. See his July 14 letter to Untermeyer. 235. ​Joseph Untermeyer was the first of Untermeyer’s ­adopted sons.

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but it left me in no condition to face the winter. I’m sorry. But I m ­ ustn’t think I m ­ atter too much. T ­ here are one or two on your list who w ­ ill be no unhappier for not having me of the party. 236 I s­ hall be anxious for the success of the experiment. It is a good idea. (If I remember rightly it was partly mine. At any rate I have long contemplated such an annual conclave on the side hill of my own farm—if I should ever feel executive enough to carry it out. It ­w ill amply satisfy me to see some one ­else carry it out. I s­ hall want to hear all about it.)237 I wish you could visit me h ­ ere before you go back to Bermuda this fall and report to me. I like your seriousness in your books and out of them and count sometime on more converse with you. Always yours Robert Frost

236. ​The Burlington ­Free Press ran a May  14 article announcing the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (which ran from August 18 to 30, in 1930). The same day the conference released its official “Bulletin.” The regular faculty included (besides Allen himself ) novelist and poet Margaret Widdemer, educator Edith Mirrielees, critic (and RF biographer) Gorham Munson, and Theodore Morrison, editor, poet, and professor of En­g lish at Harvard. Guest lecturers that year included (in addition to Untermeyer) publisher John Farrar, Edward Weeks (editor of the Atlantic Monthly Press), novelist Samuel Merwin, historian and literary critic Lewis Mumford, essayist and short-­story writer Zephine Humphrey Fahnestock, her husband (the painter) Wallace Fahnestock, playwright Thatcher Hughes, literary critic and civil rights activist Joel E. Spingarn, and Henry Seidel Canby. As for the “plans” RF commends at the start of the letter to Allen: Professor Harry G. Owen (of Middlebury College) announced (as the ­Free Press put it) that “A tutorial system ­w ill be used by the School this year, offering contact with leading writers of the day.” As for who among the lecturers named would not miss RF: Farrar, with whom he had had a falling out, would top that list (see YT, 682). In the summer of 1929, RF and Farrar vigorously disagreed about the objectives of the Writers’ Conference, with RF arguing that too many of the sessions dealt with marketing rather than writing per se (Farrar had established the conference in 1926). 237. ​RF’s conviction that the conference should not be commercial in tone accounts for his tentative praise of what he takes to be the new plan—an informal system of the kind he once aspired to create in a “literary summer camp” to be conducted with the poet (and dearest of all RF’s friends) Edward Thomas, before the latter was killed in 1917. See LRF-1, 243n115. For a detailed account of RF’s vision of what Bread Loaf o ­ ught to be, see his February 8, 1922, letter to George Whicher (LRF-2, 230–232).

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[To J. J. Lankes. ALS. HRC.]

The Gulley [South Shaftsbury, Vermont] June 21 1930 Dear J. J.: ­Don’t mind Sherwood Anderson, ­don’t mind Birchfield [sic], dont mind Gangin [sic] dont mind anybody238 —­a piece of advice you neednt thank me for, it costs me so ­little to give it. Advice is cheap and so are eggs and so they say is living since the break in stocks.239 I hate to see you having to play second to Rockwell Kent—­especially so publically [sic] where it ­will start the yappers yapping.240 But ­after all you are perfectly honest in the partnership your integrity is kept and you have a right to earn a living in any way however unusual and surprising. The trou­ble with all your radical friends who pretend to be fresh and original thinkers is that they never can deal with anything but regulation freshness and originality. And they have always at their tongues’ ends the c­ hildren’s “Hahu hahu, ­there you go selling out!” They are always lying in wait to be disappointed in their heroes. Look out for them. Be prepared not to know what they are talking about. Suit yourself like a man and an artist. I thought the book of ­Virginia was a beauty.241 Nobody but you can beat it. I can see how Rockwell Kent would be attracted to you. But I dont quite see what he thinks he is d­ oing in having you cut his ideas. He is so frank in giving you credit. That’s to his credit. He cant think your style is like enough to be a substitute for his. Your styles are not the least bit alike. He l­abors always ­under the influence of Blake.242 You are entirely your own man. Maybe your 238. ​ Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941), American novelist and short-­ story writer; Charles E. Burchfield (1893–1967), American paint­er; Clarence Alphonse Gagnon (1881– 1942), French Canadian painter, engraver, and illustrator. Anderson had for some years been close to Lankes, whom he enlisted to make a frontispiece for his 1931 collection of essays: Perhaps ­Women (New York: Liveright). 239. ​The day RF wrote this letter, the New York papers reported that “nothing less than a miracle” would shore the market up. 240. ​Lankes had assisted Kent by cutting woodblocks from his designs—­designs commissioned by Doremus and Com­pany, a New York advertising agency. The prints appeared in major metropolitan newspapers and national magazines. 241. ​Lankes’s ­Virginia Woodcuts, a collection of twenty-­four prints, was published in 1930 (Newport News: ­Virginia Press). 242. ​William Blake (1757–1827), British poet, painter, and printmaker.

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stroke soothes and cools his hectic fantasy. He draws you in ­because you satisfy him in some way. He isnt merely saving himself work. He is taken with the idea of the collaboration—­t hat’s all. And why not? A collaboration has sometimes been more than the sum of the two parties to it. The thought would never occur to Sherwood Anderson. T ­ heres a certain fun in daring what would never occur to Sherwood Anderson. We’ve got to have something to dare beyond. Somebody has got to get stuck where we can use him for a starting post. I look out your dormer win­dow on the north west ­every night and morning.243 I dont know ­whether I’ve told you the big barn is clean gone (except for the stone foundations), we have a good rush of w ­ ater from the faucets—­Carol built the spring all over and laid on iron pipes last winter, the north porch is floored with brick 24ft by 9ft and new tin-­roofed, the road had an easy winter and came through in very decent condition, the ­house is all papered and painted inside and your two greatest pictures are over the long mantel of the cavernous fireplace. Elinor and I are alone ­here with nothing but a black New Foundland [sic] pup—in breathless quiet a­ fter our stormy life. Having failed to educate my own c­hildren and other ­people’s ­children I propose to end up as a teacher training a pup. The aim is to subdue to polite usages without breaking the pride or spirit. I know the idea all right. I want one last chance to see if I ­can’t carry it out. Given a pup that comes all over you with affection and knocks you in the face with her teeth. In two months ­we’ll see if I dont have her so she walks ­toward me with her plea­sure all in her eye and tail [and] takes her place beside me as an equal uncowed by any sound of my voice or motion of my hand. If I fail with her I ­will resign my professorship at Amherst College. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont June 23 1930 Dear Edward: You d­ on’t know what ideas you ­were putting into my head as you apostrophized me on the platform last Monday. One dangerous one was that I o ­ ught 243. ​Lankes had designed it while living in the h ­ ouse (during its rehabilitation) in 1929.

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to be ashamed to live anywhere but in New Hampshire. You watch the idea work. I predict that it w ­ ill land me back in the state where my f­ ather was born and three fourths of my c­ hildren 244 and practically all my poetry. The degree you gave me was dif­fer­ent from any other I have ever had; the hood w ­ ill be the one I wear if I ever have occasion to wear a hood. You made me realize that your friendship had in it an ele­ment of personal affection: it went beyond a mere admiration for what I have done. I deserve a ­little friendship of that warmth in a life mostly subject to cold criticism. At any rate it goes to my heart, and ­whether I deserve it or not, I am ­going to cling to it. We must see more of each other in the years to come than we have in the last few. I am coming for the visit in the fall and you must come for a visit h ­ ere when you can. You w ­ ere all so kind to us. It was ­family to ­family w ­ asn’t it. The honor was 245 much, but the kindness much more. Ever yours Robert

[To Helen C. Bennett (1859–1939), a schoolteacher in Newmarket, New Hampshire, and in 1930 a member of the nominating committee of the New Hampshire Historical Society. ALS. NHHS.]

South Shaftsbury Vt June 24 1930 My dear Miss Bennett: Thank you for your invitation to make this tie with New Hampshire, my ­fathers state and more mine than any other. I enclose my check for seven dollars to cover admission fee and dues for first year.246 I am always interested in

244. ​Lesley (RF and Elinor’s eldest surviving child) was born on April  28, 1899, in Lawrence, Mas­sa­chu­setts; the other three (Carol, Irma, and Marjorie) w ­ ere born in Derry, New Hampshire. 245. ​R F, in a slip of the pen, writes “but it the kindness much more”; we have corrected the error. 246. ​ For membership in the New Hampshire Historical Society. RF’s elliptical phrasing in the manuscript—­one expects “the admission fee and dues for the first year”—­ suggests a note dashed off in haste.

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New Hampshire history; so I ­will make sure of not missing the society’s publications by becoming a contributing member. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Camille John McCole (1905–1939), American educator and lecturer at the University of Notre Dame. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont June 26 1930 Dear Mr McCole: I should be a ­g reat deal more pleased than I must seem writing so late to let you use the three quotations from me in your syllabus.247 I remember our long talk and your friendliness. I wish ­there was something more I could do. If t­ here ever is, let me know. I may be slow in my responses but I am Always yours faithfully Robert Frost 247. ​Not a “syllabus,” but a book, McCole’s On Poetry, coauthored with Andrew Smithberger (New York: Doubleday, 1931). McCole and Smithberger chose the following passages for the chapter titled “Some Poets and Critics on Poetry: A Symposium.” The first is from RF’s 1925 tribute to Amy Lowell: “It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—­t hat he ­w ill never get over it. That is to say, permanence in poetry as in love is perceived instantly. It h ­ asn’t to await the test of time. The proof of a poem is not that we have never forgotten it, but that we knew at sight that we never could forget it” (see CPPP, 712, for the complete text); the third is from “Some Definitions by Robert Frost” (first published in a brochure by Henry Holt and Com­pany in 1923, and often used to publicize his work): “A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-­sickness or a love-­sickness. It is a reaching-­out t­ oward 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” (see CPPP, 701, for the complete text). As for the second passage, it appears nowhere in RF’s published prose, nor in his letters: “The way I know poems from non-­poems is by the way they are made. When I read other p­ eople’s poetry I ask myself if it began in a mood. That mood picks up an idea and the idea then flows into words and sentences.” We have been unable to locate the source for t­ hese remarks, though RF may have made them when he met McCole at the Bread Loaf School of En­glish in July 1929, and had the “long talk” spoken of h ­ ere. See RF to Sarett, September 2, 1929.

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[To James R. Wells. Dated from postmark. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont (Not Amherst Mass) [June 27, 1930] Dear Wells: Fine to see you both. Come along. And bring your forceps. But lets see you or anybody ­else extract anything from me in my pre­sent state of mind. I ­ought to warn you if you come ­here you have to work digging out my fish duck dog and frog pond. You would go round New York sowing suspicion that my farm was the kind where t­ here was no work done. T ­ here’ll be some done by you all right. Other tools you may as well bring besides forceps are rubber boots and Dutch Cleanser.248 Also a manicure set and vanity kit. We have a looking glass—in fact we are a looking glass. As I look out my win­dow this pleasant but torrid morning249 my eye rests peacefully on as many as ten bowed autograph hunters, my captives, spading hoeing and weeding in my garden. They came h ­ ere to pull my leg but I broke their w ­ ill and put them to work. “Then came the terrible farmer and cut off their beautiful tales [sic]—­and put them to work ­etc.” (Kipling)250 You come ­here to get anything out of me and y­ ou’re lucky if you get a way [sic] even. I dont mean to be sinister. Only I’m a ­g reat person for utilizing waste power. Our best to you both Ever yours Robert Frost

248. ​ Old Dutch Cleanser, a scouring powder with distinctive yellow-­ a nd-­ blue packaging. 249. ​A heat wave had beset New ­England, the Midwest, and the South. Clothiers in Vermont took advantage of it in advertisements. “Tropical Worsteds” w ­ ere on sale in Burlington (well to the north of South Shaftsbury) at the Joseph Frank Store, Inc. 250. ​For the Kipling, see RF to Melcher, February 9, 1929.

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[To Edward Davison (1898–1970), Scottish-­born American poet, critic, and educator. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftesbury Vermont The Gulley June 27 1930 Dear Ted: You got away from this Hemi­sphere without giving me a chance to ask you what so much more than anybody e­ lse I had done for you over ­here, accepted the engagement at Penn State, helped you tame Orage,251 written my books, stood my ground, been myself or got you deported with Guggenheim money to your own incontinent continent if only for the term of a year.252 The last is all I ask you to thank me for. The last is so very impor­tant that, if I could be shown to have had anything to do with ­doing it, I should want you to do more than thank me for it; I should want you to pay me for it. Let’s consider first the importance, and then if we have room on paper we can take up the m ­ atter of payment. Can anyone doubt the importance of sending an exiled poet home to renew himself at the sources of his poetry? Something like that was the way I put it to the Guggenheim judges on their benches. In effect, if not in so many words. I besought them to have mercy upon you and put you out of your American misery for a while. What’s this about giving a man a h ­ orse he 253 can ­r ide (or ­can’t ­r ide)? Give him his own country most of the time especially when he is a poet. That’s my pious prayer a priori and a posteriori. I was both born with that wisdom and acquired it by experience. (All experience 251. ​Alfred Richard Orage (1873–1934), an influential British socialist thinker and latterly a disciple of George Ivanovich Gurdijeff. Orage had moved to New York in 1924, and divorced and remarried ­t here (he would return to ­England in 1930). We have been unable to identify exactly why he needed “taming,” but his politics would certainly not have been congenial to RF. Notes kept by Davison about his friendship with RF (held at Yale) include the following cryptic entry: “Orage party. R.F.”; perhaps at the Sunwise Turn bookshop in New York, which is where Orage met his second wife. 252. ​Davison had been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for “creative writing, abroad,” starting from June 1, 1930. 253. ​A reference to James Thomson’s (1834–1882) poem “Gifts,” which begins: “Give a man a h ­ orse he can r­ ide / Give a man a boat he can sail.” “Gifts” was included in Arthur Quiller-­Couch’s Oxford Book of En­glish Verse (1900), a book RF knew well (see Mark Scott, “Frost and Anthologies,” Robert Frost in Context [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014]: 109–10). Note also the mention of Quiller-­Couch l­ater in this letter.

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ever is is confirmation anyway.) You may think you are ­under obligation to the Guggenheim money to deny yourself ­England and write your epic on the extinction of the h ­ uman race (Hear! Hear!) in Paris. Dont be foolish. It was understood all round that you would follow the dictates of your heart and see much of the only land you love. Take it from me and thank me some more for the assurance. Now for the pay in addition to the thanks. It is—it is that you w ­ ill do your best to pave the way with Quiller-­Couch, Richards and anybody ­else you ­will at Cambridge for a young friend of mine Reuben Brower who is g­ oing t­ here next year.254 He is one of the best Amherst ever sent out—­“thinks for himself and steals for himself and never asks whats to do.”255 Cambridge was his own personal preference to Oxford for reasons you would like if I had space for them. I believe I’ll come to E ­ ngland to write my next book. I am dead serious in most herein. My best to you Natalie and Peter.256 Ever yours Robert Frost

254. ​A rthur Quiller-­Couch (1863–1944), King Edward Professor of En­glish at Cambridge University; I. A Richards (1893–1979), lecturer in En­glish at Cambridge, author of Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment (London: Kegan Paul, 1929). Reuben Brower (1908–1975) graduated summa cum laude from Amherst in 1930, and ­later was professor of En­glish lit­er­a­ture at Amherst College and Harvard University. At Cambridge, Brower studied u ­ nder Richards and would edit (with Helen Vendler and John Hollander) I. A. Richards: Essays in His Honor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). He would also go on to author one of the best books on RF: The Poetry of Robert Frost: Constellations of Intention (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963). 255. ​From Wilfred Blair’s “Butler An’ ’Ousmaid, Too (Spoken by an undergraduate temporarily obsessed by the cockneyisms of R.K. [i.e., Rudyard Kipling]),” collected in Poets on the Isis and Other Perversions (Oxford: Simpkin Marshall, 1910)—­a book dedicated (as it happens) to Arthur Quiller-­Couch and R. C. Lehmann (like Richards and Brower, a Cambridge gradu­ate). 256. ​Davison’s wife and son. It was the latter’s second birthday, although RF d­ oesn’t seem aware of this.

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[To Herschel Brickell. ALS. Alger.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont June 27 1930 Dear Mr Brickell: The printing of the book still drags on with the Spiral Press. They say I am holding them up with one last poem they sent me the proof of a month ago. To the best of my recollection I sent it back O.K’d: I ­can’t find hide or hair of it round ­here. Of course I may have lost it in our moving.257 Anyway please ask them to conclude. I have had this business on my mind for six months now and I’m so sick of it I feel as if I never wanted to see my own works again. It is a perturbing t­ hing with me to be having a book published—it always puts me off every­t hing else—­a nd I’m grateful to anyone who gets through the agony with dispatch. How ­little fuss Updyke [sic] made over West-­r unning Brook.258 I can see the book is g­ oing to be too late for the season in E ­ ngland. I have a tele­g ram from Longmans asking if I w ­ ill be satisfied to let them take sheets from you.259 I assume their idea is to save time. But this is utterly inconsistent with what R. G. Longman impressed on me, namely, that the proud firm of Longmans never took sheets from anyone: they published outright or not at all. (I had casually proposed their taking sheets of West-­r unning Brook.) The entanglement with them has become a distasteful mess that I should value your advice about getting out of. Perhaps the collected poems had better wait another year—at least till next spring both h ­ ere and in ­England. Dont let my trou­bles trou­ble you too much. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

257. ​To the Gully Farm. For details about the proofs and contents of CP 1930, see RF to Brickell, late December 1929, and RF to Blumenthal, February 14, 1930. 258. ​Daniel Berkeley Updike (of the Merrymount Press) had prepared the l­ imited edition of WRB. 259. ​They did—1,000 sets, bound in E ­ ngland, and with a new title page. See Crane, 46.

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[To Wade Van Dore. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont June 27 1930 Dear Wade: I seem to lack the inspiration for advising you at this moment. The best ­thing in general for c­ hildren to do when in doubt is to stick to their parents. My last talk with you made me feel that you ­were pretty well off where you are—at home.260 My anxiety for you is chiefly that you should make haste and add a string to your bow, learn to do something tolerable for the bread and butter to make your poetry out of. It is never too late to learn they may tell you. But it might be a­ fter three score and ten I should think, though I met a distinguished man of 77 the other day a scientist who sixty years ago helped invent the telephone, last year discovered a new religion in the desert at Biskra, and is just about to take up painting.261 On the w ­ hole I think you had better be about it if you are g­ oing to be anything but a poet. Practical landscape gardening would attract me if I ­were in your place. You have such a good start ­there and t­ here’s a charm to it. My son in law John is about to give up farming to go into it.262

260. ​In Detroit, where he was born. 261. ​Thomas A. Watson (1854–1934), coinventor, with Alexander Graham Bell, of the telephone. In l­ater life he became interested in spiritualism and religions of vari­ous kinds. On May  15, 1930, shortly before RF met him, he had typed out (and signed) an eighteen-­page document titled “The Religion of an Engineer: A Revelation in the Desert” (held now in the AT&T Archives and History Center; we thank Sheldon Hochheiser, PhD, AT&T’s corporate historian, for making a copy available to us). At the age of seventy-­five, in 1929, Watson had traveled through Biskra, Algeria (then something of a magnet for seekers of vari­ous stripes), into the Sahara, where, at an oasis, he experienced the “revelation” recorded in “The Religion of an Engineer”: “That the living, conscious ­Mother Earth is the only loving God whom man in his pre­sent stage of development can possibly comprehend. That her Life is the only life on earth. That our feeling of separateness from Her life and from other men and ­women and from other living ­t hings is an illusion. And that, being one with the Universal Life, our lives and ­those of all living ­t hings—­plants or animals—­must share Earth’s immortality or, at least, her longevity.” In 1933, Watson privately published (in Boston) a treatise: From Electrons to God: A New Conception of Life and the Universe. See also RF to Lewis, July 1, 1930. 262. ​See the notes to RF’s September 1, 1929, letter to Bartlett.

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My hesitation about saying the word to go farming is due to the pre­sent state of the country. You wouldnt make your living from your own small farm at first anyway. You would use your farm as a base to hire out from. My fear is that ­there would be too many unemployed now to compete with you. You ­wouldn’t get odd jobs enough.263 ­We’ll talk about it again l­ater. Business is depressed, I’m depressed a ­l ittle. Coward-­McCann has been having a hard time.264 So have a lot of publishers. It is a won­der any of them ­w ill touch poetry. I am not r­ eally opposed to anything you ­really want to do and can see your way even dimly in. It may be the places north of Superior are your destiny. If so— Always your friend Robert Frost

[To J. J. Lankes. ALS. Alger.]

The Gulley South Shaftsbury Vermont June 28 1930 Dear J. J. Lest it should work any further like madness in your sensitive nature let me hasten to tell you that the general term yappers had for content nobody but the two you complained of yourself Anderson and Birchfield [sic].265 So dont imagine it is all London Paris and New York. Perhaps I was too severe in calling your friends yappers. It was only my way of taking your side against them to console you. You kick so hard so magnificently so artistically (dont stop) sometimes that I blame myself for not being a readier comforter. Apparently it doesnt help for me to join in and damn the ­people you are damning. You’ll do your own damning. Never mind ­there’s nothing impor­tant in the world but education and I am educating a dog. You are wrong about the theory of educating a dog though.

263. ​­There is a discernible context, h ­ ere, for RF’s “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (RF’s Christmas card poem for 1934, l­ater collected in AFR). 264. ​Publishers of Van Dore’s first book, Far Lake, in 1930. 265. ​See RF’s June 21, 1930, letter to Lankes.

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It is the same for a dog as it is for a ­human being. It is not just to let him subside naturally, get over his entusiasm [sic] naturally. It is to hasten the pro­cess and mature him as much before his time as pos­si­ble, make him precociously critical and self-­critical. Anybody by forty is ­going to know what’s the ­matter with every­thing and why nothing is worth an effort. Anybody I say. The properly educated should know it by twenty-­five—­a clear gain of fifteen years. Irma says I am prejudiced against education and s­ houldn’t be listened to. She says she ­can’t understand my motive ­unless it is to console ­people like her who ­haven’t had the advantages of a college education. I fondly think I make it more bearable to them by calling the advantages disadvantages. Irma is deep. One ­thing sure I may be too prone to educate t­ hose I dont like and console t­ hose I do like (Im an interfering cuss), but I make it a point on all occasions on and off the platform that nobody s­ hall pay any more attention to me than I advised you to pay to Sherwood Anderson. You do just right in figuring that thats where my logic brings you out. I’m not like Lenin asserting my ideas of your in­de­pen­dence all over you even for your good.266 Some of the time most of the time I’m recessive. I let p­ eople grow by putting it all over me. I give way to my innate laziness and neither write letters by the year, nor seek the b­ ubble reputation in print.267 I allow myself to die down to the ground like the spiraea called Anthony Waterer.268 Speaking of Waterer thats what I was prepared (with a faucet on the outside of the h ­ ouse) to be this summer. But it is raining a plenty: it started to rain right now when I was writing the word Waterer. Let it rain fish. Carl Ruggles was full of the pictures you sent him when we saw him yesterday.269 I hope you dont have hay fever down ­t here in that region.

266. ​Though his point is likely that the Bolsheviks—­those scientists of history—­ believed they knew what was best for every­body, RF may have something more par­t ic­u ­lar in mind: upon assuming power in 1917, Lenin declared as “annexed” and for that reason eligible for “self-­determination” “all subjects of the Rus­sian Empire, or of any other state,” as Stanley W. Page puts it in “Lenin, the National Question and the Baltic States, 1917–19” (American Slavic and East Eu­ro­pean Review 7.1 [1948]: 16). 267. ​See As You Like It (2.vii), Jacques’ speech on “the seven ages of man.” 268. ​Anthony Waterer Spirea is a deciduous flowering shrub that requires ­little regular pruning. ­Every few years, however, it can require, for rejuvenation, a pruning in which all branches are cut to within a few inches of the ground. 269. ​Charles Sprague “Carl” Ruggles (1876–1971), an American composer.

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This is a lot for me: I dont know myself but Im Yourn always R.F. Send along your lit­er­a­t ure if you dare.

[To Witter Bynner (1881–1968), American poet and scholar. ALS. Harvard.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont June 29 1930 Dear Witter: I’d so much rather talk to you than write to you that I suffer in the comparison. But that is no excuse for my not having written long ago to thank you for the books you sent and tell you that I remain your faithful admirer in almost every­thing you do. It fascinates me to watch the way your dif­fer­ent selves influence each other. You are a self-­suggestible. Taking your Grenstone self as the norm, we all know what your Spectral self did to that.270 And now we have displayed in the Chapala poems what the translator-­f rom-­the-­Chinese in you has done to it.271 I confess translations from the Chinese or any other language bother 270.  Bynner had been writing the work gathered in Grenstone Poems: A Sequence for quite a while when it appeared in 1917 (New York: Frederick A. Stokes). It expresses, as RF suggests, his baseline poetic self. In 1916, Bynner had published, with Arthur Davison Ficke, Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments (New York: Mitchell Kennerley), using the pseudonyms Anne Knish (Ficke) and Emanuel Morgan (Bynner). Spectra purported to found a “Spectrist” school of poetry but was, in fact, a send-up of Imagism and similar vogues, and featured conspicuously enigmatic verse. Spectra was a lark, yet Bynner found his alter-ego, Emanuel Morgan, liberating enough to adopt it again in Pins for Wings (New York: The Sunwise Turn, 1920). So we have two poetic selves—the pure lyricist and the experimental ventriloquist. Bynner stayed true to the former for most of his career. But his last book, New Poems, 1960 (New York: Alfred Knopf), recalls, as Michael Wenthe puts it, “the wildness of the Spectra poems in its enigmatic (and at all times bizarre) verses” (Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Eric Haralsan, ed. [Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001]): 119. RF has it right: Bynner was a “self-suggestible” (a term of art in hypnotism). 271. ​In 1929, Bynner published The Jade Mountain: A Chinese Anthology: Being Three Hundred Poems of the T’ang Dynasty 618–906 (New York: Knopf). Bynner kept (with his partner Robert Hunt) a second ­house in Chapala, Mexico. He published a number of poems

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me with questions. (Your translation from the French of Vildrac was one of the few I ever forgot myself in.272) I cant help wondering all the time I read if the vapidity of translation from the Chinese, for instance, is a fault or virtue of the original, the childlike blandness that Truthful James celebrates in the Oriental, or merely a fault acquired in dispensing with the form of the original.273 I cant help suspecting that something goes when the form the poem is conceived in goes. I have thought and thought and thought about it.274 I like your Chinese poems well, better than other ­people’s. But I like better still your own free-­hand per­for­mance in the spirit of the Chinese. (It prob­ably enhances the Chapala Poems that D. H. Lawrence has died 275 since I read them first, that the very first poem I ever wrote myself (1890) was about how the ­children of Quetzal and Huitzil once gave Cortés One Very Bad Night, and that some of my earliest reading and some of my latest was-is John L. Stephens [sic] Yucatan.276) In other words with a l­ ittle help from the Chinese you have made an

about the place in another volume released in 1929, to which RF h ­ ere refers: Indian Earth (New York: Knopf). 272. ​See A Book of Love, by Charles Vildrac, which Bynner translated and published in 1923 (New York: E. P. Dutton). 273. ​“Plain Language from Truthful James” is a poem by American writer Bret Harte (1836–1902), published in 1870 in the Overland Monthly. Intended to satirize anti-­Chinese sentiment in California, the poem was often taken instead—to Harte’s exasperation—to express it. In any case, the poem was republished in newspapers all across the United States as “The Heathen Chinee” (its refrain). In it a Chinese man named “Ah Sin” is said to possess a “smile that was child-­l ike and bland” (hence RF’s phrasing). 274. ​See the penultimate stanza of E. A. Robinson’s “Miniver Cheevy” (1910): Miniver scorned the gold he sought,   But sore annoyed was he without it; Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,   And thought about it. 275. ​On March 2, 1930, at the age of forty-­four. Lawrence’s Mornings in Mexico had been published by Martin Secker in 1927. Bynner knew Lawrence and his wife Frieda and, in 1951, memorialized their friendship in Journey with Genius: Recollections and Reflections Concerning the D. H. Lawrences (New York: John Day). 276. ​R F refers to his first published poem, “La Noche Triste.” It appeared in the Lawrence, Mas­sa­chu­setts, High School Bulletin in 1890. The poem recounts the events of June 30, 1520, when Hernán Cortés and his invading army ­were driven out of the Mexican capital at Tenochtitlan. He had lately been rereading John L. Stephens’s books about his travels in Yucatán and Central Amer­i­ca; see RF to Melcher, December 20, 1929, and January 7, 1930.

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exotic more to my taste out of Old Mexico than with a g­ reat deal of help from the Chinese you have made out of old China. You must indulge my prejudice—my body it is fifty-­six.277 Chinese poetry when I came across it gave me a scare for my notion of all poetry, that it was nothing but meta­phor, the heaven-­appointed way of saying one ­thing and meaning another, instead of meaning what you said. But Chinese poetry comes in ­under the definition all right, only perhaps too unvaringly [sic] with the figure Suggestion.278 I’ve been impressed by Chinese poetry. Of course something gets across to us from it. I [­can’t] imagine anything of it in the original. But I’ll bet a poetry-­prize I am nearer that magic in your Chapala poems than in your translations, just as I am nearer Grecian magic in Arnolds Cadmus and Harmonia279 written u ­ nder the influence of the Greek than I am in anything Gilbert Murray George Palmer Butcher Lang or anybody e­ lse ever translated from the Greek.280 I s­ hall be reading your Chinese translations again sometime and w ­ ill report any change of mind. Thus are we torn in conflict between agate and jade—­taking sides now with agate. It is forbidden us as neither Yaqui 281 nor Mongol but Christians to wish by ­dying to be made careless of agate careless of jade. Too soon w ­ e’ll be careless of every­thing, even of each other maybe, though I refuse to give in entirely to the fear. At least let it not be while we live.282 Faithfully Robert Frost 277. ​R F was, in fact, fifty-­six, but h ­ ere he aptly quotes “La Francesca,” a poem collected in Bynner’s 1929 volume Indian Earth (New York: Alfred Knopf): “My body it is fifty-­six; but my heart / Only fifteen, ­because never have I loved” (25). 278. ​Compare RF’s remarks in his October  1934 letter to his d­ aughter Lesley: “The same aspiration t­oward brevity and undersaying rather than oversaying has led to the poetry of intimation implication insinuation and innuendo as an object in itself.” 279. ​The poem—­though often printed alone—is part of Matthew Arnold’s Empedocles on Etna (London: B. Fellowes, 1852). See also RF’s April 4, 1934, letter to Untermeyer. 280. ​ George Gilbert Aimé Murray (1866–1957), Australian-­ born British classical scholar; George Herbert Palmer (1842–1933), professor of natu­ral religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity at Harvard, and translator of Homer; Anglo-Irish classicist Samuel Henry Butcher (1850–1910) collaborated with Scottish poet Andrew Lang (1844–1912) on a prose translation of the Odyssey, published in 1879. 281. ​The Yaqui (also known as the Yoeme) are indigenous to the north Mexican state of Sonora and the southwestern United States. 282. ​RF echoes Bynner’s poem, “I Change,” collected in his 1922 volume, The Beloved Stranger (New York: Alfred Knopf):

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[To Edward Morgan Lewis. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 1 1930 Dear Edward Just a word in returning the enclosed.283 Descend from Owen Glendower as much as you please284 but before you condescend to me give me time to find out if I may not descend from Bruce or Wallace.285 By the time you get ­here I may have a real ancestry worked up. Dont fail to visit us on your journey to Utica.286 Always yours faithfully Robert

I won­der how it happens I was made A foe of agate, And a friend of jade, Yet have become, Unwisely I’m afraid, The friend of agate And the foe of jade— So that I wish, by d­ ying, To be made Careless of agate, Careless of jade. 283. ​A newspaper clipping sent RF by Lewis; the article described the June 16 ceremony at which the University of New Hampshire awarded honorary degrees to RF and to Thomas A. Watson. See also RF to Van Dore, June 27, 1930. 284. ​Lewis was Welsh-born. Owen Glendower (ca. 1359–ca. 1415), the last native Welsh­man to hold the title Prince of Wales (from 1404 ­u ntil his death), led a fifteen-­year-­long rebellion against En­glish rule. 285. ​That is, through his Scotland-­born ­mother Isabelle Moodie Frost. William Wallace (d. 1305) defeated the En­g lish at the ­Battle of Stirling Bridge (September 1297). Robert the Bruce (1274–1329) reigned as King of the Scots from 1306 to 1329. 286. ​Where Lewis had settled when he immigrated to Amer­ic­ a from Wales in 1880.

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[To Harold Goddard Rugg (1883–1957), American librarian, historian, naturalist, and collector. Since 1912 he had been a librarian at Dartmouth College. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 3 1930 My dear Rugg— If you w ­ ill accept an answer so belated. Word of that small book got out through my friend Melcher. I think we de­cided it was printed in 1894. It was of an edition of twins, the other of which perished in the flames.287 The Colophon has I believe an exhaustive description of it in a forthcoming bibliography.288 Anything more you need to know I w ­ ill try to tell you—­g ive me time. Come and see the book as an excuse for coming to see me. Always your friend Robert Frost

[To Herschel Brickell. ALS. Prince­ton.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 3 1930 Dear Mr Brickell: Your letter makes every­t hing all right. I’m content to let you and R. G. Longman arrange the business between you. Of course it wont do to have the book cost too much over t­ here. Any compromise to prevent having it. The tele­g ram threatened with having to charge 26 shillings if Longmans set up and printed the book themselves.289 I won­der why paper and print cost more in E ­ ngland than in Amer­i­ca. But perhaps I’m not getting the idea.290 Well as I 287. ​ Twilight, of which RF had two copies printed in 1894. For details, see RF to Melcher, February 9, 1929, and RF to Haselden, February 29, 1929. 288. ​Frederic Melcher, “Robert Frost and His books” in the Colophon, A Book Collectors’ Quarterly I.2 (1930), which notes of Twilight that it “­w ill forever be the despair of collectors.” RF sold the only surviving copy to collector and bond trader Earle J. Bernheimer in 1939 (a year ­a fter Elinor had died) for the then-­astronomical price of $4,000. 289. ​See RF to Brickell, June 27, 1930. 290. ​One reason for the comparatively high cost of books in the UK was the Net Book Agreement, which would not be abolished ­u ntil 1995.

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say I am willing to leave it to your discretion. I can see you know more about it than I do. I’m glad you think so well of what Blumenthal has made of the book. Mind you it is not what o ­ thers do but what I do myself that I get sick of when it is too long drawn out. I’ve been thinking I’d run down to talk ­things over with you. But it is hard to pull out once I get into this retirement! Always yours faithfully Robert Frost I enclose this letter from State College Pa for you to pass along to your sales dept. if you w ­ ill.291

[To Herschel Brickell. TG. Prince­ton.]

BENNINGTON VERMONT 1930 JULY 10 LONGMAN STILL PRESSING FOR SHEETS STOP HAVE CABLED ALL RIGHT IF YOU AND THEY THINK BEST STOP AM RECONCILED STOP DONT KNOW QUITE WHY I OBJECTED IN FIRST PLACE STOP HATED TO LEAVE PROUD FIRM OF LONGMANS HIGH HAT ME PERHAPS292 ROBERT FROST

291. ​Inviting RF to give a series of lectures at Pennsylvania State University’s six-­week summer En­glish Institute (along with Frost f­amily friends Eunice Tietjens and Padraic Colum); see the notes to RF’s July 14 letter to Canby for dates. 292. ​A s detailed in the previous two communications with Brickell (June  27 and July 3, 1930), Longmans had annoyed RF by proposing to print CP 1930 from sheets supplied by Henry Holt (rather than set their own), and threatening a fairly exorbitant price if this proposal ­wasn’t acceded to. “Proud firm” is also used ironically in the letter of June 27. Five days l­ ater RF’s mood had changed again, and he was saying to hell with the “infirm firm” of Longmans (letter to Brickell, July 15, 1930).

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[To Ruth Goodman (1908–2001), American playwright and screenwriter. In 1930, she was working as a reader and acquisitions editor in the publishing h­ ouse of Alfred A. Knopf. ALS. Middlebury.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont July 11 1930 My dear Miss Goodman: I like to judge students writing as good or not in the absolute and not just relatively considering they are freshmen sophomores ju­n iors freshmen [sic] undergraduates or gradu­ates. And I have always found a few to mark that way. But much as I may believe in them and want to see them turn out real authors, I always hesitate to help them find publishers for fear word of it should get out and I should [be] flocked upon for advancement in business rather than in art. To show you that this ­isn’t from lack of generosity, let me tell you of a person or two, not students, that I should think a publisher might get a book out of (if books are still demanded u ­ nder the presidency of Hoover). One is J. J. Lankes who is already known for his beautiful woodcuts. I have seen his prose in letters and in one or two short stories—­very racy and unfictitious. He lives in Hilton Village, V ­ irginia. Another is Lawrence Conrad a young professor in the State Teachers College of New Jersey. I may admit that he has already had a first novel, “Temper,” with Dodd and a second that Dodd refused.293 I shouldnt want the second if I w ­ ere you. It is prob­ably too straightened and self-­conscious, though full of good writing. But Conrad is an uncannily able ­little upstart and is g­ oing to make [for] some publisher a novelist or critic.294 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

293. ​Dodd, Mead published Temper in 1924. 294. ​RF’s phrasing is unusual, but perfectly clear in the manuscript. We supply [for] to clarify the sentence. Actually, Conrad had already published a volume of criticism: Descriptive and Narrative Writing (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927). In her reply to this letter, Goodman writes: “I am writing immediately to Mr. Lankes to see what he has and I ­shall of course write to Mr. Conrad, but about this last I am a l­ ittle more doubtful since he seems already to have found a publisher. If I can overcome my scruples, however, he ­w ill certainly hear from me” (letter held at DCL). Holt—­R F’s publisher—­brought out Lankes’s A Woodcut Manual in 1932. Knopf never published a book by Conrad.

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[To Henry Seidel Canby (1878–1961), American scholar and editor, professor of En­glish at Yale, and cofounder of the Saturday Review of Lit­er­a­t ure. ALS. Yale.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 14 1930 Dear Canby: You cant stop an hour ­here—­not at this house—­not on your way anywhere. You’ll stop a night or nothing. Say, what do you mean by such a threat? We want to see you both, but ­don’t you know we want to talk to you too. It should be early in the first week of August prob­ably. I’m not quite sure, but I believe I am expected at Penn State the 4th 5th and 6th. It may be the 5th 6th and 7th.295 I’ll have to find out and tell you. Sayler296 is all very well but if distractions like him would let me alone for the next few months I might do the California poem you ­don’t seem to forget.297 Best wishes to the Canbys and Dodds.298 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 14, 1930] Dear Louis: I am left out of the Two Weeks Manuscript Sales Fair299 as I had reason to suppose I would be. I thought perhaps it would be less embarrassing all round

295. ​A s it happened, RF was in residence at Pennsylvania State University’s En­glish Institute from August 7 to 12. He spoke on the topics “Who Owns Poetry?” and “Jingle and the Balanced Sentence” (according to a June  6 advance report, published in the Shamokin, Pennsylvania, News-­Dispatch). 296. ​Oliver M. Sayler (1887–1958), theater critic at the Saturday Review, author of The Rus­sian Theatre (1922) and Our American Theatre (1923), among other works. 297. ​This would seem to be a never completed, and since lost, poem described in a letter to James Wells, July 14, 1928 (LRF-2, 650). 298. ​Canby’s s­ister Marion Roberts Canby had married Lee Wilson Dodd (­lawyer turned playwright, and a contributor to the Saturday Review) in 1907; they had two ­children. 299. ​RF’s derisive term for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

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if I simply forgot to go to the ­earlier educational session at Bread Loaf.300 But I have been come ­after by Pres. Moody and flatteringly written ­after by our friend Gay to be pre­sent and help them dedicate the Memorial Library to Wilfred Davison on Monday July 21st.301 Pres Moody said frankly that he saw no way but for the second session to go on commercial as it had begun. I judge he thought the two sessions could be kept like the right and left hand each from knowing what the other was d­ oing. He asked me to think of the two as separate. They c­ an’t be separate of course and in the end belonging to one ­w ill mean belonging to both. But I dont care if it does in the end. This year can make no difference in princi­ple and I hate to put on airs that ­w ill hurt ­either Moody’s feelings or Gay’s. I agreed to go on the understanding that they would give you your choice of sessions. I knew you said you came a good deal to be t­ here when I was. But of course we are g­ oing to see each other h ­ ere right off anyway and maybe it would be too ostentatious for you to desert the Farrow302 session b­ ecause I was left out of it. You may be sure I dont mind your being with that gang for a visit if only as a spy and agent provocateur. You cant imagine how cleanly I have forgiven the Johnnie. The explanation is that I am at heart secretly tickled if I offended him unintentionally. I suppose it to have been unintentionally b­ ecause to this hour I dont know what my offense was.303 I am too cowardly to offend anybody intentionally and usually too

300. ​The six-­week session of the Bread Loaf School of En­glish, which runs in June and July, is followed by the two-­week session of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in August. 301. ​Robert Malcolm Gay (1879–1961) was a faculty member at Simmons College who participated in the Bread Loaf School of En­glish. Paul Moody was president of Middlebury College from 1921 to 1942. Wilfred Davison was dean of the Bread Loaf School of En­glish. In 1921, he invited RF to participate in the program. He died unexpectedly in 1929. As has been noted, RF spoke at the School of En­glish on July 21 and 22. The first of ­t hese appearances was at the dedication of the Davison Memorial Library, at which RF said (in remarks pertinent to his complaints about the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference): “A school of this kind, set amid the beauties of nature, I think would be a dismal t­ hing— it would be a mere credit-­hunting summer school up ­here—­but for the bent of poetry [Davison] gave it. Now it ­isn’t easy in just a few words to define rightly how or where he gave it that poetic bent. He just had always with him this poetic fineness: I think he never would willingly have any teacher on the place who would give to lit­er­a­t ure a meaning that w ­ asn’t intended by the person who wrote it. There are all sorts of perversions—in summer and winter schools—in the teaching of poetry” (CPRF, 100–101). 302. ​A pun on John Farrar’s name. 303. ​For more on RF’s prob­lems with Farrar and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, see RF’s June 7 letter to Allen.

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skillfull [sic] to do it unintentionally. So I am stuck. I cant hurt anybody no ­matter how much he deserves it. When I do it is a triumph of the divinity that shapes our ends.304 It gives me a funny feeling I must say I like. I suppose it’s a manly feeling, but I’m such a stranger to it I hardly know. Yes I came off so well with the Johnnie that I shant care if you do treat him as if nothing had ever happened. I even evened the score between him and Lesley.305 Another barn got out of the way last week.306 ­We’ll be almost ready for you when you get ­here on the 26th. Remember comparisons are odious as between farms. King’s X.307 You are so afraid to cut wood at home. I s­ hall have to give you a chance to cut some ­here. I’ll try you on the other end of the cross-­cut saw with me. And may the best man faint from sheer sympathy with the live wood. I heard from Raymond Holden for the first time in five years.308 And in the same mail I had a letter of another of our youngsters Joseph Anthony commending to my mercy (pronounced Marcy in the Adirondacs [sic]) a rhymed book of his called Casanova Jones.309 Have you seen it? What are you ­going to say to such indifferent nonsense from a boy you like? Accuse it of hyper­ cleverness? But would that be honest? Raymond wants to know if I have changed. Yes, I tell him, as it happens within the month into a conscientious answerer of ­every letter I get. To show you how high life goes at our post office. At one time we had two countesses getting male310 ­there. One of them was Millicent Rogers, but she

304. ​ Hamlet 5.ii.10–11: “­There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-­hew them how we ­w ill.” 305. ​Lesley Frost reported to her f­ ather that Farrar had harassed her when both w ­ ere employed in New York by the publishing h ­ ouse of Doubleday Doran (in 1928): see LRF-2, 655. 306. ​R F had torn down several dilapidated barns and outbuildings on the Gully property. 307. ​“King’s X” is an American idiom for “truce.” RF used it as a title for a poem satirizing the 1946 nuclear weapons testing ban, collected in SB (1947). 308. ​RF met Raymond Holden (1894–1972) in the summer of 1915 in Franconia, New Hampshire. Holden purchased half of RF’s Franconia farm in 1919 and, in the 1920s and 1930s, launched a ­career as a poet, novelist, and editor. 309. ​Joseph Anthony’s satirical Casanova Jones (New York: ­Century, 1930) is a long narrative poem, whose titular hero serves as a Prohibition agent while his wife runs a speakeasy. Mount Marcy, located in the Adirondacks, is the highest peak in New York. 310. ​A pun, as what follows indicates.

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was only a countess by marriage and she undid herself by marrying an Argentinian and g­ oing to South Amer­i­ca.311 The other one was seen loading a c­ ouple of boxes of loud-­peeping day-­old chickens into the back of her car the other day. That explained her. Plainly thats where she got her title, counting chickens before and a­ fter they w ­ ere hatched. Ever yours Robert Frost I havent seen a newspaper since I started writing letters. I havent heard a bit of news. I have recovered my pristine innocence in no time.

[To Roland Wood (1897–1967), American actor and a former student of RF’s at Amherst. Wood was cofounder, with John Fass, of the Harbor Press, which in 1929 published RF’s one-­act play A Way Out (CPRF, 269). Wood had performed in the play at the Northampton Acad­emy of ­Music on February 24, 1919 (LRF-1, 647). ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont July 14 1930 Dear Roley I have to acknowledge your check. I’m turning it back not ­because it’s suspeck. But simply ­because it is what is called velivet.312 That I have a good mind to spend for the Hell of it In buying some more of my beautiful books. I refer less to beauty of content than looks. And dont think I flatter—­this isnt soft sawder313 It’s business, my practical friend, it’s an order. Please send all my thirty-­five dollars ­w ill buy, And never mind if it exhausts your supply. 311. ​Socialite Mary Millicent Abigail Rogers (1902–1953), heiress to the Standard Oil fortune, eloped in 1924 with Austrian-­born actor Ludwig von Salm-­Hoogstraeten. She was twenty years old, and he was forty. The ­couple divorced in early 1927. Rogers then married wealthy Argentine financier, Arturo Peralta-­Ramos, in November of that year. 312. ​A deliberate misspelling of “velvet”: the receipt of more money than one is due. 313. ​“Soft sawder”: flattery.

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(If it does and some over I guess you ­won’t cry.) Many thanks for so gracefully coming acrosst. I am yours the more faithfully Robert Lee Frost314

[To Herschel Brickell. TLS. Prince­ton.]

South Shaftsbury, Vt. July 15, 1930 Dear Mr. Brickell: Suppose we leave it this way then that you are to let Longmans have sheets if they ­w ill take what you consider a large number of them; but if they seem afraid of me and cautious in their buying, you are to give them a chance to get out altogether. I’m disappointed in them. They kept me from every­body ­else and now they dont want me themselves. They are an infirm firm. I’d rather give them their money back than be their unwanted child. In other words t’Hell wit them. This is a fine day in Vermont anyway and o ­ ught to 314. ​This poem elicited the following (typed, signed, dated July 20, 1930): Dear ­Uncle Rob: We got your check and put it in the bank And seven Way Outs have been mailed You ­needn’t write to thank Us for them. We, indeed, in turn Should send the thanks to you. Though God knows why a writing man Should buy books too. Especially books he wrote himself. Now where’s the fun of that? Why ­didn’t you invest the dough Or buy your wife a hat? Take my advice—­stay in Vermont. New York’s so hot, that slowly ­We’re ebulating into soup.    Regards to all Yours, Roley (letter held at DCL)

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make it up to us for a lot of l­ittle annoyances. I hope it is a fine day in your office. Sincerely yours, Robert Frost

[To Raymond Holden (1894–1972), American poet and editor. ALS. Trinity.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont July 15 1930 Dear Raymond: Absolutely the only change in me since you saw me last in the North Station315 is one I resolutely made on purpose not over a month ago from a bad answerer of letters into a good answerer of letters. A lot of my letters with dates of June and July 1930 w ­ ill be found in the ruined cities of North Amer­ i­ca. It remains to be seen ­whether any ­w ill of August or late August. A reassertion of my worse nature may be looked for in the hay-­fever season. So you see you came in at just the right time to get this. If you had been much e­ arlier or much ­earlier [sic] you would have got no letter but a tele­g ram and that would have been more by a tele­g ram than almost anyone e­ lse would have got. As an old friend and I sometimes hope admirer of my works you would at least have had a tele­g ram telling you to come on up for a night and do your article if you must,316 but do a stroke of farming anyway for old sakes sake, saw a log or two or in two on the other end of the cross-­cut saw with me like the dabblers both of us always w ­ ere and w ­ ill prob­ably never now get any further than being. The teeth of my cross-­cut are freshly sharpened to ­needles and w ­ ill cut as the fellow said fours [sic] sides off a shaving. The article isnt necessary between friends. I dont know what to say to the article. But come along up and bring the poetess your wife.317 This is an invitation from me and my wife. I’ve got to go on an errand for the three days July 20, 21 and 22, and

315. ​In Boston. 316. ​Holden would publish a profile of RF entitled “North of Boston” in the New Yorker on June 6, 1931. 317. ​In 1925, Holden had married American poet and editor Louise Bogan (1897–1970).

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on another for three days including August 6.318 The rest of the time till August 20 I ­shall be right h ­ ere at home in South Shaftsbury. You choose when. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 20 1930 Dear Louis ­Heres this back at once so it shan’t get lost. And my! what a piece of ready writing.319 Elinor and I both read it with admiration for the way you hold a new book off at its distance for judgement. Genevieve Taggart [sic] did awfully well all t­ hings considered but it is exactly as you say about her. She doesnt make a case out for her man and she would have had more fun in making it out that ­t here was no man at all.320 In my biography I have it that Madam Martha was Emily’s neither legitimate nor illegitimate child, parthenoge­ne­tic by the composite imago of all men it might have been.321 Enough of this pretty soon. I have read a good deal of your higher guide book and enjoyed reading it without the help of having been to the Black Forest.322 It may prove the last straw and break me of my habit of not g­ oing to Germany. I mean this. You 318. ​H is appearances at (respectively) the Bread Loaf School of En­glish and (in August) at the En­glish Institute convened by Pennsylvania State University. 319. ​An omnibus review of recent essays and books about Emily Dickinson, published in the July 5 issue of The Saturday Review of Lit­e r­a­ture. 320. ​Untermeyer devotes the better part of his (skeptical) review to Taggard’s The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson (New York: Knopf, 1930). Taggard argues that the death of Leonard Humphrey (Dickinson’s teacher at Amherst Acad­emy), and her own ­father’s refusal to allow Amherst College undergraduate George Gould to court her, led the poet to become a recluse. 321. ​A snide reference to Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Dickinson’s niece and the author of The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924)—­a lso discussed in Untermeyer’s review. For more on RF’s low opinion of Martha Dickinson Bianchi, see the letter to Conrad, October 26, 1930. 322. ​Untermeyer’s Blue Rhine, Black Forest: A Hand-­and Day-­Book (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1930).

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make it all sound like just what I need in my pre­sent state of mind. I’d like to go and write a book in one of the corners you tell of. And I may yet. If I dont see you at Middlebury no m ­ atter: you’ll be ­here right away where ­we’ll have each ­others undivided attention.323 ­We’ll talk Longfellow and Emerson. Longfellow was a true poet for anyone with the ears to judge poetry by ear. His size—­well I havent both­ered to size him up yet any more than I have a lot of lyric ­people. Just go and listen to that passage about the Jew in the Prelude to one of the books.324 Emerson was ­g reat. ­Great ­g reat ­g reat. I won­der what kind of a book Michaud has written about him.325 Till I hear you go into second coming up our hill. Robert

323. ​See RF to Untermeyer July 14, 1930. 324. ​That is, in the “Prelude” to Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside Inn (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863), inspired (in part) by Boccaccio and Chaucer: A Spanish Jew from Alicant, With aspect g­ rand and grave, was ­there; Vender of silks and fabrics rare, And attar of r­ ose from the Levant. Like an old Patriarch he appeared, Abraham or Isaac, or at least Some ­later Prophet or High-­P riest; With lustrous eyes, and olive skin, And, wildly tossed from cheeks and chin, The tumbling cataract of his beard. His tale, based on a story in the Talmud, is titled “The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi.” Like most of the other figures in Tales of a Wayside Inn, this Sephardic Jew is based on a man Longfellow actually met: Isaac Edrehi, a Philadelphia physician born in Morocco in 1811. See John J. Appel, “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Pre­sen­ta­t ion of the Spanish Jews,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 45.1 (1955): 20–34. As Appel suggests, “The Sephardi of the Tales was prob­ably the first Jewish character in American writing who clearly reminded readers of the influence of Oriental learning and culture on the West” (32). 325. ​Régis Michaud’s Emerson: The Enraptured Yankee (New York: Harper and ­Brothers, 1930). As for “talking” Longfellow and Emerson: Untermeyer had undertaken yet another anthology, for details about which see RF’s September 6, 1930, and October 26, 1931, letters to him.

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[To Joseph Blumenthal. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 1 1930 Dear Mr Blumenthal: We s­ hall be looking forward to your visit. Choose any time between the 12th and the 16th of this month if you can.326 You say exactly when so we can be in out of the woods and off the mountains waiting to receive you. This cruel strain of getting out a book is practically over and we can meet carefree. Oh about Waugh’s name. I’m glad you have thought of a way to bring it in. He likes to write it Frank A. Waugh.327 I surely appreciate what you are ­doing for me. Sincerely yours Robert Frost Louis Untermeyer has been ­here talking of the book you made for him. I have a copy of it.328

[To J. J. Lankes. The letter is undated, but “Received Aug. 5, 1930” is penciled in at the top of the first page. ALS. HRC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa August 5, 1930] Dear J. J. It has your honesty and some of the raciness we have learned to look for in your letters. You permit yourself rather more of the flavour or should I say odor of sex than you do in your pictures. No need to tell you. It isnt a t­ hing I can read unconcerned. I dont know w ­ hether it is enough to strike out on. I dont know ­whether any story is alone. I should want a ­little more back. But you are the lamb for the sacrifice. I think you can write—­I have always thought 326. ​Blumenthal arrived on Saturday the ninth; see his Robert Frost and His Printers for an account of the visit (the first he’d made): 15–16. 327. ​See RF’s September  26 tele­g ram to Brickell. By that date Waugh was out, and Doris Ulmann in, as photographer. 328. ​Blumenthal had privately printed a collection of Richard Starr Untermeyer’s poems. Richard, Untermeyer’s first son, committed suicide on January 25, 1927.

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so. I think this is a very good story.329 I dont promise you an editorial success right off instantly. No man knoweth the mind of the editor or can tell what he ­w ill like or dislike. I’m obstinately of the opinion that writing is another ­thing you can do in addition to wood cutting. Go with God at it. R.F.

[To Jean Paul Slusser (1886–1981), American painter and professor of art at the University of Michigan (where RF met him in 1925). The letter is not dated. The postmark is August 19th, but the letter was clearly written several days e­ arlier; hence its placement h­ ere. ALS. UM.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa August 15, 1930] Dear Slusser: Now listen for it may seem complicated. We are leaving this south west corner of Vermont for the north west of New Hampshire on the 18th.330 My son in law John Cone w ­ ill be in this region of South Shaftsbury however and would like to see you. He cant entertain you b­ ecause he is breaking up to go back to college.331 But he ­will bring you to my ­house and give you the key for as long as you like to stay painting or not painting. Then when you move on across New ­England it w ­ ill be natu­ral to come where we are in Franconia New Hampshire. We’d like you to stay a night with us ­there. Strictly speaking we ­shall be on Toad Hill near the Fobes Farm which you can inquire for at Franconia or at Sugar Hill. W ­ e’ll be disappointed not to see you. You must come. Good voyage! Always yours Robert Frost 329. ​The story is “After­noon and Eve­n ing,” which was accepted (in part on RF’s recommendation) by no less an editor than H.  L. Mencken, who published it in the October 1930 number of the American Mercury: 238–243. RF further encouraged Lankes to write A Woodcut Manual, which Henry Holt (RF’s publisher) brought out in 1932, by which time Lankes had a position at Wells College—­again, partly through RF’s interventions on his behalf, though the poet R. P. T. Coffin (1892–1955), who taught at Wells, also played a role in bringing Lankes t­ here. Lankes ­later illustrated Coffin’s 1937 book of poems, Saltwater Farm (New York: Macmillan). 330. ​As subsequent letters show, and as the postmark to this one makes plain, RF remained in South Shaftsbury ­u ntil shortly ­a fter August 26. 331. ​For Cone, see the notes to RF’s September 1, 1929, letter to Bartlett.

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South Shaftsbury VT till the 18th ­after that Franconia N.H. till Sept 16th. Dont fail to occupy our ­house at least a week and make history.

[To Theodore Roo­se­velt Jr. (1887–1944), American statesman, soldier, businessman, and author. Roo­se­velt was governor of Puerto Rico from 1929 u­ ntil 1932. ALS. LoC.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont August 16 1930 My dear Gov. Roo­se­velt: I should like to see my poem in your anthology.332 I can think of nothing national I should like better—­short of an appointment to your staff as poet laureate for a month or two some cold winter. One t­ hing and another may happen to us in a ­career, but it seemingly never happens to us to be noticed by any one very busy with the state but a Roo­se­velt. Your ­father was not deaf to our verse and it kept us from feeling left out of the age.333 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To  H.  L. Mencken (1880–1956), American journalist, editor, essayist, and scholar. ALS. NYPL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont August 22 1930 My dear Menken [sic]: The news warms me in my friendship for you.334 Our Baltimore ­daughter Marjorie tells us how particularly well you have done and we have other ways of knowing. 332. ​ TAPS: Selected Poems of the ­Great War, compiled by Roo­se­velt and Grantland Rice, was published by Doubleday in 1932. The editors chose (by RF) “Not to Keep,” published first in the Yale Review in January 1917, and collected in NH. 333. ​Theodore Roo­se­velt  Sr. (himself the author of some forty-­seven books) was among the founding members, in 1898, of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and, in 1904, of the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters. 334. ​Mencken’s forthcoming marriage to Sara Haardt (1898–1935), writer and instructor of En­glish at Goucher College, on August 27, 1930.

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I may not be supposed to have heard that your bridal tour is to be through New E ­ ngland and it ­w ill be seeing New ­England for the first time for both of you. But I won­der if you could be persuaded to look in on us for a night in your travels e­ ither in our camp near Franconia N.H. before Sept. 15th or at our home h ­ ere in South Shaftsbury, Vermont a­ fter September 21st. See us and you see New ­England. And we have been married ever since 1905.335 We ­wouldn’t talk dialect to you. Thanks for your kindness to my wood-­c hopper J.  J. Lankes.336 You remember I said to you once you did more than all the teachers put together to find ’em out and help ’em up. Ruth Suckow sat on our porch the other day and acknowledged her debt to you.337 Always yours friendly Robert Frost

[To Vrest Orton (1896–1986), American author, founder of the Colophon, and, in 1946, founder also of the Vermont Country Store.338 ALS. Private.]

South Shaftsbury August 22 1930 My dear Orton: Sometime in the fall when the flood of summer p­ eople has subsided you and I w ­ ill be left still clinging to the rocks of Vermont. Then we can see each other. But if I h ­ aven’t seen you, I have thought of you and read you. Of course your passage in The Colophon pleased me.339 So also your Vermont Yearbook 335. ​A remarkable slip ­because the Frosts had married in December 1895. 336. ​See RF to Lankes, August 5, 1930. 337. ​Ruth Suckow (1892–1960), American author, had stories published in two Mencken-­ edited magazines, the Smart Set and the American Mercury. 338. ​In his Vermont After­noons with Robert Frost (Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1971), Orton reports that he had been introduced to RF in New York City in the mid-1920s by H. L. Mencken (Orton worked for the American Mercury). 339. ​Orton had founded the Colophon in 1929. He supplied details of the origins and publication of Twilight (1894) to H. S. Boutell for Frederic Melcher (and Boutell’s) “Robert Frost and His Books,” Colophon: A Book Collectors’ Quarterly 1.2 (April 1930): 67–78. Boutell’s bibliography followed Melcher’s introductory essay, and credited Orton with supplying this note: “When Mr. Frost was about nineteen he had the book printed by a small job

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and Guide in which I have read ­every single town once and some towns twice.340 From now on it ­w ill be easier for me to masquerade as a Vermonter.341 Next year put in more elevations. Nothing is so uplifting as the heights of small towns. The height of Peacham did me good.342 I knew the height of Danby and Peru.343 I want to know more. A book like that enriched year by year could become the most in­ter­est­i ng book of the age. My best to you. Always yours friendly Robert Frost

[To James George Leippert (1909–1964), American publisher, at the time a student at Columbia University. For more on this colorful character and serial imposter, see the headnote to RF’s August 27, 1927, letter to him: LRF-2, 597. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 23 1930 Dear Mr Leippert: Sometime you ­w ill meet me and by then I ­w ill have thought what to say to your tribute poem. It is a moving t­ hing to have friends like you. Your poem is one f­ avor. I want to ask you another: and that is d­ on’t go back on me. D ­ on’t be one of t­ hose ­people who let their next favorite poet crowd out their last.344 Remember ­there has got to be some retention for growth. Let your motto not be modelled [sic] on that of the R.R. time t­ able “Destroy all previous printer at Lawrence, Mas­sa­chu­setts, the type being distributed ­a fter two copies had been run off. This copy was given to Mrs. Frost, with an inscription on pages [7] and [8] which was ­later cut out; and the other copy was destroyed.” Orton omits to mention that RF himself destroyed the second copy. For details, see the notes to RF’s February 20, 1929, letter to Haselden. 340. ​ T he Vermont Year Book & Guide (formerly called Walston’s Register), published in Rutland by Tuttle. 341. ​A business that vexed RF. See his October 1, 1930, letter to Thornton. 342. ​1,526 ft (465 m). 343. ​1,430 ft (436 m) and 1,647 ft (502 m), respectively. 344. ​Indeed, ­u nder the assumed name “J. Ronald Lane-­Latimer,” Leippert would soon turn his attentions to Wallace Stevens, whose Ideas of Order (1935) and Owl’s Clover (1936) he published (at his Alcestis Press).

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issues.”345 Some language learners lose words at one end as fast as they acquire them at the other end. Their vocabulary is stationary. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To William W. Christman (1865–1937), American farmer, poet, and conservationist. Christman’s farm outside Schenectady, New York, is now a nature sanctuary. ALS. Fenimore.]

S. Shaftsbury Vt August 23 1930 Dear Mr Christman: One ­thing and another have kept me from getting to see you. Too much comes on me lately. And now I am ­r unning away from it all for a few weeks. In the fall it w ­ ill be quieter. You w ­ ill be ­there and I w ­ ill be ­here. Every­body ­else w ­ ill be gone. Then I w ­ ill try again to make the promised visit.346 I am sorry to be like this. But if I can stand it, o ­ thers o ­ ught to be able to. I hope 347 your farm didnt dry up or your muse go dry. Remember me to your son.348 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

345. ​“R.R.” is likely the Reading Railroad Com­pany, in whose cars RF often rode. 346. ​According to Christman’s grand­son, Corkey, the visit when it occurred did not go well: “They both had monumental egos; Mr. Frost and my grandpa . . . ​a nd the story goes that they ­d idn’t stay long in the woods, and they both came storming back and Frost said, ‘I have to leave right away.’ Maybe somebody knows what happened, but I ­don’t, and nobody I know does.” See Bill Buell, “Landmarks: Legacy of Land and Lit­er­a­t ure,” Daily Gazette (Schenectady, New York), August 28, 2011. 347. ​One of the worst droughts in US history hit much of the nation in the summer of 1930. It was covered extensively in the Vermont papers. 348. ​Henry Christman (1906–1980), a journalist and historian.

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[To J. J. Lankes. ALS. HRC.]

S. Shaftsbury Aug 23 1930 Dear J. J.: Its some years since we first noticed you could write. You get it in your letters. All you have to do in g­ oing over into stories is to hold it. T ­ here is where a young person fails. He gets scared when he goes into print and loses what he had in talk and letter writing. Y ­ ou’re old enough to manage better. Give em some of your character sketching with animus. You feel ­people with such interestingly mixed feelings. Also t­ heres a lot of you that ­will carry over from one art to another by analogy. Go ahead and make money. Dont let them rattle you by asking for novels short stories and poems all in one breath.349 Steady while you decide what to do first. Only dont let the chance get away from you. You can skate circles all round R. Kent in writing as well as in drawing.350 Ever yourn R.F. S. Shaftsbury Vt still but not a­ fter tomorrow. I won­der how your Hay Fever is.

[To Otto Manthey-­Zorn (1879–1964), American scholar and educator, professor of German at Amherst. Dated, in part, from postmark. ALS. ACL.]

S Shafts Aug [25] ’30 Dear Otto Sit right down and tell me how to spell the name of James Nautopolis [sic] the Amherst Greek poet from Altoona Pa who went to Oxford.351 I owe him five dollars for helping me buy my ticket out of Pennsylvania in the hot wave.

349. ​See RF to Goodman, July 11, 1930. 350. ​For Rockwell Kent, his relationship with Lankes, and his Arctic (mis)adventures, see RF’s December 15, 1929, letter to Lankes. 351. ​ James Notopoulos (1905–1967) had spent the past two academic years (October 1928–­July 1929, October 1929–­July 1930) studying at Jesus College, Oxford.

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He and prospective wife gave me a long r­ ide to the train.352 She was a non-­ Greek from Altoona and a ju­n ior at Mt Holyoke. I am in debt to them for more than the r­ ide and the fare; they entertained me so. Says I “You went to the Altoona high school together I suppose. That’s where you met.” “No,” says Jim, “we never knew each other in Altoona. My kid ­brother discovered you first, didnt he Funny Face?353 She was his girl first. But he asked me to call on her at Mt Holyoke once and I stole her away from him. You d­ on’t care do you Funny Face?” Such delicacy would have to be innate mostly but it made me won­der how Jim got on at Oxford. “Pretty well Mr Frost.” “Hes too modest to tell you,” says Funny Face; “he stood second in his class. He came out away up ­there a­ fter having been warned in the m ­ iddle of his last year that he would fail.” I asked Jim how he saved himself so late. “By turning from Latin and Greek and coming up for my examination in philosophy.” He evidently astonished the examiners with his knowledge of philosophy. The long result of Amherst and Oxford however is not very perceptible in taste and judgement.354 I dont know that it ­matters. One of my outrageous friends said to me “I believe the worst of every­body and I like to tell it so as to make it worse still.” “But you let it make no difference with you. Such is your breadth of mind,” I said in his defence. “Yes” he said “but I know it ­will make a difference with the plain p­ eople, and ­there’s where the mischief comes in. I like to do harm when I have a contempt for the kind of harm.” I think I followed him. Write to Franconia N.H. ­We’re off for ­there tomorrow. We ­were sorry to hear Oldsie wasnt as well as he might be.355 It is hard to see him suffer. You ­don’t see many like him. He makes every­thing he says and does stand out so bright. We saw another good German night before last. Did I catch the name as Siemann? He was something at the top of the government once.356 He’s at Wil352. ​The “prospective wife” was Jean McKerihan (1909–1999); the two married in May 1934. The meeting—­a nd the r­ ide, some forty miles—­presumably occurred during RF’s residency at the Pennsylvania State University’s En­glish Institute (August 7–12). 353. ​­After George Gersh­w in’s musical Funny Face, which had opened in November 1927, with Fred Astaire in the leading role. 354. ​Vide RF’s remarks in “Education by Poetry,” a talk delivered at Amherst on November 15, 1930: “How s­ hall a man go through college without having been marked for taste and judgment? What ­w ill become of him? What ­w ill his end be?” (CPRF, 103). 355. ​George Daniel Olds, former president of Amherst, was ill; he died in May 1931. 356. ​Walter Simons (1861–1937) delivered a lecture on “The Evolution of International Public Law in Eu­rope since Grotius” at Williamstown, Mas­sa­chu­setts, in August 1930.

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liamstown lecturing. I dont want you and Ethel to think you are the only good Germans we ever saw. Be kind to Smith Baird and Doughty.357 Ever yours Robert

[To James A. Notopoulos (1905–1967). ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 26 [1930] My dear Notopoulos: You neednt think that I have forgotten my r­ ide to Altoona. If I havent written in a hurry it was b­ ecause I knew I could trust myself not to forget for a long long time if not forever. Your affairs w ­ ill always interest me as they always have interested me since that day you ­were introduced to me as a poet in one of the seminar rooms in the library at Amherst.358 Your money got me to New York all right where when I went to look for my wife I found her by telephone patiently waiting for me in a temperature of 101 in Baltimore Mary­land. So I had to beg some more money and spend it and the day g­ oing down ­there. Now I am having to pay. The man always has to pay sooner or l­ater as you prob­ably found out in your study of philosophy at Amherst and Oxford. ­There are ­those who w ­ ill tell you it is the ­woman who has to pay; but they are sentimentalists. Besides sending you the enclosed check 359 I have just one object in writing this letter and that is to warn you against being just one more phi­los­o­pher like the three thousand (an average of three for ­every college, professor ass-­ professor and instructor) at the pre­sent moment in this country. Let me tell He had served as foreign minister of the Weimar Republic from June 1920 to May 1921 and was acting head of state for some ten weeks following the death of President Ebert in February 1925. 357. ​Three colleagues at Amherst: Henry de Forest Smith (1869–1943), professor of Greek; Theodore Baird (1901–1996), professor of En­glish; Howard Walters Doughty (1872–1949), professor of chemistry. 358. ​Notopolous graduated Amherst in 1928. 359. ​Dated August 28, 1930, and drawn on the First National Bank of Bennington, Vermont, in the amount of $5.00.

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you a story. A friend of mine, a business man and a thinker, asked to join the American Philosophical Society or what­ever it is called. They wanted to know if he was a professor. He couldnt say he was. Then he couldnt join. No phi­los­ o­pher, but only professors of philosophy need apply. And to show you the mentality of the professor of philosophy I heard a prominent one say: “Let young men learn to quote phi­los­o­phers. Who are they that they should set up to think?” How long oh Lord are we for this provincialism? The most con­ spic­u­ous book in literary criticism with us at pre­sent has scarcely one thought of the author’s own in it. It is a marvellous texture of quotations from everywhere. It is a professor’s work and about as far as a professor can be expected to go. It is the height of the academic. The professor’s name is John L. Lowes.360 Remember me to the lady. Always yours sincerely Robert Frost

[To Frederic Melcher. ALS. UVA.]

Franconia New Hampshire September 1 ­Here till September 15 [1930] Dear Fred: I got home and found the Colophon.361 Thanks for that, for the impressive way you treated me in it and for the money that helped me home by way of Baltimore. I enclose my check for $10.50 to show my appreciation. (­There was a tele­g ram besides the fare.) I am ­going to ask you very privately for a piece of advice. Do you think I would derogate from my dignity or aloofness or anything if I did a series of lectures (so to call them) on poetry this winter at the New School of Social 360. ​See Lowes’s The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927). The book—­a source study—­fi rst appeared in 1927, but it had been reissued, with a new preface (and addenda and corrigenda) in 1930. Its 600 pages are devoted entirely to two poems (by Coleridge): “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mari­ner.” RF discussed the book with Lowes when he found himself seated next to him at the dedicatory dinner of the Amy Lowell Poetry Room at Harvard’s Widener Library (on December 16, 1929). For an account of their exchange, see YT, 382. 361. ​See RF to Orton, August 22, 1930.

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Research.362 Im not afraid of the radicals I should be thrown with nor of the Jews. I may be a radical myself and ­there is a theory that the Scotch ­were Jews and another that the Yankees w ­ ere Jews.363 I am a Scotch Yankee. What I want to know is, do you think I would be [cheapening] myself in some way. I’m half inclined to accept Alvin Johnson’s invitation to lecture ­there if only to save myself from too much humanism.364 Ever yours Robert Frost Wouldnt you two come up to visit us when we get home for late Sept and October?365

[To Joseph Blumenthal. ALS. ACL.]

Franconia N.H. September 4 1930 Dear Mr Blumenthal: We had the beautiful books and meant to thank you.366 They w ­ ere all ­things I ­shall like to have for whats in them as well as whats around them. I’m ­here in Franconia, New Hampshire and s­ hall be till September 16th—no longer. If you are delayed for any reason with the books so that I am in danger of not receiving them ­here before the 14th, better send them to S. Shaftsbury Vt where I s­ hall be by the 20th. I am limbering up my arm for all that autography.367 You agree with me that is the hardest job any of us have to do on the book writing printing or publishing it. 362. ​RF often writes New School of, when it should be New School for. 363. ​For the latter “theory,” see RF’s January 7, 1930, letter to Melcher, where it is attributed to Barrett Wendell. 364. ​RF spoke weekly at the New School for Social Research in New York beginning on January 8, 1931. See RF to Orton, December 28, 1930. Alvin Saunders Johnson (1874– 1971) was president of the school. 365. ​Melcher was married to Marguerite Fellows (1879–1969), an author of ­children’s books. 366. ​Blumenthal had sent a box of books printed by the Spiral Press. 367. ​That is, signing sheets for the ­limited edition of CP 1930—­sent in two lots of 550 each in September.

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Best wishes everyway Sincerely Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

Franconia N.H. Sept 6 1930 Dear Louis I found your letter waiting for me when we got h ­ ere tuckered at the end of the month. This is the latest we ever fled the plague since we began to be flees in 1906 to be historic.368 One sickness and another in the ­family kept us till I could have cried out with the romantics that no artist should have a ­family. I could have if the idea h ­ adn’t been so stale and unoriginal. I have been thinking about art lately (not with a Capital A but with a Capital F) and the conclusion I have reached is that it is the bodiless child of a perversion not necessarily but preferably major such as embracery or godamee, but at least not getting married or not having ­children if married. Art is nothing but to get ashore out of the stream of animal perpetuations. It is systematically to get some fun out of sex without having to work for it. Hell yes that must be so, so many fools seem to think so. If ­t heres an idea that lends itself to facile spieling in our day equally well with that of evolution it is that of detachment (sic-­K !). About the preface to your book of e­ arlier Ams.369 I very much want to read it. But I may as well wait till our visit which we want to make you in a week or two—on the 18th  to be exact. Elinor is inclined to think Jean is right about your property in the book.370 I should only be invading you if I came in. We see rosily, they ­really. That is why ­woman in our hours of need (uncertain coy and hard to please) should, even more than the dog or h ­ orse, 368. ​When the ­family lived in Derry, New Hampshire (and when RF began teaching at Pinkerton Acad­emy ­t here). The “plague” is hay fever. 369. ​Untermeyer’s American Poetry from the Beginning to Whitman (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931). 370. ​Elinor and Jean Starr Untermeyer both recommended that RF should remain a con­sul­tant for, rather than editor of, Untermeyer’s anthology.

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be looked on as the Friend of Man.371 I’m serious about the book’s being yours. You can consult with me and when I dont advise you wrong I’ll advise you right about Poe Longfellow Bryant and Emerson, t­ hose four and no more.372 You’ll have to go it alone on Lowell Whittier Drake Dana Freneau Wigglesworth Barlow Pierepont [sic] and the rest.373 A lot of them ­were ladies then as a lot are now. I won­der if it wouldnt be found at any given time that most of the con­temporary fit to go into an anthology was feminine. The girls keep it up and ­every now and then a boy whoops it up. Who wrote: I am a pebble and yield to none ­Were the vaunting words of a tiny stone.374 Ans: ­Ought I to know? Wouldnt it, I mean, damage me more with the examiner to know than not to know. Rerejoinder: It certainly would with Thomas Edison.375 I ­ought to say I should like to help with the se­lections from my big four. I should make no bones of cutting poems down to my taste. I just came on another poem Palgrave carved out of a longer one. It was one of Patmore’s:

371. ​See canto VI of Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion (1808): O, W ­ oman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou! 372. ​Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). 373. ​James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), Richard Henry Dana  Sr. (1787–1879), Philip Freneau (1752–1832), Michael Wigglesworth (1631– 1705), Joel Barlow (1754–1812), and John Pierpont (1785–1866). 374. ​A slight variation on the opening lines of “The Pebble and the Acorn,” by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789–1865); it was printed in The Youth’s Coronal (New York: D. Appleton, 1851). 375. ​Reference not entirely clear; but it may concern the fact that Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) had l­ ittle formal education (and yet held nearly 1,100 patents).

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“The sheep bell tolleth curfew time.”376 Harriet Monroe rewrites living poets.377 Why s­ houldn’t we dead poets. Ever yours Robert Frost.

[To Joseph Blumenthal. ALS. ACL.]

Franconia N.H. September 9 1930 Dear Mr Blumenthal: I’m sending the 550 back autographed. You made a weak parcel of them and they arrived dented at our corner rumpled and almost dogs-­eared. Prob­ably this is no g­ reat m ­ atter or you would have seen to it by boxing in wood that it didnt happen. Its not for me to worry about. I have put a ­little more paper between them and the special handlers for the journey back. You mustnt use anything I may have modestly said to keep me from getting a l­ ittle more than ten ­percent should the Random House and Holt find it in their hearts to do better by me. I’ll never write autographs again for a dollar and a half apiece. It is too ignominious degrading and debilitating. Honestly. What was the word you thought we had spelled wrong.378 Always yours Robert Frost

376. ​In the Second Series of the Golden Trea­sury (London: Macmillan, 1900), Francis Turner Palgrave extracted stanzas 6–8 from Part IV of Coventry Patmore’s long poem “The River” and published them as a single poem titled “An Eve­n ing Scene.” 377. ​Harriet Monroe (1860–1936) was the editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 378. ​In Robert Frost and His Printers, Blumenthal says nothing of a misspelled word, though he does mention one typographical error; see the notes to RF to Blumenthal, late March 1930.

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[To Vrest Orton. ALS. The postmark is illegible, but Orton has written in red ink, above the letter: “Sept.19.30” ALS. Private.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [September 19, 1930] Dear Orton: I should hate to have you give Vermont up as a bad job. But of course you ­w ill have to live where you can earn a living.379 I wish Rutland werent so far off. I wish you w ­ ere where you could drop in off-­hand when you felt forlorn. The wine I c­ ouldn’t provide. I dont know how to make it and it takes too much time and trou­ble now to buy it.380 And it seems more rebellious than luxurious or genial to sit drinking it in any com­pany however good. I cant stay roused up enough to talk and act rebellious in my pleasures. Pleasures and rebellion dont mix with me. Stolen sweets are another ­matter. They are an individual t­ hing. This strug­gle for drink is a mass movement. I could supply some talk. I like talk the same as you do. I o ­ ught to say that I think ­we’ll have the wine flowing f­ ree again soon if you can only hang on.381 The small town is as bad in its way as the big city. I for my part never said it wasnt. Something you want to do and the chance to do it is all that makes any place endurable. E ­ very ­little while when I am out of work I have a slump about where I live and look all round the ground and up at the sky for a refuge.

379. ​In his Vermont After­noons, Orton explains: “­A fter the stock market crash in 1929, when I was living in New York and seeing Frost once in a while, he precipitated a decision one day by asking me, in his inimitable fashion, why I d­ idn’t ‘ease off on New York.’ He declared that what you are escaping to is more impor­tant than what you are escaping from. I had first met him in the mid-­t wenties when H. L. Mencken introduced us. But meeting ­people is not, however, a friendship. My friendship with Robert Frost began when I left New York briefly, in 1930, to try out Vermont. That brief trial resulted, years ­later, in a total conviction of me. Vermont has held me firmly in bondage ever since” (13–14). 380. ​Orton was not only a drinker. In 1930 he privately published Proceedings of the Com­pany of Amateur Brewers, a how-to book about making beer, and circulated it gratis among a group called “The Com­pany of Amateur Brewers” (it was illegal at the time to publish such books). 381. ​He would have to hang on for three years more. Prohibition ended with ratification of the Twenty-­First Amendment to the Constitution on December 5, 1933 (repeal of Prohibition had been a plank in the platform on which FDR and the Demo­crats campaigned in 1932).

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It was in such a mood that I read your Year Book.382 I considered ­every town in it as a pos­si­ble escape from Shaftsbury. Then ­there are the Bermudas where my friend Hervey Allen lives and the South Seas where other friends live.383 That’s when I’m deflated from inaction. You have to admit that even ordinariness is sometimes diverting. Last year my friend Joseph Albani [sic] the Italian fruiterer ­stopped me in passing his stand to ask in confidence if I didnt think the school teacher was giving his l­ittle girl the good marks just to kid her along.384 I said No not likely. ­A fter a year I ask again about her. She’s ­doing fine, he says not too pleased. Good, says I. “Not so good” says he. “The teachers praise her too much for songe.” “Songe songe? Oh you mean singing.” “Yes singing. She sings well. I dont like that.” “What’s the ­matter with that? Singing is a good t­ hing.” “In my country we dont like to have girl in the f­amily that sings.” “No?” “No.” I began to see. We looked at each other long and seriously. Such is the ­m iddle class small town mind in Italy no less than in Amer­i­ca. I think it is delightful if it d­ oesn’t get you where it can tell you where you get off. Francis Thompson’s f­ather, a small town doctor, threw Francis out into the gutter (literally) b­ ecause he w ­ ouldn’t stop writing poetry.385 Masefields ­family l­awyers and county society p­ eople tried to hide the f­amily shame by buying in all Masefields first book and cleansing the local bookstores of it.386

382. ​For this, and for the talk about “elevation” in the penultimate paragraph, see RF to Orton, August 22, 1930. 383. ​From 1927 to 1932 Hervey Allen and his wife Ann Allen (1907–1976) lived in Bermuda on a plantation called Felicity Hall (in Somerset, in the Parish of Sandys). Allen ­later bought a place in Coconut Grove, Florida, where RF himself would eventually buy a winter home. As for RF’s South Sea island friends: he’s likely joking, though he did have friends in Key West, which he occasionally referred to—in ­later letters, written from Key West—as a “South Sea island.” 384. ​Joseph B. Albany, born in Italy in 1889, operated a fruit store in Littleton, New Hampshire, near Franconia. His ­daughter, six years old in 1930, was Sylvia. 385. ​The anecdote, more or less true as RF tells it, figures in most biographies of Thompson (1859–1907)—­t hough he was of course never literally thrown into the gutter. Thompson abandoned his ­father’s ­house­hold in 1885 and spent the next three years in poverty on the streets of London. His poem “The Hound of Heaven” was among RF’s favorites. 386. ​Likely gossip picked up when RF lived in ­England (1912–1915). We have been unable to substantiate it, but perhaps RF had heard stories about Masefield’s aunt, Katherine, with whom he resided a­ fter being orphaned and who fiercely discouraged his youthful literary inclinations, ­going so far as to remove all books from the ­family home and send him, at age 13, to apprentice on the HMS Conway, a naval training vessel.

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That was in the fair sized town of Ledbury in ­England. You ­couldn’t invent more amusing ways for p­ eople to behave or ask God for more amusing ways. I overlooked the pages of elevation. My fault. I dont know that they should be scattered to the towns. They are all right as they are. Im off h ­ ere for hay fever. I s­ hall be home by September 21st. Always your friend Robert Frost

[To Harold Rugg. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftesbury Vt September 24 1930 Dear Rugg: I’ll stay at home from church the last three Sundays of the month of October for you.387 Come any Sunday in October but October 5th. Of course bring the boys.388 I’ll be happy to see you all. You and I ­haven’t had a talk for some time. Ever yours Robert Frost [To Herschel Brickell. TG. Prince­ton.]

[Bennington Vermont] [September 26, 1930] BY ALL MEANS OMIT WAUGH PICTURE IF YOU THINK BEST STOP ­W ILL SEND ULMANN PICTURE WE SHOULD LIKE USED389 ROBERT FROST 387. ​Ironic: the Frosts w ­ ere not (and never had been) churchgoers. For a similar joke see RF to James Wells, September 7, 1929. 388. ​Students from the book history classes Rugg taught at Dartmouth, or student journalists from the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, or (the likeliest possibility) members of the Dartmouth Outing Club (see LRF-1, 431). 389. ​Frank Albert Waugh. In March  1930 Elinor Frost had sent R.  H. Thornton a photo­g raph of RF taken by Waugh, as a pos­si­ble portrait for use in CP 1930: the terms Waugh set on publication may not have appealed to Henry Holt and Com­pany (as letters

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[To Theodore M. Fisher (1882–1971), literary agent. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont September 28, 1930 Dear Mr Fisher: When you first wrote my proposal for a tour in 1932 [it] looked too far off to be taken seriously.390 So I gave up all idea of the Coast for the time being and let myself in for a number of ­t hings that I ­don’t see how I can get out of now. I’m not f­ ree till October 1932 and I suppose ­t here would be no sense in looking for plea­sure out ­there in the early winter. I should want to show my native state to my wife at its best. I have made no engagements for October November December of 1932 nor January February March of 1933. But 1933 begins to sound too ridiculously far away again. I guess you had better give me up as unamenable. I’m sorry. It’s too bad we c­ an’t get together on what we both would like. You see the trou­ble with me is I take engagements in lumps (like the course I’m giving at the New School of Social Research 391 and like my three months a year at Amherst College) and t­ hese seem to take shape a good way ahead. Thanks just the same for your interest. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

from Elinor Frost to R.  H. Thornton, dated March  31, 1930, and May  24, 1930 [held at Prince­ton] suggest). Doris Ulmann (1882–1934), American photographer; the image RF mentions is one that had adorned Sidney Cox’s Robert Frost: Original “Ordinary Man” (New York: Henry Holt, 1929). The Ulmann picture was used. 390. ​Theodore Fisher had proposed a reading / lecture tour that would take RF through several western states, eventually terminating in San Francisco. As it turned out, RF never accepted the offer. For more on RF’s feelings about the matter, see the September 1, 1929, letter to Bartlett. 391. ​See RF to Melcher, September 15, 1930.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. Date supplied by Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa October 1, 1930] Dear Mr Untermeyer: You ­wouldn’t remember, but I met you shaking hands once in the West. Something shaky in your manner emboldens me to submit to your judgement my first sonnet for ages. May I leave it to you to say on this showing w ­ hether you think I o ­ ught to write any more for a while? I want you to take the entire responsibility for my f­ uture. I’ll do as much for you some time. I may say the sonnet is original except for the rhymes which w ­ ere supplied in the set all set up by an agency in York State.392 Sincerely yours Robert Frost Ps. I was formerly poet Laureate of Vermont, but they chucked me for cause.393 RF. Trou­ble Rhyming Rhymes given by Burges Johnson It sort of put my spirits in the ­whole When my Scotch friend from the adjoining sweet

392. ​Set all up in a set, that is, by Burges Johnson (as RF soon indicates), professor of En­glish at Syracuse University (in New York state). Soliciting sonnets from RF and Untermeyer, Johnson had sent both a list of fourteen rhymes as a prompt. In 1931, Johnson published his New Rhyming Dictionary and Poets’ Handbook (New York: Harper & ­Brothers). 393. ​RF had been named Poet Laureate of Vermont in 1922 (not without controversy). A New York Times editorial titled “Did Vermont Have No Candidate?” (June 9, 1922) challenged RF’s election: “Mr. Frost was born in California, and his college days ­were spent partly at Dartmouth and partly at Harvard. He was a farmer for a while, or Who’s Who says so, though one won­ders, and then, a­ fter teaching in several New Hampshire schools he fi­nally landed a post as Professor of En­glish Lit­er­a­t ure in Amherst. His home is set down as Franconia, N.H., but he does have a summer place in South Shaftsbury, Vt., and that seems to be his only connection to the Green Mountain State.” See LRF-2, 251. In 1930, the state’s laureate was Daniel Leavens Cady (1861–1934), author of Rhymes of Vermont Rural Life (Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1919), among other books.

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Came bursting in on us with “Greet, oh Someone’s been locked in a Chicago Not just for robbing Croesus396 of his But for inditing verse in rhymes and No won­der Truslow Adams397 says w ­ e’re 398 But if w ­ e’re ­cattle, we are not the ­There’s ­others capable of such a As the French say in En­glish, or fox As we might say in French, but ah, it’s Excuse for us that ­others sin as

greet!394 goal (tr?)395 roll, feet. neat; soul— sleep, pass,399 know deep.

394. ​As per the OED, in Scottish dialect “greet” meant “weeping” or “lamentation”; a “cry of sorrow.” Robert Burns (a favorite of RF’s) uses it in this sense in several poems. 395. ​R F transposes the vowels with a proofreader’s mark to make the word read “gaol” (jail). One context for the joke: Law enforcement officials in Chicago (and Illinois generally) w ­ ere, at the time, engaged in a “war” on gangsters and racketeers; during September 1930 the headlines of papers all across the state ­were full of news about the hunt for twenty-­six “public enemies” designate. The day before RF posted this letter, Jake “the Greaser” Guzik—an associate of Al Capone—­had been jailed. 396. ​Croesus (560–547 BCE) was the wealthy king of Lydia credited with issuing the first gold coins for circulation. 397. ​James Truslow Adams (1878–1949), American historian and author of a popu­lar, three-­volume history of New ­England, the second volume of which adopts the argument of Frederick Jackson Turner that life on the “frontier” had defined the American character, both for good and ill. Adams writes, in Revolutionary New E­ ngland: 1691–1776 (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1923; volume two of a trilogy): “Indeed, to t­hose dwelling on the frontier, removed from any serious restraint upon their actions and with the un-­exampled physical resources of the continent open to their exploitation, liberty came to mean not a just balance of rights and duties between individuals united in social bonds but freedom from all curbs upon individual ­w ill and desire. The word duty almost completely dis­appeared from the po­liti­cal vocabulary of the colonial radicals, as the feeling did to a g­ reat extent from their po­liti­cal life” (9–10). This argument was often given a cruder cast by journalists, who at times spoke of Adams as claiming that a spirit of “outlawry” was the essential American trait—­a fact RF may have in mind in this whimsical sonnet on crime. See also RF’s December 19, 1931, letter to Untermeyer. 398. ​“Neat” in Old En­g lish meant “­cattle,” which in a usage now archaic (as per the OED) sometimes meant “trash, rubbish”—­something beneath contempt. Milton uses “­cattle” in this sense in his anonymously published Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1644): “Certainly not the meer motion of carnall lust, not the meer goad of a sensitive desire; God does not principally take care for such cattell.” 399. ​That is, faux pas.

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alas, go. R.F.

[To Mortimer Robinson Proctor. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftesbury Vt October 1 1930 Dear Mr Proctor: I return with some embarrassment to the subject of the poem for the Long Trail cele­brations.401 I would never have undertaken to write such a ­thing except in a moment of weakness—­out of friendship for Mrs Fisher402 and some sentiment for the Trail, which I walked the length of with my ­children in a party a few years ago.403 But I never wrote an occasional poem in my life. I was to have written one for the Lexington Sesquicentennial, but begged off before it was too late.404 And I ask myself why I should write this one when I dont r­ eally want to write it and t­ here are better, more deeply-­rooted, Vermonters than I who do (I am told.) You are not in a position to know, perhaps, but I am still looked on a­ fter ten years of residence in Vermont as a somewhat rank outsider by such old-­timers as Spargo, Coates, and the editor of The Rutland Herald.405 You would only subject yourself and me to criticism by wilfully dragging me into what in their minds is a f­amily affair. For my 400. ​“Small, mean, weak” (as per the OED); now archaic (though it survives in “pusillanimous”). 401. ​See RF to Mortimer Proctor, December 20, 1929. 402. ​Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879–1958), American author and a neighbor to RF when he was in South Shaftsbury (she lived in nearby Arlington). 403. ​This is not quite true: RF had been forced to abandon the 1922 Long Trail hike ­because of badly swollen feet. For a detailed account, which somewhat overemphasizes RF’s “mortifications,” see YT, 188–201. 404. ​The sesquicentennial anniversary of the B ­ attle of Lexington had been celebrated in April 1925; for RF’s failure to write a poem honoring that occasion see LRF-2, 474–475. 405. ​John Spargo (1876–1966), author and one-­time socialist agitator: “old-­timers” is ironic b­ ecause Spargo was born in Cornwall, E ­ ngland, and had moved to Vermont at the age of thirty-­six. Walter J. Coates (1880–1941), editor of Driftwind, owner of the Driftwind Press, supporter of progressive po­liti­cal ­causes, and occasional poet (his volume Mood Songs: Voices Within Myself appeared in 1921): also not a native of Vermont, having been

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birth or ancestry to count in f­avor of my writing I should have to resort to southern New Hampshire or San Francisco. I may if worse comes to worst. No, too much goes with the honor you offer for me to accept it. My compliments, and tell me you excuse me while t­ here is yet time to find someone e­ lse. The situation calls for the smile of worldly wisdom. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. Prince­ton.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa October 1, 1930] Dear Mr Thornton: It is good to hear from you again. I have had half a mind to run down to see you. But I am trying to stay in one place as long as pos­si­ble before the inevitable winter wandering. I ­shall be in and out with you in January February and March when I s­ hall be giving Thursday eve­n ings in poetry at The New School of Social Research.406 I may even set up a tent in Central Park or the Bronx Zoo for part of the job. It would relieve me of something distasteful if you would deal with this Committee of Vermont Traditions and Ideals (tell it to Menken [sic]!). Have I not put it in plenty good blank verse that the ideals w ­ ill bear some keeping still about.407 The Walter J. Coates you mention is no friend of mine.408 I sat in an audience of twenty-­five at Arlington Vermont two years ago and heard born and educated in New York State. William Field, cofounder of the New York Daily News and editor of the Rutland Herald from 1927. 406. ​See RF to Melcher, September 15, 1930. 407. ​From “The Generations of Men,” in NB: “But d­ on’t you think we sometimes make too much / Of the old stock? What counts is the ideals, and t­ hose w ­ ill bear some keeping still about” (CPPP, 81). 408. ​Coates had contacted Thornton requesting permission to include, ­f ree of charge, four poems by RF in a collection of Vermont verse he was compiling with Frederick Tupper (1871–1950), professor of En­glish at the University of Vermont. The poems ­were “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­n ing,” “The Woodpile,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “The Sound of Trees.” Thornton was initially inclined to accede to the request, but on RF’s demurral communicated to Coates that permission would be granted only on payment of “the usual fee” (Thornton to RF, October 3 1930, held at Prince­ton). The book

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him read me out of the State and out of the ranks of impor­tant poets. Afterward ashamed of himself, he climbed all over me with adulation. I have become an issue in their local literary politics. It makes you laugh. They say I’m a foreigner ­because I came only ten years ago from New Hampshire. The leaders of this purging movement—­I say leaders but should say cathartics—­are this Coates, an unfrocked parson from New York State, a Rutland (Vt) editor from Ohio, and the reformed-­radical Welsh Jew John Spargo.409 I dont know what their ideals may be, but possibly one of them is to stay black Republican, set the nigger f­ ree and elect Taft retroactively as of 1912.410 Vermont and Utah ­were the only states Taft carried in that election.411 I can barely stand such ­people. And still I must be careful not to get tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail by them some fine night lest I be suspected of d­ oing it for the advertisement. If you act between us it ­w ill be all right prob­ably. Tell them they can have the poems. I’ll pretend not to know whats ­going on. If they send me their Anthology I’ll burn it privately only in one of our three open fire places or the kitchen stove. All this sounds more like a mountain feud than it r­ eally is. I manage not to seem to notice most of the time.

was published as Vermont Verse: An Anthology (Battleboro, VT: Stephen Daye Press, 1931): it did include all four poems. 409. ​­There is an ele­ment of calumny in ­t hese characterizations. The aforementioned Field, the “editor from Ohio,” was born in Rutland, Vermont (RF’s mind might already be on William Howard Taft, who was from Ohio, and is introduced in the next sentence); Spargo was neither Welsh nor Jewish, although he had lived and worked for a time in Barry Docks, South Wales. 410. ​By the mid-1920s Spargo had disavowed the radical socialism of his youth and joined the Republican Party, supporting Calvin Coo­lidge in the 1924 presidential election; Coates, though, was not popu­lar among Vermont Republicans, and apparently supported the breakaway Progressive Party rather than Taft’s Republicans in the 1912 election, and as owner of the Driftwind Press published socialist authors. By the late 1920s, however, he appears to have self-­identified as a Republican. RF’s point is that Spargo et al. would have (if they could) “retroactively” delivered the White House (in 1912) not to the white-­supremacist (and southerner) Woodrow Wilson and his Demo­cratic Party, but again—­a nd with re-­e nfranchised African American voters—to Taft, who, though hardly a Reconstruction-­era “Black Republican” of the Thaddeus Stevens stamp, still had to talk as if his was the Party of Lincoln. 411. ​True. Wilson carried forty of the forty-­eight states, and Theodore Roo­se­velt (and his Progressive “Bull Moose” Party) carried six. Wilson won nearly twice as many votes as Taft.

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Lets think of something pleasanter, the book you have made of my Collected. I look forward to seeing it. We both do. Remember us both to Mrs Thornton. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Mortimer Robinson Proctor. ALS. Cornell.]

South Shaftsbury Vt October 9 1930 Dear Mr. Proctor: I greatly appreciate your personal kindness. But please take my judgement for it that you would only invite criticism if you insisted on introducing me, while still looked on as an outsider, into your intimate Vermont affairs. ­Little ­things warn me that I neednt go into. I know you ­w ill re­spect my disinclination to be made an issue of. ­Later when I am more accepted perhaps I can be put to use locally. Mind you, I ­don’t mind being ignored; I merely shrink from exposure to further open resentment, however slight. I was never a fighter for place anywhere. With all personal regard I am Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Marilla W. Freeman (1871–1961), American librarian, at the time head of the Cleveland Public Library. Dated from internal evidence. The letter relates to a trip RF took to Cleveland in early November 1930 during which, among other engagements, he gave a reading at Western Reserve University on the tenth. ALS. NYPL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [mid-­October 1930] My dear Miss Freeman: That was a very in­ter­est­i ng letter. But you must be careful not to advertise me as a humanist poet. I am simply a poet approved of by some humanists, prob­ably unread by most of them. I should be taking money ­under false pretenses if I came to you as an avowed humanist. I am [a] very bad party man.

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­ eople seldom have any luck in getting me to say ­under which flag Bezonian.412 P For me t­ here are the loyalties at e­ ither extreme to country and to f­ amily, but the wide gulf between has stayed unfilled. I belong to no club society or party I can think of—to nothing but the United States and the Frost f­amily. Some of my best friends have turned out humanists, but then some of my best friends are sinners and rattle-­brains who cant make and who hate a distinction. The question is which side a man commonly errs on. I may err on the side of making distinctions. I d­ on’t know. You’d have to ask someone who has come nearer me than any of my public friends. I dread being too restrained and a prig. Then again I dread being too unrestrained and a rotter. I must say I despise most the vanity that brags of unrestraint—if that tells you anything. Well, well, the time i­ sn’t yet for me to be rounded up into anything in par­tic­ u­lar for anybody’s purposes. The head of a party like Babbitt has the most fun ­because as the originator of the humanist idea he is at once an individualist and a party-­member.413 Perhaps thats the most felicitous state and the only one I envy. I could be a member of a party if I got the party up—­perhaps. I’ll tell you what I could do without insincerity. I might say you a short impromptu dialogue between a humanist and an anti humanist that I thought of the idea for as I looked on at their shindy and brawl.414 ­Theres a place where they seem to overlap and get lost in each other. The dialogue could be called “Stops.” ­Pardon length. I d­ on’t usually write as much as this. Sincerely yours Robert Frost Please dont have too much of a gathering before I read, but have all you want afterward. I hope Miss Raymond can have me at her school in the morning or early after­noon of Nov 13 so I can get away east in the late after­noon.415 412. ​“­Under which king, Bezonian?”: Henry IV Part 2, 5.iii.74. 413. ​Irving Babbitt (1865–1933), professor of French lit­er­a­t ure at Harvard and a leading light (with Paul Elmer More and George Roy Elliott) in the New Humanism movement. 414. ​RF did write a short (and absurd) “Dialogue on Humanism” (between a “swain” and a “nymph”): see NBRF, 390–391. It appears, however, to date to 1935. 415. ​Mary E. Raymond, dean of Hathaway Brown School (a private girls’ school) in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

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[To Kenneth C. M. Sills (1879–1954), Canadian-­born American educator and poet. Sills served as president of Bowdoin College from 1918 ­until 1952. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Bowdoin.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont [mid-­October 1930] Dear Mr Sills: I am looking forward too. My fear is I am coming too late in the year to be made the most of for the boys.416 Mr Chase can have me a round t­ able or two I hope.417 And I suppose I ­shall be permitted to read and talk in public once. Try to make me feel useful. I should hate to prove a supernumerary. It ­wouldn’t be appropriate for me not to have any round t­ ables. Round ­t ables ­were in­ven­ted for me at Bowdoin.418 Not that I am spoiling for hardships. You w ­ ill notice that I say make me feel useful. Ways may occur to you of making me feel useful without putting me to too much use. The g­ reat t­ hing in this world is to give ­people like me plea­sure. You and Mrs Sills419 can do that best by letting me see something of yourselves when off official duty— as you know full well. I have a half hope to bring Mrs Frost with me if she can be enticed away from the invalid d­ aughter.420 Sincerely yours Robert Frost I won­der if I ­hadn’t better try to get down Saturday. I prob­ably c­ ouldn’t find trains to make the w ­ hole distance on Sunday.

416. ​Apparently, RF was then contemplating a late fall engagement. In fact, RF would spend March 23–24, 1931, at Bowdoin. See RF to Sills, December 3, 1930. 417. ​Stanley Perkins Chase (1884–1951), Henry Leland Chapman Professor of Lit­er­a­ ture at Bowdoin. 418. ​RF first spoke at Bowdoin on May 4, 1925, at the college’s Institute of Modern Lit­ er­a­ture, convened to celebrate the centennial of the class of 1825 (which included Henry W. Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among other worthies). The “round ­tables” he speaks of w ­ ere small, informal gatherings with students who had a par­t ic­u ­lar interest in verse. They ­were not public events. 419. ​Edith Lansing Koon Sills (1888–1978), whom Kenneth married in 1918. 420. ​Marjorie.

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[To Herschel Brickell. The year is blotted out, but a response contained in the Holt archives at Prince­ton Library dates this to 1930. TG. Prince­ton.]

Amherst Mass October 24 [1930] ADDRESS AMHERST MAS­SA­CHU­SETTS NOW FOR THREE MONTHS PLEASE SEND ANY BOOKS YOU HAVE FOR ME H ­ ERE421 SPECIAL EDITION422 NOBLE PIECE OF WORK LOOKING FORWARD TO YOURS ROBERT FROST.

[To Kimball Flaccus (1911–1972), American poet and educator, at the time an undergraduate at Dartmouth. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass October 26 1930 My dear Flaccus: The book has come and I have read your poems first.423 They are good. They have loveliness—­they surely have that. They are carried high. What you long for is in them. You wish the world better than it is, more poetical. You are that kind of poet. I would rate as the other kind. I wouldnt give a cent to see the world, the United States or even New York made better. I want them left just as they are for me to make poetical on paper. I dont ask anything done to them that I dont do to them myself. I’m a mere selfish artist most of the time. I have no quarrel with the material. The grief w ­ ill be simply if I c­ an’t transmute it into poems. I dont want the world made safer for poetry or easier. To hell with it. That is its own look-­out. Let it stew in its own materialism. No, not to Hell with it. Let it hold its position while I do it in art. My w ­ hole anxiety is for myself as a performer. Am I any good? That’s what I’d like to know and all I need to know.424 I won­der which kind of poet is more numerous, 421. ​The books referred to are, respectively, the Random House ­limited edition and Henry Holt trade edition of CP 1930. 422. ​The tele­g ram in fact reads “addition” ­here, but that is presumably the clerk’s ­m istake, not RF’s. 423. ​Prob­ably Dartmouth Verse 1930 (Hanover, NH: The Arts, 1930), which contained seven poems by Flaccus. 424. ​Compare RF’s remarks in his 1959 Paris Review interview: “I look at a poem as a per­for­mance. I look on the poet as a man of prowess, just like an athlete. He’s a per-

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your kind or my kind. T ­ here should have been a question in the census-­taking to determine. Not that it should bother us. We can be friends across the difference. You’ll have me watching you. We must meet again and have a talk about poetry and nothing but poetry. The g­ reat length of this letter is the mea­ sure of my thanks for the book. Always yours friendly, Robert Frost

[To Lawrence Conrad. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa October 26, 1930] Dear Lawrence: You did handsomely by me in your article and well by yourself.425 Look at how you can write. Look at the grace with which you slip into it. You be patient. You’ll make some publisher a good name for his list before long. And I dont say so simply b­ ecause your name is the same as that of the town I got my education in.426 Do you want me to tell you one ­little ­thing? You get in the way of your own development in an assumption like that that I stumble on purpose in my talk in order to make my long long thoughts look impromptu.427 I’m perfectly

former. . . . ​The ­whole ­t hing is per­for­mance and prowess and feats of association. Why ­don’t critics talk about ­t hose t­ hings—­what a feat it was to turn that way, and what a feat it is to remember that, to be reminded of that by this? Why ­don’t they talk about that? Scoring. ­You’ve got to score” (CPPP, 890–892). 425. ​Conrad published an essay on RF in the October 1930 (3.10) number of The Landmark: The Monthly Magazine of the English-­Speaking Union (643–646). 426. ​Lawrence, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, where RF attended high school (1888–1892). 427. ​RF borrows a phrase from a line of Longfellow’s (in “My Lost Youth”) that gave him also the title of his first book, A Boy’s W ­ ill: “A boy’s ­w ill is the wind’s ­w ill, / And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” The offending passage in Conrad’s essay in The Landmark reads as follows (and it chiefly refers not to RF’s public per­for­mances, as might be supposed from the response it evoked, but to his poetry): “Frost’s poems are intense, sometimes with a terrible intensity, but the tone is always casual, the way ­people speak who first pause a moment to master and conceal their feelings. The deep hurt of life is in them, but they speak like a mortally wounded soldier who first wets his lips and brightens his voice and then speaks with a kind of joking cheer through the cloud of his suffering. . . . ​The ­human voice is in [the poems], but never in mere chatter. The voice is

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good-­natured about being accused of wiles and foibles. I know they hurt me with no one. They help me. They realize the conventional picture of the artist. But it sort of gives you away that you should assume cunning where t­ here are so many other possibilities. Mayn’t I stumble ­because I am a ­little too scared or ­because I am not scared enough to be nerved up? Or ­because I dont set enough store by lecturing to prepare properly? Mayn’t I stumble merely ­because I am not a good talker? You may have noticed in your experience that you are apt to be awkward with thoughts you remember having thought out but dont remember the form of and havent thought of lately to reshape them. Your assuming the worst is of a piece with your idea (wherever you got it) that an artist lives by design. It w ­ ill bother you all up before you get through if you hold to that. An artist does only one ­thing artistic and that is his novel, picture or poem. The rest can be any old way it pleases. Other­w ise artists’ lives would run all to one pattern. The poetic life a priori is to quarrel with your ­father wear long hair and a Byronic collar drink confusion to the bourgeoisie fall in love with another man’s wife and not pay your debts. That is the approved design if the life is to be designed. Unpleasant to consider. The Bianchi is just enough of an artist to think she is ­doing Emily a ser­v ice in making her look like an artist.428 It is a test of absorption in the main issue Frost’s standard En­glish: its tones ring through all his poems. But it is the voice we use only about once a year—­when we are saying something remarkably wise or witty that we have taken all year to formulate and which we are careful to phrase awkwardly, so it ­w ill seem to have popped into our heads only a moment ago” (646). 428. ​Martha Dickinson Bianchi (Dickinson’s niece) had lately reissued her Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), perhaps to keep up with the competition: in 1930, Josephine Pollitt published Emily Dickinson: The ­Human Background to Her Poetry (New York: Harper and ­Brothers), and Genevieve Taggard Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson (New York: Alfred Knopf). In speaking of Bianchi’s book, RF has in mind such passages as this (given what he says l­ater in the letter): “If art is as Mérimée once declared ‘exaggeration apropos’—[Dickinson] was an incomparable artist at life. To her ­t here was a prodigality of excess in each thrill of the returning common day. Her spirit found its own nectars in spite of her loneliness for all her b­ rother’s home so vividly illustrated—in spite of the dearth of m ­ usic, painting, and the stimulus o ­ thers took for granted as necessary for any lasting accomplishment. . . . ​­There is hardly a soul left now who knew her or ever saw her, and only one of her own f­ amily surviving to depict her as not only a poet and mystic, but a beloved person, moving from win­dow to win­dow to watch the day’s retreat or the change of light on Pelham hills, or flitting across from ­house to ­house, a dear familiar spirit of delight in e­ ither” (66).

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not to want the world made artistic as in the Golden Age or Utopia (for then ­there would be nothing for the artist left to do), not to want the artists [sic] life made artistic.429 The ­people we can resign to making life artistic are female interior decorators and I always feel as if I’d like to see their interiors decorated for them—­lined as they say of bitches.430 Do you think I would have indolently let myself be kept around colleges if I was interested in being a picture of any kind. I suppose nothing could be more dangerous to the picture than the ascription of academic. We must see each other so we wont grow into anything distorted in each ­others minds. I’ll be in New York in January February and March off and on for the New School of Social Research. Thanks thanks for your generosity. My gracious, how many friends have I as sincere. Ever your friend Robert Frost

429. ​See the previous letter (to Flaccus). See also RF’s poem “The Lost Follower,” collected first in AWT: . . . ​No one has ever failed the poet ranks To link a chain of money-­metal banks. The loss to song, the danger of defection Is always in the opposite direction. Some turn in sheer, in Shelleyan dejection To try if one more popu­lar election ­ ill give us by short cut the final stage W That poetry with all its golden rage For beauty on the illuminated page Has failed to bring—­I mean the Golden Age. (CPPP, 325–326) 430. ​See the OED: “Line, v.3.: transitive. Of a dog, wolf, ­etc.: To copulate with, to cover.” John Dryden uses the verb in this sense in his allegorical satire The Hind and the Panther, in which the Presbyterian Church figures as a wolf who “lined” with its consort (i.e., John Calvin) “near the Leman lake” (in Switzerland).

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[To Leonidas Warren Payne Jr. At the top of the first page, Payne has written “Mailed from Amherst, Mass., Oct. 27, 1930.” ALS. HRC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [October 27, 1930] Dear Payne: What a patient understanding friend I have in you away off down t­ here in almost the furthest state in the Union. I wish you had occurred to me as the one to give my proof its final reading. I hate that fearful mix-up of or and our as much as you do. It came about in the way you surmise. I dont know why I didnt catch it in this edition. I was anxious enough to have it right. But Im afraid I grow a worse and worse reader of my own proof. The reason is I have come to know my poems so well that I see them in my mind’s eye to the blinding of my outward eye. ­Either that or I am turned away from them in the spirit and ­toward what I am ­going to write next. It [is] as if my manner was saying to them resentfully that they neednt think they ­were all the poems I ever intended to do.—­Let’s see if we cant have something perfect in text next time. Folkses is bad. Tote-­road is better than tote road, plow than plough. I’ll keep your letter where I can lay hands on it when it is wanted. Rō is the way to pronounce row. Now if I had been rhyming ­there would have been no doubt in anybody’s mind.431 Serious poetry has to take special care in avoiding ridicu­ lous possibilities. I’m the mischief and all myself for getting the howls I can out of them in other p­ eople’s poetry.

431. ​R F uses “folkses” in “The Self-­Seeker”: “­Don’t you be a fool, / You, crumpling folkses l­egal documents” (CP 1930, 124). (That is the reading given the line in NB.) He retained it for CP 1939—­which in any case reused the plates set up for the 1930 edition—­but altered it to “folks’s” for CP 1949 (for which edition the type was set entirely anew). RF uses the phrase “tote road” twice, once in “The Witch of Coös,” and a second time in “The Pauper Witch of Grafton” (CPPP, 190, 192); he did not hyphenate it in subsequent editions. RF uses “plough” twice in CP 1930: once in “The Bonfire” (“. . . ​as if the reins / ­Were round my neck and I was at the plough” [165]), and once in “A Girl’s Garden” (“It was not enough of a garden, / Her f­ ather said, to plough” [167]). As with “folkses,” the spelling is retained in CP 1939, but changed to “plow” for CP 1949. The “row” referred to ­here occurs in “The Death of the Hired Man” (which is in blank verse): “Then ­t here w ­ ere three of them ­there, making a dim row, / The moon, the ­little silver cloud, and she” (CPPP, 45). Payne seems to have wondered w ­ hether the three ­were (figuratively) at odds or squabbling (no other “row” in RF’s poetry—­whether at a line end or not, or in a rhymed poem—­could possibly admit of the alternative pronunciation given that word, when it rhymes with “cow”).

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About Miss Nicholson’s book.432 (Let’s not call it a thesis. It is too good and rëal for that.) Of course I should like to see it published. But for me to push it would be like pushing myself. I find I am not up to it. But I like the book so much that I should be glad if she would let me keep a copy of it in the chest of my first editions. I can have a copy made if she must have this back. She has given me as close a reading as I have had. And she has told me t­ hings about myself that I dont recognize as originating in my own talks about my poetry. You ask her what I am to do. In any case she must have an inscribed copy of the first edition of the Collected Poems when it comes out. And so must you for every-­day use in class. What you have is not a first edition in my opinion, but just a special edition. It is a noble piece of bookmaking, ­isn’t it?433 ­We’ll see if you ­don’t like the ordinary edition as well. Always yours Robert Frost Amherst Mass. now for three months

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. Prince­ton.]

Amherst Mass now for three months Oct 31 1930 Dear Mr Thornton: I want to tell you how perfect a book I think you have made for me. I wouldnt have a t­ hing dif­fer­ent in the make-up, what­ever I might want to blot or alter in the content. ­There is the m ­ atter of that stock I have never settled with the firm for. I must see to it as soon as I get my money from the Random House.434 I s­ hall do it in person I think in the near ­f uture.

432. ​Lillian L. Nicholson (1897–1993) wrote a 1929 MA thesis on RF: “The Art of Robert Frost.” She did not publish it. She embarked (in 1930) on a lengthy ­career as a public-­ school teacher in Galveston, Texas, where she was born. 433. ​For details about CP 1930, see RF to Blumenthal, February 14, 1930 (and its notes). See also RF to Brickell, December 1929, July 3, 1930, and July 10, 1930. 434. ​Thornton, in a private capacity, had encouraged RF to invest in Henry Holt stock (see The Robert Frost Encyclopedia, eds. Nancy Tuten and John Zubizarreta [Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001], 151).

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My friends are ­going to expect gift copies of the book. I mustnt take too many of the first edition for them, but I should like thirty or forty copies if you didnt think that was greedy. Tell me just how it is. I ­tremble and am never too happy at being exposed to the public with another book. I hope this one ­won’t be badly received. I should like to know in general, though it is better for me to shut my eyes and ears to the details. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Vrest Orton. ALS. Private.]

Amherst Mass October 31 1930 Dear Vrest Orton: Just a word to tell you that it was as much fun as finding the parsonage on the common myself to hear the story of your finding it.435 I’m ­going to live in a place like that before I get through. I ­shall want to have a good look at it as soon as pos­si­ble. You see where I am now. I’ve just arrived for my three months in residence without duties. I classify in the census at this time of year as one of the gainfully unemployed. T ­ here is nothing against it I hope in anybody’s prejudices. Amherst is a pleasant l­ ittle town and our street is almost as quiet as yours in Clarendon I’ll venture to say.436 I cant come to prove that right away but I’ll tell you what I can do. I can put a brand new book of mine into your ­house as a hostage—if you’ll let me.437 Ever yours Robert Frost

435. ​Orton explains in Vermont After­noons: “For a brief time, I had rented a h ­ ouse in a Vermont country village and, since it had been the residence of a former clergyman, it became to me ‘The Parsonage’ ” (21). 436. ​Clarendon Ave­nue in West Rutland, Vermont. While in Amherst (in 1930), RF resided at 34 Amity Street. He would l­ater buy a h ­ ouse on Sunset Ave­nue (see his November 7, 1931, letter to Brown). 437. ​Again, CP 1930.

2

A Frost ­Family Diaspora October 1930–­June 1932 We are back from having sown c­ hildren broadcast over the West. One ­thing it does for us what­ever it may do for them: it makes us feel as if we inhabited the ­whole country and not just New ­England: and it reassures us of the uniformity of the American ­people, East and West. —­Robert Frost to Richard Thornton, October 5, 1931

[To Paul Osborn (1901–1988), American playwright and screenwriter. He and RF met while Osborn was pursuing his BA and MA degrees at the University of Michigan (where RF taught for three years in the 1920s). ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass October 31 1930 Dear Paul: I’m glad of the change of date b­ ecause that makes it certain that at least one of us, possibly both, can see your first night.1 I just ­couldn’t have managed it on the 10th much as I wanted to be with you. I ­shall almost feel as if it ­were my own play—­I had so much to do with your education. Elinor may not be able to come. It ­w ill depend on how she is. Can we leave it that she ­w ill come if she is well enough? Always yours Robert Frost

[To Wade Van Dore. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass November 4 1930 Dear Wade: It’s a good ­little book and I’m proud to have it dedicated to me.2 Now for what you are g­ oing to do next. It’s l­ ittle I ask of any body to show for his time 1. ​Osborn’s The Vinegar Tree opened on Broadway at the Play­house Theatre on November 19 and enjoyed a run of 229 per­for­mances. 2. ​ Far Lake, Van Dore’s first book.

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as well you know from the way I have left you to your own devices the last ten years.3 You can do nothing and stay my friend. I d­ on’t m ­ atter. I mean I can be left out of account. The question is how are you g­ oing to take it yourself if you ­don’t turn rather more power on than you have exerted up to now. You seem disappointed at the reception of this book. Slender first books are lucky if anybody pays them even the slightest attention.4 You ­w ill make ­people see more in your first book if you can make them come back to it from your second. ­You’ve got to strike again or y­ ou’ve got to if you want to. Dont do a ­thing for me you dont want to do. I can reconcile myself to watching you dream your life away. You have the right. I re­spect unassertiveness as a form of not seeking the advantage Christ recommends our not seeking.5 Ambition is an infirmity or somewhere between an infirmity and a strength. I dont know what to say about it so I seldom say. Only understand you can be unambitious for all of me. But as I say t­ here is you to consider. If you want success in poetry, the unhypocritical course is to acknowledge the fact and get yourself together for effort. You have got a certain distance. Let’s see what that is. You have highly developed the tiny-­form-­sense that makes single lines and phrases. The book is simply littered with single lines to remember. I know readers who would say that is enough: it is all the best of us ever achieves—­the single line that sheds the rest of the poem and lives on alone in the imagination. I could quote instances and so could you. But let’s not delude ourselves to the arrest of our developement [sic]. The line h ­ ere and t­ here has not been enough to make reputation. You must press harder with thought and observation to fill and feel the larger form. ­Every week or two take another hard look at how the olden heroes of form have done it. The best poem in the book

3. ​RF’s correspondence with Van Dore began on June 24, 1922; the men met in Michigan. See also Van Dore, The Life of the Hired Man: Robert Frost and Wade Van Dore (Dayton, OH: Wright State University Press, 1986): 1–2. 4. ​The book came to forty-­seven pages and was not widely reviewed. The reviewer for the Detroit ­Free Press (Van Dore’s hometown paper) praised the book but opined that it bore “the mark of the amateur.” “It is also to be regretted,” the review noted, that the book “does not cover a wider range of emotional reaction than escape from the realities of cities to the releases of the forest” (October 5, 1930). RF’s first book, ABW, had also been slender (thirty-­t wo poems, fifty pages), and though it created something of a stir, it won nothing like the reception of his much longer second book, NB (a best-­seller in the United States). 5. ​As in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:5): “Blessed are the meek: for they ­shall inherit the earth.”

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is Lost for some reason connected with the larger form of the ­whole.6 I wish you could see this. Thought—­idea—­those it is sure we must have so that the flowers ­shall be full blown. ­Great thought, delicate thought, sinister thought, but in any case playful thought. It must be a play of thought to be a poem. You remember the long thought poem you sent me years ago? That comes back to me as well aimed.7 But I must leave it to you to choose your way. Immerse. All but lose yourself in the next phase. Get rid of the last traces of me. Revel in your recklessness. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Paul Osborn. TG. BU.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [November 19, 1930] PAUL OSBORN, THE SULGRAVE 646 PARK AVE ARRIVING NECESSARILY SOMEWHAT LATE PLEASE RESERVE ONE TICKET AT THEATRE ROBERT FROST.

[To Sidney Cox. Date derived from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst now for three months [November 19, 1930] Dear Sidney: Thats a good letter—­a fine letter—­f ree from non-­essentials. Why dont we use sheer poems oftener for letters? It might be good for the poems.8

6. ​Reprinted in Life of the Hired Man, 38. 7. ​Likely the poem RF refers to in his January 1, 1929, letter to Van Dore (who gives no details of it in his Life of the Hired Man). 8. ​The letter to which RF refers seems not to have survived; it is not in RFSC.

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I didnt get you up to see me at Woodsville.9 The uninvited crowded in on me to the exclusion of the invited. I must see you before long. The ordeal of addressing the alumni trustees and faculty10 has just been barely survived by Yours always Robert Frost

[To Kenneth C. M. Sills. ALS. Bowdoin.]

Amherst Mass December 3 1930 Dear Mr Sills I choose March 23rd and 24th. You dont catch me walking into open competition with science in a scientific age11—­not ­unless science ­will promise me a return engagement in the next ensuing poetic age, which I predict w ­ ill occur when as a final test of autonomy the Robot is called on in public to write good poetry and breaks down in tears admitting that he ­can’t write very good—he can only write pretty good. You mark my words[:] the final test of science is ­going to be what the synthetic man can do.12 All poetry is being kept alive for is to see if he can write it. He prob­ably can—­and ­w ill. But it ­w ill be something to be said for poetry that it was thought of as the highest proof of the Robot’s arrival. Ever yours Robert Frost

9. ​Woodsville is a village within the town of Haverhill, in Grafton County, New Hampshire (not far from Franconia, where the Frosts lived from 1915 to 1920, and often summered). We have been unable to identify the event in question. 10. ​RF had delivered “Education by Poetry” to the Amherst College Alumni Council on November 15 (see CPRF, 270–271). 11. ​The Bowdoin Institute of Natu­ral Sciences was held April 7–16, 1931. 12. ​Not RF’s phrase. The question as to ­whether scientists would soon produce a “synthetic man” and, if they did, what manner of intelligence it would possess, was widely debated in newspapers in the 1920s and early 1930s.

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[To Paul Osborn. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass December 8 1930 Dear Paul: I wanted to say for myself before anybody ­else said that first night and I did say. Plainly the play was a fine bold stroke; and nothing schoolboyish left lingering in it. And though no judge of first night audiences I was dead sure your audience liked it. You had them crowing like babies. All that remained was to see how the critics in their profundity would pronounce. The three papers that come to Amherst, The World, The Times, and The Tribune ­were for you unanimously. I went forth among my friends to brag of knowing a new playwright. Dont leave town till I can get down again. I know the play wont, but ­don’t you ­either. I want to bring Elinor down. I’ll bet the Osborns are a gay pair—­w ithout being unduly elated. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Vrest Orton. Date derived from postmark. ALS. Private.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [December 13, 1930] Dear Orton: I should think that would be a good ­thing for me anyway. Would it help to have one quotation from each volume and perhaps two or three w ­ hole poems from that earliest one-­copy edition?13 I’m up to my eyes in Amherst—­I’m immersed in Amherst for another month or so now. I have no classes I can call my own. But I go a visiting on other ­peoples classes. And the result may not be better educated boys, but it means an exhausted me. I dont have to do anything: I do it for the fun of it. So dont be sorry for me.

13. ​Orton explains in Vermont After­noons with Robert Frost: “I was then compiling biblio­g raphies of American authors for a book on American first-­editions” (Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1971): 22. The “earliest one-­copy edition” to which RF refers is his Twilight (1894).

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Several of the boys are sorry for certain omissions in the Colophon bibliography.14 We must tend to t­ hose in yours. Merry Christmas up t­ here and hold the state down till we come back in the spring. Ever yours R.F. Beautiful pieces of printing and book making you sent.15 Thanks!

[To Richard Thornton. Dated from internal evidence. TG. DCL.]

[Baltimore, Mary­land] [mid-­late December 1930] PLEASE WIRE ME AT CHARLES APARTMENTS 3333 NORTH CHARLES ST BALTIMORE IF YOU ­W ILL BE IN OFFICE FRIDAY LIKE TO SEE YOU SOMETIME SOON CHRISTMAS GREETINGS TO HOME AND OFFICE ROBERT FROST

[To Vrest Orton. Date derived from postmark. ALS. Private.]

[Baltimore, Mary­land] [December 28, 1930] Dear Orton: We are in Baltimore with a d­ aughter sick in the hospital for Christmas and the ­f uture a blank uncertainty. I should like to have you go ahead on the book if you can see the way. My firsts are all in a box at my son Carol’s ­house in South Shaftsbury where you could see them or get them to take home with you, just as you pleased. I know you’d be more careful of them than even I would, particularly of the first first.16 Say the word and I’ll let Carol know you ­w ill be down for them. I should of course like to have you come to Am14. ​See Frederic Melcher, “Robert Frost and his Books,” Colophon: A Book Collectors’ Quarterly 1.2 (1930), and H.  S. Boutell, “A Bibliography of Robert Frost” in the same volume. 15. ​Presumably items printed by Orton at his Tory Press in Rutland, which issued five books in 1930. 16. ​Again, Twilight.

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herst any time you can or can catch me ­there between now and spring. I ­shall be t­ here fitfully. Thursdays e­ very week for ten weeks beginning January 8th I ­shall be in New York at the New School.17 I may have to make an expedition west to place Marjorie somewhere for her lungs. I shan’t be able to stay with her now, but think of spending part of the year with her ­later. I sound fairly confused. Marj has been poorly for several years. This tubercular threat is new. We are a good deal upset. Tell me what you want to do. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To J. J. Lankes. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. HRC.]

[Baltimore, Mary­land] [circa December 28, 1930] Dear J J: We are in Baltimore among the Mds for Christmas, and the Mds have it on our f­amily: they tell us Marjorie is out of nursing and w ­ ill have to be taken away for her lungs.18 I have seen the X-­ray pictures and it seems to be so. Well it has been a hard pull for her and her m ­ other. She stuck it and stood up to it two years of the three required.19 I have been afraid she would die on her feet sometimes. So I am relieved to have it end no worse than with incipient con-

17. ​The lecture series was advertised as follows: “The method of this course, as appropriate to an inquiry into pure poetry, ­w ill be one of sounding for meanings, rather than one of general analy­sis. Some attention ­w ill be given to the parties to poetry, since the poet can not create in isolation, without cooperation in the spirit; to sense and m ­ usic in poetry; to the truth of meta­phor; to the capacity of poetry to transcend all bound­a ries. ­Because the truth about poetry is infinitely subtle, all formal requirements of the lecturer’s procedure are excluded. The program of each session ­w ill remain tentative to the last moment, in order that the lecturer, ­a fter experience of the needs of his audience, may have ­free choice among the means for satisfying such needs” (The New School for Social Research Announcement, Winter Term, 1931 [New York: New School for Social Research, 1931]): 25. 18.  Marjorie entered the nursing program at Johns Hopkins University in February 1929. She had been ill, intermittently, since 1925. The new diagnosis required that she move west to a sanitarium in Boulder, Colorado. 19. ​To obtain a degree.

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sumption that ­theres a good chance Colorado Arizona or New Mexico ­will cure. We had what Christmas we had in her room in the hospital and we ­were pretty selfish about it not thinking much of anybody but ourselves. You must forgive my not writing. Aristotle says art is a kathartic.20 I say it is a form of forgiveness. I am dumb about an e­ nemy or a grief till I have surmounted them with forgiveness and then my words come. Then they are subject to art. Ever yours R.F. I seen your picture of my pasture gate on the Va. Qua. Christmas Card.21

[To Verna Elizabeth Grubbs (1894–1974), American educator and editor. She conducted her professional life ­under the name Ann Winslow. The society ­under discussion is the College Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca, for which Winslow acted as secretary, and the magazine is College Verse. ALS. Wyoming.]

Amherst Mass January 3 1931 My dear Miss Grubbs: If I hesitate to be drawn into such a ­thing as you propose it is from fear of getting involved in too much letter-­writing. ­There should be someone who would enjoy the letter-­w riting. You would confer a ­favor on two p­ eople at once, then, by taking him and not taking me. I know your aim is a society in which you w ­ ill write some poetry but read more poetry, perhaps publish a small national poetry magazine like Miss Monroe’s (a model),22 but not scatter prizes left and right; in a word, cultivate the

20. ​A n alternate spelling of “cathartic,” closer to the original Greek κάθαρσις (katharsis). 21. ​Presumably a reference to the woodcut of RF’s pasture gate printed at the head of Sherwood Anderson’s essay “J. J. Lankes and His Woodcuts,” which appeared in the winter 1931 issue (7.1) of the Virginia Quarterly Review. Lankes had completed several versions of a woodcut titled “Calf Pasture Gate” in June 1930. The woodcut was based on a sketch he completed while he resided at RF’s Gully Farm in the summer of 1929. 22. ​Harriet Monroe, founding editor of Poetry Magazine. The masthead for the first issue of College Verse lists as sponsors (along with RF) Robinson Jeffers, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Carl Sandburg. When RF wrote this letter, Grubbs was a student at the University of California, Berkeley. His May 9, 1931, letter to Freeman implies that Grubbs

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art like cultivated ­people, but not make it a scramble of petty ambition. Surely I am sympathetic with all that and if merely lending my name as a non-­ corresponding sponsor w ­ ere anything to you, I cant see why I shouldnt undertake to be Yours faithfully to that extent Robert Frost

[To Morris Tilley (1876–1947), American scholar and professor of En­glish at the University of Michigan. ALS. UM.]

Amherst Mass January 28 1931 Dear Morris: Your letter of long ago is due for an answer. We have been in Baltimore over Marjorie most of the time for two months. I have been as bad in my attendance at Amherst as I was that last year at Michigan.23 Elinor is just back from having taken Marjorie to Boulder Colorado and we seem composed for the moment. We dont know how serious Marjorie’s case may be. We hope not too serious. I suppose it is something t­ hese years of debilitation w ­ ere leading up to. The tendency to tuberculosis has merely come out into the open. What seemed for a while the right way, hard self-­forgetting work, has proved the wrong way, and now she ­w ill have to rest hard and be selfish for a cure. I tell you all this to show you where we have been in our thoughts. You asked me about Elliotts plans.24 He came within an ace [of] ­going to the University of Cincinnati to be with Louis Moore on one of ­those fellowships where he would be expected to go on writing his books rather than teach.25 But ­t here was some hitch about salary and I may tell you confidentially, a scare as to how much Roy might find himself followed up about the

included RF’s name on the masthead without his permission; in fact, he had simply forgotten. 23. ​1926—­when (as was again occurring) serious illness in the f­ amily had left RF much preoccupied. 24. ​George Roy Elliott (­later referred to as Roy). 25. ​Louis T. Moore (1870–1944), professor of En­glish at the University of Cincinnati.

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books.26 From what I have heard Shaffer [sic] is made to feel uncomfortable sometimes about the amount of his output.27 Amusing. Roy is prob­ably just as well out of it. I s­ houldn’t think he would be productive ­under pressure. You o ­ ught to be told in case you are thinking of anything that Roy is being treated very well where he is. George Whicher of the department tells me that Roy’s work can be cut down next year from the two three-­hour courses and a seminar he has to one three hour course and a seminar. This is what Roy is best on, less teaching and more time for writing. This chiefly can tempt him. I think his salary is ­either seven thousand or seven thousand five hundred. His Detroit brother-­i n-­law still shows an interest in Roy’s fate but thats as much as ever he shows.28 I wish I ­were where I saw you oftener. Effinger has written 29 about my coming to Michigan this year, but I d­ on’t know what to say yet: I have so much undone so much to make up for ahead of me. I can tell better in a week or two. I’ve let myself in for ten lectures at the New School for Social Research in New York. I shan’t be clear of t­ hose till well into March. I go down for them over night. Still I want to see you all in general and some of you in par­tic­u­lar. I’ve kept it up with Paul Osborne [sic] more or less ever since the old days and I went down for his first night the first I ever was in on with a friend the playwright. It was very exciting to see a reputation made in an hour. ­He’ll be worth a hundred and fifty thousand by the end of the year. Maybe more. The movies are paying him a large sum;30 and the play ­will prob­ably go to ­England, though if it does a few words w ­ ill have to come out of it to pass the more censorious British Censor. Our Paul goes a long way in his frankness. Did you

26. ​H is most recent book was The Cycle of Modern Poetry: A Series of Essays T ­ oward Clearing Our Pre­sent Poetic Dilemma (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1929). 27. ​Robert Shafer (1899–1956), professor of En­glish at the University of Cincinnati (from 1927 to 1955); he had at this date only edited anthologies of lit­er­a­t ure, not authored a book proper (his first appeared in 1935: Paul Elmer More and American Criticism [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press]). 28. ​The Detroit banker John Ballantyne (1868–1937), second husband of Elliott’s s­ ister Alice Kate Elliott Ballantyne (1860–1938); her first husband, Arthur William Reid (1860– 1885), died the year ­a fter their marriage. 29. ​See subsequent letter. 30. ​Osborn’s racy play The Vinegar Tree was adapted for the screen in 1933 as Should Ladies Behave? (a pre-­code film directed by Harry Beaumont, with a screenplay by Bella and Sam Spewack). He subsequently had a c­ areer as a screenwriter in Hollywood (he wrote the screenplay—adapted from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s 1938 novel—for the Acad­emy Award winner The Yearling [1946], starring Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman).

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help make him like that. The r­ eally killing person in the play is the college girl who talks like a sex-­questionaire [sic] in sociology. She made the audience crow like babies.31 Well well. It seems Lawrence Conrad saw early Pauls trend and tried to stop him in it.32 Our very best to you all. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To John R. Effinger (1869–1933), American scholar and professor of French and dean of the College of Lit­er­a­ture, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan. This appears to be a draft of a letter that was never sent, and we have found no letter that might have followed from it. RF has struck out many more phrases, and inserted many more to replace them, than he typically allows in a letter; in a few cases Effinger would almost certainly have been left to puzzle the wording out (a situation in which RF never places a correspondent). We reproduce h­ ere the text of the letter as all of RF’s corrections and amendments appear to demand that it read. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa late January 193133] Dear Effinger Honestly but privately (at your home address) this dimenuendo [sic] hurts my feelings. It began at 500. Then it was 400. Last year it was 300. And now it is 200. Whence comes this pressure that bears down so steadily on my price? I dont blame you personally for it. But lest I should subconsciously sooner or ­later I think you and I ­ought to cease to mingle friendship and business at this point; proceed henceforth as in friendship alone. I’m fond of you and several ­others out t­ here and I s­ hall want to be asked to visit you. I s­ hall want you to visit me. The university is another m ­ atter. It cant come to see me. I can get along without g­ oing to see it. In the opinion of my ­family, I get all the colleges that are good for me in the course of a year. At any rate I seem not actually to need any more e­ ither for money experience or advertising. I’m fifty 31. ​Helen Brooks (1911–1971) played Leone Merrick (the “college girl,” who avers, at one point, that virginity, which she endeavors to lose, is “an unintelligent state to be in”). 32. ​For more on Conrad as an advisor to or meddler with aspiring writers, see RF’s January 1, 1929, letter to Van Dore. 33. ​It appears that this letter (or draft of one) was written more or less coincident with, or just subsequent to, the previous one.

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five years old.34 Time I dignified myself a ­little by getting in off the road. Please let it be as if you hadnt asked me to the university this year but to your ­house at some time to be arranged ­later. With real affection Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass February 3 1931 Dear Mr Thornton: Dont you think this is a serious ­m istake with a person as impor­tant as Robert Hillyer in and out of Harvard College?35 It is for you to say. I merely pass it along for your judgement. Pretty soon I ­shall be seeing you again. I am getting on to the ­m iddle of my talks at the New School. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Robert Hillyer (1895–1961), American poet and professor of En­glish at Harvard. The letter is undated, but a notation of “[2/4/31]” has been made in another hand above the salutation. ALS. UVA.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [February 4, 1931] Dear Robert Hillyer: Well, I’ll be abso-­dam-­lutely goddamed.36 What’s the use of writing books if my publishers ­aren’t ­going to let anybody see and review them? But patience 34. ​At this point RF still believed he had been born in 1875, not 1874. 35. ​Robert Hillyer had been a friend of RF since about 1916, on Hillyer’s own account. He had taught at Harvard from 1919 to 1926, and then again from 1928 (he left for good in 1944). As the next letter makes clear, Hillyer had written to Holt for a review copy of CP 1930 and been rebuffed. In 1936 he would publish a highly appreciative poem, “A Letter to Robert Frost,” in reaction to criticisms of AFR. 36. ​RF’s spelling, and an accepted, if rare, one.

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to prevent that murmur soon replies,37 You used stoutly to maintain that you wrote your books for yourself: you didnt care ­whether anybody ­else read them or not. If I said that I lied. And then you have to remember that when I said it, if I said it, nobody ­else did read my books or seemed likely to read them. I cant be held [to] lofty sentiments wrung from me by suffering. As you see I invariably stand by my agents. When they say you ­can’t have my book to review, you c­ an’t. That ­settles it for me. But I’ll tell you what you can have if you’ll accept it a­ fter what has passed: you can have the book from me personally to put on your shelf for remembrance. Be good and do not refuse it. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To William Colston Leigh (1901–1992), American businessman. He founded the W. Colston Leigh Bureau, a speakers’ agency, in 1929. ALS. Private.]

Amherst Mass Feb 22 1931 Dear Mr Leigh: Thanks very much for your interest in arranging me a course of lectures: I may want to talk with you another year. I just dont see my way far enough ahead to promise anything for next winter. Thats the way it is with me usually: I am in no position to plan far in advance; and that is why I have never taken up with any agent. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

37. ​See John Milton’s sonnet, “When I consider how my light is spent . . .”: “Doth God exact day-­l abour, light denied?”   I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent   That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need ­Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.

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[To David McCord. ALS. Private.]

Amherst [Mas­sa­chu­setts] February 23 1931 Dear McCord: I’ve disengaged myself so that I can come on March 21st and I ­shall be happy to. But you cant fetch me in your car ­because I ­shall be coming from New York. Tell me more. Where ­shall I meet you and at what time?38 What I look forward to is a good talk late afterwards. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Charles Wilbert Snow (1884–1977), American poet and educator, professor of En­ glish at Wesleyan University. We have been unable to locate the manuscript. Text derived from Codline’s Child: the Autobiography of Wilbert Snow (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1974): 364.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa February 25, 1931] Dear Bill: It’s shameful the way I ­don’t write. One of my excuses is I let myself in for too much of every­thing t­ hese days. I feared I was g­ oing to be afraid of the New School course and so to sink it into less significance I took one lecture before and ­after each New School lecture. And I says to myself See how you like that you unbreakable old fraid-­cat. I got some fine poems from you and I d­ idn’t even acknowledge them. The egotist in me prob­ably thought it was enough that I liked them. It ­didn’t ­matter ­whether you knew it or not.

38. ​In his reply, McCord suggested that he pick RF up at Back Bay Station, Boston, at such time as RF proposed. The occasion was a dinner held by the Harvard Signet Society.

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I’m trying to persuade your revered president39 to have me for March 2930-31 ­after my worst lecturing is over.40 I’d bring Elinor with me to see the f­ amily.41 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Prescott Frost (1924–1989), RF’s grand­son. Dating by Arnold Grade: “late winter 1931.” RF writes in block letters, not in cursive, so as to make it easier for the young boy to read.42 ALS. UM.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [early March 1931] Dear Prescott You have lots to do this spring, on your f­athers farm. But I hope you w ­ ill find time to take care of my farm too. I dont mean for you to do all the work on both places yourself. Do as much as you can without hurting your appetite and hire a good man like Mr Olin to do the rest.43 I wish Jack could help you.44 But I’m afraid he wont get big enough to be any good this year. W ­ e’ll feed him up and try to bring him along faster. We want him to amount to something. He begins to be quite a talker. But a talker ­isn’t always a worker. Perhaps if he d­ idn’t talk so much he would get more done. Some one must put a flea in his ear. I begin to wish I was up ­there planting pines and clipping birches. I saw a big Newfoundland dog. We must have one to take care of the sheep. Has that last lamb come yet?45 Wont it be ­g reat when we get the Gully ­going! 39. ​James Lukens McConaughy. 40. ​RF’s sole visit to Wesleyan in 1931 occurred on October 12, when he was awarded an honorary LHD degree as a part of the university’s centennial cele­bration. 41. ​Snow, his wife Jeanette Simmons Snow (1888–1980), and their five ­children. 42. ​See his December 21, 1933, letter to Prescott, where he speaks of no longer needing to do this. 43.  For the “good man” Prescott is to hire, Archibald Kimball Olin, see RF to Van Dore, September 9, 1929. 44. ​John “Jack” Cone Jr., Irma Frost Cone’s son (then four years old; Prescott was six, and would be seven in October). 45. ​As for Carol Frost’s sheep, see RF to Melcher, December 20, 1929.

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Grandma sends a ­whole train load of love. ­Theres a small town near h ­ ere named Prescott.46 I want to visit it. Grandpa.47

[To Loring Holmes Dodd (1879–1968), American scholar and professor of En­glish and art at Clark University, in Worcester, Mas­sa­chu­setts. ALS. BU.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] March 2 1931 Dear Mr Dodd I have written 10 a.m. Saturday March 28 in my note book. I ­w ill come to you as early as I can Friday eve­n ing.48 It w ­ ill be a g­ reat plea­sure to see you 49 again a­ fter all t­ hese years. I feel as if I had kept up the acquaintance rather personally in encounters with your boys h ­ ere and ­there in my travels. ­We’ll have much to talk over. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To John Bartlett. TG. UVA.]

[New York, New York] March 17, 1931 JOHN T BARTLETT BARTLETT SERVICE BOULDER COLO DO YOU THINK FOUR CLASSES AND ONE PUBLIC READING WOULD BE ABOUT RIGHT FOR THE MONEY50 ROBERT FROST. 46. ​A hamlet in Hampshire County, Mas­sa­c hu­setts (incorporated 1822, and soon [1938] to be unincorporated to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir). 47. ​Signed in cursive (not in the block letters used throughout the letter). 48. ​RF gave a reading at Clark on Friday, March 27. We do not know what the 10:00 Saturday appointment concerned. 49. ​Eight years (RF last spoke ­t here in 1923). 50. ​Bartlett was helping RF obtain an appointment to the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference, held on the University of Colorado campus in August.

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[To George Martin Coffin (1912–1982), American businessman, publisher, and theatrical producer, son of the artist William Haskell Coffin (1878–1941). ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt April 27 1931 My dear boy: Bless you and keep you, I should like nothing better than to help you with51as food for your new press, but I am already promised to the presses of nearly half a dozen friends, and to them rather rashly, ­because it is doubtful how much of me my big publisher, Henry Holt w ­ ill let them have. My heart is so much in fine printing that I wish I could set up a press of my own.52 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt April 27 1931 Dear Edward: I seem to have dropped out of sight and left no last words even. I got sick in New York trying to do too much for me.53 I still have hopes of feeling like my engagements54 down your way. I want to see you. If I ever do get ­going again I’ll write and ask for another invitation. As I am now rest is what I need, freedom from every­thing including letters except the briefest. You’ll understand. Ever yours Robert Frost

51. ​We retain the alternate reading in this instance ­because the distinction (“with” / “as”) is of intrinsic interest. 52. ​Coffin had requested “around eight or nine new poems, to be issued in an edition ­l imited to 550 copies signed by you” (letter held at DCL). Presumably Coffin had a small letterpress ­going. 53. ​With his wife Elinor, RF spent most of April in New York City, renewing acquaintances and friendships. 54. ​Though a bit odd, the phrasing is as RF has it.

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[To Lew Sarett. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Northwestern.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [May 1931] Dear Lew: I hear p­ eople say the more they love their wives c­ hildren and friends the more plainly they see their faults. Such p­ eople ­either are lacking in passion or do themselves less than justice. Anybody I care for beyond a certain threshold becomes perfect. You say you are that way too. Let’s stay that way even at the risk of losing our critical powers from disuse. Some blindness is to our credit. I’d give a good deal to see you for a talk. The last one we had was a­ fter Harriet Monroe’s patronage dinner when you and I and your wife went off by ourselves for a supplementary meal.55 It’s as fresh as yesterday though it must have been five or six years ago. Since then ­you’ve run away from civilization and come back to it again.56 That must be a story. I heard about your terrible accident, but too late to congratulate you on your recovery from it.57 I’ve bought another farm since then and one, as it turns out, too many. I could have had my son Carol’s who is having to clear out and take his wife west for her lungs. I’m in a fair way to die land poor. If you see me start a real estate agency pretend not to notice. I ­can’t sell you any eastern property I suppose. Your wife is old New ­England stock.58 You might like to see her in a New E ­ ngland setting. Oh yes I have some of the arts of a salesman.

55. ​See RF to Sarett, September 2, 1929. 56. ​Sarett divided his time between Chicago (where he taught) and the wilderness of northern Wisconsin. 57. ​Reference unclear, but the Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois) reported on January 19, 1931, that Sarett had been compelled to cancel a lecture appearance at Illinois State Normal University (now Illinois State). No reason is given, but Sarett was (within days) again giving lectures. 58. ​Margaret Husted Sarett (1894–1941) was a fourth-­generation Chicagoan but also a member of the ­Daughters of the American Revolution.

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I’ll be only too glad to be anything to your Poetry Festival you want to make me.59 Always yours* Robert Frost R.F. *But we must see each other soon for it to mean much.

[To John Bartlett. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. UVA.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [May 7, 1931] Dear John: Marjorie wrote in her last letter, ­Don’t say our ­family never does anything right. In her opinion we did a big ­thing right when we sent her out where the John T. Bartletts live. I ­don’t know that she says right out, but she seems to imply, that she doesnt think much of your Colorado spring as far as it has got. But that defect sinks into a joke by comparison with all she does think much of. Between you and me (you mustnt tell her for fear of making her self-­ conscious) you folks and Colorado have changed her tune. You know where to come for thanks if you want any in words. She wants me to come out ­there and do the cooking for the sanatorium she intends to establish when she gets well and finishes training for a nurse. She says I am a good meat cook—­thats where I would come in. Elinor could do the bread and pastry. Carol could run the dairy and kitchen garden. What dissipates that dream is your altitude. You live too high for us—­about 2500 feet too high.60 Cut your plateau down half and ­we’ll talk with you. Why ­can’t you be reasonable? Twenty five hundred up ­ought to be enough up for anybody who began life on the plains of Raymond, New Hampshire.61 Come 59. ​Along with Harriet Monroe, Vachel Lindsay, and other prominent Chicago poets, Sarett had helped or­ga­n ize the first annual National Poetry Speaking Festival, which took place on April 2–3, 1931, at Northwestern University. RF and Carl Sandburg ­were added to the advisory board for the second annual festival, which took place at Northwestern on March 24–25, 1932. 60. ​Boulder, Colorado, is 5,328 ft above sea level. 61. ​The Bartlett homestead was in Raymond, New Hampshire—­elevation 200 ft (Raymond is in the state’s southernmost county, Rockingham, which contains the ­whole of New Hampshire’s Atlantic coast).

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down I wont say off it—­come down with it. Shake down, have an earthquake. I mean it. I’d like to live out t­ here for a few years if it w ­ ere only pos­si­ble. We are not wedded to this state. For some funny reason we have never been accepted as Vermonters.62 We are impor­tant enough to have the question raised ­whether or not we should be accepted. We w ­ ere that flattered. But the answer has been in the negative. So we can go when and where we please. Well w ­ e’ll have some farms to sell when we mobilize. Three. Mine of 150 acres a hewn timber ­house with three open fireplaces on the central chimney and many HL hinges on the doors. Carols of 100 acres and the stone h ­ ouse you remember very old and historical. John and I­rma’s of 8 acres and a small old h ­ ouse in a half circle of old spruces.63 Allow me to sell you a c­ ouple.64 Dont weep for us. I can unload them if I turn my hand to advertising. Give me a year. We mustnt think so far ahead. It ­w ill be something to have a few weeks out ­there with you this summer. ­We’ll want to be sure of Elinor of course. But if the doctors give her permission, I dont see why we ­shouldn’t all have a gay time together. Im studying the cata­logue of the Summer School so I ­shall be up on my fellows on the faculty.65 I ­ought to have read what they have written when I meet them. Yes and they ­ought to have read what I have written. But ­will they have? I ask you. Once in a while I meet someone who has read me. It did him good. I mean it served him right. This is the time of year that I have been keeping away from my farm ­things all winter for. Now I am let loose to go the rounds of them all to see how they

62. ​See RF to Thornton, October 1, 1930. 63. ​Carol’s place (aka the Stone House) was built in 1769 in the Dutch Colonial style from local stone and timber. The Gully farm­house dated to 1790. RF had purchased John and I­ rma’s ­house in North Bennington in 1928. 64. ​See stanza 3 of “You Are Old, ­Father William,” from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (in the chapter titled “Advice from a Caterpillar”): “In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, “I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment—­one shilling a box— Allow me to sell you a ­couple?” 65. ​This would be the first of a number of appearances RF made at the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference in Boulder (held in August).

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came through. I didnt winter-­k ill (though I damn near did in one of t­ hose New York ­hotels).66 Did they winter kill? A few blew down and a few spruces dried up in the big wind of March 9.67 But most ­things stood it and are ready [to] start their new growth. I’ve got the trellis of a grape-­vine to rebuild. ­People a­ ren’t kind to me about my farming any more. They make jokes like the one I had to listen to ­today. A friend says to me says he: You look poorly for you. ­You’ve had too much city. ­A fter ­you’ve sat down on your farm for a few months you’ll be as good as new. I have to admit that I dont work at anything profitable like milking or pitching down hay. I move trees around the way Amphion did only he did it by ­music proper and I do it by hand.68 Our love to you all RF.

[To Joseph Lesser (1901–1989), American businessman and trea­surer at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vt May 9 1931 Dear Mr Lesser: Send along the book right away before I set off on any travels again. I s­ hall be happy to write in it for you. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

66. ​See RF to Lewis, April 27, 1931. “Winter-­k ill” is (though rarely) used as a verb in North Amer­i­ca. 67. ​The storm, which hit early in the morning, had sustained winds of sixty miles per hour and caused widespread damage within a fifty-­m ile radius of Bennington, Vermont. 68. ​For Amphion, see RF’s January 6, 1929, letter to Untermeyer.

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[To William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943), American scholar and critic, professor of En­glish lit­er­a­ture at Yale University. ALS. Yale.]

South Shaftsbury Vt May 9 1931 Dear Mr Phelps: Your letter in praise of my book gave me hope that you would stay in town when I came to New Haven and let me see something of you.69 But you didnt: you ran away. I ­don’t know what to think of this being ­u nder obligations to a stranger who insists on remaining a stranger. Impersonality drives me ner­vous. T ­ hings you have said written and done70 have long made me want to be Your friend Robert Frost

[To Marilla W. Freeman. ALS. NYPL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont May 9 1931 Dear Miss Freeman: I won­der if Dr Adler hasnt got the name wrong.71 I ­don’t remember having lent myself to anything called The College Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca.72 Perhaps I am in some prospectus or cata­logue he has seen. If so, I should like to see it too. I should be glad to help Dr Adler, tell him. Why doesnt he ask to have me consulted about his getting into what­ever it is.

69. ​RF went down to Hartford, Connecticut, to give a talk on May 2 and thereafter spoke at Yale (in New Haven). 70. ​Phelps was a man of parts: a prolific author of literary criticism, a noted athlete, a popu­lar public speaker, and a radio broadcaster. 71. ​ Frederick Henry Adler (1885–1959), professor of En­ glish at Western Reserve University. 72. ​A slip. See RF’s January 3, 1931, letter to Grubbs, in which he grants permission to use his name as a “non-­corresponding sponsor” of the society.

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You gave me a pleasant time in Cleveland.73 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Whitney Darrow Sr. (1881–1970), American publisher, founder of Prince­ton University Press and secretary of the Friends of the Prince­ton University Library. ALS. Prince­ton.]

Amherst Mass May 21 1931 Dear Mr Darrow: ­After the way you and Wheelock74 treated me in New York the other night, I ­shall always feel a particularly friendly friend of the Prince­ton Library. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To J. J. Lankes. The letter is undated, but “May 25, 1931” is written above the salutation in another hand and the place of origin is established in the text. ALS. UVA.]

[Montauk, New York] [circa May 25, 1931] Dear J. J.: Whats all this need of my having to be defended for having given the world my great-­in-­little Celtic drama The Cow’s in the Corn.75 You say I dont take my responsibilities to the book collector seriously enough. You may be right about that but you are dead wrong in saying I got two ­children of ten and twelve years to print the play on a toy press for me. If you are g­ oing to be my advocate in the courts of New York you must work the case up more carefully. The Hilda and James Wells who printed bound and published my play are old enough to know better. One was formerly the partner the other

73. ​See RF’s October 1930 letter to Freeman. 74. ​John Hall Wheelock (1886–1978), American poet; an editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons, where Darrow also worked. 75. ​See RF to Wells, March 11, 1929.

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formerly the wife of Crosby Gaige.76 And I didnt get them to make the book. It was worse than that: they got me to let them make the book. That is to say I was weak enough to let them. As you’d think anyone could see, it was all a piece of foolishness in disrespect of the sacred business of collecting books for the sake of collecting them. I wanted to make the first price $25 thus anticipating all the pos­si­ble profits of all speculators for the next 25 years.77 But dont let it worry you for the salvation of my soul. I steadily resist t­ hese fancy presses at the rate of about one a month. I ­don’t believe in them. They would make me ashamed with their prices before my friends. I dont want ­people I know to think they have to buy special editions of me to support me. It would be dif­fer­ent if I made pictures from the block like yours. They o ­ ught to be worth just as much in a book as when bought separately. But all this is too much fuss over nothing. The Wells mean wells [sic] with their fine printing in high priced books of one precious page but except as a joke on the speculator their method seems to me a m ­ istake. I try to be kind to them without getting too much entangled in their dreamy schemes. They advanced me 3 hundred dollars 4 years ago and wouldnt hear of my giving it back as I wanted to give it on having thought the m ­ atter over. They fi­nally sold out their claim on me to their successor in the Fountain Press and the successor allowed me to give him the three hundred.78 I had kept it ready in the bank for all t­ hose years. I think the Holts made a ­m istake they would not make again in letting the special edition of my Collected Poems get out ahead of the first ordinary edition, so that the ordinary edition had to be called first trade edition. We are down h ­ ere on Long Island for a while to become grandparents for the fourth time.79 Next we are g­ oing to Colorado to see for ourselves if Mar-

76. ​Crosby Gaige (1882–1949) was a New York theatrical producer, gourmet, author, and cofounder of the Watch Hill Press, which published fine editions of works by ­Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, and James Joyce, among o ­ thers. Hilda Willson (1886–1968) had married Crosby Gaige in 1907; they divorced in 1927, whereupon she married Gaige’s partner / employee James Wells in 1928. In that same year Wells and Elbridge Adams (1866–1934), a New York l­awyer, acquired the (eponymous) Crosby Gaige publishing com­pany and also formed the Fountain Press. 77. ​Time has added some zeros to RF’s estimate; a fine copy of the chapbook was offered for sale in 2017 for $2,500. 78. ​Adams (see note above). 79. ​Lesley Lee Francis, Lesley Frost’s second d­ aughter—­her first was Elinor, born in 1929—­a nd the Frosts’ fourth grand­child, was born on June 20, 1931. See Figure 2.

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Figure 2. Elinor Francis, Lesley Lee Francis, on the seesaw, and their ­mother Lesley Frost Francis, Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts, summer 1933. Used by permission of Lesley Lee Francis.

jorie’s tuberculosis is getting subdued by the climate. Marjorie has tuberculosis and so has Lillian. Carol ­w ill move to California for Lillian’s health. The enclosed check is for one or two pictures for Mrs Frances Tinker.80 Pick her out a good one. She knows what’s what. Ever yours RF. Address pictures to me at Montauk Long Island.

80. ​Frances (McKee) Tinker (1886–1958) was the second wife Edward Larocque Tinker (1881–1968), a New York attorney and writer. She coauthored a number of works of fiction and nonfiction with him.

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[To Nicholas Carroll (1859–1949), Russian-­born American sailor and US Navy veteran. Carroll was born in Moscow in 1860 and emigrated to the United States in 1875. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt June 1931 Dear Mr Carroll: Your letter is without guile and you get what you ask for.81 You believe you appreciate Dust of Snow. You believe you do? Well I believe you do. T ­ here’s something about you I like. Stay my friend as I s­ hall stay Yours sincerely Robert Frost

[To Alfred Sheppard Dashiell (1901–1970), American journalist and editor; at this point managing editor at Scribner’s Magazine. The letter is addressed to Dashiell c / o P.E.N. and likely has to do with efforts to install RF as president of that organ­ization (see RF to Frederic Melcher January 18, 1932, and December 30, 1934). ALS. Prince­ton.]

Montauk Long Island June 7 1931 Dear Mr Dashiell: No godly counsel but god speed. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

Montauk Long Island June 12 1931 Dear Louis This is getting momentous. What we decide to put in ­here ­w ill go down to time. We ­don’t want to make any more ­m istakes in selecting than we have

81. ​RF enclosed a fair copy of “Dust of Snow” inscribed to Carroll.

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to.82 Even I know that not all my poems are equally good. Neither are they all equally bad. Some like The House­keeper are very much worse than o ­ thers. Dont ask me to go into the terrible details. T ­ here are moments when I am overwhelmed ­under them as if my nature under­neath a heap of jarring atoms lay.83 Jarring atoms is what they disintegrate into. But I mustnt give way to such talk. It would be bad advertising with anybody but you. And t­ oday particularly I am in no mood to estimate myself or anything I ever did. Lesley is at the hospital in Southampton (L.I.) in ineffectual pain and has been for three days now. We dont understand whats the ­matter. The doctor says nothings the m ­ atter. ­We’ll be convinced of that ­after every­thing comes out all right. All our ­children are an anxiety at once it happens. Marj gains very slowly. Carol’s wife (I havent told you have I?) w ­ ill have to be taken west for her lungs. Carol must sell his farm just when it is coming into productiveness.84 The orchards began blooming this year. Irma is on the strain of having a husband at college (John’s one of ­those smart boys that shines in college: so that ­w ill prob­ably come out all right).85 And ­here is Lesley in trou­ble too. Elinor just interrupted me to say on the telephone that it is bad but the worst of it is it doesnt get worse. I hope you three are flourishing. In a day or two I’ll write again about the poems. But first tell me a l­ittle more about it. How big is it g­ oing to be? Is it

82. ​RF had requested a list of poems to be included in Untermeyer’s latest anthology, The Book of Living Verse: En­glish and American Poetry from the Thirteenth ­Century to the Pre­ sent Day (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932). 83. ​From John Dryden’s “A Song for St.  Celia’s Day” (The Songs of John Dryden, ed. Cyrus Day [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932]): From harmony, from Heav’nly harmony      This universal frame began.    When Nature under­neath a heap      Of jarring atoms lay,    And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high,      Arise ye more than dead. . . .  84. ​As it happened, Carol’s wife Lillian recovered more quickly than expected during their time in Monrovia, California (the move RF alludes to h ­ ere). Carol leased out, but ­d idn’t sell, the Stone House farm; he and his ­family moved back into it in 1934. 85. ​See the notes to RF’s September 1, 1929, letter to Bartlett.

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g­ oing to extend considerably beyond the lyrical? I judge so by your proposing some of my blank verse. But instance please. Ever Yours Robert

[To Richard Thornton. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

Montauk Long Island (still for a few days awaiting the event) [circa June 12, 1931] Dear Mr Thornton: I have connections with the Chicago underworld through Carl Sandburg that often make me ­tremble in the night with fear of being taken for a ­r ide if I show the least sign however unintentional of defection desertion falling away.86 T ­ here is something undeniably sinister in a letter I have just had from Harriet Monroe Editress of Poetry a Magazine of Verse asking me what’s this—do I mean to let my publishers stick her up for fifty dollars for four small poems she wants to include in her anthology.87 Seeing its she and she lives in Chicago and the times are what they are (morally and financially) suppose we cut that in half if you think we can do it with dignity. I d­ on’t want her to think we are too scared or the next we know ­we’ll have her dictating my ­f uture poems to me subject ­matter and form. But once you are in with the lawless in verse rum or dope you cant get out and live. I know too many of their secrets about breaking lines where they break them not to be dangerous ­r unning at large.88 I appeal to you to understand the perilous position I am

86. ​Carl Sanburg (1878–1967), Illinois-­born poet, noted (among other attainments) for his rough-­hewn, exuberant cele­brations of Chicago. 87. ​“On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations,” “Once by the Pacific,” “Acquainted with the Night,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­n ing.” ­These four ­were added to the dozen Frost poems already in Monroe’s and Alice Corbin Henderson’s The New Poetry: An Anthology of Twentieth-­Century Verse in En­glish (New York: Macmillan, 1932). The anthology first appeared in 1917. A second, enlarged edition appeared in 1923, and a third, “revised and reset” edition (­u nder discussion ­here) in 1932. 88. ​The letter’s riff on Chicago’s reputation for crime and vio­lence h ­ ere develops into a joke about ­f ree (or “lawless”) verse.

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in. Tell her if you can that at my supplication you ­w ill let her have the four poems for twenty-­five dollars. Seriously yours Robert Frost Thanks for getting the books to me so instantaneously. The other boxful ordered by The Open Book had been directed to Shaftsbury instead of South Shaftsbury and has been three weeks coming.89

[To Anna Hempstead Branch. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Smith.]

[Montauk, New York] [circa June 15, 1931] Dear Miss Branch: We have been absent thinking for some time and more or less advertently missing our mail. That is to say we didnt exactly tell the postmaster when to start forwarding letters to us.90 And this is what we get for our sin: your letter doesnt arrive till much too late for me to act on it. It has been thus ever since I was sick in New York. We have had to be or thought we had to be dodgers and shirks before the Lord. Poetry seems to have got us into affairs pretty deep for a t­ hing so unworldly. It makes us cross sometimes. We are anxious not to let it spoil us. We are down ­here out of New ­England with Lesley awaiting her next child. She sends you her love, and Elinor and I send ours. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

89. ​We have been unable to determine which books RF had asked Thornton to send. The Open Book: a shop launched in Pittsfield, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, by Lesley and Marjorie Frost in 1924. 90. ​During March, RF gave readings in Hartford, Connecticut, and at Yale, Bowdoin, Bates College, and Clark University. From April 1 through early May 1931, RF and Elinor stayed in New York City.

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[To Anna Hempstead Branch. Typed transcript of a tele­g ram, signed and annotated by RF. Above the text of the tele­g ram, RF has written: “Of course use this if ­there is still time.” Below RF’s signature, someone e­ lse has written: “Autograph, keep.” Date derived from internal evidence. Smith.]

[Montauk, New York] [June 15, 1931] I heartily endorse the plan of The World Book and join warmly in the invitation extended by the Poets’ Guild to the General Federation of W ­ omen’s Clubs 91 to contribute a poem to the Festival of the World Book. Robert Frost

[To George Whicher. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont July 2 1931 Dear George (wherever you are):92 I’m sorry and ­you’re sorry, but I think we ­were both mistaken in the assumption that you ever had a chance. Your comparative salaray [sic], which was as 5 ½ to 7, determined your rank. No one was g­ oing to promote 5 ½ over 7 to 8. You ­didn’t stop to consider and I didnt realize—­didnt know. I was doubly off in my calculations. I thought Roy93 wouldnt care to be considered as in ­r unning for the 8 when the prospects ­were so good in several places of his getting 10. And we might have suspected that the rivalry between the Jones Library and Amherst College for Emilys remains would enter into it.94 All I could seem to think of was your plain deserts as teacher speaker and editor

91.  The “world book” is probably the International Unbound Anthology (1931), issued by the Poets’ Guild, which Branch founded. It was as an anthology of 260 unnumbered pages, four devoted to each participating country. The Guild had already printed three poems by RF. See RF to Branch, March 7, 1929. 92. ​Whicher was then in France. RF addressed the envelope 14 Place Vendome, Paris, but Whicher had left the city; the letter was forwarded to Le Pouldu (in Brittany, on the northwest coast of France). 93. ​George Roy Elliott. See the letter to Tilley, January 28, 1931. 94. ​Emily Dickinson’s literary manuscripts. The Jones Library is the town library (unaffiliated, and often in competition with the college).

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and your devotion to the college. ­There w ­ ere practical allowances I failed to make. I was to blame if in my admiration for you, I helped get your hopes up. But you must be a good boy and not take the disappointment too hard. The consequences need not be as fatal to your ­career as your f­ather fears.95 You and I know where your redress lies. It is in the written appeal to the world outside college. I never want to ask too much of anyone’s ability. But the adventures forward I have seen you make embolden me. You have the instrument and the sure hand on it. Look at the way you can write. What is next for you is plainly indicated. You have but to dare the next inch (an inch is all it is) and assume to speak to us on the large standing subjects. Your addresses to se­n iors are on the threshold. The slightest thrust in that direction and over you go. It is not cruel to ask you to trust yourself just a ­little further is it? You can use that essay gift of yours to interfere in grown-up ­people’s minds. Come out among us and you’ll come to fulfillment. Then college politics w ­ ill be ­behind or u ­ nder you where they d­ on’t ­matter. I take this liberty as your old teacher.96 I deeply mean what I say. Forgive it as the telephone girls say. The order is simply for essays like your addresses to se­n iors, only more at large, more to us men of the world. A book of them might well include your addresses to se­niors. They are not just a foretaste: they are the full savor of what I am talking about. But look outward for more subjects.97 Forget school much of the time. Have a happy vacation. Steadfastly yours Robert

95. ​George Meason Whicher (1860–1937), who had moved to Amherst ­a fter retiring from Hunter College. 96. ​A bit of teasing: Whicher graduated Amherst College with the class of 1910, seven years before RF joined its faculty—­a nd indeed while he was still teaching at Pinkerton Acad­emy. Nevertheless, RF was something of a mentor to Whicher, who joined the faculty at Amherst in 1915, two years before RF did. As for Amherst College politics (at least in the En­glish Department): in his diary for March 1932, Theodore Baird memorializes a fierce debate with Whicher—­about whom he speaks with considerable condescension—­ regarding the f­uture of En­g lish  A. The course was a staple in Amherst’s curriculum; Baird wanted it to stay in, Whicher wanted it out (diaries held at ACL). Departmental infighting over the m ­ atter continued well into 1934. 97. ​Whicher’s first book appeared in 1938: This Was a Poet: A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson (New York: Scribner’s).

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[To Charles Howell Foster (1913–1995), American scholar, professor of American Lit­er­ a­ture at the University of Minnesota, and book collector; at the time of writing still a schoolboy, but shortly to enter Amherst, from which he would gradu­ate in 1936. Date derived from postmark. TLS-­C. DCL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 6, 1931] My dear boy: ­There is much that is imaginative in your poetry already.98 Make the most of your imagination. Remember what you think in a poem is never as impor­ tant as what you imagine. Always your friend Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. The list of “shorter” poems RF mentions is in Elinor’s hand. The “supplementary” list and “suggested” sets are in RF’s hand. Untermeyer selected poems from “Suggested Set No. 1,” choosing for his new anthology—­The Book of Living Verse: En­glish and American Poetry from the Thirteenth ­Century to the Pre­sent Day (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932)—­ “My November Guest,” “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “Home Burial,” “Tree at My Win­dow,” “To Earthward,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­ning.” ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 9, 1931] Dear Louis Now for it or, as the lady said when required to swear in court, You ­ought not to make me, but if I must I must; so h ­ ere goes Hellity damn!99 Elinor and I have cooked up a list any one of which we ­w ill take sides with against you

98. ​Foster published numerous works of criticism but does not appear to have published any poetry, though he took an MA in creative writing at Iowa in 1937. 99. ​A n echo of Jim Munson’s speech habits in Langford of the Three Bars, a romantic western written by Kate and Virgil D. Boyles and illustrated by N. C. Wyeth (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1907). A traditional cowboy who breaks h ­ orses for a living, Munson serves as a witness for the state against Jesse Black, who has stolen a steer from Paul Langford, owner of the Three Bars Ranch.

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if you leave it out. This is the first time I ever helped anthologise myself.100 Next you’ll have me helping you write my reviews. Besides the general list of all the poems we hate and ­can’t bear to see you omit we have made out two trial sets for you to cock your eye at. They are offered as basises [sic] for discussion. Lave [sic] us talk ­things over. What do you say to deleting the second stanza of Tree at My Win­dow for the sake of perfection. Does that keep the “head” in the last stanza from ringing as it should. I’ve always been a shade unsure about what the second stanza did to the poetic logic which is the t­ hing I set above all ­t hings in poetry. The two changes in An Old Man’s Winter Night are obvious gains. I dont know where “fill” crept in. It was originally “keep.” “Fill” is a joke with the “heavy breathing.”101 Elinor and I both think the two best written of the long ones are The Mountain and The Fear, the four richest in the h ­ uman are Snow, The Death of the Hired Man, Home Burial and The Black Cottage. Respond. I go to Bread Loaf for my one night tomorrow (Thursday). I visit Lillian at her sanitorium on Friday and start with Elinor for Marjorie’s on Tuesday.102 We are in many many trou­bles for the moment, so many that grief loses its dignity and bursts out laughing. I toughen it seems to me. Of course I may be prejudiced in my own f­ avor, but if I keep on I think I cant be refused a chance for the heavy weight crown. I have doubled up my fists at several lately that manifestly d­ idn’t want any part of me. The secret of success in ­these encounters is not to care for your eyes nose teeth or chin. I’ve found that out late in life but not too late. I used to say Yes I’m ready to fight, but I ­don’t want my 100. ​See RF’s June 12, 1931, letter to Untermeyer. RF sometimes lectured on the topic, “When the Anthologist Anthologizes Himself.” For more on the ­matter, see Mark Scott, “Frost and Anthologies,” in Robert Frost in Context, ed. Mark Richardson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014): 107–113. 101. ​The misprint had long vexed RF. He wrote Marguerite Wilkinson on April 12, 1919: “I wont say I h ­ aven’t learned with the years something of the tinker’s art. I’m surprised to find sometimes how I have just missed the word. It ­wasn’t that I was groping for my meaning. I had that clear enough and I had and thought I had said the word for it. But I ­hadn’t said within a row of apple trees of it. That’s the way it was I suppose with that word ‘fill’ in the Winter Night poem. I had the perfectest conviction of having said ‘keep’ then and I believe I had read it aloud as ‘keep’ for some time before I saw that I had written ‘fill.’ ‘Fill’ is awful!” (LRF-1, 674–675). The bad reading persisted through multiple printings of the trade edition of MI (where the poem was first collected). RF corrected it for SP 1923 only to have it reemerge on page 135 of CP 1930. 102. ​Marjorie was already convalescing in the Mesa Vista Sanitarium in Colorado (as the last sentence of the letter indicates).

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teeth broken. Well I was wrong. What reason had I for not wanting my teeth broken? ­There was no reason. We w ­ ere brought up on principals [sic] of saving every­thing ourselves included. The war taught us a new gospel. My next book is to be called the Right to Waste. The Right? The duty the obligation to waste every­thing, time material and the man.103 I’ve a good mind to tell them so at Bread Loaf while I am heated on the subject. But would it take root in such ground and do ­either good or harm? Perhaps you had better send your next letter to me in care of Marjorie Frost, Mesa Vista, Boulder, Colorado. Steadfastly yours Robert Frost Elinor’s Choice of shorter ones My November Guest Storm Fear Reluctance Mowing An Old Mans Winter Night Birches Putting in the Seed Stopping by Woods To Earthward Two Look at Two The Need of Being Versed in Country ­T hings Spring Pools Tree at My Win­dow A Soldier On Looking up by Chance at the Constellations

103. ​RF would often touch on the theme of the necessity and good of “waste.” See the first poem in ITC, “The Pod of the Milkweed”: “But waste was of the essence of the scheme . . . ,” ­etc. (CPPP, 426), and the poems, unpublished during his lifetime, “Waste or Cod Fish Eggs” and “Wanton Waste” (CPPP, 558). See also his late essay “The F ­ uture of Man”: “We must let down in tribute to the generosity of waste with now and then a libation on to the ground or down our gullets where the waste is double” (CPPP, 872). And from his notebooks: “The difference between expense and waste: ‘Waste is where only God can see the sense / Where man can see it ­shall be called expense’” (NBRF, 5).

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Mine supplementary to hers The Tuft of Flowers The Pasture Hyla Brook The Oven Bird The Star in a Stoneboat The Onset Dust of Snow Nothing Gold Can Stay The Aim Was Song The Runaway Acquainted with the Night Out Out Elinor and I agree that the chief long ones are The Mountain, The Death of the Hired Man, The Fear, Home Burial, and Snow. Suggested Set No.1 My November Guest Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­ning Tree at My Win­dow (1st 3rd & 4th stanzas) (“For” for “And.”)104 An Old Man’s Winter Night (“need” for “what it was”) (“keep” for “fill”)105 To Earthward, Star in a Stone-­boat or Two Look at Two Snow Home Burial The Fear The Mountain or The Death of the Hired Man. Suggested Set No 2 Mowing Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­ning The Pasture Tree at My Win­dow (1st 3rd & 4th.) Birches The Star in a Stone-­boat or Two Look at Two The Mountain or Snow

104. ​Untermeyer neither omitted the second stanza nor revised the wording as RF ­here requests. 105. ​­Here, Untermeyer emended the poem as RF asked.

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[To Vrest Orton. ALS. Private.]

Evergreen Colorado July 25 1931 Dear Vrest Orton: I ­don’t forget you: I’ve been thinking of you lately and wondering what you ­were thinking of me for having neglected you so long. You ­mustn’t think too hardly and you w ­ on’t when you hear my excuses. We have had one sickness on top of another ever since last Christmas. You knew we had to be in Baltimore on account of my d­ aughter Marjorie much of the winter. In the end we brought her to Boulder, Colorado. We had scarcely wound up at Amherst when we discovered that my son Carol’s wife was sick of the same sickness and would have to be taken away from the New E ­ ngland climate. Carol was busy selling out his farm business the two or three weeks we ­were in South Shaftsbury. That isnt all the story. We w ­ ere four weeks at Montauk Long Island with my ­daughter Lesley who had a serious time with having a second child. So you see without having to be told in exclamations. We are out h ­ ere giving Marjorie a brief vacation from her sanitorium. S­ he’ll go back to it and then ­we’ll go east soon. But all is obscure ahead. I may not get settled down in South Shaftsbury before the ­m iddle of September a­ fter the first frosts have knocked the hay-­fever. When I do I ­shall want to see you and hear all about your new publishing.106 I owe you a book d­ on’t I? I notice you are advertising several books about Vermont and have meant to have at least one of them. I seem to have too much to think of for decency. This is a beautiful country but hot where we sojourn thirty miles west of Denver up Bear cañon ­under Mt Evans of nearly 1400 ft. ­Theres snow in sight. ­Every two or three hours the drought is broken with a bump of thunder but

106. ​Orton explains in Vermont After­noons with Robert Frost: “In 1931, I had founded a book publishing venture which undertook to issue Vermont books, the most notable being a four-­volume compilation of Vermont material called The Green Mountain Series” (25). The new publishing ­house was the Stephen Daye Press in Brattleboro, Vermont, named to honor Stephen Daye (ca. 1594–1668), the first North American printer, who established a press in Boston ca. 1639.

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no rain. The region is flowery. I am learning to like the U.S. section by section. I read Williams History of Vermont on my way out h ­ ere.107 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. DCL.]

[Evergreen, Colorado] July 27 1931 Dear Mr Thornton: ­Will you kindly, as soon as pos­si­ble a­ fter you get this, send one copy each of all my books including the Collected Poems to Mr John Bartlett, Bartlett Ser­ vice, Boulder Colorado. ­These are to go on exhibition at Colorado University before and during my lectures ­there.108 I ­shall autograph and leave them as a gift to the University when I leave. The Dean asks me if you ­will please put a ­little pressure on the three Boulder bookstores too.109 I am virtually in Boulder now. But the height of my being h ­ ere ­will be between August 10th and 14th. We are giving Marjorie the d­ aughter a vacation of a few days eight thousand feet up u ­ nder Mount Evans which has snow on it to look at for contrast with the summer heat of Colorado. Marjorie is much better but not well even in her own estimation. We send you and the f­ amily our best. Sincerely yours Robert Frost Address c / o John Bartlett Bartlett Ser­vice Boulder Colorado 107. ​ T he Natu­ral and Civil History of Vermont (Burlington, VT: Samuel Mills, 1809), by Samuel Williams. 108. ​RF lectured at the second annual Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference, which took place from July 27 to August 15 at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In addition to RF, Zona Gale, Frank Luther Mott, Blanche Young McNeal, and Edna Davis Romig served as faculty during the two-­week event. 109. ​Jacob Van Ek (1896–1994), at the time dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

[Evergreen, Colorado] July 28 1931 Dear Louis: I am up ­here 8000 feet high gasping for oxygen, my walk slow and vague as in a world of unreality. Anything I say feels as if someone e­ lse said it. I’m told its not my heart but the size of my lungs thats to blame. I always was a short distance runner even in my best day. I did one hundred yards in eleven seconds but hare and hounds was an agony.110 We came h ­ ere to give Marj a vacation from the sanitorium. W ­ e’re having a fine time all to ourselves in spite of the uneases of altitude. (Marj and I are the sufferers as it turns out though Elinor was the only one we feared for beforehand.) I climb some of the nearer dirt hills for the activity I need leaving the rocky peaks and cliffs till I renew my youth. I’m botanizing all over in an almost entirely dif­fer­ent flora. Up one ravine ­today ­there ­were masses of larkspur and monkshood.111 Its a very flowery country. I’m a ­little too late for much of it. I just missed the yellow lady’s slipper112 that seems as common ­here as the pink slipper at home. Isnt it strange for me to be living away off like this. Three weeks ago I was settled for a month but as if forever in the sand dunes of extreme Montauk. Such lengths our c­ hildren drag us to. Im glad none of the f­amily are foreign missionaries or we should be snatched back and forward very likely from continent to continent instead of as now from state to state. I dont care if God d­ oesn’t care. Who is this Ferril poet in Denver?113 Is he one of your prospects? He seems a pleasant boy. But I dont like Fisher114 the entrepreneur. If I have to make a 110. ​“Hare and hounds”: a long-­d istance racing game that dates to the Elizabethan era. 111. ​Delphinium barbeyi, or tall larkspur, is a member of the buttercup ­family and native to the Rocky Mountains. Aconitum napellus, or monkshood, is extremely poisonous. 112. ​The yellow lady’s slipper, Cypripedium parviflorum, though native to Vermont, is far rarer than the pink lady’s slipper, Cypripedium acaule. As for the yellow one, see RF’s “The Self-­Seeker” (collected first in NB), in which it (and other orchids) make an appearance: CPPP, 95–97. 113. ​Thomas Hornsby Ferril (1896–1988). Ferril’s first book of poems, High Passage (New York: AMS Press, 1926), a collection RF admired, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1925. He would ­later become Colorado’s Poet Laureate. 114. ​See RF to Fisher, September 28, 1930. See also RF’s September 1, 1929, letter to Bartlett.

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r­ eally western tour some one ­will have to recommend a better agent than that man. I suppose lecturing for any agent is roughing it. I had a real run in with Fisher. I let him have me interviewed for his publicity twice on arrival once in the station and once in a newspaper office a place where in all my years of reading to p­ eople I have never gone for anything.115 On top of that I had to stand a lot of loud anxiety from him about his getting a big enough audience. Damn him. I was against his trying for one in the summer anyway. To hell with him for a bad sport. I cant think he lost much by the size of the crowd I saw in front of me. But I could wish he had. ­There was nothing handsome about his style. I ­shouldn’t have got into this. I took the Colorado University ­thing weakly to pay our fare and then one ­thing lead [sic] to another. Fisher has been soliciting me for a year or two. I was inclined to let him manage me for a California swing-­round. He did himself out of a cool thousand by his inconsiderateness of my age and dignity. I, we all, go back to Boulder next Wednesday for my talks to the summer school. I may live to be sorry I got into ­those. Sometimes I do well and then again I get too tired from the strain leading up to a per­for­mance. I mustnt complain of how Fisher manages me: I dont manage myself very well. I ­don’t care if God d­ oesn’t care. Elinor and Marj take your side about the second stanza in Tree at My Win­dow. They say I ­can’t leave it out. All I say is never show any version of a poem to your friends and relatives ­unless you are absolutely sure it is final. All right then the list is 6 Home Burial 1 An Old Man’s Winter Night 2 My November Guest (complete) 3 Stopping by Woods 4 Tree at My Win­dow and if you possibly can make it (I hate to have it left out) 5 To Earthward. I’ve numbered them in the order that would please me most.116 It is your se­lection with Elinor Marj and me concurring. I’m willing to stand or fall by it. Sometimes I almost cry I am afraid I am such a bad poet. But to­n ight I ­don’t Care if God doesnt care. 115. ​The tribute to RF appeared in the Greeley Daily Tribune on July 15, 1931. 116. ​Untermeyer published the poems in the following order: “My November Guest,” “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “Home Burial,” “Tree at My Win­dow,” “To Earthward,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­n ing.” See also RF’s July 9, 1931, letter to him.

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Our best to you all three. Ever yours Robert Lee Address c / o Marjorie Frost Mesa Vista Boulder Colorado

[To Wade Van Dore. ALS. BU.]

Boulder Colorado C / O John T Bartlett August 3 1931 Dear Wade: You know how I am about letters. But with this one I have more than the usual excuse of laziness. I have been all taken up with f­ amily trou­bles. Lesley had to have us with her at Montauk (Long Island) while she was in the hospital and then Marj had to have us with her for a while away out ­here in the Rockies ­after her lonely six months in the sanitorium for lungs. Carols wife has the same sickness, only worse perhaps, and Carol is bringing her west to live in California. We expect them by almost any day now. So you see I have had something to make me forget temporarily whom I owe letters to. Elinor was just asking to­n ight if I had answered you. I’m sorry I havent ­because I want you to feel assured of my friendship and backing. We ­won’t talk of the poems now except to say that you are too young yet to give in to any par­tic­ u­lar way of writing. You must keep cracking your crust to flow again like lava. You must look abroad with envy on all the dif­fer­ent kinds of ­thing that can be done in verse. You must use the leverage of other poets to lift yourself into greater variety. You cant lift yourself on yourself. That only in passing. You are a poet and twice the poet some of your technicating friends are or ever ­w ill be. Y ­ ou’ve been mistaken to some extent about the way to conduct yourself as a poet. But never mind, you are a person of the mood. The only question with me is how far you w ­ ill go before you close in on yourself for good. Stuff in anything to keep your sidelines from converging prematurely. For your sake and my sake I wish you’d force yourself to be very definite with me about your plans. I cant help being anxious to see any move you make turn out a solid gain. We’ve been over all this till ­you’re tired of it. But let’s

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clarify a l­ ittle more. The t­ hing is to make a regular life as a relatively permanent foundation for your poetry. Something s­ imple for the bread and butter. ­You’ve got to consider though that it prob­ably ­can’t be a life where your poetry w ­ ill be laughed at by s­ imple ­people or where you would have to hide it from them. You mustnt attempt what you cant stand. Take a good look at yourself. Your dignity has got to be thought of.117 First of all y­ ou’ve got to see some work (part or w ­ hole time) you can count on. Then y­ ou’ve got to have a ­little ­house of your own of three rooms and your piano and your books where your neighbors can look in on you in an ordinary way. You set up like that and you can get away with being a poet. Other­w ise not among the common p­ eople. It isnt much and I won­der if we could figure how much it could be done for in your part of Canada. T ­ here would have to be a big enough piece of land for gardening. You could dig the cellar and build such a h ­ ouse with a l­ittle help I should suppose small of course but good proportions so you’d like it. Is this all my nonsense? Always yours R.F. I’m in ­favor of your ­going anywhere you please and ­w ill do my best to help you go t­ here. Of course it makes me a l­ ittle sad to have you choose Western Canada partly b­ ecause it is out of our country and partly ­because it is out of all bounds for me and lands you where I may never see you. You said something about two hundred dollars, was it? Say the word and it is yours to set you up in a new home.118 117. ​In the first letter he wrote to the British poet F. S. Flint (January 21, 1913)—­whom he met during his first visit to Harold Monro’s Poetry Bookshop in London—­R F said: “I trust t­ here was nothing ambiguous in my rather frank enjoyment of an unusual situation the other night. . . . ​You w ­ ill take my word for it that t­ here was nothing in my sleeve: I showed just what I felt. I was only too childishly happy in being allowed to make one for a moment in a com­pany in which I ­hadn’t to be ashamed of having written verse. Perhaps it w ­ ill help you understand my state of mind if I tell you that I have lived for the most part in villages where it ­were better that a millstone ­were hanged about your neck than that you should own yourself a minor poet” (LRF-1, 89). 118. ​Van Dore explains in The Life of the Hired Man: “I had estimated five to eight hundred would be enough to s­ ettle me e­ ither in Canada or in rural New E ­ ngland, and Frost had said he would furnish that amount, or more; but now with the depression in high gear, in a summer letter of 1931 I lowered the figure to two hundred dollars” (155). Van Dore soon de­cided against Canada, and bought (with $100 provided by RF), a small place in the Berkshires, between ­Great Barrington and Stockbridge.

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[To Carol Frost. ALS. UM.]

Boulder Colorado August 21 1931 Dear Carol: Glad ­you’re ­there all right.119 Have a look around at the vari­ous elevations and climates. Tell Prescott he’d better be ready to tell me all the differences between New ­England and California farming and scenery or I’ll—­well I’ll tell him all the differences if it takes me an eight hour day. Affectionately Papa

[To Wade Van Dore. Written on Hotel Boulderado letterhead. ALS. BU.]

Write in care of Marjorie Frost Mesa Vista, Boulder Colo* [September 8, 1931] Dear Wade: If you like the place, Im sure I s­ hall like it. You must put it in shape of course. ­We’ll talk it all over when I get home, which should be in a week or two now. Meanwhile buy it. Im glad y­ ou’re settled. Im just back from seeing Carol settled in a lovely place in Monrovia California. Now for getting Marjorie settled for the winter h ­ ere in Boulder Colorado. Be sure ­you’ve thought of every­thing ­won’t you?—­I mean before you go ahead. I enclose one hundred dollars. Always yours Robert Frost *Or better S. Shaftsbury now.

119. ​That is, in Monrovia, California. RF and Elinor would soon join Carol, Lillian, and Prescott for a brief visit, before heading back east to Vermont.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa September 23, 1931] Dear Louis: I’m back from settling the Rockies and Sierras with my c­ hildren and ­children’s c­ hildren or rather child. So as for that telescope, let ’er come. She ­w ill fill a life-­long-­felt want,120 as you have reason to know from having gone shopping with me for one once and witnessed my heart break when we failed to find what you thought I could afford. You more than anything ­else kept me from one then w ­ hether from too much sympathy with my f­ amily or too ­little sympathy with me (at least on my scientific side). It is only poetic justice that you should stand me one now—so late in life. I ­w ill have it right ­here in South Shaftsbury please. And let the most modest stars be prepared to be looked right at. Frankly I had been getting near sighted of late especially when it came to the N.Y. Telephone Directory and I had been thinking of ­going to the expense of a pair of pinchnoses but how much better a monocle such as this you have thought up for me. With it I should be able to see you as a farmer. I mean I should be able farming in the Green Mts to see you farming in the Adirondacs [sic]. As a farmer I should be able to see you as a farmer. With a child on each knee ventriloquizing out of alternate corners of your mouth for both of them. My love to them the poor ­little dears.121 I dont know what possessed me to take them in vain thus in our el­derly affairs. Before I forget it I hope you wont leave Smart’s Song of David wholly out of your book, nor Curran’s “If I sadly thinking with spirits sinking would more than drinking my cares compose—.” Smart’s is the only splendid poem in a

120. ​See RF to Untermeyer, October  26, 1931. RF fell in love with astronomy at an early age. Writing in the Lawrence High School Bulletin in 1891, he opined: “What the school now wants is a telescope—­m ighty and far-­reaching. . . . ​It is a most wonderful teacher of observation and cultivator of the more practical imagination” (CPRF, 13). See also “The Star-­Splitter”—­collected first in NH (CPPP, 166–168)—­which tells the story of “hugger-­mugger” farmer Brad McLaughlin, who burns his ­house and purchases a telescope with the insurance money. For more still, see Henry Atmore, “Frost and Astronomy,” in Robert Frost in Context, ed. Mark Richardson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014): 333–342. 121. ​Untermeyer’s a­ dopted sons, Laurence and Joseph.

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c­ entury of wit. Curran is the fine old pre-­Sin-­Fein [sic] Irish style that few ­w ill listen to now.122 I saw a poem by an American girl (Davies I believe her name was) that seemed to me one of ­those rarities that you get now and then from a nobody in par­tic­u ­lar just as you did in the anonymous ballad days. It began I sing of sorrow, I sing of weeping. I have no sorrow.123 I wish you would have a look at it. Ever Yours R.F. Say isnt the Gerard Hopkins figment a caution to us who would be original. That book with all its notes is a ­mental exercise.124

[To Sidney Cox. Dated from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [October 1, 1931] Dear Sidney: I have a vague recollection of your having asked me in a letter sometime this summer not to pity you. Dear Sidney y­ ou’re a joke. Why didnt you offer to bargain: you wouldnt pity me if I wouldnt pity you. What could have put pity into your head u ­ nless it was that you ­were feeling pitiful. Pity you? You dont get me. Damn it I blame you: I ­don’t pity you. I blame you for letting the

122. ​Christopher Smart (1722–1771) is thought to have written his “Song to David” while confined in an insane asylum. John Philpot Curran (1750–1817) was an Irish orator, ­lawyer, politician, and sometime poet. RF h ­ ere quotes from memory—­slight divergences from the original indicate as much—­t he opening lines of his “Deserter’s Lamentation.” Curran defended, in court, several members of the Society of United Irishmen, a group of republicans who or­ga­n ized the Irish Rebellion of 1798, but in speaking of a pre–­ Sinn Fein Irish style, RF’s point seems less po­liti­cal than literary-­h istorical: he’s harking back, in what may be a potshot at Yeats, to pre–­Gaelic Revival Irish poetry. 123. ​RF’s friend, Jesse Belle Ritten­house, anthologized “Borrower” by Mary Carolyn Davies (1888–1974) in her Second Book of Modern Verse (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920). 124. ​See Robert Bridges, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931). Appended to the poems ­were thirty pages of notes (about a quarter of the book as a ­whole). As for “figment”: RF uses it in a sense that fell out of use in the late seventeenth ­century (as per the OED): “Something moulded or fashioned, e.g. an image, a figure, a model”—­t he modeler in this case being, in large part, Bridges.

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basteds125 in on you by inviting (not just incurring) their criticism of your teaching.126 Thats all; and its not much though its a good deal. So forget it. Only remember that as a grown-up man whose further improvement is your own private affair, it becomes you to look and act and speak henceforth when anybody starts to take you to task as I do now, it becomes you, I say, to look and act and speak as if you couldnt permit of personalities. Keep the basteds out. Forbid them. I know ­you’re one of the best of teachers. You know it. Never again ask any one to say that at least you do the ­children no harm. Bless the c­ hildren anyway. I wish you could write and talk with them less in mind—­them and their teachers and their teachers’ teachers. Let’s think mostly of the non-­school world. The worlds a stage not an acad­emy Shakespeare says.127 Ever yours R F. ­ e’re just back from seeing Marj at Boulder Colorado and Carol & Lillian W settled at Monrovia California.

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. Prince­ton.]

South Shaftsbury Vt October 5 1931 Dear Mr Thornton: We are back from having sown c­ hildren broadcast over the West. One t­ hing it does for us what­ever it may do for them: it makes us feel as if we inhabited the ­whole country and not just New ­England: and it reassures us of the uniformity of the American p­ eople, East and West. We saw a teacher out t­ here who was ­doing a book for California ­children on California flowers. To make it in­ter­est­ing she had made it a story of two l­ ittle ­children who had been moved from bleak bare Vermont to live in luxuriant California.128 We ­couldn’t make

125. ​Common spelling of “bastard” in mid-­t wentieth ­century American hard-­boiled crime fiction. 126. ​A per­sis­tent difficulty Cox experienced at Dartmouth; see RF to Cox, September 19, 1929. 127. ​In As You Like It, 2.vii.138ff. 128. ​We have been unable to identify the book or author.

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the m ­ istake about California now that she makes about Vermont. California is as flowery as Vermont. I am enclosing the signed contract you should have [had] years ago. And another m ­ atter of business. A Mr Udo Rall of Los Angeles thinks we ­ought to let him have four of my poems for nothing to translate into German.129 Dont you think it might be good advertising? I told him his letter to you prob­ably didnt fall into the hands of anyone empowered to make exceptions. Our best to you and your f­ amily. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Harold Rugg. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt October [6, 1931] Dear Rugg: ­We’re getting to be old friends, a­ ren’t we? You add this gift to what you have already done for me. I ­shall always be glad to do anything for you short of writing articles. So command me. ­Here we are where we want to be, home from the Rockies, home from the sea (both seas in fact, the Pacific and the Atlantic) and ­we’re ­here to stay with a ­w ill. We’ve been giving the ­children climate, each according to her case. From what we can hear every­thing so far is g­ oing all right. Best wishes Always yours Robert Frost —­K now you had a good time botanizing this summer. I botanized within my limitations at Montauk L. I. Evergreen Colo and Monrovia Calif. Nothing like it for innocent plea­sure. —­Im tempted to add further a botany story. I met in California a young teacher who said she was glad of the encounter with a Vermonter ­because she was just publishing a childs book of Southern Californian flowers and to make it 129. ​Udo Rall (c. 1894–1980), a German-­born teacher and administrator, had lived in Los Angeles for some twenty years. Correspondence is also extant between Rall and Wallace Stevens, on the subject of translating Stevens into German.

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lively or something she had done it as the adventures of two l­ittle flower-­ starved ­children from my bleak state translated without death to the flowery paradise of Pasadena. It made me mean so much to her. R.F.

[To Burges Johnson (1877–1963), American journalist, poet, publisher, and director of public relations and professor of En­glish at Syracuse University. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt October 6 1931 Dear Johnson: That would be one way of our seeing more of each other. (We must think of other ways besides.) I want to keep the winter to myself. Would April be too late for your Syracuse lecture season? It got so I was charging two hundred. Do you think I ­ought to take a 10% cut? Or do you agree with Hoover?130 We for our part ­w ill miss Dwight Morrow in our Amherst affairs particularly.131 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Vrest Orton. ALS. Private.]

South Shaftsbury Vt October 23 1931 Dear Vrest: ­Won’t you and your wife come over someday soon and have lunch with us? It w ­ ill be fine to hear from you all about your new books. Perhaps you

130. ​In response to the onset of the ­Great Depression, Herbert Hoover had made efforts to prevent businesses from imposing wage cuts on employees. 131. ​Dwight Whitney Morrow (born in 1873) had died the previous day, October  5. Morrow was a businessman, a partner at JP Morgan & Com­pany, a diplomat (ambassador to Mexico, 1927–1930), and a US senator (R-­New Jersey, 1930–1931). But RF knew him chiefly in his capacity as a member of the Board of Trustees of Amherst College (from which he graduated in 1895).

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had better send a post-­card ahead or telephone on the point of departure if you like to be impulsive. And please send the set of four Vermont books to Carol Frost (my son) at 261 North Canyon Boulevard, Monrovia California and send the bill to me ­here.132 Its a g­ reat set for the l­ ittle state and we dont care who says it isnt. I liked the Ballads least and the Prose Se­lection best. Prithee more of the prose. T ­ here surely must be more like the Perkins and Mrs Royall Taylor [sic] ­things.133 I won­der if the Rev. Leo Leonard Twinem134 St Johns P. E. Parish, Flushing, Long Island, N.Y. wouldnt be able to help you to a book from his collection of early religious writings. He occasionally sends me a bit of the irrisistable [sic]. I’ll show you one when you come over. Oh and I must have four copies of Walter Hard’s book which I felicitate you on being the publisher of.135 T ­ here you have something absolutely lit­er­a­t ure not just relatively to Vermont. The piece about the stone chopping block beats

132. ​The four books constituting the Green Mountain Series ­were (and RF refers to three of them in the letter) Vermont Folk-­Songs & Ballads, eds. Helen  H. Flanders and George Brown (Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Daye Press, 1932); Vermont Verse an Anthology, eds. Gerard Quinn and Vrest Orton (Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Daye Press, 1932); Vermont Prose, a Miscellany, ed. Harold G. Rugg and Arthur W. Peach (Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Daye Press, 1932); and Vermonters: A Book of Biographies, ed. Walter H. Crockett (Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Daye Press, 1932). 133. ​Reverend Nathan Perkins (1749–1838) authored Narrative of a Tour Through the State of Vermont from April 27 to June 12 1789 (first published in 1920), extracts from which appeared in Vermont Prose. Royall Tyler (1757–1826) was a writer and chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court; he authored (among other t­ hings) The Algerine Captive: or, The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill, Six Years a Prisoner Among the Algerines (Walpole, NH: David Carlisle, Jr., 1797), two chapters of which are included in Vermont Prose. RF ­m istakes him for a ­woman or e­ lse for Mary Palmer Tyler (1775– 1866), wife of Royall; she wrote several memoirs of her husband which w ­ ere l­ater collected by her great-­g randdaughter, Helen Tyler Brown, in Grand­m other Tyler’s Book (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925). Among her reminiscences is an account of her husband having courted a young Abigail Smith, who would eventually marry John Adams. 134. ​Above his cursive, RF has printed the name, interlinearly, to make the spelling clear. James “Leo” Leonard Twinem (1890–1968) was an Episcopal priest and gradu­ate of Union Theological Seminary. He also taught En­glish and public speaking at the University of Vermont and wrote poetry and essays about Vermont history (he had, as RF indicates, a vast collection of books). 135. ​ T he Salt of Vermont (Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Daye Press, 1931).

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anything American in a long time.136 Hard is the best poet who has put in a recent appearance. You must make the most of him. One fault I find with the Vermont Poems is that it doesnt show that [it] knows what we have in Walter Hard. (Another is that it falls so flat with Saxe.137 Saxe was one of Vermonts national contributions.) I wish you could get Hard ­really ­going, not only for his sake but for your own. You have something t­ here. Bully for Lewis.138 Thats the way to talk to them liberals. They howl at the injustices of this country and then seize the first opportunity to commit injustice themselves. I hope Lewis convicted them. Good on his head. I suppose he makes a ­mistake in assuming they want the nation deurbanized. They, the likes of them, are all for having it industrialized centralized deindividualized and sovietized ­under a Stalin or other son-­of-­a-­Marx. But never mind. The Nation heard itself characterized. I may be a radical and long for revolution, but I ­shall have to choose the kind of revolution. Always yours Robert Frost

136. ​“A Chopping Block,” related in theme to two of RF’s poems: “The Code” and “Two Tramps in Mud Time.” 137. ​John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887), born in Highgate, Vermont. He wrote satirical and humorous poetry, and his books outsold, at one point, ­t hose of Hawthorne and Tennyson. He was a sought-­a fter lecturer and toured the country. He is best known for his poem “The Rhyme of the Rail.” Saxe was also a ­lawyer and, in 1859, mounted an unsuccessful campaign in the Vermont gubernatorial race. 138. ​Orton explains in Vermont After­noons with Robert Frost: “In 1931 . . . ​I spent considerable time with Sinclair Lewis at his h ­ ouse in Barnard, Vermont, and also in journeys around Vermont. Lewis became incensed, at one point, when The Nation reviewed The Green Mountain Series and, as was (and still is) its wont, sneered at anything that smacked of American ideals and ancient wisdom. Lewis wrote a slashing attack on The Nation and its senseless diatribe against Vermont. This I published in a broadside on September 16, 1931, in an edition ­l imited to 375 copies” (25). Lewis’s shot at The Nation was titled A Letter to Critics. The author of the offending review was Eda Lou Walton; her ire was directed chiefly at Vermonters: A Book of Biographies.

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[To Norman Foerster (1887–1972), American scholar. In 1931, he was the director of the School of Letters and professor of En­glish at the University of Iowa and had recently led the establishment of a semiautonomous program in creative writing that would ­later become the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. ALS. Stanford.]

South Shaftsbury Vt October 25 1931 My dear Foerster: My debt to you is acknowledged. It is too ­g reat to be dealt with by telegraph.139 But ask me anything in payment except to act as a formal judge of poetry. It seems to me I spend half my time excusing myself from judgeships lately. I may tell you in confidence I refused to act on both the Pulitzer and Guggenheim committees of award—­not without giving offense I was afraid. You I am sure w ­ ill take no offense. I never set out in life to be a formal judge of anything. Judgement seems to fail me when it has to be formal. I suppose it becomes too conscientious. You ­w ill understand and indulge me. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Burges Johnson. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt October 26 1931 Dear Johnson: Oh if you are ­going to give me $250, I ­w ill do anything you say. I may even let you have that miserable sonnet, neither sense nor good nonsense as I remember it. Perhaps I had better see it again. Louis ­w ill have to send me a copy.140 I kept none for my protection. Mind you I promise this conditionally on finding it a sufficient warning to every­body not to write in rhyme anymore. 139. ​Reference not entirely clear, but RF likely has this “debt” in mind: Foerster had dedicated his 1930 book ­Toward Standards: A Study of the Pre­sent Critical Movement in American Letters (New York: Farrar & Rinehart) as follows: “To Willa Cather and Robert Frost.” Cather was near the top of RF’s favorite American novelists (and he near the top of her favorite American poets); any public association with her would doubtless have pleased him. 140. ​Johnson, Untermeyer explains, was fond of parody, and devised challenges “to show what a series of arbitrarily rhymed words might suggest to dif­fer­ent poets” (RFLU,

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All I promise positively is to come and lecture to you and anybody ­else you care to invite early in March. But gee nevertheless I would sacrifice the extra fifty not to have to come till April.141 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Untermeyer supplies the date in RFLU. Enclosed with the letter-­ poem is a clipping of a newspaper cartoon showing an anxious and diminutive “World” peering through a telescope labeled the “The ­Future” at a large, bearish figure of “Soviet Rus­sia.” ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [October 26, 1931] Dear Louis: The telescope has come and I am charmed.142 I dont see how on earth I ever farmed A day without a tool so all impor­tant. I have to tell you though (perhaps I oughtnt) That come to get the barrel up and pointed I cant see Hoover as the Lord’s annointed [sic];143 I cant see E.A. Robinsons last book—­144 As yet—­I’ll have to have another look. At first I couldnt even see the moon, And that not just b­ ecause ­there wasnt one; ­T here was according to the almanac. One ­whole night I was pretty well set back.

206). RF had sent his effort to Untermeyer (see the letter of October 1, 1930). It would indeed appear that he had not retained a copy of his own. 141. ​As ­t hings turned out, RF lectured at Syracuse on March 3, 1932. 142. ​See RF’s September 23, 1931, letter to Untermeyer. 143. ​The epithet “the LORD’s anointed” occurs ten times in 1 and 2 Samuel (the ­matter concerns the prophet Samuel’s endeavor to discern who would succeed King Saul, whom he had anointed; divine guidance brings him to David). Herbert Hoover was, of course, defeated in his bid for reelection in 1932. 144. ​Prob­ably Matthias at the Door, published by Macmillan in 1931, of which Untermeyer had a low opinion (see the April 8, 1932, letter to him); or perhaps Robinson’s Selected Poems, from the same publisher in the same year.

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Perhaps the object glass demanded dusting Or the small lenses needed readjusting Perhaps as in the picture Im enclosing Some question of the day was interposing Between me sinful and my hope of heaven But never mind I didnt blaspheme even I had one of the two ­things Shakespeare wanted most. Write on my tombstone for post-­mortem boast: I had—­I had the other fellow’s scope.145 I need nobody ­else’s art, I hope. Yours ever RF. P.S. It ­will take another and entirely separate letter to tell you how much more to me than much scope was the dedication of your able book:146 I’m particularly proud of your ­handling of Longfellow and Emerson not mine a bit—­all yours.147 Some time I want to see you do a small book (say four or five lectures long) on Our Pre­de­ces­sors Now, or Our Past in our Pre­sent. And I liked

145. ​A pun. See sonnet 29: When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trou­ble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope . . . 146. ​ American Poetry from the Beginning to Whitman (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1931), which extended to 827 pages. Untermeyer dedicated it “To Robert Frost, who prompted it on a mountain farm in New Hampshire, and who furnished the final cues on an Adirondack hillside twelve years l­ater.” 147. ​Untermeyer included thirty-­one poems (or extracts from longer poems) by Emerson, and thirty-­t hree poems (or extracts from longer works) by Longfellow. T ­ here is one instance in which he does appear to follow RF’s lead: by including the “Flight into Egypt” section of Longfellow’s The Golden Legend. RF often referred to and quoted it. See also RF to Untermeyer, July 20 and September 6, 1930.

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the Yale Review poem best of any lately.148 So did Cross he told me when I saw him last week.149 R.F.

[To Carol Frost. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. UM.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [November 1,] 1931 Dear Carol: This is an annus mirabilis (won­der year) with us in New E ­ ngland.150 H ­ ere it is November 1st and though it cant be said that we have had no frosts we have had only one or two and t­ hose not very severe. We have had no freeze at all. I have had all the grapes I could eat right along since we came home from the West off the Nigara [sic] vine north of the h ­ ouse.151 ­Today (November 1st take notice and dont forget) I picked a quart of them for Lesley Mama and myself. They are my witnesses to good grapes on the vine in Vermont so late in the autumn. I may as well call ­those the last of them, though ­t here are still a few broken bunches for tomorrow and maybe next day.152 148. ​Untermeyer’s “As Earth Was” appeared in the Yale Review 21 (1931–1932): 71. 149. ​Wilbur Cross edited the Yale Review. On October  12, Wesleyan University (in Middletown, Connecticut) awarded RF an honorary LHD; presumably Cross came up from New Haven to see him. 150. ​As for the parental gloss of so familiar a Latin phrase: RF must have thought twice, or thrice, before making it. Carol had very l­ ittle formal schooling, but it is hard to believe he’d not encountered “annus mirabilis” growing up in the Frost ­house­hold (RF coached his d­ aughter Lesley in Latin during her time at Wellesley). One finds in the letters to Carol an uncertainty of address RF seldom displays elsewhere in his correspondence. 151. ​Actually, “Niagara”: common name of Vitis labrusca (botanical ­family Vitaceae), the most widely cultivated green t­ able grape in North Amer­ic­ a. 152. ​See “October,” in ABW, which concludes: Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow! For the grapes’ sake, if they w ­ ere all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must ­else be lost— For the grapes’ sake along the wall. (CPPP, 35–36)

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­ very ­t hing has hung on, the ­whole month of October has been so quiet. E ­There are still some leaves on the trees. But it has been rainy enough to make us think how sorry you would have been if you had been ­here. I havent mea­sured the rainfall or heard the rec­ord. It must be bucketsful. ­Theres a thick mop of very green grass. It prob­ably hasnt grown much but it has some and I never saw it greener at any time of year. Next year’s hollihocks [sic] have made a rank fall growth. ­There are still marigolds petunias salvias calendulas and phloxes feebly blooming their last in the piazza garden. I suppose this mild fall is sent to ease us gradually from the heat of your western summer into the rigor of our eastern winter. We deserve some consideration from the ele­ments we are such good parents (we claim though we c­ an’t prove it.) I can imagine it must be beginning to green up around you if the rains are on. I suppose the w ­ ater may make some show ­behind the dam in the canyon (or cañon). What’s the coldest ­you’ve had it yet? I mean to keep my promise about the weather rec­ords: but we havent been rich enough to buy a good thermometer. A lot of expenses have come on us at once this month. ­We’ll be freer to spend soon. We are keeping warm on the big ash you felled and cut up and piled for us. I fetch it two pieces at a time one ­under each arm everytime I come up the hill on foot, though I prefer to do it in the dark so the Hawkinses ­won’t catch me in my unfarmerlike ways and make talk the same as they do about Burdella Buck and the old Lyons man who lives with her.153 With acres of woods they could burn, they cut nothing except along the walls and drag that in a tree at a time as they absolutely need it to keep from starving and freezing. They say t­here’s tons of manure around the barn and in the barn up t­here that anyone o ­ ught to be able to buy though Burdella might not be willing to sell it cheap. She has taken to drawing and painting lately and sits up till midnight at it—­just like me at my books. We o ­ ught to have got acquainted with Burdella. Remember how she once wanted Lesley to drive a butchers cart round selling her beef for her?

153. ​Edwin Numan Hawkins (1879–1951), a farmer, his wife Jennie Lind Hawkins (1884–1938), and the spinster Burdella Buck (1874–­?), also a farmer; all ­were neighbors of RF and appear in the same town directory. He may refer also to Edward J. Lyons (1861–­?), a handyman and widower in 1931, living in Bennington (though we have found no evidence that he lived on Buck’s place).

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Before I forget it: a nice ­thing you could do for the Shaws would be to write them out very carefully and clearly all you know and think they should know about raising cultivating h ­ andling and selling sweet peas.154 I can see they are inclined to go on with your business. Make it s­ imple and easy to follow. Emphasize the impor­tant ­things. Tell them about the rotation you planned and about the brush string and wire supports. I tried to tell them a ­little but I didnt know enough. Introduce the subject by mentioning me and telling them I told you of their interest. Mama has prob­ably written you about Dwight and Lesleys new venture with a skiing school at Woodstock Vermont. They are bringing a teacher from Austria. Lesley has moved all her furniture up ­there and went by h ­ ere ­today with her two babies to ­settle for the winter in a farm ­house. It sounds exciting and a big change for Dwight from Wall St. to that. May they prosper.155 Tell us more about the classes in aeronautics and what all this is about your flying. We miss your help. I’m having a furnace chimney built from the cellar up on the north side of the big chimney and leading into the big chimney between the first and second floors. If you ­were within reach I think I would try to save money on the furnace by having you help me put in one from the Montgomery Ward Cata­logue. I ­shall prob­ably fall back on Horton. I got cross with Robinson again on the plastering job in the attic and ­shall have Bentley on the chimney jobs. I’ll forgive Robinson as I have forgiven him before but it w ­ ill take time.156 You spoke of climbing over into the Sierras. Tell us about that sort of ­thing.

154.  RF likely refers to Bennington real-estate agent Walter H. Shaw (1883–1934) and his wife Esther (1896–1982). They had four young children, and, in 1930, lived with Esther’s widowed mother, Delia Smith Graves, but apparently now were renting Carol’s place. Walter comes up again in RF’s October 30, 1932, letter to Carol. 155. ​The Burlington ­Free Press for December 10, 1931, carried the following notice: “The Woodstock Skirunners Club, first of its kind in the United States, has been founded at Woodstock; J. Dwight Francis, New York, ski expert, the founder. The club ­w ill have the ser­v ices of Fritz Steri, Jr., of Greenwald, Switzerland, one of the finest mountaineers and down-­h ill runners in the Oberland.” The club persisted for several years, but the marriage (already troubled) did not: Lesley would divorce Francis in 1932. See also RF to Lesley, early fall 1932. 156. ​David H. Robinson (1879–1972) and Marshall A. Bentley (1850–1954), both stonemasons in South Shaftsbury. Thomas W. Horton (1878–1946) was a plumbing and heating man in North Bennington.

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You are right about Prescotts reading. He must break new ground. But the g­ reat t­ hing is not to betray the least impatience with him and get his mind para­lyzed with fear or dislike in some part. The way to do is to make the lessons short and lively. Say a few in­ter­est­ing t­hings between his efforts. Let him get some satisfaction e­ very lesson, so he w ­ ill gain or keep confidence. Affectionately Papa

[To Warren R. Brown (1873–1957), American businessman and realtor in Amherst. ALS. Jones.]

S. Shaftsbury Vermont November 7 1931 Dear Brown: We think Dr Goodell is giving us and you are getting us a h ­ ouse cheap and 157 we are much pleased with our bargain. I am enclosing one hundred dollars to bind it. I want the deed made out to us both. A mortgage of two thousand should be enough and I am not sure that it wouldnt be a graceful t­ hing for me to ask Mr Andrews and the college to take it.158 As my good friends they seem to like in­ter­est­i ng themselves in my affairs. I w ­ ill come down between trains on Tuesday to see about this. Would it be too much to ask you to take me off the 12.09 train at Greenfield? John Cone (my son-­in-­law) can put me back on some other l­ater. If one hundred isnt enough to bind such a good bargain I can give you more on Tuesday. Sincerely yours Robert Frost We could have lunch together in Greenfield.

157. ​The ­house RF bought at 15 Sunset Ave­nue in Amherst. 158. ​Charles A. Andrews (1872–1940), Amherst College trea­sur­er.

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[To William Griffith. ALS. Jones.]

S. Shaftsbury Vt November 9 1931 Dear Mr Griffith You have my permission to use ­those four poems in your garden book.159 I’m pleased to have them noticed by you. You w ­ ill of course get my publisher’s permission also. I’m still pleasantly reminiscent of where I saw you last and of how ironical you w ­ ere about being ­there.160 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Burges Johnson. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt November 19 1931 Dear Johnson: Didnt I tell you more than two weeks ago that I would have to come on March 3rd or 4th ­under the circumstances (viz. $250)?161 I particularly hate to have lost that letter not only for the loss to lit­er­a­t ure (I was at ­g reat pains to compose it wittily-­worthy) but also for the loss of confidence it makes me feel in the local postmaster and the postmaster general in general.162 I think someone must have rifled it for the large sum of money mentioned in it twice. 159. ​ T he Garden Book of Verse, coedited with Frances Johnstone Paris. See the March 23, 1929, letter to Griffith. Only one of RF’s poems, “Lodged” (from WRB), is in the book. Accompanying the poem is a note by William Lyon Phelps (culled from his The Advance of En­glish Poetry in the Twentieth C ­ entury [New York: Dodd, Mead, 1918]): “In spite of his preoccupation with the exact value of oral words, [RF] is not a singing lyrist. ­There is not much bel canto in his volumes. Nor do any of his poems seem spontaneous. He is a thoughtful man, given to meditation; the meanest flower or a storm-­be-­d raggled bird ­w ill lend him material for poetry” (64). 160. ​In a classroom at Amherst; see RF to Griffith, March 23, 1929. 161. ​See RF’s October 26, 1931, letter to Johnson. 162. ​The letter appears to have survived. See RF to Johnson, October 6, 1931 (and of course the letter mentioned in the previous note).

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If you dont get this letter let me know as you did with the other and I w ­ ill write you still a third; though I have to confess my inspiration is about spent on this subject. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Carol Frost. ALS. UM.]

S. Shaftsbury Vt Nov 19 1931 Dear Carol: You tell me your feats. I o ­ ught to tell you some of mine or my car’s. The old t­ hing did the hundred miles from our ­house in South Shaftsbury to Lesleys in Pomfret163 (just outside of Woodstock, this state) in less than three hours and back the hundred miles in two hours and three quarters. We went into second only twice coming and not once ­going. The average was nearly thirty-­five miles an hour. I was surprised. I didnt know I was travelling so fast. I must have been creeping up in my speed. I’ll have to bring myself down, or first ­thing I know I’ll rival Dwight in his fifty mile average.164 Dwight had a serious collision with an old man near Manchester on his way up through ­here. Neither was hurt badly but both cars ­were pretty completely wrecked. The old man was coming over a rise on the wrong side of the road and I suppose Dwight was speeding. The Manchester police exhonorated [sic] Dwight. I’ll never forget the speed we got up to in pursuit of the fellow that insulted us that day near Pomona. The weather is ­going easy on us ­because we havent been able to make up our minds what kind of heating plant to put in. We are still depending on the kitchen stove and the big open fireplace. We have had only one killing frost to date (November 19th) though that lasted two days and nights and froze half an inch of ice on the pond. A skunk drowned itself in the pond—­I think by

163. ​In Windsor County, Vermont (as is Woodstock), seventy-­five miles northeast of South Shaftsbury. 164. ​Lesley’s husband Dwight Francis.

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r­ unning on to the ice when it was thawing too thin to hold it. Very likely Winnie was at its heels.165 We changed from Robinson to Bentley for the piece of chimney I told you I was having built from the cellar bottom up to about the second floor against the main chimney and leading into it. Robinson was bad in one way. ­There was never finish to anything he did. He was crude. Bentley does neat work but he has his defects. He takes my check in payment for his work goes down to the dens on Pleasant St in Bennington gets drunk gets knocked on the head and robbed of ­every cent he has on him including my check for $60. The next day he let me know and I telephoned the bank in Amherst to have them stop payment on it. That saves me any loss. It would be the loss of any bank that was foolish enough to cash it. We have heard that it has been presented at a bank somewhere with a forged endorsement. This is the nearest I ever came to any trou­ble with a check. Bentley says he was attacked on the street. He may have been. But I think likely he was too drunk to know where he was attacked. The police are trying to make it out it was in a ­house, a speak-­easy. Bentley says he knows or can describe the men—­ there ­were two of them—­who robbed him. They have one he says was in it. I’d better have stuck to Robinson.166 That was a fine letter about the climb into the mountains. I’m reminded of your mountains almost e­ very day by something in the New York Times about the d­ oings in astronomy at Mount Wilson. That is one of the most exciting places in the world just now. Einstein is ­going back t­ here to work on his theories of the universe. He says gravitation and acceleration (speeding up) are the same t­ hing and gravitation and curvature are the same t­ hing. You can see how gravitation and acceleration may be closely connected by the way you feel heavier when an elevator speeds up with you. I like to think of all this ­going on over you.167 It takes the curse off having Hollywood so near. 165. ​Winnie was a black Newfoundland that the Frosts had acquired in 1929. 166. ​For ­t hese men: see RF to Carol, November 1, 1931. 167. ​More than sixty articles about the observatory at Mount Wilson—in Pasadena, not far from where Carol and his ­family lived—­ran in the New York Times in 1931 alone. The most recent, published on the day RF wrote this letter, detailed the first-­ever attempt to view the Leonid meteor shower from a high-­a ltitude plane. An article in the Times for September 29, 1931, reported that Einstein had booked passage from Germany directly to California, via the Panama Canal, to continue work he’d begun at the observatory e­ arlier in the year, when he’d conferred with Edwin Hubble about the latter’s confirmation—­a lso at Mount Wilson—of Georges Lemaître’s Big Bang theory.

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We are terribly sorry about Lillian’s m ­ other being so sick. Elinor saw her and talked with her the day we went to Woodstock: It is the kind of attack that she may slowly recover from. But of course it is serious.168 She has had a good deal to trou­ble her I’m afraid. Did Prescott get my long printed letter? I got a cramp ­doing all ­those stiff lines. I’ll do it easier next time.169 The h ­ ouse looked fine in the picture and almost like home. We lived in it so long ourselves. You got it wreathed just right in the pepper tree and the live oak. We ­were sure the fresh paint showed. It’s a lovely place and a ­g reat piece of luck. ­We’re all glad from ­here to Colorado that Lillian has de­cided to go to bed for the cure. Affectionately Papa We mailed three autographed books from Dorothy to Lillian ­today.170

[To Warren R. Brown. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt Nov 19 1931 Dear Brown: Yes let’s have the lines run and the corners marked so I s­ hall know how far I can go in my gardening and where I must stop. If I am ­going to be much of my time on a town lot I s­ hall want all the elbow room my deed allows me. Mrs Frosts full name is Elinor Miriam Frost. I hope to have every­thing arranged to be in Amherst and close the deal on Tuesday November 25th. But if I find it hard to get away, would it be all right a week or so l­ater? I expect to have to be in Boston, Lawrence, and Exeter be-

168. ​Lillie Belle Haskins Labatt (1873–1931). She died of a ce­re­bral hemorrhage on November 20—­t he day ­a fter RF wrote this letter—­a nd was buried in Arlington, Vermont. Her husband Francis Labatt had died in 1922, at the age of sixty-­six. 169. ​­Either a letter now lost, or, much less probably, RF’s (circa) early March 1931 letter to Prescott (done in block letters). 170. ​Books by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

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tween Thanksgiving and December 6th.171 So that it ­w ill have to be before or a­ fter that time out. I’ll talk to you about this on the telephone just as soon as I have the permission I am waiting for from my friend to take my money out of his bank in Lawrence.172 I may decide to let Mr Andrews take a 3000 dollar mortgage if he w ­ ill.173 We like it that the place dates back to 1874. That makes it exactly our age174 and explains its attraction for us. What­ever its style may be said to be it is prob­ ably about the style of our minds. It is certainly our period to a day. Call it November 25th ­unless I have to change it by telephone. Survivorship deed is right.175 Always yours Robert Frost I’ve just spoken to Mr Andrews about the mortgage. He says 3000 ­w ill be all right and he ­w ill be expecting to hear from you.

[To Richard Thornton. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury VT [mid-­November 1931] Dear Mr Thornton: If you are absolutely sure it w ­ on’t hurt you in the exchequer I believe I ­w ill accept your kind offer of that other seven hundred on last year now. I seem in fairly deep at the old ­house in Amherst.

171. ​RF and Elinor w ­ ere in Boston from December 1 to 3. On the sixth, RF read at Phillips Acad­emy, Exeter. 172. ​The friend is Wilbur E. Rowell, executor of RF’s paternal grand­father’s estate, and occasional ­legal counsel to the ­family. RF and Elinor stayed with the Rowells at their Lawrence, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, home on December 4. 173. ​See RF to Brown, November 7, 1931. 174. ​Unusual in its specificity. RF had always believed himself born in 1875—­u ntil his biographer, Lawrance Thompson, placed the year accurately (as RF does h ­ ere). As of 1935, RF still set his birthdate at 1875, as his “ ‘Letter’ to The Amherst Student” indicates (he thanks the paper for felicitating him on his sixtieth birthday). See RF to the Amherst Student, (circa) March 21, 1935. 175. ​A deed whose terms provide for the transfer of owner­ship without recourse to probate court.

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It looks more and more certain you’ll have to show me North Carolina next fall.176 T ­ hings have got to stop vibrating the width of the continent for us, if I am ­going to do the remaining half of my life’s work. I see ­there is open criticism of my not bulking up. Bulk up is it? Let them take care they dont provoke me to a five-­foot shelf full. I hope you and Mrs Thornton had a good ­r ide round and reached home the better for it. ­We’ll be seeing you soon. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Herschel Brickell. ALS. Prince­ton.]

S. Shaftsbury Vermont November 21 1931 Dear Mr Brickell: Of course I ­shall be only too happy to sign my name to ­those books for Mrs Tinker,177 you, the firm, and myself. The best place to send them is to John Paine Cone, 5 Kendrick Place Amherst Mass and the best time is right off soon to catch me in passage. Your letter was the first I heard of any honor from the Acad­emy.178 Other letters have mentioned it since. Mr Thornton who made us a short visit ­today, told us more about it from what he had read in the papers. Very in­ter­est­i ng. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

176.  Thornton’s family had a place in North Carolina. 177. ​Frances (McKee) Tinker. For more on her, see the close of RF’s May 25, 1931, letter to Lankes. Her husband, Edward Tinker, collaborated on a number of proj­ects with Brickell, due to their shared interests in Latin American cultural affairs. 178. ​The Russell Loines Award for Poetry, worth $1,000, given by the National Institute of Arts and Letters. RF was its first recipient, for CP 1930.

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[To Wilbur Rowell (1862–1946), American ­lawyer and banker, the executor of the Estate of William Prescott Frost Sr. (RF’s paternal grand­father). ALS. UVA.]

South Shaftsbury Vt November 21 1931 Dear Mr Rowell: Your kind letter has just come; and thanks for the invitation to visit you Friday December 4th and the offer to see to getting me the money from the bank. I ­shall have to be in Amherst Wednesday and Thursday the 25th and 26th and I should like to ­settle this business of the h ­ ouse then if we can make it con­ve­n ient. ­A ren’t you mistaken about interest days? My book seems to say May 1st and November 1st. If November 1st is right ­there is nothing to lose by drawing the money out now. Any way I can leave that to you. I have written an order for the two thousand payable to you on the chance that it is right; and may I ask you to make the check over to me and send it to my friend and agent W. R. Brown, Savings Bank Bldg, Amherst, Mass. It w ­ ill simply get forwarded to S. Shaftsbury if it is addressed to me in Amherst and of course I dont want it forwarded. All this can wait if it has to till Friday or even l­ater if necessary or better for any reason, though as I say I should like to wind it up on Wednesday after­noon. I have made you so much trou­ble so often that this seems ­little in comparison and ­won’t apologize for it. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Vrest Orton. ALS. Private.]

S. Shaftsbury Nov 21 1931 Check enclosed179 Dear Vrest: You dont come over the mountain, and w ­ e’re sorry. You must be busy, and ­we’re glad. We hear of that press of yours on ­every hand. I have good hope you’ll make its mark.180 179. ​For the four books Orton sent, at RF’s request, to Carol in Monrovia, California. For this, and for other details spoken of in the letter, see RF to Orton, October 26, 1931. 180. ​The Stephen Daye Press, Brattleboro, Vermont.

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Now ­we’re g­ oing away for a week or so to s­ ettle businesses [sic] and by the time we get back snow may have closed the pass for plea­sure driving. In that case consider our invitation commuted to one on us at Amherst during our three months in residence t­ here. W ­ e’ll be easily reached from Brattleboro by train what­ever the weather. I want to see you. ­T here are several ­t hings I wanted to talk with you about. A short one of them I can get in h ­ ere. I should think it might be a good idea to send a copy of Hard’s book to Louis Untermeyer, Elizabethtown, N.Y. And I should send him the Sinclair Lewis letter to The Nation too.181 He’s worth in­ter­est­i ng in what you are at. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To John Bartlett. RF enclosed with the letter a photo of President Calvin Coo­lidge sharpening a scythe blade on a grindstone at his farm in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. UVA.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa November 21, 1931] Dear John: The enclosed picture of Cal in his smock and boots o ­ ught to make you more of an American if not a New En­glander. ­There is something so touching in seeing a Republican try to pose as a Demo­crat. Signs like this (pretenses and poses) tell us that the Bolsheviki are coming; the real­ity has gone out of the old order we grew up in and gave our hearts to. But never mind; ­we’re not politicians: we d­ on’t care too much. It isnt as if we had signed the Declaration and voted for the Constitution. It’s no frame-up of ours. Let it all go to pieces. ­There’s still the comparative climate of Vermont Colorado and California to think of. Did you see Menkens [sic] statistical quest of the worst state in the Union in the last Mercury?182 181. ​For Lewis and Hard, see RF to Orton, October 23, 1931. 182. ​Charles Angoff and H. L. Mencken’s “The Worst American State” appeared in the American Mercury in a series of three articles from September to November  1931. Presenting 104 ­tables of statistical data in a wide array of subjects, Angoff and Mencken concluded that Mas­sa­c hu­setts ranked as the best state and that Mississippi “seems to be without a serious rival to the la­men­ta­ble pre-­eminence of the Worst American State.”

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You’ll never seem so far away again. Ever yours Rob

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. Prince­ton.]

South Shaftsbury Vt Nov 24 1931 Dear Mr Thornton: And another ­matter.183 Would you mind letting me see Morton’s plea?184 That fellow disturbs my peace of mind. Didnt see you enough—­hope to see you more soon. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Frederic Melcher. TG. UVA.]

[Boston, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [December 4, 1931] FREDERIC MELCHER EDITOR OF PUBLISHERS WEEKLY R R BOWKER CO 62 W 45 FOR THE LOVE OF LIT­ER­A­T URE PLEAD WITH DASHIELL AND CANBY NOT TO BLAME ME TOO MUCH IF I FIND MYSELF UNEQUAL TO PRESIDING OVER DINNERS185 I SHOULD

183. ​Thornton’s reply to this letter (dated November  27, 1931) alludes to an e­ arlier “note” on the subject of the use of RF’s poems in a fraternity magazine. We have not been able to locate this. 184. ​David Morton (1886–1957), a teacher at Amherst. His plea relates to Morton’s Six for Them, published by the Poetry Society of Amherst College in 1931—­a short anthology of poems in defense of animal rights. 185. ​See RF to Melcher, January 16, 1932, and December 30, 1934. RF refers h ­ ere to Alfred Dashiell (1901–1970), managing editor of Scribner’s Magazine, and of course to Henry Seidel Canby. Both then served on the executive committee of PEN International (as did Melcher). PEN was organ­i zing a banquet.

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HAVE KNOWN THAT WAS WHAT I WAS LETTING MYSELF IN FOR MUST BE GOT OUT OF OFFICE WITHOUT MAKING A NOISE186 ROBERT FROST

[To Herschel Brickell. An article mentioning that RF received the Russell Loines Prize is enclosed with the letter. ALS. Prince­ton.]

Philadelphia Dec 12 1931 Dear Mr Brickell: Harrison Morris187 gave me the enclosed to help you in telling the world.188 The emendations are his. He says you can advertise the award as much as you like. He thinks the magnitude of the prize is impor­tant. ­People should be made to understand that it ­isn’t just one more of the ­little prizes the country is flooded with. He says the reason no story was made of my getting it was the illness of Mrs Vanamee secretary to the president of the Acad­emy.189 I wish

186. ​Melcher jotted down this reply, in pencil, on the tele­g ram: “Lit­er­a­t ure must be saved. The ­eager PEN officers are anxious to make a good impression on the Connecticut governor. If you say no real loudly ­t hey’ll prob­ably stop. ­You’ve done your best for international good ­w ill among authors by allowing use of your name at mast-­head. Stop. Tomorrow I try to see t­ hese raiders on your peace and quiet. It would be nice to see you though. With regards. Fred Melcher.” The governor of Connecticut was, at the time, RF’s friend, Wilbur Cross (editor of the Yale Review). 187. ​Harrison Smith Morris (1856–1948), poet and biographer, Philadelphia-­based industrialist, editor, and patron of the arts. Morris, in his capacity as trea­surer of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, had officially informed RF of the Loines Award (although as RF noted in his letter of November 21, 1931, Brickell in fact told him first). The formal pre­sen­ta­t ion of the award was made at a reception on December 11, 1931. 188. ​An item from the Philadelphia Ledger dated December 12, 1931. The article reports that RF was given a $1,000 award by the National Institute of Arts and Letters at the “home of Robert Von Moschzisker” (an eminent Pennsylvania jurist and Frost ­family friend). The “emendations” to which RF refers are ­t hese (and they are RF’s, not Morris’s, of course): “ ‘Robert Frost is one of the three outstanding poets of Amer­i­ca,’ Dr. [William Lyon] Phelps said last night in an address before the Philadelphia Forum at the Acad­emy of ­Music. The o ­ thers, he said, ­were Vachel Lindsay, who read ­here this week, and Edwin Arlington Robinson.” To RF’s embarrassment, Phelps’s remarks ­were widely reported. 189. ​Grace Davis Vanamee (1876–1946), of the American Aacdemy of Arts and Letters (a ­sister organ­ization of the National Institute of Arts and Letters). In 1931, its president was Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947).

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that besides any general publicity you give it you could get it into a straight advertisement like this in a few places: Robert Frost’s Collected Poems Loines Prize of the National Institute 1931 Pulitzer Prize 1931 Would that be too much to ask? Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa December 18, 1931] Dear Mr Thornton: You said you wanted to keep this.190 It proved worth seeing. I had a funny adventure of the same kind in Philadelphia. The editor of a National Business Magazine (I think he called it191) called me on the telephone to say that he was publishing an editorial on my having had the Loines prize in his next number and would I like a few copies. All right he would send a boy round for my O.K. I smelled something and sure enough what the boy brought round for me to sign was an order for 600 copies at 35¢ a copy—210 dollars’ worth. I ­didn’t sign. I had the Law on my side in that I was staying in the law’s h ­ ouse.192 He called me again to argue how much an unsolicited testimonial ­ought to be worth to me. We all have to live. We enjoyed seeing you both and all. You must come to our h ­ ouse again soon. Merry Christmas. Sincerely yours Robert Frost I wrote Brickell Harrison Morris would be pleased to have you give the Loines Prize award any publicity you can.

190. ​Presumably a clipping to do with the prize. 191. ​We have not been able to trace a magazine of this, or any similar, name published out of Philadelphia in the early 1930s. RF was prob­ably right in smelling a scam. 192.  Again, with Robert von Moschzisker (1870–1939).

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[To Louis Untermeyer. Untermeyer supplies the date in RFLU. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [December 19, 1931] Dear Louis: I hope you got an uninfluenced judgement from Sara. I ­shall feel better justified and so ­w ill you in delivering the blow it must be to the MacKayes. The poem was fairly good, but was too generous and impulsive a choice for so deliberate a book.193 I can put myself in the MacKayes’ place. Every­thing downtrodden in their nature ­w ill rise to cry robbery at being done out of an honor already within their grasp. Beware their fury. But you have the practiced bravery of a regular and dont even have to summons the heroic to face your duty. (Im glad its yours, not mine.) The poem would never have done for your tail-­piece anyway. It would have been the only poem a lot of p­ eople would have read in the ­whole book—­accustomed as they are from their novel-­reading to look first and find out how a book comes out. You can see I must have a bad conscience in the business—­I talk so much. I suppose at bottom away down in my heart I am incurably skeptical about anything being accepted or rejected on its merits. If anyone doesnt like anything of mine I am sure from of old, it is b­ ecause he h ­ asn’t met me or b­ ecause I havent liked something of his, for e­ very reason but a purely critical. Such am I a­ fter fifty six years spent in arbitrariness among the arbitrary. Let him that is without stone among you cast the first ­thing he can lay his hands on.194 If I have praise I dont deserve I say nothing and accept it to compensate for having had blame I ­don’t deserve. I even go further in my optimism: if I have praise I dont deserve I say nothing and accept it to compensate for someone’s ­else having had blame he doesnt deserve. Thus injustice cancels injustice and our plea­sure is unalloyed in this easy winter weather while it lasts.195

193. ​The passage concerns the submission of a poem by Christy MacKaye (1909–2002), the youn­gest ­daughter of RF’s friend Percy MacKaye, for inclusion in Louis Untermeyer’s anthology, The Book of Living Verse: En­glish and American Poetry from the Thirteenth ­Century to the Pre­sent Day (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932). American poet Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) served as a contributing editor for the anthology. RF, Untermeyer, and Teasdale concurred in their rejection of the poem. 194. ​John 8:7. 195. ​In its December 26, 1931, number, the Brattleboro Reformer (Brattleboro, Vermont) reported that the region was having its “warmest Christmas in ten years at least” (1).

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I read what you said about Mrs Todd’s letters of Emily with admiration for your acuteness.196 You are at the height of your powers and ready for the next step beyond the splendid introductions to the poets of your American Poetry before Whitman.197 Not for me to say too definitely what it ­will be, but surely some sort of original interpretations of a few of your favorite ­g reat ones of any and all times. How someone is to be understood, and if not so understood how he w ­ ill be wholly missed. You have the individuality to consult for an original impression. You have the language and the strength of w ­ ill to have it your own way. You have the scholar in you not to go off in generalizations at half-­cock. You know you are unfolding into a scholarship you have no right to not having “been to college.” One t­ hing to say for James Truslow Adams (my mild aversion for the moment): he is a better scholar b­ ecause a livelier a less deadened by school than any of the academics.198 He has the freedom of the realm as you never get it in the teacher-­taught. He has come to learning as you come to the ­table, not the conference round ­table, but the dinner ­table. You could show him the way in the historical-­literary. He is better than the hack Freudian explanator. Of course we all have a policeman But what we want’s a release-­man. That bunk fadeth. But listen to him explaining our lawlessness. He no longer trading on Freud no longer ascribes it to Puritanism bursting through its age-­ long repressions. He gives someone credit for the better idea that it is a lingering frontierism. But he says that is only partly it. He says we are worse than the other frontiersmen, the Canadians and the Australians. It must be b­ ecause as every­one knows we ­were provoked into lawlessness by British ill-­treatment of colonies before we taught the British good treatment of colonies. The Canadians and Australians came ­later and profited by what we taught the British. Not so original. He trades on the commonplace assumption of history that the British or anyone e­ lse have treated l­ater [sic] day colonies better for the

196. ​A reference to Untermeyer’s introduction—­which had drawn the attention of Dickinson scholars—to Dickinson’s poems in his A Critical Anthology: Modern American Poetry, Modern British Poetry (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1930). T ­ here, Untermeyer subtly, though decisively, ranks Mabel Loomis Todd above Martha Dickinson Bianchi as a scholar of Emily Dickinson. 197. ​ American Poetry from the Beginnings to Whitman (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931). 198. ​For more on Adams, see the sonnet (and the notes) accompanying RF’s October 1, 1930, letter to Untermeyer.

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American revolution.199 Has Ireland liked the way she was ruled? Has India? Australia would have gone to war if strong enough to stop E ­ ngland’s using it as a penal colony. Ireland has gone to war. India is ­going.200 The dictum is too unoriginal too unexamined to base another on. Let’s have a try at it ourselves since ­trials are ­free and the ­free mind is known by the way it makes them always fresh. We are lawless b­ ecause, in theory and largely in practice, we are all of the upper class which has in all times been above the law of marriage life and property. Our society is a truncated cone. We cut the point off and ­little points broke out all over the resultant plateau. We are like a lot of hens that start crowing and treading each other ­because ­there are no roosters in the barn yard. Gee I have run on. All of this is just to indicate the realm I think of you as disporting yourself in. Only you’ll be better grounded than Adams and I. You have an awful solidity in lit­er­a­t ure—in all the arts. And you have an American mind for which reason I am the more yours ever Robert Frost Adams has a would-be British mind like a bad Rhodes scholar. Addendum Woe is me for Vachel.201 I feel more as if I had lost a child (with all sorts of foolish l­ ittle ways) than a b­ rother and fellow artist. It comes near me. Memento mori, the church says. I do. I ­w ill now more and more anyway. To the young death is what it is to Poe, macabre: Someone in a poem he sent to me lately calls it tender. It is subduing.

199. ​This is topical: a week ­earlier, on December 11, 1931, the Statute of Westminster had received royal assent. This established legislative in­de­pen­dence for the British Dominions: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and (pertinent to what RF says l­ater in the letter) the Irish ­Free State. Also pertinent is the fact that India was not covered by the statute. Irish attitudes ­toward the legislation ­were complicated, ­because, for some time, the Irish state had not acknowledged the authority the statute now formally abolished. 200. ​The Irish War of In­de­pen­dence (1919–1921), leading to the foundation of the Irish ­Free State in 1922. (From a certain perspective, of course, the fact that Northern Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom meant that the British continued to have a colonial presence on the island of Ireland.) As for India: tensions w ­ ere high with ­Great Britain at the time. The AP ran an article on December 4, 1931, ­u nder the title “Gandhi Hints of India War.” Talk of an impending war for Indian in­ de­ pen­ dence filled the papers throughout December. 201. ​Vachel Lindsay had committed suicide on December 5.

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[To Richard Thornton. TG. Prince­ton.]

SOUTH SHAFTSBURY VT 1931 DEC 19 PLEASE SEND ­TODAY IF POS­SI­BLE THREE COLLECTED THREE SELECTED POEMS ONE VILLERS [sic] SEADOGS202 ROBERT FROST

[To Ruth Suckow (1892–1960), American author. Suckow was a prolific writer of novels and short stories, most of them set in her native Iowa. ALS. Iowa.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont December 24 1931 Dear Miss Suckow: Instead of sending you a Christmas card why d­ on’t I write a small letter to you in your small mid-­western town by the big river where we like to think of you and your husband ­after your long tolerant visit in a small New ­England town, and tell you what I think of your big book?203 I dont know why but my mind was all set for it to be for or against something, the small town, marriage, rotarianism, Puritanism, nationalism, Americanism, or destiny. And it isnt: it proves to be without guile or thesis. It is just stories of life vividly restored, each one satisfied if it is true to its inward self. That is the way I like stories and should wish my own always to be. Never mind whom you resemble and excel: you are a full fledged importance uncomparatively. Your first discoverer must be proud of you.204 Elinor and I, l­ater discoverers, are even 202. ​ Sea-­Dogs of ­Today, by the Australian author and mari­ner Alan Villiers, published by Henry Holt in 1931. 203. ​The husband is Ferner Nuhn, whom Suckow had married in 1929. The small Midwestern town is Cedar Falls, on the Cedar River, a tributary of the Iowa River (and therefore a subtributary of the Mississippi). The “big book” is ­Children and Older ­People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931). Suckow had presented RF with a copy, inscribed with the last line from “Hyla Brook”: “We love the t­ hings we love for what they are.” 204. ​Possibly John T. Frederick (1893–1975), who had published Suckow’s first story in the Midland literary magazine; Frederick had recently taken up a position at the University of Notre Dame. But more likely RF has in mind H. L. Mencken, who had published Suckow extensively in the Smart Set and the American Mercury.

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gladder to know you than we have been. How you can write and remember. Your story about the l­ ittle girl who sent herself valentines205 almost makes me want to tell one about a ­little boy who went to a birthday party he hadnt been invited to. Talk about anguish.206 —­Our best to you both Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Ray Baker Harris (1907–1963), American scholar, author, and librarian. The letter is neither headed nor signed, and RF makes so many false starts, cancellations, and interlinear additions (some illegible), that he likely copied his reply out again before mailing it—if in fact he mailed it: we have been unable to locate any other, more finished draft. Date derived from internal evidence. AL. DCL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa December 28, 1931] I wish I could save you by one stroke from all such considerations.207 It wont make a figs difference in my opinion ­whether you ever see Amer­i­ca from the outside or not. It ­won’t make a writer of you to go abroad or even a better writer of you. It wont do ­either to stay at home. When I went to ­England at 38 years of age I was too innocent or as they say nowadays unsophisticated to have thought of it as a question, To go or not to go? I merely went and took my f­ amily along to see the country. The furthest t­ hing from my mind was to get anything. As it turned out fate had sent me not as an importer of influ-

205. ​“The Valentine Box,” from ­Children and Older ­People. 206. ​Presumably a boyhood memory of RF himself. 207. ​Harris, an aspiring writer, says in his letter (dated December 26, 1931): “I dislike to add to the burdens of your busy life, but I cannot put aside the temptation to write and ask you about the advantages which you found or d­ idn’t find in the experience of living [in ­England from 1912 to 1915]. . . . ​I have felt that it would be a valuable experience to me at about this time to sever connections with the ­people and ­t hings I’ve been used to . . . ​ and to get the perspective on Amer­i­ca which can only be had from distance and by absence” (letter held at DCL). When he wrote RF, Harris was working as an editor at a magazine in Washington, DC (though he d­ oesn’t say which one). W ­ hether Harris went to E ­ ngland or Eu­rope we cannot say, but he did publish a number of books, including several about the Freemasons (he worked at the [Masonic] House of the T ­ emple in Washington, DC), a book about the 1920 Republican National Convention at which Harding was nominated, and a book about Harding’s youth in Ohio.

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ence or anything ­else but as an exporter. I left a book or two with them over ­there and at least one good writer of my “school.”208 But even that was not intentional. I didnt go with the idea of publishing or of appealing from our courts to theirs as higher. I had never tried to publish a book at home. The extent of my bad luck was with a few magazine editors. I just happened to try a book in ­England (and that before I had met or made a single friend—­ absolutely) and happened to find ­favor and so have a very good time and rest a debtor of the British in a way forever. Search myself the closest I ­can’t give you any better reason for our expedition than a hope we had of living cheaply and so holding out longer on what we had ahead and no salary coming in.209 I’m the most haphazard person in the world. I couldnt trust myself to plan for my improvement any more than I would trust anyone e­ lse to plan it for me. I should be afraid I should only defeat my own cunning and spoil my fools luck. I cant beg you strongly enough not to nurse your nature individuality or c­ areer. Go it the same as you eat, I hope with no talk about dieting. I’d go to E ­ ngland if I liked. I’d stay in if I liked. If in terrible doubt I’d do neither. I wouldnt let doubt torture me—­not at least till I got very very old. Go it I say. If you are g­ oing to be a writer the only impor­tant ­thing is to learn how to have impor­tant or graceful or some kind of ideas and how to stick them into p­ eople. Or so I say. Ideas ideas. We’ve got to find out what it is to have them and then have them. Or so I say and its more than I say to most but my excuse is I found your letter very in­ter­est­i ng.

[To Warren R. Brown. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt December 29 1931 Dear Brown Happy New Year to you and all other good business men and forty dollars (enclosed) to you. Is that all the money I owe you?210 208. ​ A BW and NB ­were the books, and Edward Thomas the “good writer,” of RF’s “school” (though Thomas was killed in action at Arras in 1917). 209. ​The text so far is written on the blank back of Harris’s typed letter; the rest is scrawled in the margins of the letter itself. 210. ​For brokering RF’s purchase of his new h ­ ouse at 15 Sunset Ave­nue, Amherst (the “Goddell place” mentioned ­here).

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I am having slight trou­ble about my boundary on one side.211 Some p­ eople who have just bought a wood lot t­ here are cutting what looks to me over my line and I find on enquiry are intending to cut in further on me. The place is all criss crossed with barbed wire and rail fences and stone wall that they have been told as I was told to disregard. I dont blame them much that they are very much at sea. I am having a surveyor run the line for them and me—­ something I never had before till I bought the Goodell place.212 I am getting the habit. Always yours sincerely Robert Frost

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. Year derived from internal evidence. ALS. Jones.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] January 7 [1932] Dear Edward: My dates at Bowdoin Bates and possibly Exeter are March 21st to 25th inclusive.213 I’ve been asked to them but it remains to get them all in. How does this accord with your plan? I should like to see Gene Tunney. So also should I like to see you. You know which more. I say this without prejudice to the cultured pugilist.214 A Happy New Year to You. Ever yours Robert Frost

211. ​For more on “boundary” trou­bles at his Gully Farm in South Shaftsbury, see RF to Brown, January 12, 1932. 212. ​See RF to Brown, November 19, 1931. 213. ​RF spent three days at Bowdoin College, lecturing and holding conferences with students (March 21–23). On March 25, he gave a reading at Phillips Exeter Acad­emy (Exeter, New Hampshire). He did not, on this trip, make it to Bates. 214. ​James Joseph “Gene” Tunney (1897–1978), the American boxer who twice defeated Jack Dempsey, was then serializing his memoir, A Man Must Fight, in Collier’s Weekly; in the fall of 1932, Houghton Mifflin published it as a book. Advance press stressed the fact that Tunney had composed the book without the help of ghost writers. Lewis had invited him to speak at the University of New Hampshire.

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[To Wade Van Dore. Dated by Van Dore in Life of the Hired Man. ALS. BU.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [January 9, 1932] Dear Wade: It looks now as if we would light out of ­here on Friday January 15th 1932 for a lecture at Rutland first and then go from t­ here ­either to Lesley for a day or two in Woodstock 215 and from ­there to Amherst or directly from Rutland to Amherst. So if you are still of a mind to come and take care of the place it would be a good idea for you to come on Wednesday January 13 1932 (not 1931 nor 1933) for an eve­n ing or two’s talk and a walk around the farm for instructions. I s­ hall plan to be up once to see you and perhaps read to the Parent Teachers Association of the village. They want me to and while putting them off I’m afraid I have promised to. One t­ hing I want to show you is the bound­ aries of the farm especially in the woods where an attempt has been made by some Bennington riffraff to cut my best trees. We’ve had the surveyor run the line fresh and every­thing is all clear now but the esses of bees216 ­w ill bear watching. If I hadnt happened on them just in the nick of time and had gone away and left the place vacant they would have stripped me. I ­can’t meet you anywhere with the car as I am without e­ ither license and the battery is run down. The car is prob­ably put away for the year. I’ll meet you on foot at Hawkins store when the bus comes.217 Ever yours R.F.

215. ​Where she and her husband Dwight operated a ski resort; see RF to Carol Frost, November 1, 1931. 216. ​That is, “sons of bitches.” 217. ​Taylor & Hawkins, a general store in central Bennington run by Clifford  H. Hawkins (1899–1944) and Edward C. Taylor (1875–1950).

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[To Warren R. Brown. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont January 12 1932 Dear Brown Excuse me for making you ask for more.218 I had a feeling t­ here was something I was leaving out of account. You’ll see me before many days. We licked the trespassers on our wood lot. The lines and degrees w ­ ere exact as described in the deeds and all four corners of their 16 ½ acres ­were plain in sight. I guess they thought I was gone for the winter and they had a ­f ree hand. I caught them by the sheerest accident. No one told on them. They only nicked me for a few cords. But the trees they w ­ ere cutting on mine w ­ ere better than any on the lot they had bought. Always yours Robert Frost

[To Arthur Stanley Pease. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont January 16 1932 Dear Mr Pease: I have been the friend of your administration from the first and from before the first, and I ­shall be sorry to see you give us up—­I w ­ on’t say desert us 219 and introduce a note of reproach. The furthest ­thing be it from me to hold anyone to presiding when he wants to teach. As Acquinas [sic] said (in some Latin you prob­ably know but I dont), teaching is better than presiding, and, as I say, writing is better than both, especially when anyone can do it as well

218. ​See RF to Brown, December 29, 1931. 219. ​Pease had announced his retirement during a January 11 meeting of the faculty—­ much to their surprise. Theodore Baird notes this in his diary for January 11: “At faculty meeting President Pease in a dignified and admirable speech announced his resignation! Shocked by the suddenness of the news. Now we are in for months of rumors and gossip” (diary held at Amherst College).

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as you.220 In letter or essay, you know exactly where to take hold of a subject and exactly how much of it to say per sentence. I shan’t forget how I was charmed with your touch in that leaflet of some years ago about New Foundland.221 Now is my time to say this when I can in writing: I have never been bold enough to say it to your face. We ­shall be in Amherst with you in a day or two. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Frederic Melcher. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. UVA.]

South Shaftsbury Vt now but Amherst Mass from January 18 1932 [January 16] Dear Fred The one who composed the poem on your Christmas card knew how to write. Was it John B. Tabb or who was it?222 It seems to us we heard that money was being raised in memory of Vachel. Was it for a monument or for his f­ amily? What is the absolute (not relative) poverty of his ­family? Do you know what his wife is ­going to do for a living. She must be helped of course to a job and to money till she gets a job so as to keep the ­children with her.223 I had in yesterday’s mail a letter from a ­woman whose husband died fifteen years ago when I first knew them and 220. ​Pease had resigned the presidency at Amherst to return to its classrooms to teach Latin. (We have been unable to locate the remarks by Aquinas—­assuming RF is correct in his attribution.) 221. ​ See Pease, “A Visit to Northwestern Newfoundland,” Appalachia 197 (February 1926): 278–284. Pease and RF shared a number of interests—­botany, geology, and the White Mountain range among them. It was a botanical expedition that took Pease up into Newfoundland. 222. ​John Banister Tabb (1845–1909), American poet, Roman Catholic priest, and professor of En­glish. 223. ​In 1925, when he was forty-­five, Lindsay had married Elizabeth Connor (then twenty-­t hree). They had a d­ aughter, Susan Doniphan Lindsay (born in 1926) and a son, Nicholas Cave Lindsay (born in 1927). Lindsay had been reduced, in his last years, nearly to poverty.

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left her with one small boy. She had nothing absolutely, not even a legacy of fame, but she didnt look for a new husband or give up the boy to ­others. She went to work teaching and now writes to report she has got the boy to his graduating year at Dartmouth. She thinks he’s been worth her pains. Can we do anything for the Lindsays through you? Would 100 be no more than a drop in their bucket? From what I observed of his earning and spending I fear their scale of living would dwarf small contributions to a value as good as nothing. I am still tingling with the shame of having behaved so cowardly at the one P.E.N. dinner of my brief term in office.224 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Herschel Brickell. ALS. Alger.]

Amherst Mass February 2nd 1932 and till May 1st 1932 Dear Mr Brickell: Much as it costs, I have de­cided to buy my Random House remainder in out of the cold.225 Funny they make such hard work of it when one of my ­earlier firsts, Melcher tells me, went at auction lately for two hundred and twenty-­five dollars. To be sure that had a small inscription in it. Let’s you and me go on the street selling inscriptions instead of apples to heave in over Hoover. Collectors must have their inscriptions though the heavens fall on the stock exchange.226 I believe I am to give two hundred dollars for thirty copies of the book.

224. ​See RF’s December 4, 1931, tele­g ram to Melcher. 225. ​Random House published the signed ­l imited edition of RF’s CP 1930 (1,000 copies ­were printed and offered for sale four weeks in advance of the trade edition). 226. ​R F may have this in mind in his quip about Hoover: by February  1932, many prominent Republicans ­were turning against their president, some (Calvin Coo­l idge included) vowing to vote Demo­cratic should he be renominated.

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I was sorry not to see you when we w ­ ere down. We had a notion we might 227 go to the Tinkers with you. My best to Mrs Brickell Sincerely yours Robert Frost Kindly have the Random House books sent to me at Amherst Mass. Sorry to trou­ble you so much. R.F.

[To Walter King Stone (1875–1949), American painter and illustrator and professor of fine arts at Cornell University. ALS. Private.]

Amherst Mass February 4 1932 Dear Mr Stone: I’ve got ­these pictures up and in my possession and I dont see how you are ­going to get them back except by pro­cess of law or by appeal to something in me that may or may not exist (I cant tell till you try). Threats aside, what are you ­going to let me buy a few of the pictures for? I’ll take the ones about the stars over drifting snow for all my autography, more than satisfied with my bargain. But ­after that ­there are the one about the spring pools, about the grindstone, about the late walk in the aftermath, about my November Guest, and about looking up at the constellations that I cant do without and refuse to part with.228 You have stirred something up by showing them. Sincerely yours Robert Frost 227. ​For the Tinkers, see RF to Lankes, May 25, 1931, and RF to Brickell, November 21, 1931. 228. ​In his reply, dated February 11, Stone proposed that RF keep the five paintings he’d sent and the two men could call it “square,” RF having already sent him, as an expression of gratitude, five of his books, each inscribed with lines from one of the poems that had inspired Stone (and to which RF alludes in the letter): “Stars” (ABW), “Spring Pools” (WRB), “The Grindstone” (NH), “A Late Walk” (ABW), “My November Guest” (ABW), and “On Looking Up By Chance at the Constellations” (WRB).

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[To Walter Prichard Eaton (1878–1957), American author and drama critic. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Feb 20 1932 Dear Mr Eaton: I’ve been looking forward to renewals at Syracuse and of course counting on more than a glimpse of you and Mrs Eaton.229 But we must arrange it through Mr Johnson who I suspect of having instigated my invitation this time partly to get me for himself.230 If I c­ an’t be divided without the sword of Solomon,231 what hope is t­ here in Geneva?232 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Burges Johnson. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass February 21 1932 Dear Johnson: The best I can seem to do is arrive in Syracuse at 6.25 p.m.—­which ­w ill just about give me time to wash and iron before the meeting. It was just as well I couldnt be in time for tea and a dinner party in advance: for I am u ­ nder the weather and the doctor’s care since I moved a ­g reat growing tree a month ago. Any sociabilities can come the next day (Friday). On Saturday I must leave you and get home. Thanks for the offer of all ­those engagements. Another time I might accept them: I’m evading every­thing I can now. It is more or less by a miracle or a fiction that I am able to keep my promise to you. I have been on the point of telegraphing my cancellation.

229. ​R F lectured at Syracuse University on March  3, 1932, and then on March  15 at  Wells College (Aurora, New York). Eaton was married to Elise Morris Underhill (1874–1969). 230. ​See next letter. 231. ​1 Kings 3:16–28. 232. ​The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments (1932–1934; also known as the Geneva Disarmament Conference) was then in pro­g ress, conducted u ­ nder the auspices of the League of Nations. It ended in failure.

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­ e’ll have to see if Louis ­won’t let us have a copy of my weird sonnet.233 I W have none myself. It may not prove as bad as I remember it. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [February 23, 1932] Dear Louis: Jean writes that wheree’er you may roam you worry about me. You should. I’ll tell you what ­we’ll do: I’ll worry about my ­family; you worry about me; and let Hoover worry about you. Concerning you are all Hoovers expressions of hope and fear—­concerning you and the proletariat you represent or used to when you ­were an editor of The Masses.234 Me and mine are below the threshold of legislative cognizance. Beyond participation of politicians and beyond relief of senates lie our sorrows: if any of the farm bloc (heads) chance to heave a sigh, they pity us and not our grief.235 And the chiefest of our sorrows is that the world should go as it does—­that thus all moves and that this

233. ​“Weird” is a spelling in Scots dialect. For discussion of the sonnet see RFLU (206); see also RF to Johnson, October 26, 1931, and RF to Untermeyer, October 1, 1930. 234. ​In January, President Herbert Hoover, in an effort to ameliorate the effects of the G ­ reat Depression, signed a law creating the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which provided aid in the form of loans to state and local governments. The initiative recapitalized banks and provided seed money for relief programs l­ater expanded by FDR. Untermeyer had (in the 1910s) briefly served as editor of the left-­w ing magazine the Masses. 235. ​RF adapts a line from William Words­worth’s poem “The Affliction of Margaret”: “Beyond participation lie / My trou­bles, and beyond relief. . . .” The “farm bloc,” founded in 1921 (in loose association with the American Farm Bureau Federation), was a bipartisan co­ali­tion of US senators, primarily from the Midwest, that voted as a bloc to bolster farm prices and to combat unfair speculation in f­utures markets (among other t­hings). They wielded considerable influence in Congress and, working with the Farm Bureau, helped draft the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 (­later ruled unconstitutional).

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is the justice that on earth we find.236 What justice? Do I have to tell you? Why injustice, which we ­either have to turn on the other fellows with a laugh when it is called comedy or we have to take like a spear point in both hands to our breast when it is called tragedy. Laugh no more, gentles, Laugh no more. For it is almost too hard for anything to succeed in being divine though Lionel Johnson swore the opposite.237 But let what w ­ ill be be. I am so deeply smitten through my helm that I am almost sad to see infants young any more.238 I expect to look backward and see the last tail light on the last car. But I ­shall be ­going the other way on foot. Yet I refuse to match sorrows with anyone ­else; ­because just the moment I start the comparison I see that I have nothing yet as terrible as it might be. A few of our ­children are sick or their spouses are and one of them has a spouse still in college.239 I and my wife are not well neither are we young: but we mean to be both better and younger for com­pany’s sake. That is to say we mean well, though we arent well. I thought I’d just lay it on lugubrious this letter. I saw and heard what you said about me in Springfield but it didnt cure my evily mood ­because it threw

236. ​ See the opening lines of “The Prob­ lem,” a sonnet by William Drummond (1585–1649): Doth the world go thus, doth all thus move Is this the justice which on earth we find? Both this poem and “The Affliction of Margaret” are in Francis Turner Palgrave’s The Golden Trea­sury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the En­glish Language (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1861), a favorite anthology of RF’s, memorialized in the poem “Waiting—­ Afield at dusk” (in ABW: CPPP, 23–24). 237. ​Lionel Johnson (1867–1902), an En­g lish poet and playwright often affiliated with the Rhymers’ Club. The last stanza of his most famous poem, “The Dark Angel,” argues that lust (the “Dark Angel”) s­ hall not defeat him: Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so Dark Angel! triumph over me: Lonely, unto the Lone I go; Divine, to the Divinity. 238. ​From Tennyson, “The Passing of Arthur” (in Idylls of the King): “I am so deeply smitten through the helm / That without help I cannot last till morn.” 239. ​­Irma’s husband, John Cone, then a student at Mas­sa­chu­setts Agricultural College (he would transfer to Yale in the fall of 1932).

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me into a superstitious fear that you would incur for me the jealously of gods and men.240 I s­ hall have to tell you someday just how g­ reat I can allow you to say I am—­that is if Elinor ­will allow me to set you a limit. (But she says now if you dont go to extremes for me she ­will.) The gods I am afraid of are your God of Israel who admits he is a jealous god and Edna’s goddess Venus who cant deny the love she stands for is a 99 per cent adultery of jealously.241 Never mind the names of the men I am afraid of. Now dont for goodness sakes ever take me at my word and incontinently give up praising me altogether. I had a letter awhile ago from Babette Deutch [sic] asking me to admire her Prometheus242 in exchange for her respecting my total output. Some cheek. I was chilled to the marrow. I have since suffered cramp. I am all taken down by mere re­spect. No, admire my work and give me the courage for the home stretch. I admire yours. The book is full of your new-­found country answer to the questioning dark—­bright answer.243 What a bright delightful poem that is you fear you stole a shred of from me.244 You d­ idn’t steal anything to mention. Your

240. ​R F may be mistaken about the site of the lecture. Untermeyer spoke on February 10 at the W ­ oman’s Department Club in Indianapolis. Addressing the “New Era in American Poetry,” Untermeyer praised RF as the “greatest living American poet.” 241. ​Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950), American poet notorious (in the 1920s) for the sex in her poetry—­a nd also for her wild, bohemian love life (hence “Venus”). In the Indianapolis address just mentioned, Untermeyer singled her out for praise (and read from her poetry). 242. ​American poet Babette Deutsch (1895–1982) published Epistle to Prometheus in 1931 (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith). 243. ​See “To an Asking Girl,” in Untermeyer’s latest book, Food and Drink (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932): Lifting herself on some invisible arc, Dear Child, is beauty . . . ​Curious and brave, You are the two: A challenge to the dull, And the bright answer to the questioning dark. 244. ​The acknowl­edgments page for Food and Drink includes ­these remarks: “One verse of ‘Last Words Before Winter’ was suggested—­a lthough unconsciously at the time of writing—by Robert Frost’s ‘Good-­bye and Keep Cold’ ” (a poem collected first in NH). The verse in question is the third: Farwell, my apple-­trees; You have learned what it is to freeze, With the drift on your knees.

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­ hole next book is adumbrated in that one poem both its humor and its ­matter. w Or I’m a liar. I seem slowly to be getting over what I ­imagined was the ­matter with me. Ever yours Robert Say, if ­you’re anywhere in Harriet Moody’s neighborhood ask her about her domestic science book ­w ill you?245

[To Marjorie Frost. ALS. Private.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] March 26 1932 Dear Marj: Just a word from Amherst to welcome you to Monrovia.246 Your last news from Boulder went to our hearts and imaginations. Willard sounds like a good

But, oh, beware ­T hose first kind days, the snare Of the too promising air, The cost Of over-­sudden trust— And then the killing frost. Close indeed to RF’s poem. In his lavishly illustrated anthology, The Golden Trea­sury of Poetry (New York: Golden Press, 1959), Untermeyer printed “Good-­bye and Keep Cold” and “Last Words” on facing pages (284–285), with a note pointing out the echo in the second of the first. 245. ​ Mrs. William Vaughn Moody’s Cook-­Book (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931). Moody—­w idow of the poet William Vaughn Moody (1869–1910)—­had long been a close friend of the Frost ­family; they often stayed at her apartment in New York. Unbeknownst to RF, she had died the day before he wrote this letter. 246.  RF and Elinor visited Carol and his family in Monrovia, California, in August 1931. Marjorie was making her first visit. Hence the welcome from Amherst.

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boy in a sad world.247 Bless you both. Perhaps on our way out in June w ­ e’ll 248 see him and on our way back see him and you together. We are in possession of our Big Home and overwhelmed with the responsibilities of taste it lays upon us. We wish we had all our ­children ­here to help us debate the curtains wall-­paper carpets and paint. We mustnt try too hard to be right. It must be fun to look on Prescott once more. I’ll bet he’s quite a Californian, tell him. Tell him I say Texas is bigger than California. So he ­needn’t put on airs. Ask him if he remembers how scared that Californian was of us Vermonters with our Vermont license when we ran him down for speaking rude to us.249 We easterners are the real heroes. Affectionately Papa

247. ​Marjorie met Willard Fraser in Boulder (he was studying archaeology at the University of Colorado); the two had recently become engaged. In the letter to which RF h ­ ere replies, Marjorie wrote to her parents of her fiancé (on March 22): “Every­t hing is settled. Willard and I are engaged to be married, and my only regret is that you are too far away to see how happy I am. I know you w ­ ill be happy, too, when I tell you that I have found a love and a companionship that I never dreamed existed for me. It all happened last Saturday night. So of course it is still too new for me to realize all it means. I like him for many, many ­t hings, but most of all for his absolute goodness. He is a dear, kind and considerate man, another real Victorian, papa, with the beautiful ideals that I had feared no longer existed, but I guess always ­w ill if you are lucky enough to find them” (SL, 382). 248. ​From June 25 to June 30, RF and Elinor stayed in Boulder, where Marjorie introduced them to Willard. They then set out for California with Marjorie (while Willard began a summer of fieldwork with the archaeologist Earl H. Morris). The three reached Carol and his f­ amily in Monrovia on July 2. On their way back across the country, RF and his wife revisited Boulder, spending several days more (in October) with Willard (Marjorie having remained in California), and with John and Margaret Bartlett. 249. ​See RF’s November 19, 1931, letter to Carol Frost.

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[To Sidney Cox. Date derived from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [March 30, 1932] Dear Sidney: You got what you wanted, a dossier, which I suppose w ­ on’t seem complete without a word from me. They say what you teach is subsumed in what they teach. You might say what they teach is subsumed in what you teach. Then the President250 ­ought to say which is better to leave subsumed, what is subsumed in your teaching or what is subsumed in theirs. Nobody seems to say definitely enough what the ­thing is that with them is implied with you brought to the surface. Of course it is Responses. Nobody seems to say definitely enough what the t­ hing is that you imply and they bring to the surface. Of course it is rec­ords on paper or in the mind. With them every­thing must be cited or quoted. E ­ very idea must be put in the mouth of an authority. The most they presume to be themselves is authorities on authorities. ­There is this to be said for their way, that they gain a certain objectivity by putting every­ thing off on someone ­else dead or above them. It is the same objectivity I gain by putting e­ very ­thing into the mouths of characters. Only mine are characters while theirs are authorities. We ­won’t scorn rec­ords. But responses are better than rec­ords ­because [they] include rec­ords and much besides. Let’s see what responses are. They are the same to t­ hings read that they are in conversation to ­things said. First of all they are witty and spirited. They abound in meta­phor and analogy. They throw light on, they enlarge on, they create diversions from, they go off at tangents from, they make unexpected play with, what­ever offers. They are insights and associations. They are more additional than subtractive though they may well be both. And they are addressed more to the subject-­matter than to the form I speak of them as they go in good com­pany. But ­there is this about them: they are so much a m ­ atter of luck and excitement that I should be as hesitant in announcing a course in them as I should 250. ​Ernest Martin Hopkins (1877–1964), president of Dartmouth from 1916 to 1945.

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be in announcing one in love and friendship. I should be sure they would happen in my classes and your classes much oftener than in most classes. But I should want something like sandwiches and tea and cigarettes to lie low with and pretend I wasnt waiting for anything in par­tic­u­lar in the hours when responses refused to be. Inspiration is too delicate a t­ hing to talk much about. So is giving birth to ideas, not to mention babies. You have been influenced by me a l­ ittle in past years. I wish you would be guided by me outright and not want to give a course in the artistic mind. What you mean is responses. That’s what you and I are good at and that cant be advertised in a college cata­logue. Any plain-­sounding course we give w ­ ill be one in responses. And we c­ an’t help ourselves. It’s too large a subject for any one year. Narrow it down for modesty. A course in Shakespeare’s periods and commas. A course in the final couplet in Shakespeares sonnets. Call it anything definite (but of course honest and real) and then ho for a good time. I had one of the best hours I ever had in a class last week over the scene in Richard III where three citizens meet and talk about the death of Edward and the succession of a child to the throne.251 All I’m saying is that you ­don’t have to put your kind of teaching forward. On the contrary you can afford to keep it more or less u ­ nder a bushel basket 252 and it w ­ ill shine through the weaving. Shrink a l­ ittle from declaring inspiration. Call your course Merely Coleridge Merely Byron and then let it speak for itself with the years. I know what I’m leaving out of account. All the responses you ever encourage, all the responses the classes become conscious of having, w ­ ill make no impression in the department examinations. Your boys c­ an’t get credit for quoting as I can from factitious authorities. As Duns Scotus once said in his cups and saucers.253 Well not every­thing can be solved. Stick to developing responses and let who ­w ill be sodden.254 You may have to die for your cause. I am resigned. 251. ​ Richard III, 2.iii. 252. ​Conflating the two gospel texts from which the phrase “light ­u nder a bushel” derives: Mark 4:21–22 (the bushel) and Luke 11:35–36 (the basket). Cox, in wishing to advertise the energy of his teaching style, is more in the spirit of the scripture than RF in urging reticence. 253. ​Duns Scotus (1266–1308), medieval theologian. The reference is factitious, the joke being that the scholar was drunk, with “saucers” added for a play on dignity. 254. ​Possibly in the archaic sense of “to seethe” or “to bring to the boil,” as opposed to “wet through.”

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For gods’ sake d­ on’t ever let the word Responses loose in a class room. Have them in all their variety but name not their dread name. And remember that the best of them are beautiful and the second best true. A lot of ­people aspiring in art waste their lives on truth in the mistaken idea that it is the same t­ hing as beauty.255 Then they won­der why they have missed being poets or appreciators of poetry. They have missed by the hair or mile that divides beauty from truth. “Pro­cesses” is below the b­ elt. You a­ ren’t interested in pro­cesses but in responses at the level of the work of art ­under consideration. And so I might talk on. Ever yours RF. Your story about Frazers Golden Bough and Brownings poems is a ­grand one. I know one on them that d­ oesn’t match it. A teacher says, says he, “The only defect of Lowes Road to Zanadu [sic] is that it is about two very insignificant poems.256 If it had been about Gulliver’s Travels now, it would have been some ­thing.” “What would it have been?” “The study of a real mind.” “You mean an artists mind?” “A ­g reat artists mind.” That fresh from the Ph.D. Dept of Harvard. [To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [April 8, 1932] To you, Louis, wherever you are: Way down in my heart I ­don’t know about you ­doing that to Robinson.257 You and he are old friends. He w ­ ill suffer if you find it necessary to go back 255. ​A piece of covert anti-­Romanticism; vide the conflation of truth and beauty in John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” 256. ​John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), which focuses on Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mari­ner” and “Kubla Khan.” Lowes taught at Harvard, so ­t here is bite to RF’s observation at the end of this postscript. RF was acquainted with Lowes (see LRF-2, 125–126, 144–145), but did not think highly of The Road to Xanadu (see the letter to Notopoulos, August 26, 1930). 257. ​Untermeyer had proposed a scalding review of E. A. Robinson’s Matthias at the Door (New York: Macmillan, 1931), a long narrative poem. Untermeyer thought its characters “spoke in the same dark, overdeliberate idiom” (RFLU, 221).

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on him too publicly. Your silence about his falling off should be severe enough in the cause of art (which of course must be maintained.) Dont you think so? Jeffers would be my quarry if I w ­ ere out hunting.258 Ever yours Robert Amherst still.

[To Wade and Edrie Van Dore. This letter in typescript is a copy of the original, which is not among the Van Dore correspondence held at the Gottlieb Archival Research Center at BU. Given the theme of the letter, and the marriage it memorializes, one can imagine why Van Dore might have kept the manuscript—or destroyed it at some point: the marriage was not a happy one and ended in divorce. A note at the bottom of the page reads as follows: “Cancellation: Boston and New York R.P.O. 14 April 1932, Address: Mr. Wade Van Dore, 3834 Scovel Place, Detroit, Mich.” TLS-­C. BU.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [April 14, 1932] Dear Wade and Edrie: What you ­children propose is momentous.259 I know that at my age better than you can at your age. Still you must know it too. No need for me to urge it on you too conscientiously. I only hope you wont be influenced by my example which would be particularly bad to follow ­because I came out so well by luck when t­ here ­were nothing but reasons for failure. Theoretically I was doomed and crossed off from the start. Your recklessness must be all your own: and I assume it is. You w ­ ill have to be brave in taking the step and even braver for a long time afterwards. I ­couldn’t give you permission to take it. I can give you my blessing in what­ever you decide to do. Your letters are both nice and admirably put to spare me responsibility. I ­shall always be your friend and a believer in your poetry (it belongs to you both now).260 I like boldness. 258. ​Robinson Jeffers’s Thurso’s Landing (New York: Liveright, 1932) was another long narrative poem, but generally considered, by critics, more successful than Matthias at the Door. 259. ​The two married in late May. 260. ​Not simply by virtue of marriage. The two composed a poem to use as a wedding announcement and (presumably) sent it to RF, though it is pos­si­ble also that RF’s letter (with its reference to hoes and spades) inspired the poem; Van Dore ­doesn’t make the m ­ atter clear in his Life of the Hired Man. In any case, the ditty, titled “A Spring Poem by Edrie MacFarland and Wade Van Dore,” reads, in part:

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Be as bold as you have it in you to be. But mea­sure your strength. Be no bolder than you have it in you to be. I can give you a ­little work now and then. Prob­ ably ­others ­w ill too. An acre of land can be made to yield a lot of living with hoe and spade. You can exchange work for your first plowing perhaps.261 If not you can dig. You are both young and strong. You’ll be something to watch. As I say, you have my blessing. Always yours Robert Frost What­ever you do dont base anything on the hope of any money directly from poetry. I’m writing this in the train between Amherst Mass and Wilmington Delaware April 14 262

[To Willard Fraser (1907–1972), American businessman and politician, and soon to be RF’s son-­in-­law. ALS. Private.]

Amherst Mass April 18 1932 Dear Willard That was a fine letter.263 I know I ­couldn’t have done half as well ­under the circumstances. What between you and Marj we begin to get quite an idea of you. We o ­ ught to reciprocate and describe ourselves to you. But we s­ hall be ­ on’t pick a flower, D But go and ask one If it can hear Edrie Singing this hour; If it can see Wade Kneeling to Earth, Gardening ground With a hoe or spade. (182) Also printed in Life of the Hired Man is a photo­g raph bearing this caption: “With Edrie in 1931 outside the cottage Frost bought for me” (183). 261. ​A common practice in rural New E ­ ngland: exchanging ­labor (among farmers) in such large tasks as planting and harvesting. 262. ​RF read and lectured at the University of Delaware at 8:00 p.m. that eve­n ing. 263. ​Fraser’s first to RF and Elinor.

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coming out so soon now where you can see us and save us the necessity. I am particularly glad you are bringing archaeology into the f­ amily. Archaeology is one of the four t­ hings I wanted most to go into in life, archaeology, astronomy, farming and teaching Latin. When I saw I ­wasn’t ­going to be able to go into them all, I began to hope my four c­ hildren would go into them for me, each taking up one, or, in the case of the girls, marrying into it. Carol is in farming. Marj marries into archaeology. Lesley almost went into Latin. That’s rather better than fifty p­ ercent of my dream come true to date. Dwight Morrow ­w ill tell you what a frustrated archaeologist I am.264 You may have to take me on a small expedition some time for relief. That would be a relief expedition indeed. We are very happy in Marj’s happiness. Yours henceforth Robert Frost

[To Sidney Cox. Date derived from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [April 19, 1932] Honestly Sidney You are getting out of hand. I’m afraid you arent ­going to let yourself be unduly influenced by me any more. I grow surer I ­don’t want to search the poet’s mind too seriously. I might enjoy threatening to for the fun of it just as I might to frisk his person. I have written to keep the over curious out of the secret places of my mind both in my verse and in my letters to such as you.265 A subject has to be held clear outside of me with struts and as it ­were set up for an object. A subject must be an object. T ­ here’s no use in laboring this further years.266 My objection to your larger book about me was that it came thrusting in where I did not want 264. ​Dwight Morrow  Jr. (1908–1976), at the time a student at Amherst, introduced Marjorie to Fraser during a trip he made to Colorado to do work in archaeology. For more on the Morrow ­family, see RF to Johnson, October 6, 1931. See also YT, 400. 265. ​The discussion of pedagogy in an ­earlier letter to Cox—­March  30, 1932—­here shifts to a long-­standing dispute between the two men over Cox’s ambitions to be RF’s biographer. 266. ​The syntax is peculiar h ­ ere, but this is what RF has written.

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you. The idea is the ­thing with me. It would seem soft for instance to look in my life for the sentiments in the Death of the Hired Man. T ­ here’s nothing to it believe me. I should fool you if you took me so. I’ll tell you my notion of the contract you thought you had with me. The objective idea is all I ever cared about. Most of my ideas occur in verse. But I have always had some turning up in talk that I feared I might never use b­ ecause I was too lazy to write prose. I think they have been mostly educational ideas connected with my teaching, actually lessons. That’s where I hoped you would come in. I thought if it didnt take you too much from your own affairs you might be willing to gather them for us both. But I never reckoned with the personalities. I keep to a minimum of such stuff in any poets life and works. Art and wisdom with the body heat out of it. You speak of Shirley.267 He is two or three ­g reat poems—­one very ­great.268 He projected, he got, them out of his system and I w ­ ill not carry them back into his system ­either at the place they came out of or at some other place. I state this in the extreme. But relatively I mean what I say. To be too subjective with what an artist has managed to make objective is to come on him presumptuously and render ungraceful what he in pain of his life had faith he had made graceful. Leave us look at the Gilchrist book.269 I am curious to see where it touches me. Ever yours RF.

267. ​John Shirley (1596–1666), En­glish dramatist and poet. Cox had mentioned, in a letter to RF dated April 15, 1932, that he had recently taught a successful class on Shirley and Andrew Marvell. See RFSC, 202. 268. ​Shirley wrote a number of masques, possibly an influence on RF’s ­later ventures in that form (A Masque of Reason [1945] and A Masque of Mercy [1947]). His best-­k nown poem—­a nd one RF often quoted—is “The Glories of Our Blood and State.” 269. ​Marie Gilchrist, Writing Poetry: Suggestions for Young Writers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932). Cox had been asked by Houghton Mifflin to read the book in proof and, if pos­si­ble, to send it along to RF. See RFSC, 202–203. Gilchrist quotes from and discusses RF in the book, citing, for example, the definition of a “complete poem” (as “one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words”) from Robert Frost: The Man and His Work (New York: Henry Holt, 1923).

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[To Sidney Cox. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [late April 1932] Dear Sidney: Pay no attention to me ­unless to figure from what I say the kind you are and want to be still more. I can see, though dimly, that you like the blows you have had at Dartmouth and are somewhat disappointed that I d­ on’t like them too. It’s not that my ele­ment is not injustice as much as yours is; only my nature demands it further up the stream among the rocks and at the spring, yours seems satisfied to bathe further down where the stream is muddied with school or city politics. I’m trout and ­you’re pickerel. Nothing invidious intended. I dont care to be personally observed in a soiled medium. Personally personally—­there it is again. Even you dont know and never ­w ill know where I get the sense of injustice most in life to keep me living. A lot of injustice w ­ ill never have the satisfaction of knowing I know it exists. Some of it I make fun of, when it is called comedy. For instance when I am sometimes unjustly praised I accept it as making up for the other times when I have been unjustly blamed.270 Such is comedy. The only other way to take injustice is the way of tragedy. ­There I maintain my mystery for no one to pluck the heart out of.271—­But as I say pay no attention to me. I forget what I was to do with Miss Gilchrists book.272 I w ­ asn’t asked for a testimonial was I? That’s another ­t hing I keep out of from a distrust of myself in the realm of politics. I can tell you I have no objection to the way I am brought into the book. It does all right by me. I mean it comes as near what I have said as I could expect and ­w ill ask. The book is mildly good and I should think harmless.—­I’ve been giving it another look before mailing,

270. ​See RF’s December 19, 1931, letter to Untermeyer for similar sentiments. 271. ​Hamlet to Guildenstern: “Why, look you now, how unworthy a t­ hing you make of me! You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery . . .” (Hamlet, 3.ii). Cox would have seen the allusion immediately, and understood the reproach; it would not have been flattering to be cast as Guildenstern to RF’s Hamlet. 272.  Writing Poetry. See previous letter. It was unclear from Cox’s letter (RFSC, 202–203) what exactly the publisher (Houghton Mifflin) wanted from RF.

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and I think the book is in a fine spirit. I wish it well. What more do you want me to say? Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Stanley King (1883–1951), American attorney and businessman, and the eleventh president of Amherst College. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont May 7 1932 Dear Mr King: Your letter warms the heart anyway, no m ­ atter if it does overstate my value to you or anyone ­else. You ­mustn’t make me feel too self-­conscious about our talk in the train.273 If I seemed wise that day, you have to consider that I am always at my best when I ­don’t realize whom I am talking to and the situation is ­f ree from momentousness. Even our friend Felix Frank­f urter274 [saw] in you the ­f uture President of Amherst College then.275 I may never seem as wise again. But never mind my counsel: like me for my friendliness to what I’m sure you represent. I know of you in more ways than you would suspect—­ some of them quite round about. I have said twenty times I would vote for Newton Baker276 for President of the United States if only on his very g­ reat and magnanimous showing in Pershings story of the war.277 But Baker now 273. ​We have been unable to date the encounter. 274. ​RF had met Frank­f urter in Maurice Firuski’s Dunster House Bookshop in Cambridge, Mas­sa­c hu­setts (at the time, Frank­f urter held a chair at Harvard). See Elizabeth Sergeant, Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence (New York: Henry Holt, 1960): 288–289. 275. ​King served as president of Amherst from 1932 to 1946 (having succeeded Arthur Stanley Pease). His appointment had been announced on April 9. 276. ​Newton D. Baker (1871–1937), Secretary of War ­u nder the Wilson administration (1916–1921), in which capacity he designated General John J. Pershing to command the American Expeditionary Forces. 277. ​In 1932, Pershing published his My Experiences in the World War (which won the Pulitzer Prize for History). In it he spoke warmly of Baker: “I left Mr. Baker’s office with a distinctly favorable impression of the man upon whom, as head of the War Department, would rest the burden of preparing for a ­g reat war to which the wholly unready nation was now committed. He was courteous and pleasant and impressed me as being frank, fair, and businesslike. His conception of the prob­lems seemed broad and compre-

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says you deserve more than half the credit for all that was done by his office.278 Figure for yourself where that leaves you in my estimation. We have one ­thing in common to base friendship on. We are neither of us rank insiders in education. We should bring to the college something of the worlds view of its place in the world. So lets be as good friends as you please: it is for you as King to determine how good. But at least do me a f­ avor now and then. Let poetry flourish in your presence. Im up h ­ ere farming for a week or so but by the 19th we s­ hall be back in Amherst in our new ­house putting it in shape for next year. It ­w ill be fine to see you. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [May 13, 1932] Motto Courage he said and pointed ­toward the land. Alfred Lord Tenneson [sic]279 Dear Louis: The land be your strength and refuge.280 But at the same time I say this so consonant with your own sentiments of the moment, let me utter a word of warning against the land as an affectation. What determines the population hensive. From the start he did not hesitate to make definite decisions on the momentous questions involved” (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1931): 17. 278. ​As a member of the Committee on Supplies on the Council of National Defense in 1917, King worked as an advisor to Baker. RF may have in mind Newton D. Baker: Amer­ i­ca at War, Volume 1 (New York: Dodd Mead, 1931), by Frederick Palmer. Palmer refers to King as “Baker’s right hand” (38) and reports that “Baker had found King so invaluable as an industrial adviser that he wanted him in continual association in his office” (207). Baker had also spoken in public supporting King’s appointment as president of Amherst. 279. ​See the opening line of Tennyson’s “The Lotus-­Eaters” (1832). 280. ​An adaptation of Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and our strength. . . .” Untermeyer had bought a farm in the Adirondacks (Stony W ­ ater) in 1929.

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of the world is not at all the amount of tillable land it affords: but it is something in the nature of the ­people themselves that limits the size of the globulate mass they are socially capable of.281 ­There is always ­there ­w ill always be a lot many lots of land left out of the system. I dedicate t­ hese lots to the stray souls who from incohesiveness feel rarely the need of the forum for their thoughts of the market for their wares and produce. They raise a crop of rye, ­we’ll say. To them it is green manure. They plow it ­under. They raise a crop of endives in their cellar. They [eat] it themselves.282 That is they turn it ­under. They have an idea. Instead of rushing into print with it, they turn it ­under to enrich the soil. Out of that idea they have another idea. Still they turn that ­under. What they fi­nally venture doubtfully to publication with is an idea of an idea of an idea.283 The land not taken up gives ­these stay-­outers ­these loosely connected ­people their chance to live to themselves a larger proportion of the time than with the throng. T ­ here is no law divine or h ­ uman against them when you come to think of it. The social tyranny admits of squatters tramps gypsies ­because it cant make itself tight if it wants to. It isnt rebellion I am talking. It ­isn’t even literary and intellectual detachment. It is simply easy ties and slow commerce. Refuse to be rushed to market or forum. Dont come as a product till you have turned yourself ­under many times. We dont have to be afraid we wont be social enough. Hell, havent I written all that in my first book?284 But the point is the unconsidered land makes the life I like pos­si­ble. 281. ​Contra (indeed the precise opposite of) Malthusian demographic theory, in which it is “in the nature of the ­people themselves” to propagate indiscriminately, and population is ­l imited mainly by the food supply (proportionate to the “tillable land” the world affords to ­human use). 282. ​The manuscript reads (surely in error): “They it it themselves.” Untermeyer silently supplies “eat” for the first “it” in RFLU (222). The joke is plain: eating endives makes manure of them. “They et it,” dialect, is a pos­si­ble alternative, but RF ­here uses the pre­sent tense (and standard En­glish) all the way through. We regard this as a slip of the pen. 283. ​RF develops this theme in “Build Soil,” which he read as Phi Beta Kappa Poet at Columbia University on May 31. 284. ​In a March 22, 1915, letter to William Stanley Braithwaite, RF describes ABW (his first book): “The book is an expression of my life for the ten years from eigh­teen on when I thought I greatly preferred stocks and stones to ­people. The poems ­were written as I lived the life quite at the mercy of myself and not always happy. The arrangement in a book came much ­later when I could look back on the past with something like understanding. I kept farm, so to speak for nearly ten years, but less as a farmer than as a fugitive from the world that seemed to me to ‘disallow’ me. It was all instinctive, but I can

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Praise be to the unconsidered land. That’s all. I h ­ aven’t got through with the farming yet. When I get ­these sick ­children rounded up, we are ­going to make another big attempt at the almost self-­contained farm. Almost. No nonsense. Merely much more self-­contained than fools would imagine. I’m in ­favor of a skin and fences and tariff walls.285 I’m in ­favor of reserves and withholdings. I’m in ­favor of individuals with some age on their time apart. Hams cured in one day! Wine matured a week. The trou­ble with every­body’s purse is every­ body is caught out in the big market. The trou­ble with every­body’s mind is every­body is caught out in the big forum. Gee you o ­ ught to have seen the document Waldo Frank wanted me to sign. He and Mumford and Wilson got it up. He said follow us and you can be a leader of your generation. They propose to use the class-­conscious workers for the time being.286 I have half a mind to tell the class-conscious workers on them. But always ganging up

see now that I went away to save myself and fix myself before I mea­sured my strength against all creation” (LRF-1, 265). See also the first poem in that book, “Into My Own” (CPPP, 15) and the gloss RF attached to its title in the ­table of contents (in the first edition of ABW): “The youth is persuaded that he ­w ill be rather more than less himself for having forsworn the world” (CPPP, 969). 285. ​See RF’s poem “­Triple Bronze,” collected in AWT: “The Infinite’s being so wide / Is the reason the Powers provide / For inner defense my hide,” ­etc. (CPPP, 316). 286. ​In spring 1932, Waldo Frank, Lewis Mumford, Sherwood Anderson, Edmund Wilson, and John Dos Passos collaborated on a “manifesto” in support of American communism (though drafted “without the collaboration or knowledge of the Communists,” i.e., the Communist Party USA [CPUSA]). The manifesto called for (among other t­ hings) a “temporary dictatorship of the class-­conscious workers.” Mumford and Dos Passos ­later balked at its call for a “dictatorship” of the working class. Wilson dithered in circulating the manifesto (irritating Waldo Frank) and ultimately suggested that writers ­either draft manifestoes of their own or sign the CPUSA’s official pamphlet, Culture and the Crisis, published in fall 1932 in the hope of getting out the vote for the CPUSA ticket (William Z. Foster was the party’s presidential nominee, James W. Ford its nominee for vice president: they won 103,307 votes). Signatories to the pamphlet included Wilson, Frank, Anderson, and Dos Passos (in addition to forty-­eight other writers, Langston Hughes and Erskine Caldwell among them)—­but not Lewis Mumford. This pamphlet, unlike the e­ arlier manifesto, lavished praise on the Soviet Union. See Lit­er­a­ture at the Barricades: The American Writer in the 1930s, eds. Ralph F. Bogardus and Fred Hobson (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1982): 178; Edmund Wilson: Letters on Lit­er­a­ture and Politics, ed. Elena Wilson (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977): 223; and Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992): 243–247.

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at Geneva or somewhere ­else.287 When all you have to do to be saved is to sneak off to one side and see w ­ hether you are any good at anything. Can you cook can you make butter can you write can you think can you shoot can you sleep? I’ll leave the rest of this blank for you to fill out.288 Ever yours Robert

[To Lawrence Conrad. Written on Elinor Frost’s letterhead / stationery. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt May 14 1932 Dear Lawrence: That’s the convention that was ­after me last year.289 I find I usually go to a place this year ­because I didnt go to it last year or the year before. Such is my reasoning faculty. ­There are many considerations to make it end so. My ultimate defense is my price which I keep stiff but not so high that anyone can suspect me of riches. Two hundred dollars except where charity is mixed with the business and in Vermont. I hate to have that sound grossly greedy to my friends. I figure it at about ­there mostly for self-­respect.—­The worst of this convention is it comes at a season when I do every­thing to be let alone. We do our best (Elinor and I) to keep lecture ­things bunched in the late spring and early winter. But we do break our rules for big occasions and impor­tant friendships. I tell you this in general rather than in the par­tic­u ­lar case. My friends can prolong my life by spreading the idea that I like best to be invited in the late winter and early spring. You speak of worrying about me. What are you afraid for? ­Because you ­haven’t seen me in magazine or book for a long time?290 I’m merely dormant. We have had plenty of sickness in the ­family but it has been among the young-

287. ​For Geneva, see RF to Eaton, February 20, 1932. RF’s phrasing in this sentence is oddly elliptical, but it is exactly as he writes it in the manuscript. 288. ​The letter closes with more than half the last sheet unfilled. 289. ​The annual convention of the New Jersey Association of Teachers of En­glish (to be held on November 12, 1932). 290. ​Indeed, RF had published almost nothing in magazines since 1928. He had been—as he puts in the foregoing letter to Untermeyer—­“ building soil.”

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sters. Marjorie is about over her phthisis,291 is in fact discharged from the sanitarium in Boulder Colorado where she has been for a year and a half. Carol’s wife is still a very serious case. We shant know how she is coming out till we get out to Monrovia California where she is and have a look at her. She came near the edge. My year this year (if you want my news) was at South Shaftsbury Vt till February 1st, then three months at Amherst Mass., now two or three weeks back at South Shaftsbury, next two weeks at Amherst, next two weeks at South Shaftsbury; ­after which it ­will be three or even four months in Monrovia California. I may put in my three months at Amherst when we get back from California. We have a new President of the College and I want to see him in his freshness. We have a h ­ ouse of our own t­ here at last and I feel more attached to the place than ever. But some time before Christmas we ­shall be ­here at South Shaftsbury again. Can you beat it for ubiquitous? And to crown all I may be spending part of my time in North Carolina if the c­ hildren never dare to come back to New E ­ ngland and buy a farm down ­there in the Smokies.292 Wade was ­here taking care of the h ­ ouse the three months of our absence in the winter. He lived pretty well snowed in up a gulley on a private road off a back road off the main road. He seemed to get along with himself. But perhaps the loneliness is what made him go home to Detroit and engage himself to get married. I dont know how much of a secret this may be. So please say nothing to anyone about it till we see what happens. I think thats all about us. You dont tell us much about you (plural).293 Always yours Robert Frost

291. ​ Phthisis pulmonalis (aka tuberculosis). 292. ​A letter from Carol to his parents dating to spring 1932—­held now at DCL—­ indicates that he and his ­family ­were scouting out, from afar, land in and around Asheville, North Carolina, at the time a celebrated retreat for sufferers of tuberculosis and other pulmonary ailments. 293. ​“Plural”: Conrad and his wife Roberta Williams Conrad, and their son Lawrence Henry Conrad Jr. (eleven years old at the time).

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[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Bennington, Vermont] [May 18, 1932] Dear Louis: Internal evidence is that I wrote my last in answer to yours of the 10th enclipping the fence advertisement.294 Else why so much on the theme of high tariffs and separatism? I was just talking what was on my mind and the aptness was accidental.295 I should have said “Sure” to your proposal I have something in the Knopf Leaflets. I should be able to.296 What Jean said about Lesleys book was very shrewd, considering the distance from which she looks on at a mere detective story.297 ­There is writing too good in it for the kind of book. I suppose Lesley knows that, but it w ­ ill do her good to have our own intimations confirmed. You know how Lesley is. I mean you can understand her having to do something reckless and unprecious to take the plunge ­after all the inhibiting she has under­gone from me. Farm farm for this is also sooth as Yeats would say.298 Soothe or soothing. Ever yours R.

294. ​Untermeyer had enclosed an advertisement for a prefabricated picket fence whose caption was the celebrated line from “Mending Wall”: “Good fences make good neighbors” (CPPP, 39–40). 295. ​On May  12, Hoover had vetoed a major tariff bill (H.R. 6662, 72nd  Congress) drafted by the Demo­crats (it would have amended the protectionist Smoot-­Hawley Tariff Act Hoover signed into law in June  1930). FDR and the Demo­cratic Party w ­ ere then campaigning on lower tariffs (which they made good on with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934). 296. ​Alfred Knopf had launched a series of what they called Borzoi chapbooks. RF’s “A Lone Striker” would be number eight in the series and was illustrated by William Addison Dwiggins (1880–1956). 297. ​Lesley Frost’s mystery novel, Murder at Large, had recently been published by Coward-­McCann. 298. ​See the refrain in William Butler Yeats’s “Song of the Happy Shepherd”: “Dream, Dream, for this is also sooth.”

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[To Robert Peter Tristram Coffin (1892–1955), American poet, editor, critic, and professor of En­glish at Wells College. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Bowdoin.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa May 25, 1932] Dear Coffin: Someone says you write too much. You must be careful and write less. Someone ­else says I write too ­little. I must be careful and write more. The critical cry comes to me faintly from far off when I am thinking of other ­things. All that r­ eally ­matters: what is said against me and what is said for me both equally seem to endear me to my friends and relatives. Your poems are well in past my bristlings. You are one of my accepted few. Who has written anything better than Crystal Moment or Night Hawk. ­There’s a sinker to your hook. It sinks in. Such t­ hings as He Was of the Forest too. And An Old Man Raking Leaves.299 I read some of them to a class I visited yesterday. You are full of sure-­fi re figures. ­Isn’t that a good black of J. J. Lankes in this month’s Harpers?300 I hope ­he’ll like the idea of teaching.301 He is clear and deliberate of speech. A steady part time job would be my ideal for him. His address is Hilton Village V ­ irginia. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. Jones.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa June 15, 1932] Dear Edward: The last time we played an exibition [sic] game you pitched and I caught.302 This time w ­ e’ll both be on the receiving end and it w ­ ill remain to be seen 299. ​The poems are in Coffin’s The Yoke of Thunder, released on May 21 by Macmillan. 300. ​Lankes’s “Barn Near Carlisle, Pennsylvania” appeared in the May 1932 issue. 301. ​With the help of Coffin, RF had arranged for Lankes a part-­time teaching appointment at Wells College, which he began that September. Lankes would teach in the Department of Fine Arts through 1939. 302. ​A n allusion to the honorary degree RF was awarded by the University of New Hampshire on June 16, 1930; Lewis—in his youth a pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters and

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who catches it the worse.303 You can show your freedom from professional jealousy by bringing your wife up to visit us at our farm if only for a night.304 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Sidney Cox. Partially dated from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts June [15,] 1932 Dear Sidney: It’s too bad, but I s­ hall be in California by that time. We leave South Shaftsbury on June 22nd and shant be back east till November 1st. I should have liked visiting your College, seeing your crowd and seeing you. We ­haven’t had anything but letters for some time and I’m afraid mine to you have been tyrannically preaching.305 Dont worry about my worrying about you. You know what to do when anyone comes on you too overwhelming as I said to them in my poem at Columbia the other day.306 Ever yours Robert Frost

the Boston Americans—­was president of the college and presented it. 303. ​RF and Lewis ­were both awarded honorary degrees at Williams College, Lewis’s alma mater, on June 20, 1932. 304. ​Margaret Williams Lewis (1873–1958). 305. ​Notably RF to Cox, April 19, 1932. 306. ​“Build Soil,” a poem self-­confessedly in a “preaching” mode.

3

­Going to California June 1932–­October 1932 Where we are not native-­sonning ourselves but looking ­after Carol and Lillian in g­ reat retirement. —­Robert Frost to J. J. Lankes, September 1932

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from internal evidence. On Union Pacific Columbine letterhead. RF enclosed promotional postcards (one of the columbine flower and the other of the mountain bluebird), each inscribed to one of Untermeyer’s ­adopted sons, Joseph and Larry, “from his ­uncle Rob.” Also enclosed with the letter was a page torn from an advertising pamphlet containing A. J. Bernardi Jr.’s poem “The Columbine,” upon which RF inscribed the following note: “Where have I heard this before? Ans: Last year on the same journey. Allarse!” ALS. LoC.]

[Union Pacific Columbine train] [circa June 24, 1932] Dear Louis: Far as I was from you and all your works (farm) when I started last night I am ­going a mile farther a minute (thirty two telephones by ­actual count.) I leave home and friends sadly at sixty (or is it only fifty?) and I write letters badly in the lurch of the Columbine.1 Anyone sharp enough to discover Archie McLeish’s [sic] muffled rhymes in all his archaeology ­ought to be able to find mine.2 Columbine Evaline Clementine! Dandyline! I am bound for 1. ​R F was traveling to Monrovia, California, to visit Carol and the convalescing Lillian. 2. ​Throughout the letter, RF refers to Archibald MacLeish’s Conquistador, a retelling of Bernal Diaz’s True History of the Conquest of New Spain (1632). In a article published in the Yale Review (Summer 1932), Untermeyer called MacLeish’s book “the most eloquent saga-­poem of this generation” and a “triumph in the art of heroic poetry” (811). Conquistador won the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. RF is correct—as had been Untermeyer—as to its “rhymes.” Such full rhymes as occur in it are few and unschematic; and for the most part ­t hese are typically half-­or near-­rhymes. Untermeyer would pursue the m ­ atter: in the August  6 number of the Saturday Review, Untermeyer published an essay titled “Rhyme and Its Reasons,” in which he discusses MacLeish’s rhymes (though not Conquistador).

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where the newspapers grow worse and worse e­ very morning when you wake up and won­der what is g­ oing on over and above the village: But that is no special privation to me (do you follow my internal rhymes or are they too occluded now even for you). If I d­ on’t like the newspapers I can spend the day looking out the win­dow at the country I love wherever samples of it have been taken. You ­ought to see sometime my latest outbreak into po­liti­cal poetry delivered at Columbia a month since. I trust you ­w ill permit me this new form. You didnt object to the one I read t­ here some years since and this is better than that many many times I’m sure you’ll say.3 I’d quote you some sentiments from it, only I’d rather you judged it as a w ­ hole. Isnt it too bad w ­ e’re leaving the pine for the psalm.4 This is my last summer in absentia. Positively. But consuetude requires that we should live with the kids where they live. Wherever they ghost I w ­ ill ghost however unreal it makes me feel. Sure 5 send along the Elinor Wylie and be thanked but send it to 261 North Canyon Boulevard Monrovia California (­there it is out! I have said it.) ­There is no criticism like yours to make me reconciled to my rising contemptuaries be they McLeish, Jeffers, Dillon or Whosis.6 I hate not to love a ­thing like Conquistador and you make me at least kind to its imitative (of Anabase) accent.7 3. ​On May 31, 1921, RF had read an early version of what would l­ater become “Build Soil” as Phi Beta Kappa Poet at Columbia. See LRF-2, 162n363. The opening lines of the ­later version clearly reference the ­earlier one: Why Tityrus! Y­ ou’ve forgotten me, I’m Meliboeus the potato man, The one you had the talk with, you remember, ­Here on this very campus years ago. [our emphasis] 4. ​A pun: southern California is the land of the “palm.” 5. ​Elinor Wylie’s posthumous Collected Poems, edited by her husband, William Rose Benét, had just been published by Alfred A. Knopf. 6. ​In addition to the aforementioned MacLeish: Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) and George Dillon (1906–1968); the latter won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for The Flowering Stone (1931). 7. ​The idea is that MacLeish’s long, often prosaic lines imitate t­ hose in Anabase (1924), a mythical poem about conquest and empire building by French writer and diplomat Saint-­John Perse (pen name of Alexis Saint-Léger Léger [1887–1975]). In the preface to his 1930 translation of the poem (­u nder the title Anabasis [London: Faber and Faber]), T. S. Eliot describes Perse’s elliptical style: . . . ​a ny obscurity of the poem, on first readings, is due to the suppression of “links in the chain,” of explanatory and connecting ­matter, and not to incoherence, or to the love of cryptogram. The justification of such abbreviation of method is that the se-

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You have to remember the first poem I ever wrote was a narrative of la noche triste at Tenochtitlan.8 So it is hard for me not to be jealous of late comers in my field. You poultice the jealousy out of me. I undertake to accept more or less anything you tell me to with your persuasiveness. I am ­going in for the new obscurity by using bad handwriting on a moving t­ able and asking my printers to use old broken type such as was used in the edition of Ossian I have had ever since I was fifteen sixteen seventeen or eigh­teen.9 Gee I feel myself ­going—to Calif on the Chicago and Northwestern.10 Speak to me. R. F.

[To Otto Manthey-­Zorn. Dated from postmark and internal evidence. ALS. ACL.]

[Monrovia, California] [July 4, 1932] Dear Otto: ­Here we are just moved into the fifth h ­ ouse owned or rented by the Frosts in this year of our in­de­pen­dence 157. I write exactly on In­de­pen­dence Day. July Fourth. The question is how in­de­pen­dent anyone can be with so many h ­ ouses to live in. He ­ought to be plenty since ­there is nothing to prevent his living in none of them if he prefers to leave them all and live out doors in a tent. Carol

quence of images coincides and concentrates into one intense impression of barbaric civilization. The reader has to allow the images to fall into his memory successively without questioning the reasonableness of each at the moment; so that, at the end, a total effect is produced. (8) See also RF’s October 1934 letter to his d­ aughter Lelsey, in which he reports: “I read the Proem [to Anabasis, in Eliot’s En­glish] in Chapel one morning with success. I had to practice up a way to perform it. Most of the boys laughed but some ­t here ­were who pretended to be subconscious of what it was about. On the same princi­ple a child of two three and four gets legitimate plea­sure out of hearing Milton’s Paradise Lost read aloud.” 8. ​A s we note above (see RF to MacVeagh, December  15, 1929), RF’s first published poem, “La Noche Triste” (1890), concerns conquistador Hernán Cortés’s retreat from the Aztec defenders of Tenochtitlan. 9. ​James Macpherson’s The Poems of Ossian (1773), purportedly a translation from an ancient Scottish text, was one of literary history’s most notable frauds. RF’s m ­ other Isabelle Moodie read the book to the young RF and his s­ ister Jeanie (EY, 69–70). 10. ​On which train line the Columbine ran.

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has just taken up a claim in the ­kettle valley desert of Mesquite11 on the very last frontier ­there is where as a ­matter of fact I expect to take refuge for a while and help him build a shack or dobie12 and dig to ­water. It is two hundred miles in back from ­here. It o ­ ught to count as a sixth home of the Frosts, but I forgot it in their numerousity [sic]. It cost twenty dollars and is about the size of my farm in South Shaftsbury Vermont. The rainfall is three inches, the temperature range from 115 or 120 above to 10 above in twenty-­four hours. Alt. 2500 ft. Sole vegetation, mesquite. Fauna the jack-­rabbit and the coyote. The coyote by keeping down the jack rabbit keeps down leukemia a disease of the rabbit fatal to man.13 So we ­will prob­ably breed the coyote from force of logic. I ­can’t help being a farmer wherever I am. I hope you are having a good time not farming on your Pelham farm. Gee I heard some low down on our new president in Colorado Springs.14 I was told beforehand I should meet an old friend of his ­there who didnt speak to him anymore ­because he took sides with the ­adopted son the Kings turned adrift. And sure enough the old friend the artist Boardman Robinson brought up the subject of our new president.15 He spoke unkindly of him. I spoke well and hopefully. My only fear was that he would be sentimental about his old teachers, the stalwarts.16 Sentimental, nothing said both the Robinsons at once. He is without a sentimental bone in his body. He is without sentiment and his wife is worse.17 I spoke up loud but no louder than all this and said I had heard something about an ­adopted son. They hushed me as they indicated with a motion a good looking young man talking with someone e­ lse in the room. We did the rest with raised eyebrows and nods. The boy had been 11. ​Across the state line from California, near Goodsprings, Nevada (elevation 3,707 ft), where a small mining boom was underway (lead, zinc, cobalt, copper, and molybdenum had been found in the area). 12. ​Dwelling made of adobe. 13. ​Men and ­women often contract tularemia (aka “rabbit fever”) from jackrabbits and other rodents (but not leukemia); and, if left untreated, the disease can be fatal. Rabbits also suffer from lymphocytic leukemia, though this is not zoonotic. 14. ​Stanley King had been appointed president of Amherst College in April. 15. ​Boardman Robinson (1876–1952), Canadian American artist and illustrator, of strong socialist leanings; among other distinctions he worked at the Masses before its closure ­u nder anti-­espionage laws in 1917. He and King had been involved in organ­i zing a summer colony in Martha’s Vineyard in the 1920s, and, in 1931, he was named director of the Broadmoor Art Acad­emy in Colorado Springs (­later renamed the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center). 16. ​King had studied at Amherst (class of 1903). 17. ​King’s second wife, formerly Mrs. Margaret Pinckney Jackson-­A llen (1879–1967).

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picked up a wreck, his health broken and some of his bones actually broken in the gutters of New York and brought home to the Robinsons. They seem to have de­cided to give him a chance.18 Prob­ably this is nowhere near as bad as it sounds. I can see how such a ­thing may have happened through ­little fault of the parents. Parents are often less good for their c­ hildren than outsiders. Still it gave me a shock—­for one reason ­because it was all so much more recent than I had been thinking was meant. Well I see in it something of ruthlessness to look forward to. Ever yours R.

[To Gregg Manners Sinclair (1890–1976), professor of En­glish at the University of ­Hawaii at Manoa (where he served as president from 1942–1956). Date derived from postmark. ALS. BU.]

261 North Canyon Blvd Monrovia California [July 7, 1932] Dear Mr Sinclair I hear from the Islands that you are in San Francisco this summer.19 Then I am comparatively near you h ­ ere in Monrovia of the same state. It suddenly 18. ​This story pre­sents something of a mystery. The 1930 federal census lists one Eugene Crandall living with the Robinson f­amily in New York as the a­dopted son of Boardman and his wife Sally. Henry Eugene Crandall was born in 1912 (making him nineteen when this letter was written). His parents divorced when he was a baby. His ­father, Asa Jay Crandall, l­ater served a five-­to ten-­year sentence in Western State Penitentiary (Erie, Pennsylvania), which suggests a difficult f­amily background that might have led to Henry Eugene’s being put up for adoption. His ­father’s criminality might also explain how Eugene could have got into sufficient trou­ble on the streets of New York to end up with health and bones “broken.” We are confident that this is the young man RF saw across the room: the prob­lem is that RF ­here has Crandall as the adoptive son of the Kings, not the Robinsons. This could be a ­m istake on RF’s part, or perhaps a slip of syntax. A ­later statement, “They [the Robinsons] seem to have de­cided to give him a chance,” could well refer to a decision to adopt him (albeit as a teenager rather than as a small boy). We have found no evidence that the Kings ever a­ dopted Eugene Crandall or any other child. Clearly, however, they had failed in some significant duty of care to the young man in question. 19. ​The letter is addressed to Sinclair “care of John A. Hudson / Humboldt Building /  Market Street / San Francisco.”

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occurred to me the other day that now was the time to visit you if you could have me while I am on this side of the continent. I ­shall be in Monrovia till October. Does the University get ­going early enough in the fall for socio-­ literary ­doings around the first of October say? I appreciated your invitation and should like to accept it if a way can be found.20 I have always wanted to see Hawaii ever since the old days in San Francisco when we used to talk of ­going ­there for my ­father’s health.21 We had thoughts of becoming inhabitants. That was before annexation, in the reign of Queen Lil.22 I won­der what you are d­ oing this summer. Are you by any chance likely to be down this way for the Olympics?23 (I s­ hall be seeing the Olympics, I expect, though they are not what I am ­here for: I am ­here for a daughter-­in-­law’s health.) If you should be in our neighborhood, I wish we could meet for a talk. One t­ hing I ­shall need to ask you is how un-­pacific the Pacific is in the fall.24 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Wade Van Dore. ALS. BU.]

Address 261 North Canyon Blvd Monrovia California [July 8, 1932] Dear Wade: So you are a(n) ­house­holder a(n) husbandman and a(n) husband all in a year’s time.25 I call that settling down or dangerously near it. But ­don’t let it scare you out of any poetry. They say only the irresponsible can be minor poets only the responsible can be major poets. Responsibility is a tenet of any good religion. (I never could find out from the Bible or any reader of the Bible 20. ​R F never made it to Hawaii. Documents filed with the Gregg Sinclair papers at the University of Hawaii show that Sinclair considered bringing RF in as lecturer in 1933. 21. ​William Prescott Frost Jr., who died of tuberculosis in 1885. 22. ​Queen Lili‘uokalani (1838–1917), last monarch of Hawaii, overthrown in 1893 when US Marines invaded the islands (which ­were annexed by the United States on July 7, 1898, ­toward the close of the Spanish–­A merican War). 23. ​The 1932 Olympics would open in Los Angeles on July 30. 24. ​RF and Elinor ­were both subject to seasickness. 25. ​See RF to Van Dore, April 14, 1932.

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­ hether or not it was of Chris­tian­ity.) A young Japa­nese deserting Amherst w and Amer­i­ca to go home and live the patriotic life as he should told me that he was a Shintoist and as such must have faithfulness to his ancestors and ancestral god: that is to say he must have them in mind always in what ever he did and try to do them credit; he must have love—of himself his f­amily his neighbor his country humanity his god and his emperors god; he must have a willingness to sacrifice himself, his life at a moments notice for any of his loves; he must have responsibility: that is he must meet his social obligations hour by hour. He said he was g­ oing home to kick Chris­tian­ity and Eu­ro­pean American manners and customs out of Japan. I liked his doctrine and his intentions.26 Well it must be fun a­ fter Detroit depression to be away out t­ here in the backwardness of the rough country. You came too late to get much of a start with your garden d­ idn’t you. Another year you must do differently. I dont know just yet just when you can be useful up at the Gulley, but it w ­ ill be before long. ­There’ll be a dribble of t­ hings to do, taking care of two dogs, prob­ ably, digging borers out of the apple trees27 over at Carols and transplanting a few trees. U ­ nless something unforeseen happens John and Irma w ­ ill set out from ­there about August 20th. I’ll let you know in time. ­They’ll prob­ably want you t­ here a day or two to get acquainted and talk over arrangements. This is28 rather anxious out ­here. Carols wife is still very very sick. The treatment is constant and very severe. If she can only get good and well, I think they ­will move further east—­a long way further; where we can see them more easily. But nothing is certain enough to build on now.

26. ​Toshikazu Kase (1903–2004), Amherst class of 1927. Upon graduation, he entered the Japa­nese Foreign Ser­v ice and was posted first to Berlin (where he came to know Hitler), and then to London (where he came to know Churchill). He was posted in Tokyo at the start of the war, and was l­ater part of the del­e­ga­t ion sent to sign the official surrender aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. A fierce nationalist, Kase opposed a 1995 resolution in the Japa­nese Diet to apologize for atrocities committed by the armed forces of Japan during World War II. 27. ​Alan T. Eaton writes: “Several species of insects bore into New Hampshire apple trees, including roundheaded apple tree borer, flatheaded apple-­tree borer, dogwood borer (and the uncommon look-­a like, apple bark borer), leopard moth, and broad-­necked root borer” (“Borers in New Hampshire Apple Trees,” University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension [Web]). 28. ​Correct as per the manuscript (though one might expect “­Things are”).

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Day a­ fter day the air scarcely moves h ­ ere. A fog chills the night and lasts till about ten in the morning. The day temperature is steadily 80 in the shade. ­We’re entirely comfortable. For the fun of it Carol took up a 160 acre claim for twenty dollars in the Mesquite Valley desert two hundred miles north east of Monrovia. I may go pioneering with him to it. To prove up as they say he must build a shack dig a well and put in 20 months of residence in the next five years. H ­ e’ll never do the 20 months of course. ­Water is said to be thirty feet down. Friends of his w ­ ere 47 feet down last week-­end and ­hadn’t struck ­water yet. The annual rainfall in the valley (a k­ ettle valley) is three inches. Ten inches, fifteen inches makes a desert or does not prevent a desert.29 You never thought of me as a frontiersman on the last frontier. The postmistress in the valley shoots ­people who do anything they ­ought not to to each o ­ thers claims. She represents natu­ral justice. The only crime yet pos­si­ble is against a claim. It would be too long a story to tell you how it is committed. You can imagine. Good weather to you both. Always yours R. F.

[To Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884–1941), En­glish novelist, critic, and dramatist. ALS. HRC.]

261 North Canyon Monrovia California U.S.A. [August 1932] Dear Hugh: We see not, neither do we write each other, but signs are not wanting, such as this invitation to come into your Poems of ­Today,30 that you at least think of me. You must take my word for it that I often think and speak of you—­ gratefully. I’d ask when you are coming to Amer­i­ca; but I suppose you’d only

29. ​See also RF to Manthey-­Zorn, July 4, 1932. The Mesquite Valley proj­ect came to nothing. 30. ​The En­glish Association (UK) published a series of anthologies ­u nder the title Poems of ­Today; the first had appeared in 1915 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson). We have been unable to locate any of RF’s poems in anthologies or periodicals issued by the Association.

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ask in reply when I was coming to ­England.31 I’m tempted. Since you see me at all for your book, c­ an’t you be influenced to see me to the extent of one poem more, namely, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­n ing. My heart’s set on having that spread. I am in California for the health of one of the f­amily. We are seeing the Olympics of course—­not Hollywood of course. I suppose you know some of your athletes over h ­ ere for the games. I wish I knew more of ours. Our professors spend a lot of time resenting athletics in college. But athletics, as I mean to tell them someday in verse, are nearer the arts than scholarship ever thought of being.32 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Gregg Manners Sinclair. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. BU.]

261 North Canyon Blvd Monrovia Calif Wednesday [August 13, 1932] Dear Mr Sinclair: ­Will you come Friday? It ­w ill be fine to see you. I think I told you why I was out ­here—on account of sickness in the ­family. We are too much a hospital for real hospitality. I ­can’t very well invite you to anything, but you and I can have a good talk, which is a good time, at what we call the other ­house away from the o ­ thers at 219 West Greystone St.33 Thats where I s­ hall wait for you. I should meet you and bring you up in a taxi if I knew your time. I’ll tell you what we could do—we could have supper together at the ­little ­hotel if you w ­ ill come late enough and make an eve­n ing of it. In that case ­w ill you wire me at 261 North Canyon Boulevard. I trust this isnt too confusing. If I hear no further from you I ­shall expect you Friday after­ noon at 219 West Greystone St. But I think it would be pleasant if you would 31. ​Walpole lectured widely in Amer­ic­a and had, in fact, spoken several times in Northampton, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, at the Hampshire Bookshop, founded and operated by Frost f­ amily friend Marion Elza Dodd (1882–1961). 32. ​He did so not in verse but in “The Poet’s Next of Kin in a College,” a talk given at Prince­ton University in October 1937 (CPPP, 768–772). 33. ​Carol had arranged the rental of this second h ­ ouse for his parents (about ten minutes’ walk from where he lived).

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wire that you ­w ill come for supper. You may have plans for the eve­n ing that would be against it. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Marshall Louis Mertins (1885–1973), American poet, author, and clergyman. TG. Berkeley.]

MONROVIA CALIF 1932 AUG 15 JUST FOUND LETTER ON RETURNING FROM DESERT WHERE INTERESTED IN CLAIM APPRECIATE FRIENDLINESS BUT ABSOLUTELY NOT AVAILABLE FOR ANYTHING SOCIAL OUT ­HERE TILL ­A FTER SEPTEMBER FIFTEENTH TOO DEEP IN ­FAMILY AFFAIRS EXTORTED DOCTORS PERMISSION TO REST HIDING OUT ON SEABURY INVESTIGATION NAME SHERWOOD34 FOR PRE­SENT 261 NORTH CANYON ROBERT FROST

[To Louis Untermeyer. Text and date derived from RFLU; the manuscript has since gone missing from Untermeyer’s papers at the LoC.]

[Monrovia, California] [August 20, 1932] Dear Louis: This ­isn’t the big dislodger I delivered at Columbia,35 but a ­little one back in my old ways to keep you ­going till I—­you—­get something ­else. How—­just 34. ​In 1931, an investigation into the Magistrate’s Courts of New York City had exposed a conspiracy of judges, attorneys, police, and bail bondsmen to extort money from defendants facing trial. The legislative commission was chaired by State Senator Samuel H. Hofstadter, but the a­ ctual investigation was conducted by Samuel Seabury, an ex-­judge of the Court of Appeals who was appointed ­legal counsel to the committee. As the inquiry continued into 1932, Seabury uncovered fraud and corruption in the office of Mayor James Walker and sought to compel the testimony of John T. Sherwood, the mayor’s financial advisor who had fled to Mexico. Walker ultimately resigned. 35. ​Enclosed was not “Build Soil,” the Phi Beta Kappa poem RF read at Columbia on May 31, but a fair copy of “Not of School Age,” ­later collected in AWT (CPPP, 333)—­a nd

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how g­ reat a poem and just how long a poem must you have for the Knopf series?36 ­Shall I be allowed to add the greatness to the length, divide by two, and take the quotient for the size? How ­w ill the public take my impudence in charging five dollars for a book made on that basis? Or a­ ren’t we g­ oing to charge five dollars? Is this or is this not a graft? I ask you the foregoing questions. Yrs. R.   The Offer I narrow eyes and double night; But still the flakes in bullet flight More pointedly than ever smite. What would they more than have me blink? What is it? What am I to think— That hard and dry to hard and dry They may have said for years? Am I, or they, or both to melt? If I supply the sorrow felt, ­Will they supply the tears? R. F.

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. LoC.]

[Monrovia, California] [August 21, 1932] Dear Louis I ­don’t want you to think t­ hose two poems w ­ ere an answer to your letter about being poisoned in the hand.37 They got away from me just before your letter came and ­weren’t offered as a charm to cure you. ­They’ll strike you as untimely I’m afraid, and wont get their chance. “The Offer,” which RF never published. We print only the latter; the text of the former ­doesn’t materially differ from the poem as printed in AWT. 36. ​See RF’s May 18 letter to Untermeyer. 37. ​For the two poems, see the notes to the previous letter. As for Untermeyer’s hand: an August 17 letter to RF indicated that it had become infected from an embedded thorn.

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If you wont think they are for anything but the fun of it I may send you some more by air mail before we shorten the distance too much. I have always wanted the chance to fly a few poems. ­They’ll be ­l ittle ones not necessarily ever to be published especially if they seem to add nothing to what I have already written. What adds nothing takes away something, I dont need to be told. You may find one that ­w ill do for the Knopf series. But lets not be thinking too much about that. The idea is to utilize for poetry the most modern of modern con­ve­n iences the Motor Kite.38 We can call the set Air Mail—­flown to L. Untermeyer. We better not name it before it is born though, lest it fool us by remaining a dream child.39 Take care of your hand. Take care of the c­ hildren. Take care of Jean—­ temper the farming to her urban upbringing. Remember me to Kelly40 if you can, master to hired man. I just heard from Lankes that Wells College has called him to teach art ­there for a year and three thousand dollars. Much as he is thought of, he has hard times paying bills. That w ­ ill be the biggest money he ever saw in his life. I hope the text-­book he is bringing out on the art of wood-­cutting ­w ill bring him some more money and get him somewhere.41 Would Knopf let him illustrate one of the series?42 Ever yours R. Monrovia! California!

38. ​See “The Wrights’ Biplane” (collected in AFR): “This biplane is the shape of ­human flight. / Its name might better be First Motor Kite  . . .” (CPPP, 281). 39. ​See Charles Lamb’s “The Dream C ­ hildren,” collected in his Essays of Elia (a book RF occasionally assigned to students). In it, Lamb reports a dream in which appeared before him two c­ hildren whom he might have had if the w ­ oman he loved (Ann Simmons, called “Alice” in the essay) had agreed to marry him. 40. ​Kelly K. MacDougal (1901–1992) served as Untermeyer’s hired man and jack-­of-­a ll-­ trades on the Stony W ­ ater farm. 41. ​J. J. Lankes’s beautifully illustrated A Woodcut Manual (New York: Crown, 1932) was the first comprehensive book on woodcutting published in Amer­i­ca. Unfortunately, ­because of the ­Great Depression, the book quickly went out of print and never provided Lankes with the income RF had hoped it would. Lankes did, however, accept the appointment to Wells. 42. ​For the Knopf series, William Wiggins illustrated RF’s The Lone Striker. Lankes illustrated none of the chapbooks.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Monrovia, California] [August 22, 193243] Dear Louis I sent you One. ­Here are Two and Three.44 R.

[To Frank Revell (1891–1967), American businessman and publicist for RCA-­Victor. Dated in part from internal evidence. ALS. ACL.]

Monrovia! California! [late August] 1932 Dear Frank Ravell [sic] I know just how it feels To be kept waiting for ­things. So I’m moved by your appeals

43. ​Untermeyer printed this two-­sentence letter as a postscript to the letter that precedes it ­here and in RFLU. But the surviving documents in the Untermeyer papers show that it went out u ­ nder separate cover, or at any rate in its own airmail-­stamped envelope, together with the enclosures, cancelled on the twenty-­second. The possibilities seem to be two. E ­ ither RF sent the foregoing, longer letter and the two-­sentence one in the same envelope (by airmail); or he sent the longer letter, with its promise of airmailed poetry, a day ­earlier (as we have it h ­ ere) by surface mail—in which case we have on our hands an epistolary practical joke: Untermeyer would have received the short, airmailed letter well in advance of the letter that tells him to expect it. In any case, all we can say with certainty is that the short letter did go by airmail on August 22, and that the letters that immediately precede it ­were likely posted over the course of the two previous days. 44. ​RF sent by airmail fair copies of “The Wrights’ Biplane” (­u nder the working title “The Biplane of Wilbur and Orville Wright”) and “Let Congress See To It,” both whimsical. The first we quote in the notes to RF’s August 21 letter to Untermeyer; the second he left unpublished, so again we quote it h ­ ere in its entirety:    Let Congress See to It Wainwrights and Wheelwrights from of old ­we’ve had Now comes a Wright to whom we need but add An honorary Wing to make him Wingwright. That would not only say right: It would sing right.

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To hurry and tell you on wings That your book’s coming ­after on wheels45 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To J. J. Lankes. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. HRC.]

261 North Canyon Boulevard Monrovia California* [September 1932] Dear J. J.: I dont know how glad you are of that job or how much it ­w ill mean in profits, but I wanted you to get it for the academic recognition not only of 45. ​That is, the letter-­poem went by airmail, the book by rail and truck. Revell had written on August 15 worrying that a copy of NH he had sent to RF for inscription might have “gone astray.” The inscription proved to be remarkable: a full copy of an unpublished poem titled “Gone Astray,” in which the treatment of familiar themes is given special poignancy by RF’s pre­sent dislocation to California. The inscription reads “To my friend the poet Frank Revell.” The poem is as follows:   Gone Astray The field was not my field, Nor was this town my town, Nor was this state my state, Where night was coming down. Nor was this food my food That I unwrapped to eat. And weary of the ground ­Were my stone-­broken feet. And weary was my soul Of having had to tell So often who I was To make men treat me well. And ­little as I saw, I saw I should have kept A place where more of me Than body could have slept. (ACL) California was, of course, RF’s native “state.”

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yourself but of the arts in general. I wrote them a pretty ­bitter letter when they asked me what I knew of your experience as a teacher. I said I knew nothing—­a nd maybe I had got myself in too deep in recommending as a teacher you or anyone e­ lse who could merely perform in the arts. I said I washed my hands of you by which I meant of them. I wasnt mad at them though: I was mad at the system and always am mildly. The place is crawling with p­ eople who however much they cant perform in a single one of the arts can at least hold classes in their seats five hours a week while they kill the five hours in talking outside stuff. ­T hose are good ­people out ­t here or they wouldnt be wondering if they oughtnt to be taking a chance with a real performer. Your book should keep them from too ­g reat trepidation.46 Thats teaching, I’m told, of the best kind and t­ here they have it in writing where they can examine it and reexamine it. One of the best of them is Robert Tristram Coffin a performer himself, a poet of distinction who’ll be more and more heard from and of.47 You prob­ ably owe your job more to him than anyone ­else and his wanting someone with a fellow feeling beside him on the faculty. I saw Boardman Robinson at Colorado Springs on my way out and he said some good t­ hings about you.48 He has a settled job as a teacher in a big school ­there for what he calls his meal ticket. He seems to like it and the executive over him better and better. A l­ ittle security (it ­needn’t be much) certainly helps in the welter of bread and butter getting. I shouldnt be afraid of it and embarrass myself out of it with talk like that of poor old Carl Ruggles.49 Carl might possibly have had a job in the new college for w ­ omen at Bennington Vermont if he hadnt felt the heroic and superior need of talking himself out before he got his invitation.50 “Hell” he always has to say, “who the hell is anybody but me.” He’s an old friend of Boardman Robinson’s—­and we talked him over sadly for his conventional unconventionality. ­There’s no use: a small job has to be the substitute for us poor artists who inherit no money from our parents. I find ­theres often more to it than mere money too: it makes a connec-

46. ​Again, A Woodcut Manual. 47. ​See RF to Coffin, circa May 25, 1932. 48. ​See RF to Manthey-­Zorn, July 4, 1932. 49. ​Charles Sprague “Carl” Ruggles (1876–1971), American composer. Ruggles would eventually take a teaching position at the University of Miami (1938–1943). 50. ​Bennington College opened in the fall of 1932 and was the first American college to integrate the visual and performing arts into its liberal arts curriculum.

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tion an attachment that lets in life ­after I was afraid I had been cut off from it by singularity. So dont make me feel too bad for having got you into this. Ever yours Robert Frost * Where we are not native-­sonning ourselves but looking a­ fter Carol and Lillian in g­ reat retirement.

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Monrovia, California] [September 19, 1932]51 Dear Louis: ­We’re getting out of h ­ ere for Colorado soon—in a week or so. So if you can afford an air mail stamp back I wish you would use it to tell me where Joe March is.52 I have let him go till the last minute ­because I wanted to make sure he would believe me when I said I didnt want to be “shown round.” I have no interest in the Hollywood Punch and Judy show ­either way, for or against it. I d­ on’t want to have to see it or to have to refuse to see it. But of course I should feel sorry to miss my chance to talk with Joe again. I am still of the opinion that he is about my only child in poetry. (Not quite my only. ­There is also Merrill Root.53) You asked me awhile ago about Walter Hen-

51. ​In RFLU Untermeyer incorrectly dates this September 9. 52. ​Joseph Moncure March (1899–1977) was one of RF’s most promising students at Amherst College (class of 1920). He was the author of The Wild Party (New York: Covici Friede, 1928) and The Set-­Up (New York: Covici Friede,1928), two long narrative poems, the first of which was banned in Boston for its salacious content. March had moved to Hollywood in 1929, where he wrote screenplays for Howard Hughes’s film com­pany, Caddo Productions, including the script for Hughes’s 1930 remake of Hell’s Angels. Of interest is that, on March 14, 1929, RF read the w ­ hole of The Set-­Up—­based on the life of the first African American heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson—to a group of students at Amherst College. 53. ​Edward Merrill Root (1895–1973), RF’s student at Amherst (class of 1917), had to date published two books of poems, Lost Eden and Other Poems (New York: Unicorn Press, 1927) and Bow of Burning Gold (Chicago: R. Packard, 1929). He would eventually publish nine more books of poetry.

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dricks and got no answer.54 ­T here’s a queer case. He’s almost somebody. I catch a strange almost baby note in him—or should I say sappy—­that is undeniably his own. He strikes the note but that is all. What poem does he ever make.55 If you are g­ oing to be sap-­headed be sap-­headed to some purpose. Thats all ­there is to being an artist. Be anything, be wicked even, but be it to some purpose. Put the struts into it, spread it out into an entity. It needs struts and some pressure of gass [sic] from within to give the bag a derigible [sic] shape. You asked about the Wylie too but you didnt specially want an answer.56 She was self conscious artist enough to see her appointed task. It was to make a false heart ring false. Art forbade that a false heart should ring true. That would have been false art. The rules of the game permitted her, required her, to slip from one pose to its opposite even in the same poem when of moderate length. So long as she kept her high poetic strain, so long as the work was all crystals sugar glass semi-­precious and precious the falser she was the truer she rang. The ultimate test is how a writer takes himself as betrayed in tone word-­font57 and collateral advertising. I find the Wylie’s way of taking herself, her airs about herself, not very detestable.58 As for me I d­ on’t care too much w ­ hether I am a poet any more.59 It gives me peace to grant that I may be done with the larger public. I have earned the right to quit and go off trial. Let’s play anyway that I am back where I was before I had much of any audience and wrote more for the poem’s sake than ambition’s. Let me use one or two of you for faithful readers whose praise is of the f­ amily familiar. I wont send you poems b­ ecause you are my friend and

54. ​Untermeyer cut from RFLU the material concerning Walter Hendricks (1892– 1979). For the prob­lems that attended the Frost ­family’s relation to Hendricks, see RF to Van Dore, September 9, 1929. 55. ​Hendricks published his first book of poems in 1926: Flames and Fireflies (Chicago: R. Packard). His second followed in 1928, Spires and Spears (R. Packard), and his third in 1931: Double Dealer (also issued by Packard). 56. ​Alfred Knopf had recently published Elinor Wylie’s posthumous Collected Poems. See RF’s June 24, 1932, letter to to Untermeyer (in which he requests a copy). 57. ​As for RF’s interest in type and type design, see his February 15, 1936, tele­g ram to Blumenthal. 58. ​On how poets “take themselves,” see RF to Untermeyer, March 10, 1924 (LRF-2, 401–402; also collected in CPPP, 702–703). 59. ​Indeed, he had published almost no new poetry in magazines since 1928. He would resume scattering poems in magazines in 1934, in a two-­year run-up to AFR.

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my severest critic, but b­ ecause you are my friend and best believer. The fight, what ­there was of it in me, and ­there was never much where poetry was concerned, has gone out of me. Or it feels as if it had this summer. Ever yours R. F. Hold your book till we get settled in Amherst.60 Send it t­here now so you wont forget it. It ­w ill be held for us.

[To Lesley Frost. The letter is incomplete; date derived from internal evidence (in the fall of 1932, Lesley was readying herself to finalize her divorce from Dwight Francis, which was effected on November 1). ALS. UVA.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [early fall 1932] Dear Lesley: I should be able to say from the sidelines what you ­ought to do next. I suppose you do and you d­ on’t want me to. Your question to decide is ­whether Dwight’s not being right in the mind and his having wronged you come to the same t­ hing for practical purposes. If he has only wronged you b­ ecause he is not right in the mind it makes it harder to be hard on him. I can see how you must feel. But you must have been all over this ground several times before. And the conclusion you reached was ­whether he was psychopathic or merely spoiled and misbehaved, you couldnt imagine him becoming pos­si­ble to live with. I remember the hope t­ here seemed in a country life in Woodstock or some such farm as the next one beyond the one you rented.61 That was as good a prospect as any you have had. But it dissolved in the complications of daily relations. Only if you can contemplate a life of self-­sacrificing and child-­sacrificing tragedy could you begin over with him. Some ­people cant resist tragedy. My ­mother ­couldn’t. Nothing could have saved her but my

60. ​Untermeyer’s latest book, The Donkey of God (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932). 61. ​Lesley and Dwight Francis had opened a ski lodge in Woodstock, Vermont. For more on this, see RF to Carol Frost, November 1, 1931. For more on Dwight Francis, see Henry Hart, The Life of Robert Frost: A Critical Biography (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2017): 261–262.

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f­ ather’s death.62 It was wretched, pitiful, wicked, but she was hopelessly committed to it. I from my point of view see you as dif­fer­ent and differently situated. You can get out. I should say you ­were out already. You can tell about that from the inside better than I can from the outside. Without any prejudice e­ ither way for or against him you appear to have lost all warmth of feeling for him. But as I say you know that better than anyone ­else. He’s a poor sinner, but t­ heres something disillusioning and chilling in the way he goes on with his talk and his attitudinizing. He leaves your sympathy all used up and turned to resentment.

[To Carol Frost. ALS. UM.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] October 30 1932 Dear Carol: One ­thing in ­favor of all this travelling back and forth: it has got the country pretty well shrunk, so that we neednt feel very far away from each other. Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Omaha, Chicago, Denver, Baltimore and Philadelphia are down to the size of villages in a state of about the size of Vermont.63 If it werent for the coal dust in trains which catches me colds, I s­ houldn’t mind being on the go between places half the time. I wish the locomotives would use oil or electricity.64

62. ​RF’s ­father, William Prescott Frost Jr., was a hard-­d rinking and sometimes violent man. He died of tuberculosis in San Francisco on May 5, 1885, when RF was eleven (occasioning the ­family’s move to New ­England, where they took refuge first with RF’s paternal grand­father). The hardships his ­mother endured are treated (without naming her) in RF’s unsettling poem “The Lovely S­ hall Be Choosers,” added to the contents of WRB when the latter was brought into CP 1930. See Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, Robert Frost: The Trial By Existence (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1960): 304–305. 63. ​W hile on his travels, RF gave talks in Boston (April 1), New York (on May 31, at Columbia University, where, as noted above, he read “Build Soil”), in Los Angeles (on September  27, 29, and 30), in Boulder, Colorado (on October  12, on the subject: “All Thinking is Meta­phor”), and in Omaha (October 14). 64. ​Diesel-­powered locomotives did not come into common use in the United States ­u ntil 1934, when General Motors rolled out its Winton 201A engine—­t he first in Amer­i­ca suitable for powering passenger trains.

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In Ann Arbor the fo­l iage was at the height of fall color;65 h ­ ere in Amherst it is a ­l ittle past. The market is flowing with two kinds of sweet cider, one the regular doctored kind that cant ferment and the other the old fashioned natu­ral but, I suppose, illegal kind that can ferment and does almost as soon as you get it home. ­There was none of the second last year and its appearance shows how we are letting down gradually on enforcing the law.66 Kent the Dorset real estate agent is a­ fter us for someone in Bennington.67 He drove clear down h ­ ere yesterday to see what Elinor and I would say to taking two thousand down and a mortgage for six thousand. The customer who doesnt want his name known till ­things go further is described as having had the money to pay the ­whole price last year when Shaw got in ahead of him.68 He is described as a business man who should be able to raise the mortgage when and if times improve. We didnt seem to think you ­ought to have so much as six thousand tied up. I told Kent to see if he ­couldn’t get more than two thousand down. I ­don’t suppose anything ­will come of it. It is nothing to get our hopes up on. It merely gives us something to think over.69

65. ​RF and Elinor arrived in Ann Arbor, where they had lived for several years during the 1920s, on October 17. They spent ten days t­here visiting friends. RF also gave two talks / readings at the University of Michigan. 66. ​The onset of the G ­ reat Depression in 1929 led many states to reconsider Prohibition (which had denied them considerable tax revenue), and the ­w ill to enforce the Volstead Act waned. During the 1932 presidential campaign, FDR promised to end Prohibition, which he did, first by signing into law the Cullen–­Harrison Act (March 22, 1933), allowing production and sale of light beer and wine, and then by supporting the repeal of the Eigh­teenth Amendment to the Constitution (which had banned alcohol) by ratification of the Twenty-­First Amendment (December 5, 1933). 67. ​Clifton Pratt Kent (1872–1950), of Dorset, in Bennington County, Vermont. 68. ​Presumably Walter H. Shaw (1883–1934), a real-­estate agent in Manchester, Bennington County, Vermont. 69. ​The affair concerns the pos­si­ble sale of the Stone House (and the farm it sat on), which RF had given to Carol and his wife Lillian when they married in 1923. When this letter was written, Carol expected to live in California for a long while—­he’d moved ­there in 1931—if not in­def­initely (as his wife recovered from tuberculosis). As it happened, he did not sell the h ­ ouse; Lillian recovered her health more quickly than anyone in the ­family had expected, and Carol, Lillian, and their son Prescott moved back into the Stone House in 1934. One result of this is that most of RF’s surviving letters to his son date to 1931–1933. Letters subsequent to this one often take up m ­ atters to do with the sale of the farm.

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As a match for your seeing the theatre once a week I set out in Ann Arbor to see foot ball [sic] once a week.70 The Michigan-­Illinois game was my first and it ended satisfactorily enough in a victory for our side 32 to 0. My second was to have been the Aggie-­A mherst game yesterday after­noon but my cold and the cold of the weather kept me at home. You’ll have noticed the score; Amherst took a bad licking. I dont mind as much as I should if we w ­ eren’t connected in a way with the State College through John71 and if I werent in a way a farmer myself and always on the side of farmers. The State College has a star half-­back, Louis Bush, from Turner’s Falls, that our boys c­ ouldn’t lay out or stop.72 I suppose you are seeing baseball Sundays. Be sure to bring Prescott on in playing and understanding the game all his enjoyment of it permits. I’m glad he liked the play at the theatre. He o ­ ught to go whenever t­ here is anything not too much beyond him. You remember Toggles Thompson73 the chemistry professor p­ eople used to make fun of g­ ently? He’s just been in to interrupt me with an in­ter­est­ing 70. ​Carol had regularly been taking Lillian and Prescott to the theater (as the letter to which RF ­here replies indicates [held at DCL]): among the plays the ­family saw in the fall of 1932 w ­ ere The Rose Without a Thorn by Clifford Bax (about Henry VIII), Alice in Wonderland, adapted for the stage by Eva Le Gallienne and Florida Friebus, The Devil Passes by Benn Levy, and Mr. Faithful: A Comedy in Three Acts by Lord Dunsany. 71. ​For John Cone’s connection to Mas­sa­c hu­setts State College, see RF’s September 1, 1929, letter to Bartlett. The Mas­sa­chu­setts State “Aggies” defeated Amherst College on October 29, 21–6. 72. ​Louis Bush (1912–2000), a­ fter graduating from Turners Falls High School and Vermont Acad­emy (where he led the football, baseball, and basketball teams to undefeated seasons), entered Mas­sa­chu­setts State with the class of 1934. As a freshman in 1931, he was the top r­ unning back in the nation, scoring twenty touchdowns. During the 1932 season he scored five touchdowns in a single game against Cooper Union (on September 24), leading the team to a 50–0 victory. 73. ​Joseph “Toggles” Osgood Thompson (1863–1953) began his ­career at Amherst teaching mathe­matics (1887–1889), then, a­ fter obtaining a PhD at the University of Strasburg in 1891, he returned to Amherst in the early 1890s and thereafter taught physics (not chemistry, as RF says h ­ ere) ­u ntil his retirement in 1928. The Amherst College President’s Report for December 1954 (44.22) printed an obituary, highlighting certain of his eccentricities: “Professor Thompson was affectionately known as ‘Toggles.’ Exactly how or when this appellation arose is not known with certainty. However, it could well have had its origin in a certain tenacity which he possessed. . . . ​One winter day when he was rounding the Beta corner pulling his infant d­ aughter on a sled b­ ehind him, Rebecca fell off into the snow, unbeknownst to him. A ­little farther on, two students approaching him apprised him of the situation. When the trio returned to the scene of the mishap and

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story of the depression. He has a Polish tenant of a small place he owns down at Hockanum by the Connecticut River. The man is twenty-­eight and has a wife and two ­children. He hasnt had work for more than a year and is more than a year ­behind on his rent. Something put it into Thompsons head to propose g­ oing into the wood business with him. Thompson got him an old truck and bought a wood lot on this side of the Holyoke range—­t welve acres. Then Thompson did the soliciting. The Pole is not only out of trou­ble, but making money and so is Toggles Thompson. The idea is to sell good dry wood exactly as ordered in size and kind. The partnership between the retired professor and the down-­and-­out Pole is being preached about in church. Toggles is a funny sentimental fellow and the w ­ hole t­ hing makes him talkatively happy. He came to try to take me over onto the wood lot. It is of course a good story. The Pole was desperate and had no good out of this country since he came to it seven or eight years ago. He was unjustly detained in jail a week once on suspicion of having set a fire and when released with apologies found that he had lost his job. Nice to give a hard-­luck person something pleasant to think of.74 We hear all sorts of amusing t­ hings about the new President. He has told the old guard to shut up talking about Meiklejohn as fresh as if the row was

Rebecca had been ­gently replaced on the sled, he carefully reviewed with the students the exact sequence of events which had occurred, ending with the statement: ‘You see, gentlemen, the center of gravity was just a bit too high’ ” (3). 74. ​This story is corroborated in some but not all of its details by a quitclaim deed dated July 30, 1934, and held now in the Hampshire County Registry of Deeds. (The discrepancy has to do with the ages of the protagonists.) The document rec­ords the sale of a twelve-­acre woodlot, located along the Holyoke Range, where Hadley and South Hadley meet, near a place called Hockanum Flat. The seller is Edward “Eddie” Berestka (1913–1993), son of a Polish immigrant named Ignacy Beretska (1886–1956), and the buyer Joseph Osgood Thompson. The purchase price was the nominal sum of $1, suggesting that Thompson had loaned Edward the money to buy the land from one Carrie Marsh in 1929. Thompson’s wife, Lulu  B. Thompson, and Frank Beretska (1915–2002), Edward’s ­brother, witnessed the sale. The Beretska ­family lived in Hadley, adjacent to Amherst. A 1933 city directory lists Edward, Frank, and Ignacy as “laborers” on Lawrence Plain Road in Hadley (the road is now Mas­sa­c hu­setts Route 47). City directories dating to the 1950s show that Edward Beretska was, with his ­brother Frank and their wives, ­r unning a construction business on Lawrence Plain Road—­having got his start, as it would appear, at age sixteen and through the generosity of Toggles Thompson. The editors thank Beth Callahan, of the Hampshire Registry of Deeds, for locating the quitclaim deed and providing us a copy of it.

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still on. He is ­going to have Meiklejohn ­here visiting and have his picture hung with the portraits of all the other Presidents of the college. ­Great stuff! Keep as active as you can for Lillian and Prescott’s sake as well as your own. Go to the theatre and games so you’ll have plenty to tell Lillian about. Affectionately Papa.

4

“The temptation of the times is to write politics . . .” November 1932–­March 1934 I’m glad if I still can please you. I need all the encouragement you can give me in that kind of poetry to hold me to it. The temptation of the times is to write politics. But I m ­ ustn’t yield to it, must I? Or if I do, I must burn the results as from me likely to be bad. Leave politics and affairs to Walter Lipp­mann. Get sent to Congress if I ­w ill and can (I have always wanted to), but stick to the kind of writing I am known for. —­Robert Frost to Wilbur Cross, February 17, 1934

[To Elizabeth Manwaring (1879–1949), American educator, professor of En­glish at Wellesley. ALS. Wellesley.]

Amherst Mass November 1 1932 Dear Miss Manwaring: I have just come home from distant places to attend to the letters piled up against me. Thank you for the kindness of yours. Of course I ­shall be glad to be of the dinner party ­after my reading.1 ­Later I can go home with the Youngs for a midnight talk.2 I had a pleasant meeting with your President last June that took my thoughts back to Wellesley and made me ­eager for renewals ­there.3 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Charles Lowell Young (1865–1937), American educator, professor of En­glish at Wellesley. Date derived from postmark. ALS. Wellesley.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [November 1, 1932] Dear Young: ­Won’t it be fun talking with you when you are in such a good mood ­toward my latest book? 4 I have written Miss Manwaring that we w ­ ill have dinner with her and then go to your ­house for a midnight of it. 1. ​RF read at Wellesley on November 14. 2. ​See next letter (to Young). 3. ​Ellen Fitz Pendleton (1864–1936), president of Wellesley College from 1911 ­u ntil shortly before her death. 4. ​Presumably CP 1930.

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Elinor and I are just back from trying to sustain the ­children in their t­ rials. Marj has been taking the cure for lungs in Colorado. She is up and around again and we trust out of danger. Carol’s wife Lillian is a much more serious case. She has prob­ably a year or two ahead in bed undergoing the surgical treatment now generally in use. ­People ask us if we had a pleasant trip. We did have like Cadmus and Harmonia. Some day we are expecting the reward of being placed safely in changed forms where forgetting all this Theban woe we can stray5 a ­couple of old snakes forever placid and dumb.6 ­Don’t let me excite your sympathy. I’m r­ eally indomitable. Faithfully yours Robert Frost

[To Harold Rugg. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass November 2 1932 My dear Rugg: Come one, come both.7 Fine to see you. If we are enough settled into our new old ­house* to entertain com­pany, we ­shall ask you to have dinner with us on Sunday; if not we s­ hall accept your invitation to the Inn.8 Ever yours Robert Frost *15 Sunset Ave­nue

5. ​Reading as per the manuscript. 6. ​For Cadmus and Harmonia, see page 6 of the introduction to this volume. See also RF to Untermeyer, April 29, 1934. 7. ​In an October 7 letter to RF, Rugg suggested that he and Dartmouth se­n ior Kimball Flaccus meet with RF in Amherst to discuss Flaccus’s poetry and to set up a reading l­ ater that year at Dartmouth. 8. ​The Lord Jeffery Inn, located on the Amherst Common.

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[To Louise Bogan (1897–1970), American poet and literary critic. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass November 3 1932 Dear Louise Bogan: If I decide against you you wont be supposed to know it and so cant openly bear me any grudge. But I shant decide against you. I think you one of the best of us and should like nothing better than to help you get a Guggenheim.9 What I should like, however, doesnt necessarily get you one, as it might if I had gone on the committee of awards when I was asked a year or two ago. I dont know all the ­people they have ­there now and ­there may be someone with whom any boost you had from me might easily be as bad as a knock. If ­there is, it is upon your head for not looking into the m ­ atter through your detective agency beforehand. The politics of poetry is a game that has to be very carefully played. Tell Raymond that I trea­sure in memory particularly what he said in his New Yorker article about my being a good lyric poet and once having been a ­g reat baseball pitcher.10 I’m ­going to make him stand by that ­g reat baseball pitcher in my advertising for all time. I must see you both this winter. I’m glad ­you’re both well. Except for Elinor and me, w ­ e’re almost all of us sick with something serious. Oh, tell Raymond too that writing on impression and belief as he was required to write for the New Yorker he made some ­m istakes of fact. They w ­ ere not too awful, but I should like to have them corrected when he writes me up in Fortune for the only Am. poet to make a living out of poetry since Poe.11 Figures on application. Books always open to accountants. Sincerely his and yours Robert Frost

9. ​Bogan did indeed win a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1933. 10. ​Raymond Holden, RF’s neighbor from his Franconia days (1915–1920), had married Bogan on July 10, 1925. Holden’s profile of RF, entitled “North of Boston,” appeared in the New Yorker on June 6, 1931. 11. ​R F is joking. Edgar Allan Poe’s first books of poetry, Tamerlain, and Other Poems (1827), and Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829) went largely unnoticed. Poe never earned a living wage from his writing and died in poverty.

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[To Arthur Pound (1884–1966), American poet and historian. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass November 3 1932 Dear Arthur: What your poem is all about moves me.12 ­There’s a mature positiveness in it that lifts it away above the work of the mere rhymesters we have always with us. You have something you did and something you actually thought to tell of. T ­ here’s not the least affectation of sentiment or phraseology. And I can excuse the inexpertness of the ­handling. I have to admit against my prejudice in your ­favor that what I might call your seconds ­aren’t as good as your firsts in your couplets. That is to say in the first of the pair where you are f­ ree from having to think of the rhyme, you are better than in the second line where you are not so f­ ree. We all have the same defect in greater or less degree. It might be said that the ­whole ­battle of art is waged to make the second lines of couplets as honest as the first lines. Second lines simply must not be left good-­excuse lines. You could relieve this ailment if you cared to take the time and trou­ble.13 ­You’re a poet by nature. I have known that. It took this poem to make me say it out. I wish I wish—­well that such genuineness could be a shade more accomplished. But why bother you with any doubts when I like the poem so much and like you in it. Ever yours Robert Frost

12. ​Pound had sent RF a typescript of the title poem of his Mountain Morning and Other Poems (Albany, NY: Argus Press, 1932). See also RF to Pound January 1, 1933 (when he was given a copy of the book proper). 13. ​Pound’s rhymes are indeed conventional and unimaginative. Consider ­t hose that fall on the first page of “Mountain Morning”: hill / still, bird / heard, cock / clock, wing / ring, rim / dim, face / place, view / new, ­house / mouse, feet / meet (and so on throughout the poem).

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[To Kimball Flaccus. Year derived from internal evidence. (Dictated to and signed for RF by Elinor Frost). DCL.]

15 Sunset Ave. Amherst [Massachusetts] Nov. 26th [1932] Dear Flaccus,— I have been sick in bed for a week and am still unable to write letters. I am sorry to have kept your poem so long. I have had one or two good looks at it, and should like to see it again when it is finished. The best of it is the passage about the Barre stone cutter out of hospital.14 You realize yourself that is first-­ rate material for poetry of this kind. ­There are a lot of ­things I could say to you about the art if we w ­ ere talking, and one of them is that it should be of major adventures only, outward or inward—­impor­tant ­things that happen to you, or impor­tant ­things that occur to you. Mere poeticality w ­ on’t suffice. We must wait for ­things to happen to us big or occur to us big. We are sure to have some big luck if we wait long enough. At almost any age we are pretty sure to find on looking back we have had more big luck than we knew. The main point is that I put the two on equal terms, the ­things that happen to you and the ­things that occur to you. You ­can’t have them at ­w ill, but they are certainties now and then in any life of living and thinking. And when you get a good one, given out of nowhere, you can almost trust it to do itself in poetry. Almost I say. You can at least seem to throw away all you ever learned in your long apprenticeship to formal beauty. But we can talk more when I see you. I am dictating this to you.— Always yours, Robert Frost

14. ​The passage begins, “Once ­going along the road that leads to Barre / I overtook a ­g reat, gaunt stumbling man,” and includes ­t hese lines: Six weeks ago in the quarries a boom had broken And tons of rock had fallen, leaving John Wallace For a while ghosting among his carven angels, But he awoke in hospital in Wells River. Flaccus printed it as part fourteen in a series of poems—­u nder the heading “Personality”—in his first book, Avalanche of April (New York: Scribner, 1934).

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[To Carol Frost. Date derived from postmark. ALS. UM.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [December 1932] Dear Carol I forgot almost the chief t­ hing in my last letter.15 I should hope you would do the Long Trail in prose rather than in verse.16 It would bring you out right now I think to undertake a considerable t­ hing in prose. It would develope [sic] your expression in general and so help you in your verse when you went back to it. You’ll find you can load the material more freely into prose. You can say a lot in prose that verse w ­ on’t let you say, especially rhymed verse. You’ll set yourself an example in prose of fullness and straightforwardness that your verse ­w ill be the better for having to follow. I ­haven’t published any prose,17 but I know the prose I have written has made good competition for my verse. You know the weakness of verse: one line of it ­w ill be strong and good and the next w ­ ill be almost anything for the sake of the rhyme. That’s why some ­people cant stand the stuff. The ideal we are always striving for is an even goodness, so that neither line can be suspected of having been deflected twisted or trumpted18 up to rhyme with the other. That ­w ill make the verse as honest as the equivalent in prose. Sometimes I ­don’t think ­there is any other test of a good poem than to see that not a single rhyme in it has hurt it. Lets see some of the prose when you get it started. The poem about the tools was one of the richest yet. Mertins19 writes that he saw you. Be kind to him for his sake as well as mine. You should see how overcome he was in his letter at a word or two of praise I had given him for some of his poetry. He is a poet who has given up

15. ​Of October 30 (­u nless an intervening letter has been lost). 16. ​R F had been invited to write a poem about the trail (he never did). See RF to Proctor, December 20, 1929, and October 1 and 9, 1930. ­W hether Carol attempted one is not clear. 17.  Deliberately self-deprecatory so as not to intimidate Carol in yet another form of expression. To date, RF had published eleven short stories in two New England poultry journals (1903–1905), prefaces to several books, and an important essay on metaphor (“Education by Poetry” [1931]); see CPRF, 35–111. 18. ​RF’s spelling; perhaps a portmanteau of “trumped” and “trumpeted.” 19. ​Louis Mertins (the California poet and former clergyman).

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pretty much every­thing, a considerable position in the pulpit even, to live for poetry. Where we roasted and passed the summer night without sleep awhile back now all is pleasant furnace warmth and comfort. We got pretty well frozen out up at the farm. It dropped to two below zero the night before we left. Sometimes we won­der seriously if it wouldnt be pos­si­ble to find farming you would like in a softer climate than this. I have had not a word out of Kent or Mrs Nevils since I told Kent to advise her to buy the farm outright for the $8000 agreed upon if she wanted to speculate with it: she might get herself into trou­ble with the law trying to get what amounts to an eleven ­percent commission on the sale. We hear she rented it to some New Yorkers for the deer hunting season.20 Lelend [sic] Stanford comes out on top on the Coast but I suspect Southern California is the best team in the country.21 Tell me more about how it goes with the Monrovia baseball team.22 I had very ­little satisfaction in thinking of Amherst this year. It lost e­ very impor­tant game except the one with Mass State College. The game at Williams was a ­g reat disappointment.23 I’m glad 20. ​For more on the real-­estate business—­a nd Kent, the agent in question—­see RF to Carol, October 30, 1932, and September 9 and 18, 1933. As for “Mrs Nevils,” the pos­si­ble buyer: she is Mary Jane Nevils (1878–1942), wife of William H. Nevils (1874–1935) of Bennington, Vermont, and proprietor of an antique shop; they owned, in 1930, a h ­ ouse valued at $15,000, and presumably had the kind of money RF speaks of h ­ ere to speculate in local real estate. (Her husband owned a plumbing business in Bennington.) That the Stone House dated to the late eigh­teenth ­century would, of course, attract the attention of a ­woman who dealt in antiques. On August  3, 1933, Kent’s wife Rose Lindley Kent (1872–1968) published a lengthy article about the Stone House in the Bennington Eve­ning Banner (page 3), detailing its history and describing its interior (and reporting that it was leased, at the time, by Mary Jane Nevils). Presumably the puff piece was meant to heat up the market for the ­house. As we have noted, Carol never sold the place: he and his ­family returned to Vermont in 1934. 21. ​Stanford University defeated the University of Southern California 13–0 on October  22. But RF’s assessment of USC is correct: in the 1933 Rose Bowl (held on New Year’s Day), the USC Trojans defeated Pittsburgh 35–0. 22. ​The Monrovia High School baseball team, which had championship seasons in 1932 and 1933. Carol gave in his reply to the pre­sent letter a detailed account of two games he and Prescott had seen (both of which Monrovia won). Baseball was then played well into December in southern California. 23. ​A mix-up. See RF to Carol, October 20, 1932, for the Amherst–­Mas­sa­chu­setts State game (which Amherst lost). And Amherst defeated Williams College 31–7 on November 12, 1932.

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I wasnt ­there in the cold to watch it. Our team started out with the highest expectations. Tell Prescott to write me a small letter! Tell him if h ­ e’ll write a reasonable letter to Santa Claus about what he wants for Christmas I’ll see that Santa Claus gets it—­I’m so much nearer where he lives in Iceland. Affectionately Papa

[To Charles Lowell Young. ALS. Wellesley.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] December 11 1932 Dear Young— Young and unexperienced. Else how could you have fallen so incautiously into such an obviously set trap? Thus gingerly should you have approached the deadly peril. You should have said a poet’s best intended words ­w ill do for want of better, but misprints are of God and should be held inviolable. That was your only tenable position. You w ­ ere fatuous in not taking it, you must admit. You should have said, Very likely “roams” was a printers’ error, but I find printers’ errors generally an improvement on writers’ designs.24 You would only be taking your stand with the extreme Modernists. For my part I could wish the printer had made it pomps through the dark and so suggested at once splendor and a dog’s name, Pompey. Ohms would have been better than roams b­ ecause it has connotations of electricity. But why prolong your agony? You understand I ­don’t condemn you for preferring roams, but for not

24. ​The joke concerns RF’s “Canis Major,” in WRB. When he brought the poem into CP 1930, RF changed the last line in its last quatrain to make it consistent with the text of its first appearance (for which see the next note) rather than with the text of the poem in WRB, which reads: “I’m a poor underdog / But to­n ight I ­w ill bark / With the ­Great Overdog / That roams through the night.” The restored reading (in CP 1930) had “romps through the dark,” which, a­ fter all, seems much more consistent than “roams” with the description given the constellation: it “gives a leap in the east” and “dances upright,” ­etc. In a copy of WRB inscribed to the collector Earle Bernheimer, RF writes out a fair copy of the poem on a flyleaf (using “romps”) and, on the page where the poem appears in the book (38), also makes the correction in ink. We thank Pat Alger for the latter information.

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having it cross your mind that the original word may possibly have been romps. Of course thats what it was in its first publication in 1926.25 You’ll grow more wary as you grow older. Dont let what I had to eat at your ­house worry you. I like a sumptuous salad. What laid me out was too much railroad and too ­little sleep t­ here for a few days when I was covering the Acad­emy meeting in New York, the inauguration at Amherst, a convention at Atlantic City, three public readings besides the one at Wellesley, and the T. S. Eliot party in Boston.26 I ­shall have to learn to manage more eco­nom­ically as I grow older, just as you’ll have to learn to be less precipitate in critical judgement. Boys ­can’t afford to be boys forever. Severely yours Robert Frost

[To Bessie Zaban Jones (1898–1997), American author, editor (and second wife of University of Michigan professor of En­glish, Howard Mumford Jones). ALS. Harvard.]

Amherst Mass December 11 1932 Dear Mrs Jones: I’m sending this to you at San Marino on the assumption that you wont have gone back on California27 and back East quite yet but sending it on wings for fear you w ­ ill be ­going soon.28 I find its a kind of poem that can be put to all sorts of uses. You heard me put it to two or three. I put it to a dozen more 25. ​Off by a year. The poem appeared first (as “On a Star Bright Night”) in the “Books” section of the New York Herald Tribune on March 22, 1925. 26. ​Eliot held the Charles Eliot Norton professorship at Harvard for 1932–1933. The dinner took place on November 15 at the St. Botolph Club. As for the other appearances: RF spoke on November 12 before the New Jersey Association of Teachers of En­glish in Atlantic City; he was at Wellesley—­where he ate that salad, and where the library arranged a display of his first editions—­for a reading on November 14; and then, ­a fter a sickness of almost two weeks, he attended a December  1 meeting of the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters in New York. 27. ​The phrasing, though a bit odd, is as RF has it. 28. ​R F enclosed a fair copy of “A Rec­ord Stride” (and sent the letter by airmail: “on wings”). He inscribed it as follows: “To Bess Jones / for her prompting in the ­m iddle of it on a memorable occasion.” We do not know what the occasion was, but it seems certain that the Frosts visited Jones while they w ­ ere all in California.

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ingratiating my way home to New ­England. To top off I managed the other night to bring it in on a serious occasion I couldnt take seriously in Boston. T. S. Eliot said he would read a poem if I would.29 I made him a ­counter offer. I said I would write mine while he was reading his. I went to work on all the place cards I could gather, pretending to make mine up as fast as I could. When my turn came I was not quite finished but said I would do the best I could with the last stanzas extempore. I stumbled a l­ ittle for verisimilitude. Someone exclaimed, “Quite a feat” and next day The Atlantic begged the poem for publication.30 All ­were so unexpectedly solemn that I hadnt the courage to disabuse them. My lie kept me awake one w ­ hole night. John L. Lowes, Robert Hillyer and a lot of your husbands friends w ­ ere ­there.31 Caution him. They must never know the truth.—­We both send you both our best wishes for Christmas. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] December 12, 1932 Dear Louis All you say is true—­too true—­except that about my Phi Beta Kappa poem which I have my doubts about though it rather stole the occasion for some reason from the g­ reat Walter Lipmann [sic].32 In a way it was a monkey-­shine 29. ​Eliot read “The Hippopotamus.” For details of the event (beyond what RF h ­ ere provides) see YT, 402–403 and 661–662. 30. ​It was published ­t here in May 1936 (and collected in AFR). 31. ​John Livingston Lowes and Robert Hillyer (1895–1961), two of Howard Mumford Jones’s colleagues in the Harvard Department of En­glish. 32. ​R F had read “Build Soil” (as Phi Beta Kappa Poet) in Columbia University’s McMillin Theatre on May  31. Walter Lipp­mann (1889–1974), journalist and po­liti­cal commentator, accompanied RF and delivered the Phi Beta Kappa oration: “The Scholar in a Troubled World.” As the New York Times reported on June 1, 1932, “Mr. Lipp­mann contended that the ‘scholar who deserts his books and his research to heed the importunate demands of the pre­sent does not do justice to himself and the world. I doubt ­whether the student can do a greater work for this nation in this grave moment of its history than to detach himself from its preoccupations, refusing to let himself be absorbed by distrac-

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and he neednt have minded poetry’s having a ­l ittle the best of it for once in a po­liti­cal age. But I’m afraid he did mind, ­whether from wounded vanity or lack of humor; and I’m sorry for I admire him and should like to count him [a] friend. T ­ here is a devil in me that defeats my deliberate intentions. I must show you the poem when and if I get it into closer form. Much of it was almost extemporized. I larked the same way at a party where I met T. S. Eliot a month ago. He offered to read a poem if I would read one. I made him a ­counter offer to write one while he was reading his. Then I fussed around with place cards and a borrowed pencil pretending an inspiration. When my time came I said I hadnt finished on paper but would try to fake the last part in talk when I got to it. I did nine four-­line stanzas on the subject My Olympic Rec­ord Stride (I might write it out and enclose it for you.33) Several said quite a feat. All w ­ ere so solemn I hadnt the courage to tell them that I of course was lying! I had comtions about which he can do almost nothing. . . . ​For this is not the last crisis in ­human affairs. The world w ­ ill go on somehow and more crises w ­ ill follow. It w ­ ill go on best, however, if among us t­ here are men who stood apart, who refused to be too anxious or too much concerned, who w ­ ere cool and inquiring, and had their eyes on a longer past and a longer f­uture’ ” (18). RF shared t­hese sentiments. See “The Lost Follower” (collected in AWT). See also his (circa) March  21, 1935, open letter to the Amherst Student (below). 33. ​RF indeed enclosed the poem, which he ­later published, as noted above, ­u nder the title “A Rec­ord Stride” in AFR (CPPP, 27–78). The poem, a playful one, concerns his 1931 coast-­to-­coast journey to see two grandchildren. “My Olympic Rec­ord Stride” (as sent to Untermeyer) has for the first line of the final, ninth stanza, “And I hope ­they’re ­going to forgive me,” where “­they’re” refers to the “thin-­skinned” “past-­active shoes” worn in making RF’s “rec­ord stride”; the final form instead has, “And I ask all to try and forgive me” (our emphases). Possibly RF made the change to forestall any passing association of the antecedent of the pronoun “­t hey’re,” as he’d originally written it, with “grandchildren” (he’d composed the poem for them, as the fifth stanza indicates in both texts: “Two entirely dif­fer­ent grandchildren / Got me into my double adventure. / But when they grow up and can read this / I hope they ­won’t take it for censure”). The forgiving grandchildren were, of course, Lesley Lee Francis, born in Montauk, and Prescott, then living in Monrovia (not far from Long Beach). Worth noting is that in the poem RF wets his shoe not at Long Beach but at “the Cliff House,” which is in his native San Francisco (he and Elinor made a quick stop in the city—­the first RF had made since leaving it in 1885—­before heading back east). A letter from Carol dating to October 1932 indicates that RF had filled a b­ ottle of w ­ ater from the Atlantic Ocean at Montauk, carried it out to California, and given it to Prescott and Carol to pour into the Pacific at a beach in Santa Monica (letter held at DCL).

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posed the piece for my ­family when torn between Mountauk, Long Island, and Long Beach California the summer before. So be cautioned. They must never know the truth. I’m much to blame, but I just ­couldn’t be serious when Eliot was taking himself so seriously. ­There is much to give an old man the fan-­tods.34 Wont you be fine and cozy snowed in up t­ here below zero?35 We havent had a ­whole winter like that for a long time but we mean to have one again soon. I hope you thought Lankes was making a go of it at Wells. Ever yours R. F.

[To Albert S. Bobrowsky (1914–2000), at the time a high school se­nior in Brooklyn. ALS. Jones.]

Amherst Mass December 14 1932 Dear Mr Bobrowsky: Pound has been a ­g reat influence. I speak of him and praise him more than does anyone ­else except in his own immediate gang. He taught Eliot, J. Gould Fletcher, and Amy Lowell; he converted Yates [sic] from writing his old way to writing his new way and he treated me as a friend.36 He is still my friend and I am his, though we seldom see each other. I had already two and a half books written (A Boys ­Will, North of Boston and half Mountain Interval) when first we met, so t­ here was not much he could do for me except back me.37

34. ​An Americanism: to make uneasy, irritated. 35. ​The Untermeyers w ­ ere at their farm in the Adirondacks. A blizzard had blanketed much of the nation from the Rockies to New E ­ ngland. 36. ​During the winters of 1913–1914, 1914–1915, and 1915–1916, Pound lived with Yeats in a small cottage in Ashdown Forest in Sussex. Pound’s example and conversation encouraged Yeats in the development of his ­later style. 37. ​RF is correct in denying that Pound influenced him, but his remark is other­w ise misleading: as Donald  G. Sheehy has argued, most, if not all, of NB was written in ­England during the spring and summer of 1913, a­ fter RF had met Pound (though by no means u ­ nder his influence).

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He did that most generously in spite of the difference in our schools. I lost patience with him when I saw him backing just as enthusiastically Skipwith Canell [sic].38 But I have recovered my patience. What then made me cross with him I now think only amusing. I think him the real poet of all this modernismus. I’m an admirer of his friend William Carlos Williams too. I doubt if I was any more influenced by Browning and Words­worth than by a dozen other poets you or I could name. Its good of you to like my poetry. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To John Hall Wheelock (1886–1978), American poet, editor for many years at Charles Scribner’s Sons. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst Mass December 15 1932 My dear Wheelock: It turned out I wasnt as available as I looked t­ here for one while. I appreciate your thinking of me. Would it be any return for your kindness if I told you of someone who was available. He is a Harvard man, David McCord.39 You may know him—­and pay tribute to him. He is in charge of the Fund at an office on the Square. He has been reading into the infant mind some gratuitous oddities that I know nothing at all like ­unless it is a single ­thing of Locker-­Lampson’s, the one about the baby out in the baby-­carriage which seeing the policeman kiss its nurse exclaimed inwardly Ha ha When I can talk I’ll tell Mama—­40

38. ​Skipwith Cannell (1887–1957), American poet associated, in the mid-1910s, with the Imagist school. For more on RF’s opinion of Cannell, see LRF-1, 116, 120, 130. 39. ​David McCord, executive secretary of the Harvard College Fund from 1927 ­u ntil 1963, with an office in Wadsworth House on Harvard Square. Among his volumes of poetry are several for ­c hildren. 40. ​Frederick Locker-­Lampson (1821–1895). “A Terrible Infant” was published—­sans policeman—in 1872:

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They are of a wiry configuration that might easily wind themselves into the minds of a considerable public. Half a dozen specimens of them may be seen in a recent New Yorker.41 I’ll bet a real publisher could get them g­ oing.42 I hope I may be allowed a glimpse of you when I am down sometime in the winter. Best wishes for Christmas. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Leon  A. Makielski (1885–1974), American painter and professor of fine arts with whom RF became friends while teaching at the University of Michigan in the 1920s. ALS. Private.]

Amherst Mass December 21 1932 Dear Makielski: Enclosed is my check for half of what I promised you; the remaining fifty dollars I ­w ill try to send to you in April or May, depending on how well I am and so how money-­making this winter. This in back payment on the Red Tree43 w ­ ill let you know we are thinking of you and wishing you all a Merry Christmas. Ever yours Robert Frost

I recollect a nurse call’d Ann, Who carried me about the grass, And one fine day a fine young man Came up, and kissed the pretty lass. She did not make the least objection! Thinks I, ‘Aha! When I can talk I’ll tell Mamma’ —­And that’s my earliest recollection. 41. ​“A Child’s Garden of Reverses” appeared in the November  19, 1932, issue of the New Yorker. 42. ​One already had. In 1925, L ­ ittle Brown (Boston) brought out his Far and Few: Rhymes of the Never Was and Always Is. McCord adapted his title from the “The Jumblies” by Edward Lear (1812–1888). 43. ​One of Makielski’s paintings. RF is making good on an old debt, as he had purchased the painting more than a de­cade e­arlier for $100.00. See RF to Untermeyer,

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[To Herschel Brickell. ALS. Alger.]

Christmas 1932 Amherst Mass Dear Mr Brickell: I am sorry you are leaving my affairs to go to other affairs and I s­ hall miss your hand in my books.44 You may not have noticed a book on American Lit­ er­a­t ure by A. C. Ward in which my Collected Poems gets praised both in appearance and content as one of the most desirable books that have come out of Amer­i­ca.45 I’ll accept my share of that if you’ll accept yours. Once having campaigned together, we must promise to stay friends. You mustnt forget me. Neither must Mrs Brickell.46 We must see each other now and then. The seasons greetings and best wishes to you both. Always yours Robert Frost

[To J. J. Lankes. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. HRC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa late December 1932] Dear J. J. Im passing into the shameless last phase of not writing letters. Nothing but dissolution can await me—­d issolution of friendships. Or so you would say. And yet I dont know. ­There is something about me that friends wont lightly let go of I am convinced. I may be wrong in the conviction. It is the opposite to what I had [said] of myself only a few years ago. It w ­ ill be in­ter­est­i ng to try May 22, 1922 (LRF-2, 244). The painting is now in possession of Elinor Wilbur, one of RF’s grand­daughters. 44. ​Brickell was leaving Holt to resume his job at the New York Eve­ning Post as a columnist (he wrote ­u nder the heading “Books on Our ­Table”); in 1934 he was named literary editor of the Post. 45. ​RF seems to have had the book on hand. See Alfred Charles Ward, American Lit­er­ a­ture: 1880–1930 (London: Methuen, 1932): “Added to his own gifts, ­t here is the good fortune that Robert Frost’s poetry has been presented in almost perfect typographical style, and both in appearance and content his Collected Poems is one of the most desirable and satisfying books to come out of America” (166). 46. ​Norma H. Long Brickell (1894–1983).

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it out and it w ­ ill be the line of least re­sis­tance for a lazy man. (I’ll bet you dont understand a word Im saying. Neither do I. But thats all right. Its in the best modern manner.) Elinor’s written you the news. Morgan, the art department, and President Stanley King want you in February, beginning Feb 8. I hope thats all right.47 The President agrees with me that you must put in an appearance sometime during the two weeks of the show. T ­ here wont be any profit in it, but t­ here is enough for railroad expenses if you’ll be satisfied with that. I hope you’ll be, ­because I want to see you. No duties—no lecture—­just a party—­a l­ittle sociability. They are making you unhappy out t­ here but perhaps not too unhappy. Im glad you have Coffin.48 I have meant to preach you sermons on not letting the academics know for a moment they both­ered you. A person coming on them out of your world puts them on the offensive defense you have to remember. They know the art worlds sneer at the academic and professorial. You have to be the agressor [sic] in magnanimity. Take the upper hand in disarmament. I’ve been through it. Coffin can tell you. ­There was a time when I was getting it from both sides. My fellow writers scorned me for a schoolmaam: my fellow teachers deprecated me for no scholar. But I’m a past-­master at not caring about some t­ hings. The weak place in my armor is my reputation as a poet. I just tell you that so you’ll know I have a weak place. I dont pretend to be super. The book is a beauty everyway, text pictures and form, and something’s wrong if Holt cant sell it.49 The style suits me from the ground up. It sounds as if you had been developing it for years and I suppose you have in letters. It’s uncommon though to see anyone able to bring his naturalness over from letters into a book without many t­ rials and long practice. Mary50 Christmas R. F.

47. ​R F was helping to arrange an exhibition of Lankes’s work at Amherst College. Charles Hill Morgan II (1902–1984) was a professor of fine arts at Amherst. 48. ​Poet Robert  P. Tristram Coffin provided friendship and support for Lankes at Wells College. 49. ​ A Woodcut Manual had been published by Holt in early December 1932 to rave reviews. Sales w ­ ere, however, disappointing. 50. ​Perhaps an affectionate play on Lankes’s wife’s ­m iddle name, Maria.

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[To John Stuart Groves (1881–1958), American businessman, book collector and employee of DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass January 1 1933 Dear Mr Groves: I ­shall be glad to write my name in your copies of my books. I have a warm place in my heart for firsts51 and should be a fancier and collector myself if I had ever got round to it. My winter address is Amherst Mass. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Carol Frost. Date derived from postmark. ALS. UM.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [January 1, 1933] Dear Carol: I feel more and more the power b­ ehind your poems.52 It still fails to come through sometimes into ideas altogether clear to me. “Their Rings Are Bones,” 51. ​That is, first editions. 52. ​­There is good evidence that Carol hoped to publish a volume of poetry. Elinor Frost wrote his s­ ister Lesley in January  1932: “I h ­ aven’t changed my mind over night. ­Don’t write to Carroll ­u ntil I say the word. It ­isn’t that papa ­doesn’t think ­t here is some good in what Carroll has done. I guess it’s more that Carroll i­sn’t willing to be told ­t hings, & also that he fears Carroll’s ambition ­w ill get away with him—­precluding patience in collecting enough for a pos­si­ble book” (FL, 144). Several more letters to Carol about his poetry followed in the spring of 1933. And in a December 1932 typed letter to his parents, Carol had written: “As you can see I am getting more serious about writing, with an intent to publish. I now have twenty two [poems] typewritten without any ­m istakes that we can find but that d­ oesn’t prove ­t here ­aren’t any. ­A fter Lillian has read them over I have found some ­m istakes, as poor as I am at spelling. I’m trying not to get commercial. Just as soon as one thinks of ­going into print it seems the situation tends to change the writing” (letter held now at DCL). He then adds: “I feel as though I was getting better able to make my slumps or blues shorter than they used to be” (an allusion to the m ­ ental illness that would ultimately lead Carol to suicide on October 9, 1940). Noteworthy, perhaps, is that Carol—in his letters—­refers to his ­sister ­Irma’s episodes of ­mental illness using the same terms (“slumps” and “blues”). In any case, very few poems

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for instance, almost says something I get, but just misses my head at the end. “Songs” is fine deep and effective. Not a line of that one eludes me. I should think it was about the best you had done. The last stanza is ­really splendid. The philosophic tone of your letters lately has given us satisfaction. ­Things ­can’t always move along the single rail serenely balanced for anybody. They get to tipping this way and that very hard for spells, till it looks as if their poise couldnt be recovered and they would have to fall off on to the ground and start over. But some how they stay on and presently are stepping off again even and assured. Your affairs would appear to be walking smooth right now. As you say one of the best prescriptions for m ­ ental and bodily health is a regular day of well-­arranged variety. Except for one snap below zero a month ago w ­ e’ve had a gentle winter so far almost a match for Miami El Paso and Los Angeles. The ground has been bare and dry for walking much of the time. Yesterday it snowed and ­today is sunny and dripping and avalanching off the roof. I tell you this to give you an attack of homesickness. Winnie’s pup her only child has gone to Michigan University. We never saw it, but it is said to be all black and handsomer than Winnie. Winnie ran wild again for all our efforts to keep her shut in and the Lord knows how many denominations and colors of pup she ­will have this time.53 On the ­whole I liked California, its groves, its shores, its mountains, its Olympics, its Sunday ball games, its tennis and its Pomona Fair.54 Even Marj’s Coloradan talk c­ an’t get me down on the other parts of my country. Colorado is a good state. So is Michigan. So is California. And so is Mas­sa­chu­setts. The t­ hing I’m down on right now is the flu. We’ve had a dose of it. I am prepared to say the worst part of the United States is the part where they have the flu worst. I’d like never to have the damn ­thing again. The college wags on ­under the new President much as ever only somewhat livelier. It cant make much difference to me in my detached position, but still it makes some to have a stirring man over us. I havent been to a class or Chapel by Carol survive: on the night he took his life, he burned the poems (and a number of his letters). 53. ​Carol replied: “That’s rather too bad about Winnie. Next time she ­ought to be bred to a good blooded dog. But the pups w ­ ill be fun for Prescott and Jack, and Eleanor [sic] if she is ­t here; that’s counting on her having more than one this time” (letter now held at DCL). Elinor was Lesley’s eldest child (then four years old). 54. ​The Los Angeles County Fair was held yearly in Pomona (in 1932, when RF attended it: September 16–25).

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yet and I havent seen a game. A few ­people drop in, Otto Roy and George chiefly.55 I have seen more of this President in three months than I did of the last one his ­whole administration.56 I was sorry you didnt see the Trojans play the Irish.57 I didnt get the ticket ­because I was more or less afraid it would involve you with Greever or someone ­else you didnt want the society of.58 Turkey thirteen cents a pound! That alone is enough to make California attractive. It must be the cheapest state in the Union. Speaking of states again I read another British book which took the view that our states w ­ ere as sepa59 rate as nations. I guess ­they’ll find out ­whether w ­ e’re separate or not. What a complete misunderstanding the war was on our part. We thought the Eu­ ro­pe­ans wanted us to help in it by lending them money keeping them in supplies and fi­nally by sending soldiers. All our m ­ istake. They didnt want us at all. They wanted to win the war by themselves. Affectionately Papa

55. ​R F’s Amherst colleagues Otto Manthey-­Zorn, George Roy Elliott, and George Whicher. 56. ​Stanley King, who had succeeded Arthur Stanley Pease (in office from 1927 to 1932). 57. ​On December 10, 1932, Notre Dame (the Fighting Irish) lost to the University of Southern California (the Trojans) 13–0; the game was played in Los Angeles. 58. ​Garland Greever, professor of En­glish at the University of Southern California. RF had dinner with him on September 20, 1932, while visiting Carol and Lillian. Greever introduced RF to a number of educators in the Los Angeles area, and tried (without success) to bring RF out again in the summer of 1933 for a two-­week residency at USC. 59. ​Almost certainly Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, by G.  F.  R. Henderson, originally published in 1888, and recently reissued—in 1932, in New York and London—by RF’s British publisher Longmans, Green, and Com­pany. The book, im­ mensely popu­lar, had never gone out of print. Henderson offers something of a hagiography of Jackson and takes a distinctly Southern view of the war: “The States which composed the Union ­were semi-­independent communities, with their own legislatures, their own magistracies, their own militia, and the power of the purse. How far their sovereign rights extended was a ­matter of contention; but, ­u nder the terms of the Constitution, slavery was a domestic institution, which each individual State was at liberty to retain or discard at ­w ill, and over which the Federal Government had no control what­ ever. Congress would have been no more justified in declaring that the slaves in V ­ irginia ­were ­f ree men than in demanding that Rus­sian conspirators should be tried by jury” (79).

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[To Arthur Pound. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass January 1 1933 Dear Pound: Your letter arrived a minute ago by a messenger who popped in and out again so quick I hardly knew what had struck me.60 I tried to keep her, but she w ­ ouldn’t stay; so it’s only partly my fault. She was bound headlong for Boston and ­music. She brought me a book too. As I told you before, I like the poem a ­whole lot. I h ­ aven’t had time yet to see w ­ hether you have touched it up in the weaker rhymes.61 The book is a beautiful job as we used to say in the automobile business. I mean to see you the twelfth, the only question being as yet to what extent.62 Something must depend on my health which has been rotten since I had dinner with T. S. Eliot in Boston a month or so ago and contracted what the doctor calls modernism in the throat. Something also w ­ ill depend on how I can arrange t­ hings h ­ ere at Amherst for my absence. I should think it would be safe enough to go ahead on a one day assumption anyway. I’m afraid I’m not in a state for any very big party especially if it involves any roughing it in a cold camp: but we must have a good time that ­w ill include woods. Tell me more about it. Ever yours Robert Frost Mrs. Frost ­w ill be along. She wants to be remembered to you both.63

60. ​Likely one of Pound’s d­ aughters (of which he had three: Mary [b. 1910], Elizabeth [b. 1912], and Madelon [b. 1913]). 61. ​See RF’s November 3, 1932, letter to Pound. 62. ​ Pound lived in New Scotland, New York, near Albany, where RF read on January 11. 63. ​That is, remembered also to Pound’s wife Mary Madelon Paterson Pound (1883– 1969).

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[To William Branford Shubrick Clymer (1906–1972), American businessman, politician, bibliophile and collector. ALS. Alger.]

Amherst Mass January 2 1933 Dear Mr Clymer: You w ­ ill think I treat you coldly for such a good friend of all my works. But every­t hing of late has been against my d­ oing what I most wanted to, namely, have you up for a talk on the in­ter­est­i ng subject of me.64 I have e­ ither been away from home on business or at home sick in bed or worrying about someone ­else sick. It sounds worse than it is; I only complain that it takes all my time. What do you say to coming about January 18th. Even then ­there is no prospect of my being as hospitable as I should like. You can be my guest out of the ­house my out-­g uest so to speak and we can have a meal or so together. This ­unless we improve greatly. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To William Rose Benét (1886–1950), American poet and editor. ALS. Yale.]

Amherst Mass February 24 1933 Dear Bill I want to do what you want me to do. But just what is it? I’ve lost the letter in which you told me. So I ­shall have to ask you to tell me again. I’m properly ashamed of my unexecutiveness.65 Ever yours Robert Frost 64. ​With Charles Green (of the Jones Library, Amherst), Clymer prepared the first descriptive bibliography ever done of RF: Robert Frost: A Bibliography (Amherst, MA: Jones Library, 1937). 65. ​Benét had requested that RF contribute a poem to a forthcoming book, Fifty Poets: An American Auto-­Anthology (New York: Duffin and Green, 1933). In his introduction to the volume Benét explained the grounds for the se­lection. He had asked the poets, “If posterity could know your work only by one single briefer poem you had written, what

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[To William Rose Benét. Dated from internal evidence. The letter is unsigned. AL. Yale.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [early March 1933] Dear Bill (Old Knower):66 the tide of evil rises.67 Your Ark is sailing and you make me a last minute allowance of a single plant on board for seed. (It would have to be two if animals, or ­there would be no seed.) Well, let it be a tree—­Birches. ­Don’t ask me why at a time of doom and confusion like this. My reasons might be forced and unreal. But if I must defend my choice, I ­w ill say I took it for its vocality and its ulteriority.68 Ever yours

[To Elmer Adler (1884–1962), American book designer, printer, and publisher of The Colophon: A Book Collector’s Quarterly. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst College [Mas­sa­chu­setts] March 8, 1933 Dear Mr Adler: I’m no bibliographer come to judgement; but from my point of view this article is altogether satisfactory.69 I’m naturally glad of any interest shown in Edward Thomas. His connection with me is set forth without hurt to our friendship—­which h ­ asn’t always been the case where we have been talked or

poem of yours would you choose to represent you?” (vii). RF chose “Birches” (see the next letter). 66. ​A pun on “Noah,” as the development of the meta­phor indicates. 67. ​The doom-­laden tone (assuming it implies some serious intent) could be variously explained. Po­l iti­cally, the Reichstag fire (February 27) and victory in the March 5 election had all but established Nazi rule in Germany; and on March  4, FDR was sworn in as president, as the G ­ reat Depression continued to intensify. 68. ​Benét published this letter verbatim (omitting “Dear Bill” and “Ever Yours”) in Fifty Poets. See CPRF, 279. 69. ​Robert  P. Eckert’s “Edward Thomas: Soldier-­Poet of his Race” appeared in the American Book Collector 4 (1933): 19–21, 66–69.

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written about.70 Thanks for asking my opinion. Compliment the author from me. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Robert Peter Tristram Coffin. ALS. Bowdoin.]

Amherst Mass March 8 1933 Dear Coffin: Your letter about Lankes warms me. I like nothing better than success in having passed along a friend. I wish we knew where to turn to place him. But I wish most he could stay with you.71 For the sake of our getting together, we three, s­ hall I see what can be done about making a special trip from South Shaftsbury late in May? Or would that be too much out of season for a lecture (so to call it)? JJ’s indifference to parties ­w ill become a proverb before we get through with him. He told one hostess, Mrs Whicher, how surprised he was her party pleased him.72 I had to shut the door on him and drag him off to keep him from elaborating on the theme too unconventionally. He’s a genuine. We heard with pains how barely you escaped disaster this year. You have had all the bad sickness I can allow you.

70. ​See RF to Thornton, December 26, 1934. 71. ​J. J. Lankes had successfully discharged his duties as an art instructor at Wells College and was indeed invited back to teach through 1939. Coffin writes, in the letter to which RF replies: “I d­ on’t know how to begin to thank you for putting us in the way of getting Mr. Lankes ­here this year. He has been the highest spot in a year that has been rather bad in lots of ways. I think he is just about the finest friend I could ever want. But I guess I [have] no need to tell you that. As an artist, he has done a g­ reat deal to give prestige to Wells. And he has got the students h ­ ere to do t­ hings that none of the other artists, or pseudo-­a rtists, we have had, has been able to do. . . . ​He does in lines exactly what you do in words—­goes straight to the poem in a t­ hing, no m ­ atter what it is” (letter held at DCL). 72. ​RF had arranged for Lankes to exhibit his art at Amherst in February. Harriet Fox Whicher, the wife of RF’s friend and Amherst colleague George Whicher, held a reception for him.

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My best to all the f­ amily. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Henry Holt and Co. TG. Prince­ton.]

AMHERST MASS 1933 MARCH 10 KINDLY WRITE BY RETURN MAIL AMOUNT WE HAD LAST YEAR73 ROBERT FROST

[To Marie Mattingly Meloney (1878–1943), American journalist and socialite. ALS. Alger.]

Amherst Mass March 14 1933 Dear Mrs Meloney: By all means count on my support for what it is worth.74 I wish it might be more than the mere loan of my name. But I am not fertile in ideas in this field (if I am in any). So I must leave it to you to think for me and suggest where I can be of further use to you. I have been away from home neglecting my letters or you would have heard from me sooner. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

73. ​RF received $4,532.45 from Holt in 1932. He might have suspected some ­m istake in the amount the firm had sent him; he did not have complete confidence in the accounts department. An error would occur ­later in 1933; see RF to Richard Thornton, November 1, 1933. 74. ​Possibly in connection to Meloney’s PEN club activities, or her work in child protection and nutrition.

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[To Margaret Cuthbert (1887–1968), American radio personality and broadcasting executive for NBC. ALS. Alger.]

Amherst Mass March 15 1933 Dear Miss Cuthbert: I fully realize that you are thinking how much it w ­ ill do for me to go on 75 the air. But frankly nothing you tell me, nothing I hear from o ­ thers quite persuades me that I want to go on the air yet awhile. ­There are several considerations. The first is I may not belong on the air. I can well believe my sort of ­thing may depend for success on my being pre­sent to the eye. Then again I can only do a certain amount of public reading a year anyway. I now keep myself to less than a third of what I am asked to do. I should have to give up some of them and might have to cut into some of the more impor­tant of them if I turned to radiating. That is to say it would come down to a choice of audiences in the end and the need of deciding which was best for me and which I was best for. I tell you all this ­because I appreciate the friendliness of your invitations. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Carol Frost. Dated from internal evidence. ALS. UM.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa March 15, 1933] Dear Carol: Your Stratton poem is power­f ul and splendid.76 You have hammered it close and hard and you have rammed it full of all sorts of ­things, observations both of nature and of h ­ uman nature—­and humor and picturesqueness too. And

75. ​Cuthbert was Director of ­Women’s Activities at NBC. 76. ​The poem did not survive and may have been among the ones Carol ­later burned, before committing suicide (in 1940). ­There are towns named Stratton in both Vermont and Colorado, but the place evoked in the poem (on the evidence of what RF quotes from it) indicates that it was about the town in Vermont, elevation 3,199 ft (a ski resort was established ­t here in 1961).

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best of all, as Marge says, it is no sissy poem such as I get from poetic boys generally. It is written with a man’s vigor and goes down in to a man’s depth. You perhaps ­don’t realize what that means to me. And one ­thing more: the poem is richly attractive, not repulsive and ugly the way so many think they have to describe life now-­a-­days to be honest. You are not always quite clear to me, but I can put up with some obscurity where t­ here is so much solid truth, such condensation and intense feeling. The clearness must be thought of. But you musn’t [sic] sacrifice anything you now have to get clearness. Practice in aiming at the mind of your reader w ­ ill make you clearer e­ very day. I dont quite know for instance what touch h ­ ere and t­ here is needed in that remarkably in­ter­est­i ng passage about the officers in Stratton. But it is a ­l ittle too hard just as it is—­a ­little too puzzling. Even I who know more about the subject of more offices than men to fill them have some trou­ble in working it out. In straightening it out, ­there would be danger of losing some of the charming twists and turns and kinks. I shouldnt want to lose ­those of course. How I like the smooth clarity and high sentiment of “The place for me” “And me” and from t­ here on a way.

I think the best of all may be the passage

replenished clean And cold from mountain streams that ever hear Proceeding w ­ aters calling from below.

Well you are getting a firmer grip on the art now in e­ very way—­f rom rhyming up to packing in the ideas. (I ­ought to mention the way you vary the length and shape of the sentences in the lines and overlapping the lines to save yourself from monotony also.77) It is a question how you can arrange your life to give yourself further opportunities to develope [sic] your poetry. ­You’re sure, are you, that you want to come east this summer?78 ­You’ve got

77. ​Compare RF’s remarks in his 1959 interview for the Paris Review: “[T]he t­hings you can do in a poem are very vari­ous. You speak of figures, tones of voice varying all the time. I’m always interested, you know, when I have three or four stanzas, in the way I lay the sentences in them. I’d hate to have the sentences all lie the same in the stanzas” (CPPP, 890). 78. ​Carol and Prescott came east by car for a summer visit (Lillian’s frail health made it impossible for her to join them).

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a lot out of your enforced freedom from heavy farming. Perhaps y­ ou’ve got out all you can for the pre­sent. Its [sic] worth giving a lot of thought to before you act. We ­were impatient to hear about you folks in the earthquake.79 Prescotts [sic] letter came first. Now that you have had an earthquake in California you may feel shaken down into a firmer affection for the state. Marge heard someone say that the ­whole state was just a shelf over the ocean that would some day fall in and sink. And the expression “on the shelf” for a retired person came from ­there being so many retired ­people in California. Affectionately Papa

[To Whitney Darrow. ALS. Prince­ton.]

Amherst Mass March 16 1933 Dear Mr Darrow: I am honored, of course, by your invitation, and since I am no more purturbed [sic] than I have been by the thought of other public t­ hings I have survived, I am ­going to undertake and hope to survive this one.80 Your permission to read a poem makes all the difference in the world.81 I must thank you and John Hall Wheelock for having planned for me so sympathetically. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

79. ​The Long Beach earthquake of March 10, 1933 (magnitude 6.4), killed more than 115 ­people. 80. ​The invitation was for a dinner honoring that year’s Pulitzer Prize winners, hosted by the Friends of the Prince­ton University Library. Brief speeches ­were requested from previous prize winners, RF representing poetry (Willa Cather represented the novel). The event occurred on May 4, 1933. 81. ​“On the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind.” The speeches at the dinner ­were broadcast nationally by NBC.

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[To Wade Van Dore. Date derived from postmark and internal evidence. The envelope is marked: “The Bluebonnet / En Route / St. Louis~Texas.” The Bluebonnet was a special train operated by the Missouri-­Kansas-­Texas Railway (the MKT, or, more popularly, “the Katy”). ALS. BU.]

[in Missouri on a train bound for Texas] [April 17, 1933] Dear Wade: As one tramp to another may I remind you of our new President’s prescription for tramps to make men of them and reclaim them for useful citizenship, namely, that they ­shall be set to planting trees.82 What kind of an idea would it be for you to find and cut about forty good young canes about eight feet tall of the greater willow and set them out for me in a double row about six feet apart on the edge of the wet ground on the west side of the run from the spring all the way from the bridge south of the ­horse barn to the wooded knoll where the robbers tried to steal the ground pine.83 Charles Monroe might help you find them with my compliments or suggest where to look for them.84 Put them in with a crow bar or a shovel, just as you think best but fairly deep so that ­there ­w ill be several buds ­under to start roots from. Try some thick and some thin and ­we’ll see which comes out best. ­There’ll be trial too in the way you plant them one row nearer the wet than the other: w ­ e’ll see which row does best as well as which size. The rows may as well look like footsteps walking (⠡⠡⠡⠡⠡) rather than footsteps standing (::::). Which ­ought to be directions specific enough to a person who prob­ably knows more about planting trees of any and all kinds than I do. Nevertheless one t­ hing more. Take Edrie on the expeditions with you. You simply must not immure ­women like an old-­time Turk or treat them like an antifeminist German.85 Dont assume too 82. ​The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a signature program of the New Deal, began operations in April 1933; in fact, its first work camp, in the George Washington National Forest, opened on the day RF wrote this letter. The CCC brought thousands of unemployed men into the US Forest Ser­v ice (among other t­ hings). 83. ​Van Dore was at work on RF’s Gully Farm. For the theft, see RF to Brown, December 29, 1931, and January 1, 1932. 84. ​Charles Andrew Monroe (1876–1944), a clerk in the railway post office and a lifelong resident of South Shaftsbury. 85. ​That is, immure them as in a harem, or confine them as members of the German League for the Prevention of ­Women’s Emancipation (Deutsche Bund zur Bekämpfung der Frauenemanzipation, active 1912–1920) had hoped to do. Edrie Frances MacFarland (1909–

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much of the poor ­things. But be sure to remember to assume enough for their good ­because their fate ­w ill always be in our hands, I am afraid, for better or worse. I speak thus from complete knowledge of ­women in no uncertain tone, though owing to the swaying of the train on its very winding way through the Ozarks of Missouri I write with no certainty of pen. The advanced season ­here put the fear that I wouldnt get anything done on the farm into my head. The landscape, pink with the Judas tree in full bloom, makes me sad for the one tiny Judas tree I vainly tried in the rigors of Vermont.86 It’s [sic] dead stem is still sticking up in the grass down by the Montmorency cherries.87 It leaved out two or three years but never made any real headway. I just saw a g­ reat gaunt man standing in the doorway of a dirt-­chinked log cabin in a grove of scrub oak and not a sign of tillage anywhere near. He filled the door way and he filled the cabin practically which wasnt much higher than the doorway or very much deeper. He was watching me go by and wondering what kind of farmer I was in a train called the Bluebonnet just as I was wondering what kind of farmer he was in the cut-­over lands.88 And ­there is a second man leading a cow on a tether rope along a road I havent seen the like of for mud since the old days before autos when I went miles ­behind a wading ­horse

1963) was Van Dore’s wife. Van Dore explains RF’s remarks in The Life of the Hired Man: “Being an extremely facile letter writer, all winter Edrie had been giving Elinor [Frost] all of our news. I never read t­ hose letters. I just hoped that her habitual tendency to cast all social discretion to the winds would not cause ­either Elinor or Frost alarm. Total frankness was Edrie’s forte. . . . ​I thought I had shown her it was one of my ­g reat hopes that as much as pos­si­ble she would go on walks and do ­t hings outdoors with me. I always bore in mind the ­woman in Frost’s ‘The Hill Wife’ who went insane with loneliness in the country. Keeping my agreement never to urge her to do anything, I soon gave up baiting her to slight her inside interests and venture out into the open with me. Thus I could not help being a ­little apprehensive ­a fter an April letter from Frost in which he pictured me neglecting my wife” (192). The pair would eventually divorce. 86. ​ Cercis siliquastrum, other­w ise known as the Judas tree or Mediterreanean redbud, ­isn’t hardy enough to grow in USDA Zone 5-­A (South Shaftsbury’s zone), which usually experiences its first frost in late September. RF would three years ­later treat the relationship between growing zones and ethical bound­a ries in “­There are Roughly Zones,” first collected in AFR. 87. ​ P runus cerasus, the sour cherry. 88. ​Source for RF’s poem “The Figure in the Doorway,” collected in AFR.

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to buy White Wyandotte eggs by the hundred for incubation in a machine.89 And ­there is a flock of Angora goats in a small corral in a small clearing. I saw a pig a mile or two back. It is sure a scrub oak region. I am riding high. I can see away off to a peakless line of hills. The more I think of your poems the better I like them. The one about looking over from one month into the next was a kind I’m sure of.90 Ever yours R. Frost

[To Andrew Joseph Armstrong (1873–1954), American educator, professor of En­glish at Baylor University, Waco, Texas.91 TG. Texas.]

[St. Louis, Missouri] [April 17, 1933] ARRIVING ON BLUE BONNET ELEVEN THIRTY TOMORROW LOOKING FORWARD ROBERT FROST

89. ​During his first shot at chicken farming in Methuen, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, in 1899. See EY, 252. The White Wyandotte is an American breed of chicken developed in the late nineteenth ­century. From 1900 to 1906 (­a fter leaving Methuen), RF bred and raised Wyandottes on his farm in Derry, New Hampshire. During the same years he published eleven short stories and articles about chicken farming in two trade journals, the Eastern Poultryman and Farm-­Poultry, undoubtedly the best chicken-­farming stories ever written by a major modern poet (see CPRF, 35–73). 90. ​Not a reference to anything in Van Dore’s 1930 book Far Lake, but to “Looking From February,” a poem Van Dore wrote while living in RF’s Gully farm­house in 1932. 91. ​RF gave a reading at Baylor University on April 18 (at 4:00 P.M.), and had an informal “chat” with students ­there on the morning of the nineteenth. The appearances ­were sponsored by the local chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta fraternity, which sought to hunt up ­every high-­school En­glish student in central Texas to swell the audience. The occasion was the statewide convention of Sigma Tau Delta, held in Waco. RF took for his theme a question he would often revisit: Is poetry an escape or a pursuit?

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[To A. J. Armstrong. TG. Texas.]

[Nagodoches, Texas92] [April 27, 1933] ELINOR TOO TIRED FOR LONG RIDE ­TODAY STOP CERTAINLY W ­ ILL COME FOR TOMORROW NIGHT WITH YOU 93 STOP W ­ ILL PHONE FROM HUNTSVILLE94 ROBT [sic] FROST

[To Prescott Frost. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. UM.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [early May 1933] Dear Prescott: Just a word to tell you I have been within a third of the way to where you are this last week. Two thousand miles more and I should have been in California where the earth quakes like jelly. I enclose this Pullman ticket for proof. I ­ought to have started sooner sending you my Pullman tickets for you to make a collection of. My wandering days may be about over and then again they may not be over. You never can tell about a restless fellow like me. Anyway you may as well keep this ticket in a safe box or book a while till we see w ­ hether I have any more to add to it. The time may come before you grow up when t­ here ­will be no more Pullman cars and no more railroads; in which case any mementoes of them ­w ill be a curiosity worth showing. One way or another we are ­going to see you soon. It is still undecided ­whether you are coming east in a Ford or we are coming west in a Pullman. Affectionately Grandpa

92. ​R F gave a reading in Nacogdoches on April  26, at Stephen  F. Austin Teachers College. 93. ​R F and Elinor spent several nights at Armstrong’s ­house in Waco, where they ­were feted with luncheons, a banquet, and a picnic. 94. ​Where, on April 27, RF read at Sam Houston State Teachers College.

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[To Prescott Frost. ALS. UM.]

Amherst Mass* May 11 1933 Dear Prescott: You can see from the enclosed material what my travels have been in the last month.95 When we ­were in Texas I figure we ­were more than half way to Monrovia. We ­were the ­whole way south and about half way west. April ­there was exactly like the ­m iddle of summer ­here. The trees ­were in full leaf and the temperature was 85 night and day. Grandma has told your f­ather about the round trip tickets that are extra cheap this year on account of the world’s fair at Chicago.96 We think the train is your best way to come. The tickets give you the privilege of stopping off anywhere you please for sight-­seeing as many days as you please. All of us including Winnie ­w ill be glad to see you on your native soil again and you w ­ ill be glad to see all of us including Winnie. Take a good look at the United States of Amer­i­ca as you come. T ­ here may be some questions I want to ask you about the country. Notice particularly if it looks to you as if it w ­ ere falling to pieces, opening up cracks between the states. Too bad Lillian ­can’t come with you. But she wont have long to wait till she can come safely. Affectionately Grandpa *We a­ ren’t at the Gully yet

95. ​It had been a hectic tour. In addition to the reading / lectures already noted, RF spoke at Southern Methodist University (Dallas) on the eve­n ing of April  19; at Baylor again on April 20 for the inauguration of Morris Neff as president; at the University Baptist Church in Austin on April 24 (at 8:00 P.M., and before a crowd of more than a thousand); at the University of Texas, Austin—­before the local chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, as part of the annual university “Round-­Up”—on April 26; and at North Texas State Teachers College (Denton) on April 28. 96. ​The World’s Fair—­called “A C ­ entury of Pro­g ress” to mark the city’s centennial—­ opened in Chicago on May 27, 1933, and closed on October 31, 1934, attracting more than 48 million visitors.

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[To Carol Frost. ALS. UM.]

Amherst [Mas­sa­chu­setts] May 11 1933 Dear Carol: That was another good poem. The difficulties in it dont do it too much harm and even do it some good perhaps in keeping it from flatness and commoness [sic]. Your way is certainly your own. And it is not just an artificial originality but comes from the thoughts and ideas you have. It’s getting nearer the time for your journey east. Elinor and I both think the low fare and tourist Pullman rates might make it better for you to come by train.97 I suppose Prescott would be cheaper than you but I dont know. You realize you can get off the train for stops of any length on the way. You o ­ ught to plan to stay a few days somewhere in the west for the cliff dwellings and in Ohio for the mound buildings.98 Of course Prescott m ­ ustn’t miss the chance to look at the World’s Fair at Chicago. It is to be a sight to judge by the architecture already up when I was ­there a month ago. He must be made to understand that such architecture is supposed to be what he w ­ ill see everywhere in the world by the time he grows up. We ­shall see ­whether the prophecy comes true. Then he must see Niagara Falls. ­T heres quite a possibility of our being in California with you late next winter. Perhaps if all goes well, and Lillian is fine we can all come east together in May. President Bird said something about my lecturing round among the colleges sometime and he has been following the m ­ atter up in letters 99 lately. The only doubt is ­whether I have the strength for all the sociability it would involve. Its the hospitality that lays me out. The Texas trip has resulted

97. ​Carol, seldom one to take his ­father’s advice, planned to drive across the country (as in fact he did). 98. ​The twelfth-­and thirteenth-­century cliff dwellings built by the ancestral Pueblo ­peoples and preserved in the Mesa Verde National Park in Montezuma County, Colorado (RF would ­later publish a poem titled “A Cliff Dwelling” in SB). T ­ here are a number of ancient mounds in central Ohio, dating to the first c­ entury CE and e­ arlier. A spring 1933 letter, written by Carol to his parents from Columbus, Ohio, indicates that he and Prescott indeed visited the cliff dwellings and the mounds. 99. ​Remsen DuBois Bird (1888–1971), president of Occidental College (Los Angeles). See RF’s June 7, 1933, letter to him. RF had given a reading at Occidental on September 27, 1932.

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in a week’s cold in bed. But I want to see California again. I took a ­g reat liking to it for ­those days at the Olympics and the Sunday ball games. Hamlin Garland tried to talk me out ­there when I saw him in New York the other day.100 He asked about you and Lillian with real friendliness and concern. We dont seem to get to the farm very fast for one reason or another. Wade’s still up ­there keeping dog. I must release him pretty soon or he ­will come back on me in the summer for not having let him start his spring planting in time. The school year hangs on. I have still a reading or two I ­ought to do and I have an honorary degree to take at the Dartmouth College I ran away from so impolitely in 1892.101 At least my manners are better than when I was young and surly. Have plenty of good maps—­you’d better bring your Atlas on the train with you for Prescott. Affectionately Papa

[To Harold Rugg. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass May 11th 1933 Dear Rugg: I feel so very badly about my failure to meet the engagement. I thought I was up to it when I telephoned, but Elinor had been right: I was worn out with too much Texan hospitality and on the point of ­going down for a rest in bed. The fever is just leaving me and I can see I ­shall be no good for some days. But for a dozen reasons I neednt go into I wish it w ­ ere not too late to arrange something yet this year. ­Couldn’t you consider early the week ­after next.102 You m ­ ustn’t think I’m a difficult person for Im not where friends are concerned. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

100. ​Hamlin Garland (1860–1940), American writer, since 1929 a resident in Hollywood, California. 101. ​RF was awarded an LittD degree by Dartmouth on June 20. 102. ​RF gave a reading at Dartmouth on May 22.

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[To Ferris Lowell Greenslet (1875–1959), American author and editor. Since 1910, he had been literary advisor at and director of the Houghton Mifflin Co. ALS. LoC.]

Amherst Mass May 12 1933 Dear Greenslet: I forgot for the moment of being crowded past you the other night that Mac­ Leish was your property or I should have congratulated you then (and through you him) on his prize.103 Conquistadors was right for the year and it would have been a good choice any year I can remember. Old Diaz says his story “merits to be detailed other­w ise than in the dry manner” in which he himself relates it.104 Such ­were his very words four hundred years ago as good as asking MacLeish to do what he has done. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [May 13, 1933] Dear Louis: I assume you are hard at it ­doing what has to be done.105 The expression of your face in the streetlights that night settled it for me that nobody’s e­ lse business was mine except very superficially. You know what you can and c­ an’t

103. ​Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982) won the 1933 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Conquistador, published in 1932 by Houghton Mifflin. For the poem, and RF’s generally positive feelings about it, see the letter to Untermeyer, circa June 24, 1932. 104. ​R F h ­ ere quotes accurately from Maurice Keatinge’s 1800 translation of Bernal Diaz’s True History of the Conquest of New Spain, a passage concerning the audacity of the conquistador’s imprisonment of Montezuma. 105. ​Regarding, presumably, the ongoing rococo drama of Untermeyer’s marital affairs. See the January 6, 1929, letter to him. By May 1933, a­ fter sundry divagations, he was in the pro­cess of marrying Esther Antin. The two ­adopted sons of his previous marriage(s) to Jean Starr Untermeyer, Larry and Joseph, remained with Untermeyer on the Stony ­Water farm in Elizabethtown, New York. Over the course of his long life, Untermeyer married five times.

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possibly stand. Having given me notice of what to expect you have cut me off for the moment to spare me the harrowing details. T ­ heres g­ oing to be someone left slain outside the circle as made up new. But what is the ­w ill for if it is not to control thought and suppress sentimentality. I have caused suffering myself more or less justifiably in the pro­cess of getting anywhere. Its only by luck it is not in exactly the same realm. I may get credit for luck but I dont take any for it. The saddest ­thing is for two separately to live on the same memories. A cast-­off ring ­ought not to be buried where it could be dug up: it o ­ ught to be thrown into deep ­water. If you have the kind of mind that ­can’t help looking for something or someone in heaven or earth to blame you w ­ ill write life ugly like a lot of Americans lately; but if you take it naturally as it comes, you w ­ ill write it simply sad some of the time. I should hope one could be sad when ­there was anything to be sad about without seeming to reflect on the state of society or the government of the universe. I was on your trail in Texas where I heard the best ­things said of your lectures. Didnt you like t­ hose asTex?106 And w ­ eren’t you sorry you couldnt be kinder to the poetry of such a lovely person as Karle Wilson Baker of Nacagdoches in the so-­called piney woods.107 Easy on the sentimental, you say. You should have heard the out-­and-­out sentiment of some of the introductions we got down t­ here. (Elinor was along for a glimpse of the Bluebonnets.)108 Hos106. ​The “asTex” joke suggests that the trip Untermeyer made in spring 1933, ahead of RF’s lecture tour, was to Mexico (via Texas), where he obtained a second Mexican divorce from Jean Starr. In November 1933, the month he married Antin, Untermeyer would embark on his own Texas lecture tour. His reputation on the rostrum preceded him ­t here: in 1930, members of the Galveston (Texas) Open Forum placed him on a list of speakers “most desirous of hearing.” 107. ​Karle Wilson Baker (1878–1960) was an American poet who had arranged for RF to read and lecture at Stephen  F. Austin Teachers College. Her poem “The Pine Tree Hymn” was a­ dopted as the university’s song. Presumably, Untermeyer had spoken unfavorably of Baker’s poetry in Texas in 1932; but contrast a letter from Untermeyer to Baker about her 1930 book The Birds of Tanglewood (a collection of essays about birds): “I ­w ill take your book up to the Adirondacks and introduce your mockingbird to our phoebe” (The Birds of Tanglewood, 2006 reprint by Texas A & M Press in its Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life): 28. For RF’s and Elinor’s personal relations to Baker, see Sarah R. Jackson, “Karle Wilson Baker Brings Robert Frost to Nacogdoches,” East Texas Historical Journal 34.1 (1996): 71–76. A number of letters from Baker to the Frosts dating to the mid-1930s are now held at DCL; they suggest a warm friendship. 108. ​The Texas bluebonnet, indigenous to the state and to northern Mexico, is the official state flower, and bears the Latin name Lupinus texensis.

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pitality permitted no bounds. We went it and they went it. We both liked them, Elinor as much as I, I was interested to notice, ­because I hadnt known what to expect of such an inbred northerner. I hope this finds you farming as I would like to be right now. A few days more and I’ll be let loose in South Shaftsbury to see how my dif­fer­ent plants and trees have wintered and how they are g­ oing to summer. That’s about the extent of my spring efforts lately. I shant have a garden. I may move a few young trees around by the power of m ­ usic like Amphion or Orpheus or whoever Amy would have said it was.109 I heard for a fact this one on Amy and I can believe it a­ fter the way she pronounced Nausicaa in public.110 Someone was telling her about a vague and remote professor who by some accident of popu­lar success with scholarly books got asked into society and made of by ladies he hardly saw or spoke to. At a crowded week-­end party he was overheard saying to himself “Terrible day, terrible day.” ­Wasn’t he having a good time? Didnt he like the weather? What was the m ­ atter with the day? “Oh every­thing’s perfectly all right. I was just thinking of Marathon.”111 Amy wanted to know what Marathon was. So cheer up. Ever yours Robert

[To Wilbert Snow. Text derived (chiefly) from Codline’s Child (366–367).]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa May 16, 1933] Dear Bill: For me specially Etching, The Hungry Shark, January Thaw, Wave ­Music and so on through the lyr­ics and sonnets. It need not bother you that ­those against anything or anybody such as an Indiana Pioneer, the Ballad of Jona109. ​For Amphion and Orpheus, see RF to Untermeyer, January 1, 1929. “Amy”: the late doyenne of American poetry, Amy Lowell. 110. ​Greek rules of accentuation place emphasis upon the penultimate syllable. Thus, the name of Homer’s character from Book VI of the Odyssey would be pronounced “nau-­see-­K AH-­ya.” 111. ​The ­Battle of Marathon (August / September 490 bce), when the Athenians decisively defeated the Persian Army. It was a pivotal moment in the history of Greek civilization; hence the won­der at Lowell’s not having heard of it.

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than Coe, The Evangelist, Heritage and The Flood are less to my taste.112 Your attitude of a po­liti­cal agitator has to be allowed for.113 You ­wouldn’t be you if you suspected as I suspect that ­there is ­really nothing the ­matter with anybody. We are a sad lot, rather than a bad lot. My mind goes back to how true [Turgeneff] [sic] holds the balance between protagonists [and antagonists]114 in the death of [Bayarov] [sic] in F ­ athers and Sons.115 He is perfect in his non-­ partizanship. I never quite like to hear a wife turned on against a husband or vice versa. They know too much about each other and they are not disinterested. They lack, what they should lack, detachment. Maybe it bothers me as a breach of manners. But if manners count so much with me, then why d­ on’t I answer ­people’s letters or properly acknowledge their books. I’ll tell you in a minute. But first I want to finish with you where we are. The Evangelist reminds me not too painfully of Sinclair Lewis116 and a song we used to sing fifty years ago: Oh my God I’m feeling blue For I’m six months overdue Only in this case It was from a grey haired drummer Who was round h­ ere all last summer117

112. ​RF names poems—­getting some of the titles slightly wrong—­f rom Snow’s third book of verse, Down East (New York: Gotham House, 1932). 113. ​Snow was a Demo­crat and a New Dealer. His left-­w ing politics at times got him in trou­ble with the administration at Wesleyan, as when, in 1924, he campaigned for presidential candidate and Wisconsin senator Robert M. LaFollette, who ran as a third-­party candidate, with backing from the Socialist Party and a co­a li­t ion of progressives. 114. ​Lawrance Thompson prints this letter in SL (393–394). His transcription differs in a few places from Snow’s. This bracketed addition is pre­sent in SL but not in Codline’s Child. We supply it on the assumption that Snow inadvertently omitted the words. 115. ​ ­Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Ser­ge­ye­v ich Turgenev (1818–1883), was published in 1862. The first En­glish translation, by Eugene Schuyler, appeared in 1867. RF misspells the character’s name, which is usually En­glished as “Bazarov”; his death is recounted in chapter 27 of the novel. Snow corrects this misspelling and also the misspelling of Turgenev’s name in Codline’s Child. We follow Thompson, given how vagrant RF’s spelling of names sometimes is. 116. ​A reference to Lewis’s Elmer Gantry (New York: Harcourt, 1927), a satire of a womanizing, alcoholic preacher. 117. ​We have been unable to locate a source for ­t hese “songs.”

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As George Meredith says we girls are not so much betrayed by evangelists and drummers however: “We are betrayed by what is false within.”118 But ­here I go quarreling with you about your tenets when it w ­ asn’t more than a week ago I was saying in public that in verse as on the trapeze and tennis court per­for­mance is all. And that’s why nothing around college absolutely nothing is as near poetry and the arts in general as the sports of the stadium. The Greeks agreed with me, or they ­wouldn’t have had drama and games at the same time and place. And all through the book you satisfy me with your per­for­mance. You are a g­ oing poet and no ­m istake. I’m happy to be of your audience and proud to be remembered with a complimentary ticket now and then. Which brings me back to why I d­ idn’t acknowledge your fine book as soon as I got it. Well I got it for last Christmas ­d idn’t I? I thought it would be a poetical idea if I gave you a letter of thanks for it next Christmas. Honestly! And I should have carried out the idea if I could have stood the strain of being misjudged by you a w ­ hole year and liable to one of your narrow condemnations. Dust to dust and salt of blood back to salt of sea. I may be tempted to steal that someday. But if I do steal it it w ­ on’t be unknowingly: the source is too deeply stamped in my memory. Love to you all,119 R.F.

[To Marjorie Frost and Willard Fraser. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Private.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa May 20, 1933] Dear Marj and Willard You c­ hildren ­can’t be too happy to please us and you m ­ ustn’t let your happiness be the least diminished by our absence from your wedding.120 W ­ e’ll 118. ​The last line of sonnet XLIII from Modern Love (London: Chapman and Hall, 1862), by En­glish poet and novelist George Meredith (1828–1909). 119. ​Quite a large ­family. Snow and his wife Jeanette had five ­children. 120. ​The c­ ouple ­were married on June 3 in Billings, Montana (at the home of Willard’s parents).

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come to Montana and spend some time with you soon. You can make Montanans of us: ­we’ll stay long enough to give you the chance to anyway.121 But you catch us right now, both of us, in no condition for e­ ither travel or festivities. I’m counted out by the doctor and Elinor is counted out by me. R ­ eally she is worse off than I am.122 ­There’s no use talking too much about it and ­there’s no use in your worrying. Plunge ahead into marriage and progressive politics.123 ­We’ll be all right with a ­little rest. Contemplating you ­will do us good too. The day of the wedding w ­ e’ll do nothing but think of you and read the ­grand picture book about Montana. Montana has always been one of my favorite states and I ­shall enjoy being connected with it by marriage. We had a h ­ orse in the mountains once that when we bought it was named Beauty or Beaute.124 But I changed its name to Butte Montana. So you see my inclinations. Our love to you both Affectionately ­Father. ­Little check enclosed.

[To Kimball Flaccus. ALS. DCL.]

May 21 1933 Amherst Mass Dear Flaccus: You may think the worst of me for my indecision of last week. The doctor now has me back in bed again for the third time. I have no one to blame but 121. ​RF and Elinor ­were unable to visit Montana in 1933, owing to professional obligations and poor health. Sadly, their first visit to Billings came in April 1934, when they hurried to be with Marjorie a­ fter she developed puerperal fever (Willard and Marjorie’s ­daughter Robin was born on March 16, 1934). 122. ​Elinor wrote Richard Thornton (of Henry Holt) on May 31: “We are still in Amherst. We have lingered ­here ­because of Robert’s health. Two days ­a fter he was in New York, he came down with a bad cold. It was a queer cold, with temperature, and has been followed by a prolonged period of temperature and prostration. He has very ­little appetite, and is intensely ner­vous. The doctor is watching him, with tuberculosis in mind, and advised absolute quiet for an indefinite period” (YT, 404–405). 123. ​Willard was an up-­a nd-­comer in the Montana Demo­cratic Party. 124. ​When the ­family lived in Franconia, New Hampshire (1915–1920).

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myself however: it comes of my trying to crowd too much reading and lecturing into the late winter. But I have hopes of being a well man again yet, and this is to ask if we could see each other for a talk about poetry at Hanover around Commencement.125 Or ­shall you be too busy graduating? I have more than half a mind to revisit the old college at about that time. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Theodore Morrison (1901–1988), American novelist, poet and instructor (­later professor) of En­glish at Harvard. He was on the editorial staff of the Atlantic Monthly and was director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference from 1932 to 1955. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass May 27126 1933 Dear Morrison: Now what have I done? I simply assumed the Bread Loaf money was all in one reservoir and I would be saving embarrassment all round if, taking the hint from you and using a ­little frankness, I offered to relieve the school of my expense this summer. Please ­don’t let it worry you. My philosophy is to take reasonable money for my reading as the only way to make the job the least bit impor­tant in my own eyes, and when what I ask eliminates me and I am out, to count myself well out. Reading in public never improves my health. I have been sick in bed with a temperature for two weeks and am still shut in from an over dose of reading in the ­m iddle and south. John Farrer [sic] and Dorothy Fisher are dif­fer­ent from me.127 They prob­ably feel themselves beyond price anyway. Then again they are both Vermonters and glad to do anything f­ ree for the institutions of Vermont. I’m not a Vermonter. I belong to

125. ​At Dartmouth, where Flaccus was a student (and where RF would be awarded an honorary degree). 126. ​Lawrance Thompson suggests the letter is misdated and should be late March 1933 (YT, 686), but internal evidence suggests that RF’s date is correct. 127. ​Morrison had written to RF adumbrating the bud­getary constraints on the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (now that the G ­ reat Depression was biting) and observing—­ without much tact—­that Dorothy Canfield Fisher habitually waived payment for her appearances, and that John Farrar had been asked to do so in 1933. See YT, 686.

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one of the Original Thirteen Colonies that made the Union 128 and w ­ ill lay down my life for the princi­ple that the western boundary of New Hampshire is the western bank of the Connecticut at high w ­ ater and takes in for taxation 129 all the wharves on the western bank. What you say about the two dropped office assistants and the half-­d ropped librarian makes me all the surer I am right in getting myself dropped too. Better that I lost a hundred jobs out of a pos­si­ble two hundred than that the least of t­ hese underlings lost only one. Such has been my doctrine and policy ever since the New Deal came in. And when you stop to consider, it’s not so terribly unselfish at that. Always yours Robert Frost

[To Irene Wilde (1884–1964), American writer, librarian, and educator. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass May 28, 1933 My dear Miss Wilde: I have read ­these once or twice with interest. They are rather good as such ­things go. I mean they are on a level with so much that I see. But that is not enough for you. That disappoints you. I can tell you what I think this sort of American average verse lacks: it is boldness of real­ity and boldness of meta­ phor, both. ­Either alone would set a writer up in business. You could prob­ ably perform more boldly if you thought to. But you are too much taken up with something else—­the form, the conventions, what o ­ thers are d­ oing around you. You ask for my judgement and I give it at my risk. Mind you I say you are rather good. Perhaps you are good enough to make your way in the magazines. The way to find that out is to try it. No single person’s opinion 128. ​W hen the Constitution went into effect in 1789, Vermont was still an in­de­pen­ dent republic; it became the f­ ourteenth state admitted to the ­u nion on March 4, 1791. 129. ​A topical reference—­which would seem to date the letter to late May rather than late March—to the recent decision of the Supreme Court fixing the boundary between New Hampshire and Vermont on the west bank of the Connecticut river at mean low-­ water mark. It is worth noting that Morrison was also a New Hampshire man, not a Vermonter; by a certain mea­sure he was more New Hampshire than RF, having been born ­t here, whereas RF did not inhabit the state ­u ntil 1900, when he was twenty-­six, and had been born, not in one of the “Original Thirteen Colonies,” but in California.

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is worth very much. If twenty editors say you are better than rather good, then you are, and I retract. But any way it ­can’t hurt you to try to be a ­little bolder in speaking realities and springing meta­phors. Throw grenades. You may be all right to print now but if publishers’ neglect leaves you with time on your hands you might as well put it in improving in­def­initely. Thats what I used to say when I was out.130 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Kimball Flaccus. ALS. Private.]

Amherst Mass May 30 1933 Dear Flaccus: I can say with all my heart that this last you sent me is fine poetry—­h igh and exciting.131 Till we meet! Faithfully yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton. Date derived from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [June 3, 1933] Dear Mr Thornton: The hopelessly bad letter writer is roused from his coma to say how very sorry he is to hear about the ­children’s whooping-­cough. You must take good

130. ​Wilde enjoyed some success, and had already published one book of poems, Driftwood Fires (San Francisco: Harr Wagner, 1928). She also published verse in (among other places) Poetry, the Saturday Eve­ning Post, and the Los Angeles Times. A second volume of her poetry would appear in 1938: Fire Against the Sky (New York: Liveright). 131. ​Most likely a second batch of poems to be included in Flaccus’s first book, Avalanche of April (1934).

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care of them, show them plenty of pictures tell them plenty of stories and say “Easy easy” e­ very time they get into a gale of coughing. I’m afraid I s­ hall have to have about a dozen copies of the Poems sent h ­ ere to South Shaftsbury Vermont to meet the obligations incurred on my trip south. I could also use a dozen of the Selected if you could find that many left over anywhere. Any number would help. I’m a l­ittle better since I got out doors at the farm, but nothing to brag of yet. Too bad about the expedition south.132 Are you thinking of the new Boy’s W ­ ill133 before the enlarged selected?—­My best to the f­ amily. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Remsen DuBois Bird (1888–1971), American educator and minister. From 1921 to 1945, he served as president of Occidental College in Los Angeles. ALS. UVA.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont June 7 1933 Dear Mr Bird: I was in bed with a temperature when I telegraphed you. I had to get up around and have a talk with Mr King before I could write you the letter I promised.134 As I said I want to go out ­there and Mr King I find wants me to go. He in fact thinks of being out ­there sometime next winter himself. The next ­thing to consult a­ fter him is my strength, to which t­ here are limits. An expedition to Texas has just taught me that I am not up to one unbroken series of events, entertaining and being entertained. But such is not what you have in

132. ​Possibly a visit to North Carolina, where the Thornton f­amily was based (and where Thornton had lived and worked before joining Holt). This was a fairly longstanding, and it would seem still unacted on, invitation: see RF to Thornton, mid-­ November, 1931. 133. ​The second US edition of ABW, published by Holt in 1934 (Crane A2.2). The edition is unusual in that it omits “In Hardwood Groves” (added to the contents of ABW for CP 1930) and includes “Asking for Roses” (omitted from CP 1930). However, “In Equal Sacrifice” and “The Spoils of the Dead”—­both included in the 1913 first edition—­are ­here (as in CP 1930) left out. An enlarged Selected Poems would also appear in 1934. 134. ​Stanley King, president of Amherst.

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Figure 3. Left to right: Los Angeles Times columnist Lee Shippey, Occidental College president Remsen D. Bird, novelist Louis Dodge, RF, and poet Marshall Louis Mertins. At a meeting of the California Writers’ Guild, Occidental College, Los Angeles, September 1932. Los Angeles Times Photographic Archives (Collection 1429). Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

mind I take it. You intend to distribute me humanely over some weeks, devote me largely to the undergraduates and protect me from too much hospitality. But ­w ill you start ­going into particulars. How many colleges are ­there involved? Do you think I would like the January February March weather in California? Or ­were you thinking of some other months? I have the happiest memories of my day with you on your campus.135 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

135. ​See Figure 3.

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[To the “Partizans,” a group of students at Newtown High School in Elmhurst, New York. The envelope is addressed to Mrs. Abbott Combes (Gladys Ewing Combes), an American clubwoman and poet who had an association with the school. TLS. Private.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont June 18, 1933 My dear Partizans: If you are pleased and honored to inform me, you may imagine how pleased and honored I am to be informed. I value your support and belief in me and ­w ill do all I can to keep it—­even to the point of trying to answer your hard question. Often as I have been asked that question before, I ­can’t say I have learned to answer it very satisfactorily. Which, in my opinion, is my best poem? It ­w ill have to be chosen from Birches, An Old Man’s Winter Night, The Death of the Hired Man, The Runaway, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­n ing, The Road Not Taken, The Mountain, Mowing, My November Guest, A Tuft of Flowers, Reluctance, West-­r unning Brook, Once by the Pacific, Mending Wall, Dust of Snow, The Oven Bird, Spring Pools, I ­Will Sing you One-­O, The Witch of Coos, Two Look at Two and The Grindstone. Do you agree? Well then since you have chosen your favorite poet by ballot, ­don’t you think it would be only fair for him to choose his favorite poem by lot? This I hereby do. (Time out while I write the above names of poems separately on slips of paper, throw them all into a hat, reach in blindfolded and take the first one that comes to hand). The result of the drawing is: The Grindstone. I am myself surprised and not a l­ittle jealous for the other c­ hildren of my pen. But we must stand by the chance we appealed to. We ­can’t go ­behind the drawing. The Grindstone it is. Another day it might be dif­fer­ent. With best wishes to you all I am Sincerely your friend Robert Frost

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[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

South Shaftsbury June 26 1933 Dear Louis: I’m in Middlebury July 3rd.136 Would you want to meet me part way on July 4th? I could prob­ably get someone to take me across the lake.137 I want to see you for some talks.138 Ever yours R. F.

[To Jacob Hendrick Trapp (1899–1992), American minister (Unitarian Universalist), poet, and hymnist. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt June 28 1933 Dear Mr Trapp: I dont know that I can say anything to help you. You are full of material and full of spirit. And that ­ought to be enough. You falter in the art at times. You lose your poem ­after a good start. The figure of Machine Age is a fine one, but it seems to me to have given you trou­ble ­toward the last. Cain Sees Abel is splendid clear figurativeness for the first six lines and then rather goes to pieces if you wont argue against my saying so. By itself in another poem “lovely as the long white rod of rain before which beaten dust-­shapes run” would be all right but all I can see in it where it is, is the pains it must have cost you in getting ready to rhyme with God. Prob­ably it was reluctantly and merely as a suggestion of what you have to go on with. As I see it, the way appointed for anyone as far along as you is straight ahead into the publishers 136. ​To open the eve­n ing lecture program at the Bread Loaf School of En­glish with a reading from his poems. He’d been reluctant to go (see RF to Morrison, May 27, 1933), and did, in fact, skip the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference that followed the School of En­ glish. He did, however, read on August 22 at a new summer program for creative writers held at the Fletcher Farm in Proctorsville, Vermont. 137. ​At the time, the only way to cross Lake Champlain into New York was by private boat or ferry. 138. ​Again, about the vagaries of Untermeyer’s married life.

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offices to see if you cant find a public.139 Nothing but an attempt on audience ­will persuade you who you are or ­aren’t. I should do as ­Sister Madeleva says.140 I happen to have been reading her lately and have formed a high idea of her judgement.—­I ­ought to add perhaps that the character pieces seem but carried out. Is it b­ ecause, being in blank verse, they pre­sent no rhyming difficulties? You have the stuff and the brains to do it. I’m sure. The last poem I wrote before I had your first letter strangely enough was about Utah.141 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To William Branford Shubrick Clymer. ALS. Alger.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 20 1933 Dear Mr Clymer: I ­haven’t written yet to bless you for a farmer or a poet farming. It’s fine you are g­ oing where your heart is ahead of you. My only complaint is that you didnt choose a farm nearer us so we could run in on each other for an after­noon talk once in a while on impulse without planning.142 I s­ hall want 139. ​Trapp scattered poems in ­little magazines, including three in the June  1936 number of Poetry. Most of his books, however, w ­ ere devotional or philosophical in nature (sermons, meditations, anthologies of religious poetry, and a study of Lao Tzu). We have been unable to locate copies of the poems RF discusses in this letter. 140. ​­Sister M. Madeleva Wolff, Congregatio a Sancta Cruce (1887–1964), poet and nun, was the third president of Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana. She published a number of books of verse, literary criticism, and essays. In referring to her “judgement,” RF likely has in mind her 1925 book Chaucer’s Nuns, and Other Essays, which includes chapters on Chaucer, Francis Thompson (a favorite of RF’s), nineteenth-­century religious poetry, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and “The Familiar Essay in College En­glish” (a ­matter of considerable interest to RF). Evidently Trapp had also sought her advice. 141. ​Trapp lived at the time in Salt Lake City. The poem RF refers to is “On the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind.” RF collected it in AFR. As for the “first letter” RF speaks of, we have been unable to locate it. 142. ​Clymer, though he lived in Boston, had bought a place in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

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to see the farm of course and more of you and Mrs Clymer and more of your poetry.143 I have seemed no good for a while but I ­shall be all right as soon as I have rested and got the public life out of my system. The very best wishes to you on your young adventure. Always yours Robert Frost

[To Kimball Flaccus. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 20 1933 Dear Flaccus: John Hall Wheelock is a fine poet and a real judge of poetry and if he thinks you are ready to print in his magazine and with his publishing ­house I should be inclined to say accept his backing while you can have it.144 Getting away to a good start in poetry may seem a ticklish business; but I s­ houldn’t want to get cramped with anxiety about it. You m ­ ustn’t let any advice of mine hamper you. Feel f­ ree to make the final judgement your own.145 Take it happily. Ever yours Robert Frost

143. ​Clymer had married Anita Blackwell (1906–1993) in 1929. 144. ​W heelock had worked at Charles Scribner’s Sons since 1910 (he would ­later be named se­n ior editor). The firm published Flaccus’s first volume of poetry, Avalanche of April, in 1934. When this letter was written, Wheelock also edited Scribner’s Magazine, which printed Flaccus’s “­Here by the Connecticut” in its December 1933 number. Flaccus had written RF on July 8: “John Hall Wheelock of Scribners is very enthusiastic about my poetry, and he says they want very much to publish it in book form. . . . ​I won­der if I should allow them to publish now when business is so bad, and do you believe my work so far is good enough to be out in book form? I remember your words of advice about not publishing too soon, and not letting the ‘Literary Boys’ kid me along” (DCL). 145. ​RF moves from the front to the back of the sheet a­ fter writing “judgement”; and though it is pos­si­ble that, in d­ oing so, he omitted the preposition “on” (“on your own”), the phrasing given ­here seems right.

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[To Witter Bynner. ALS. Harvard.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont* July 20 1933 Dear Witter: You sent me the Tuckerman sonnets.146 I’ve just been downstairs to see if you h ­ adn’t, and I found them with an inscription and read some of them again to see if they ­were as good as you seemed to think. I like them. They have high lines that a blind man could feel with his fin­gers. We’ve been past you on our way to and from California, hanging our heads in the train for fear of catching your eye on the Santa Fé station platform.147 Our excuse for not stopping off was preoccupation with f­ amily cares. We ­were between two cases of consumption, one in California, one in Colorado. What, you interpose, in California and Colorado! Why werent both in New Mexico? Why discriminate against New Mexico as a resort for weak lungs? The answer is I had no say in the m ­ atter. Then again neither of the cases was literary. They would have been shy about venturing into the rarefied intellectual atmosphere of Santa Fé. But we must see each other soon. Ever yours Robert Frost * Where only the other day we sat with Jesse Ritten­house and talked about how Elinor and I first met you and her at our ­house in Ann Arbor Michigan; also not twenty five miles from where I first heard you read your poetry.148 146. ​ Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821–1873) was an American poet, a con­ temporary of Emily Dickinson, and a rather reclusive figure himself. He published just one volume in his lifetime, Poems, in 1860, which included a number of sonnets, the form in which he achieved his best work. In 1909, Walter Prichard Eaton published an article in the Forum about Tuckerman, a­ fter seeing two sonnets in the manuscript of an anthology by Louis How. Impressed by the poems Eaton quoted, Bynner contacted descendants of Tuckerman living in Amherst and learned of a manuscript of unpublished poems. In 1931 he published The Sonnets of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (New York: Knopf), which included five sonnet series, two from the 1860 Poems and three from the manuscript. In his introduction, Bynner ranked the sonnets among “the noblest in the language . . . ​not bettered in their kind by anyone of his time or since.” 147. ​Bynner was a longtime resident of and prominent artistic presence in Santa Fe. 148. ​Bynner read before the Twentieth ­Century Club in Detroit on November 3, 1921, with RF in attendance. As RF indicates, Bynner also s­ topped off in Ann Arbor, where, at RF’s h ­ ouse on Washtenaw Ave­nue, he met informally with an undergraduate literary

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[To Edward Morgan Lewis. ALS-­photostat. St. Lawrence.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 28 1933 Dear Edward: Im simply not up to it.149 And I wish you would tell t­hose friendly ­people—­both Mr Stevens and Miss Ryan150 —­how very sorry I am. You can explain for me better than I can for myself. I’ve had too much life for the last two years. I am nobody to the new Administration;151 nevertheless I may ask for an ambassadorship if only to some penal colony for a rest. Our best to you both. Ever your friend Robert Frost This is asking you to take care of me. Take care of yourself too. RF

society, the Whimsies. RF and his wife had known Jessie Belle Ritten­house (1869–1948) since January 1916. 149. ​RF is excusing himself on grounds of illness from a visit to the University of New Hampshire (of which Lewis was president). 150. ​Henry Bailey Stevens (1891–1976) was an American author and playwright and the husband of Agnes Edna Ryan (1878–1954), editor, poet, and suffragist. The c­ ouple had moved to New Hampshire from Boston in 1917, ­a fter resigning positions at ­Woman’s Journal in protest of its pro-­war stance. Stevens worked with the University of New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Ser­v ice; Ryan or­ga­n ized the New Hampshire Peace Union, wrote poetry, and was active in the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. 151. ​FDR’s administration, not that of Amherst College. Lewis was apparently confused; see RF’s next letter to him (circa August 10).

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[To Charles H. Foster. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 28 1933 Dear Foster: Housman is no sage what­ever ­else he is. His prose on poetry makes a fool book.152 His showy modesties are all the most arrant conceit. What he is sweating to praise in all that talk about poetry sans mind is Housman.153 He achieves a minimum of mind by writing his poetry as out of adolescent pessimism and for the rest staying all his life a philologist.154 Dont let him bother you. You may say safely enough a poem is a mood if you carefully mean by that it begins in mood and embodies mood. But the body has to be mentioned in the specifications. The body is words phrases t­ hings ideas (meta­phors) and dramatic tones of voice—­not to say meter and stanza. Walter Prichard Eaton said to me only day before yesterday that his f­ ather objected to the word crow in a poem. The bird had to be a raven to be poetical.155 Then to my surprise he defended his f­ ather: whose reason he claimed was a good reason namely that poetry had to show loftiness. T ­ here lurks another fallacy. Poetry has to heighten—­poetry is the act of heightening not taking advantage of what has already been elevated by previous poets. How

152. ​A. E. Housman (1859–1936), The Name and Nature of Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933). In the letter to which RF ­here replies, Foster says: “I read A.E. Housman’s book on poetry, and I d­ idn’t agree with him much. He seems to think the less mind that goes into a poem the better it is” (DCL). 153. ​The argument with which RF takes issue is Housman’s contention that “Meaning is of the intellect, poetry is not” (Name and Nature of Poetry, 38), illustrated by quotes from Shakespeare and Blake. Housman had also spoken of his own poetry as “flow[ing] into my mind, with sudden and unaccountable emotion” ­a fter his customary pint of beer at “luncheon” (49); hence, perhaps, RF’s urging of caution in thinking of poems as “moods.” 154. ​Housman was an exceptionally gifted classical scholar, and held professorships in Latin at University College, London (1892–1911) and Cambridge University (1911 to his death in 1936). 155. ​The reference is to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and also likely to Poe’s 1846 essay about the poem, “The Philosophy of Composition.” For Poe’s purposes “raven” was a more poetical word than “crow” ­because it is a trochee, and the poem was by design strongly trochaic. Poe also wrote, famously, that “Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem”: from which could be derived the idea that poetry must show loftiness.

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heightened? By perpetual play of e­ very faculty of art imagination and figurativeness that heaven bestows. You have to look out for ­these shallow fellows—­Yes and t­ hese deep fellows. Think for yourself. Concentrate poetry. That’s the word for you—­concentrate. Gather yourself for effort and concentrate the product. We are fairly quiet. You read Plato.156 I have read nothing but a ­little Gibbon.157 I picked five kinds of wild fruit on the place in one day lately, strawberries, red raspberries, black caps158 blueberries and checkerberries. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Frederic Melcher. ALS. UVA.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 4 1933 Dear Fred: The character question is, am I getting to be the kind of person that only writes to one friend when he is driven to it by another friend. The friend ­behind me in this case, to whom you are indebted for this letter, is Prof. Otto Manthey-­Zorn, long my chief intimate at Amherst. He asks me to intercede with you for the ­favor of a ­little attention to his son William, twenty odd years old, somewhat college educated, married, now a travelling salesman for General Foods, but disposed to desert General Foods some day pretty soon for books and a bookstore. He has been a haunter of second hand bookstores and a hunter for not too expensive first editions: and since he is no writer in his ambitions that brings him more on you than on me. As I understand it he merely wants to hear a ­thing or two from you of a practical nature. Lesley and I have both told the Zorns more or less of what’s ­going on in the book business. But you could speak to them (in the person of the son Bill) with more authority. Bill prob­ably hopes you ­w ill tell him to get a job in a bookstore for 156. ​Foster had written: “I’m reading Plato very slowly. Emerson was right, at least I think so, when he said you could burn the libraries and keep Plato and not lose much” (DCL). See the first sentence of Emerson’s essay on Plato in Representative Men. 157. ​Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. 158. ​A nother species of raspberry, black in color, and native to the eastern United States.

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a year or so before he sets up in a store of his own.159 You might give him some idea of towns suitable for him ultimately to set up in. You n ­ eedn’t assume any par­t ic­u ­lar responsibility for egging him on or scaring him off. His mind’s pretty well made up to selling books sooner or l­ater somewhere. He’s been on his way for some time. Talking with you ­will seem to him a stride forward. Just give him the benefit of your friendliness and experience. I told his ­father it would be all right for him to write to you when I had had time to write first. We wish you folks could come to see us next week. ­You’ve never looked us over at this farm, have you? I’d show you some new poems maybe. We leave ­here for less hayfeverish altitudes soon. I should have written to invite you sooner, but, as I say, I had to wait to be driven. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. Year and date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August [circa 10] [1933] Dear Edward: Elinor hopes I am writing in time to get you to stay over a night with us on your way to or from Utica.160 It ­w ill be fine to see you. I’ll play you a game of ball—­singles. I cant think what I can have said in my letter to give you the impression that the pre­sent administration and I are not entirely sympathetic.161 We are. I must have been registering too indefinite a kick for you to understand. My bad winter has been my own fault for taking too many outside engagements. Boston and T. S. Eliot did me in once and then Texas the Boundless did me in a second time: one with cramps and the other with boundless hospitality. Waste no pity on me: I deserve none.

159. ​William Manthey-­Zorn (1908–1969) instead made a c­ areer in the insurance business (eventually as head of the mortgage loan office at Prudential). 160. ​For Utica, see RF to Lewis, July 1, 1930. 161. ​See RF to Lewis, July 28 (above).

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Again I must admire your University magazine.162 Such writing beats all. Some of ­those youngsters could walk right into the Big League, I should think.163 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. ALS-­photostat. St. Lawrence.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 14 1933 Dear Edward: ­Here’s another letter from me so soon. This one is not a challenge to a game of baseball, singles or doubles, but an introduction of my young friend, Mr Orrin Griffis, formerly of this village, where he was brought up, but now of Rahway N. J. where he teaches in the high school.164 He is an athlete in rank somewhere between you and me, a good deal nearer you than me but still a long way from you. I have liked him and enjoyed talking with him. He wants to meet you and I want to have him if you can spare him the time. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Ralph Mehlin Williams (1911–1975), Amherst College class of 1933. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont August 22 1933 Dear Williams: The moral is, ­Don’t have inferiority complexes; at least dont have them too hard. Perhaps I ­ought to say have them, but have them easy. For ­after all no

162. ​ T he New Hampshire. 163. ​For Lewis’s own baseball c­ areer in the “Big League” see RF to Lewis, June 5, 1930. 164. ​Orrin Adelbert Griffis (1902–1978) played football and baseball for Norwich University (Northfield, Vermont), from which he graduated in 1926. ­A fter ser­v ice as an Army officer, he spent many years in Rahway as a teacher, school principal, member of the Board of Education, and vice president of the Rahway News-­Record and the Rahway Publishing Corporation.

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one is the less likeable for being a ­little shy. You didnt dare tell me to my face at the party you gave me, you had to get two thousand miles and among mountains, to tell me in a letter that you wrote poetry. Round-­about is braver than not at all. As long as it ends in my seeing what you wanted me to see! I must see the poems and we must have some talks. Come in as soon as w ­ e’re both back in town together. ­Isn’t Boulder a fine town? A l­ ittle more of it and it could get to be a second home town to me. I brought John Bartlett up and he’s one of the few in the world I keep up a correspondence with, albeit slow-­fi ring. Remember Mrs Frost and me to your parents. Always yours Robert Frost

[To David Anton Randall (1905–1975), American bookdealer, librarian, and bibliographer. ALS. Indiana.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont August 22 1933 Dear Mr Randall: It is too bad anyone had to get stirred up about such a slight book. It is too small to count as an item. The secret that ­there was such a book only got out by accident.165 I did call it Twilight. I had two copies of it made and bound in leather in 1894 by a job printer in Lawrence, Mass. I have one copy. What became of the other I d­ on’t know.166 Does this clear the ­matter up? Sincerely yours Robert Frost

165. ​In 1933, Randall was at work on an essay entitled “American First Editions 1900– 1933” that would be published in John W. Car­ter’s New Paths in Book Collecting (1934). RF had first revealed the existence of Twilight to Frederic Melcher in 1929. 166. ​RF well knew: he destroyed it. See RF to Melcher, February 9, 1929, and RF to Haselden, February 20, 1929.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

Franconia N.H. September 4 1933 Dear Louis: I’ve been sick in bed with a temperature again or you would have heard from me sooner. I rejoice with you in your certainty that you have joined the ranks of the peaceful.167 As your friend, I have always wished the best pos­ si­ble for you in a rather sad world. You have a lot of life ahead of you, plenty of time to begin all over and with t­ hings near you favorable, make the most of yourself you ever made. So now for it! I’ve been inclined to suffer regret for my part in the adoption of your boys.168 ­You’ve as good as told me I n ­ eedn’t by the thoroughness of the adoption. I know you’ll be a good ­father to them. They are such a splendid boyish pair. Dont have them too clever. But I meddle no further in anybody’s business. It becomes a question what’s the ­matter with me that I have to go to bed four times in one year with a temperature. You have to remember I never was any good. My being sick is harder on Elinor than it is on me. I believe I always think of more when I have a l­ ittle temperature. The Lord knows I d­ on’t drink for inspiration and so mercifully sends me fever as a substitute. I should of course have to pay for the excitement of the last week by dragging around for a few weeks now with no incentive but my conscience.169 Ever yours Robert

167. ​ By marrying Esther Antin. See also the notes to RF’s January  6, letter to Untermeyer. 168. ​As noted above, a­ fter he remarried Jean Starr in 1929, Untermeyer a­ dopted two sons: Laurence, ten years old in 1933, and Joseph, age four. 169.  Carol and Prescott visited South Shaftsbury during the last week of August (Lillian remained in California, still too sick to travel).

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[To Carol Frost. ALS. UM.]

Franconia NH Sept 9 1933 Dear Carol It cuts down the size of the United States to have someone in our own ­family cross it in a small car on the highway in ten or twelve days the way you do. You go sadly out of the door yard Monday morning and in two days you are in the ­middle of Ohio in four days in the m ­ iddle of Illinois, having seen both Niagara and the Worlds Fair, and before we know it are past the place where we hoped to have a letter in the general delivery waiting for you. We saw by your rate of travel that we werent ­going to catch you at Lawrence with a real letter so we sent a night letter tele­gram that should have been handed you at the Lawrence post office if you called not ­earlier than nine oclock in the morning Saturday.170 If you think of it, tell us in your next letter what time of what day you did call ­there. I’d like to know who was to blame for your getting no word at all from us. Of course we ­were most to blame for not waking up to the fact that we would almost have had to send a letter before you started from the Gulley to make sure of intercepting you anywhere on your journey. You slept in Gallup your eighth night out;171 which would mean by my reckoning you may possibly have reached Monrovia by Thursday eve­n ing the 7th or at latest surely Friday. That is ­unless you delayed somewhere for Indian ruins. The country must be a pile of transparent pictures in your head that you can look right through without moving them from palms and pepper trees to birches and maples. It was melancholy to see you start rolling down the hill, but ­there is an excitement in all this travel in the ­family that I cant say it is in my nature to dislike. I’m half tempted to want to see California again before you leave it. And I’d like to look the Hood River region in Oregon over to see if I dont want to live ­there. We got away in our new car for Franconia not two hours ­after we saw you and Prescott off. I was so sick I couldnt face another night in the low country. I was ­really too sick to drive, but I fastened one watery eye on the road and one on the speedometer and t­ here I kept them for the w ­ hole 165 miles up

170. ​Lawrence, Kansas. 171. ​Gallup, New Mexico.

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mountains and round curves at the exact average of 25 miles an hour. I had in mind what you said about the art of holding a perfectly even rate and made that my interest and object. All I had to do was vary the pressure of my foot on the gas. I went into second very ­l ittle and only on the downgrade. I hardly used the break [sic]. As a ­matter of fact I hardly knew what I was ­doing. I suffered plenty, but I should have suffered more if I had lain around at the Gulley all day with nothing to do. I seem to have had a grip [sic] cold as well as some hay fever. I was sick several days with a temperature ­after I got h ­ ere. We ­were afraid you two might have developed a germ from me as you journeyed. You havent have you? That’s good. I’m getting all right now. We all give Elinor lots of anxiety and she gets awfully tired. I hope life ­w ill be easier for her. Mrs Nevils gives signs of being about to find the eight thousand for the stone house—or so Kent writes.172 I s­ hall believe in her when she turns up with the cash. The deed should we have to make one, w ­ ill have to go to you for your signature and Lillian’s. We can use air mail and it wont take much time. I forgot to say I wish I had in one holder173 the w ­ hole set of your poems to look over when inclined. Would it be too much trou­ble to make me a loose-­ leaf note book of them sometime this winter? The depth of feeling in them is what I keep thinking of. I’ve taken ­great satisfaction in your having found such an expression of your life. I hope as you go on with them, ­they’ll help you have a good winter in the midst of your f­ amily. One ­thing I noticed in your hand written letter I never noticed before. You dont use a capital I in speaking of yourself. You write i which is awfully wrong. You begin a sentence with a small i too. You ­mustn’t.174 Our best to you all three Affectionately Papa. Jackie sent a letter to Prescott by air mail.175

172. ​For more on Nevils, see RF to Carol, December 1932. For more on the status of the Stone House in general (during Carol’s residence in California), see also RF’s letters to him dated October 10 and 30, 1932, and September 18, 1933. 173. ​As per the manuscript (though one expects “folder”). 174. ​This, like a number of moments in RF’s letters to his son, is odd and a l­ittle unsettling. As has been noted, Carol had ­little formal education, but he had more than enough to know how capital I’s are used—­a fact of which his ­father would have been well aware (and so might have chosen not to make an issue of). Curiously, it is only in handwritten letters that Carol uses the miniscule first-­person pronoun; in typed letters he uses capitals. 175. ​John “Jack” Cone Jr., son of Irma.

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[To Warren R. Brown. ALS. Jones.]

Franconia NH September 12 1933 Dear Brown: We have had a tragedy. The eve­n ing of the day your letter came about the new dog we lost Winnie. She got her face and mouth full of porcupine quills and died ­under the cloroform [sic] we had to give her for the ­really terrible operation of getting them out. No dog could ever take her place in our affections. No dog ­w ill have a chance to. We are all sick and sad. She was the best beast. Always your friend Robert Frost I did wrong to bring her up into this wilderness. R. F.

[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

Franconia Sept 17 1933 But write to South Shaftsbury now. Dear Louis: Cant you make it a week ­later and to South Shaftsbury instead of to Franconia. Next week we ­shall be in transition. By the ­m iddle or last of the week we s­ hall have settled back in South Shaftsbury and Elinor w ­ ill have gone on to New Haven with the c­ hildren to help them start the new year at college.176 That at any rate is the plan now. We are full of prob­lems that shift their aspect while we wait. Im sure however of the week end of two weeks from t­ oday and tomorrow. We had a successful expedition yesterday, all of us, into a new north for us, looking for a home looking for a home.177 It was beyond the uttermost wild 176. ​Irma and RF’s son-­i n-­law, John Cone; see RF’s September 1, 1929, letter to Bartlett. 177. ​“Looking for a home / Looking for a home” is the refrain from a popu­lar blues song, “The Boll Weevil,” which Carl Sandburg had recorded for Victor in 1926. He also included it is his 1927 anthology, The American Song Bag, as did Untermeyer in his 1931

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to a township called Columbia the gem of the mountains the home of the f­ ree from every­thing poisonous to mind or body and to a par­tic­u ­lar hamlet in the township called Cones on the map on Cone’s Brook where John’s p­ eople set out from for Kansas two generations ago.178 We had quite a mind to it. The mountain we would face is called Lightening [sic] ­because the spark from heaven alights ­there so often.179 Our mail would come to us at Stratford. Of course we may never. ­There is a disease known as geographic tongue or maps on the tongue:180 I certainly have maps on the brain. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Carol Frost. Year derived from internal evidence. ALS. UM.]

Franconia [New Hampshire] Sept. 18th [1933] Dear Carroll,— Elinor has made a good start which I may as well finish.181 The check came from Mrs Nevils ­today. I enclose it made over to you. So far so good. I told

American Poetry from the Beginning to Whitman (which he dedicated to RF). Many other performers recorded the song. 178. ​Census rec­ords show that a number of families named Cone lived in Coös County at the time (the northernmost county in New Hampshire), and indeed had done so since the late eigh­teenth c­ entury. The hamlet of Cones is situated between the Connecticut River and Cone Brook, just north of where the latter issues into the former, a few miles south of Columbia and Colebrook. 179. ​Lightning Mountain, near Stratford, New Hampshire; elevation 2,805 ft. 180. ​Geographic tongue is an inflammatory disorder marked by a loss of papilla on the tongue’s surface. The cause of the disorder is unknown. 181. ​Elinor had begun the letter; the place, date, and salutation—­w ith the two r’s and l’s in the name—­are in her hand. Notably, the South Shaftsbury town directory consistently gives the name as “Carroll Frost,” a spelling his ­father very seldom used. It is unclear which spelling the son preferred. Many of his surviving letters are signed “Carroll,” but some are signed “Carol,” and, while living in California, he ordered letterhead that reads: “Carol Frost / 261 North Canyon Boulevard / Monrovia, California.”

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you in my last letter she had been talking to Kent as if she ­were almost ready to buy. Apparently she ­hasn’t found the money yet.182 You manage to cross the ­whole continent without making any m ­ istake. And I cant stay in one place three weeks without making one of the worst ­m istakes I ever made. I let Winnie out when I shouldnt have in the late eve­ ning when the porcupines are all round the ­house. She went for one and got her face so full of quills ­there seemed nothing for it but to cloroform [sic] her to get them out. She bit so and suffered when we tried it at first without the cloroform. But I over did the dose and killed her. That spoils this place forever. I ­shall never come ­here again. I ­shall miss her too much at the Gulley to want to linger ­there very long this fall. Another year I s­ hall have forgotten the bloody and fatal night I had over her. It was a lot my fault. I lost my head seeing her suffer and ­every body suffer on her account. We did our best to try to get veterinaries. They wouldnt come in the night—­not for ­people they didnt know. I can see now that I should have roped her w ­ hole body to a board and put her through without the cloroform. I wish you had been ­here to help me judge. It was a bad ­thing. We leave Franconia tomorrow. The last few days I have found distraction in exploring some of the roads and side roads in the townships of Stark, Stratford and Columbia above ­here in Coos county. What took us up ­there partly was my having noticed on the map a ­l ittle place up ­there on the Connecticut River called Cones where I figured Johns ancestors must have come from. We found a brook t­ here and also a district school called Cones. The last of the ­family had just gone to live in Colebrook a­ fter having been ruined in his lumber mill business by his wife’s interference.183 On our way back we turned

182. ​In his reply to the pre­sent letter, Carol writes: “Mrs Nevils is certainly in a delicate position. If she represents to a purchaser that she owns the place she could be sued for missrepre­sen­ta­t ion [sic] or if she plays the part of an agent she could be sued for taking more than the law allows an agent to. But as I said once while ­t here, if the place is sold we ­won’t have it and if it i­ sn’t we w ­ ill. It i­ sn’t so serious which happens. I believe though we had better let ­t hings go along as they are. She is paying the rent this winter and I ­w ill take a chance on w ­ hether she sells it or not. That is the way she has made her money, by underhanded business with a vigorous smile. . . . ​She may win out but she stands a chance to lose quite a bit. We are certainly getting an insight into the business world” (letter held at DCL). 183. ​Lumber had been the principal industry in Coös County throughout the nineteenth ­century, as Georgia Drew Merrill’s massive—956 page—­History of Coös County (1880) indicates. The World War I draft card—­fi lled out on September  12, 1918, two

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in for luck at a side road that climbed to a shelf of farm land where once had lived twenty six families filling two district schools with their c­ hildren, but now live only six families with almost no c­ hildren.184 We ­were a good deal attracted by the place. Potatoes ­were still green and growing untouched by blight (Sept 17) and by the recent frost that swept New ­England.185 ­There ­were all sorts of brooks and streams ­running away. It occurred to me we might have a certified seed potato farm186 up ­there that would leave you ­f ree to go south to camp winters.187 Affectionately Papa

[To Witter Bynner. ALS. Harvard.]

South Shaftsbury, Vt. October 1, 1933 Amherst, Mass., Soon. Dear Witter: Use what I said about Tuckerman any way you please.188 I seem not ­free (within myself) to say such ­things on purpose. All the more reason they should be made the most of when I say them by accident.

months before the armistice—of one Julius Horatio Cone (1879–1958) lists him as a “lumber manufacturer” based in the town of Columbia (in Coös County). He married Olive Waymouth in 1929 and, in the 1930 census, turns up as a farmer—­but w ­ hether this is the man to whom RF refers (in all his gossip) we cannot say. 184. ​RF knew from having read Harry Alvin Brown’s The Readjustment of a Rural High School to the Needs of the Community (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1912). The book concerns Colebrook Acad­emy, in Colebrook, New Hampshire. See LRF-1, 84. 185. ​On September  12. The Burlington (Vermont) ­Free Press noted on the thirteenth: “Chronic hay fever victims are the only local p­ eople known to have welcomed the coming of this frost.” 186. ​ That is, seed certified (for purity of strain) by the State Department of Agriculture. 187. ​Carol and Lillian would soon return to New ­England, but instead of settling on a Franconia farm, they moved back into the Stone House in South Shaftsbury. 188. ​In his July 20, 1933, letter to Bynner, RF had memorably said of Tuckerman’s sonnets that “They have high lines that a blind man could feel with his fin­gers.” The ­earlier

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You say you wish t­ hose “cases” had been literary. I thought all cases of consumption ­were literary. I know I am always more literary when I have it—at any rate more productive. Frankly both the cases ­were at least a ­little literary, and might well have taken them to Santa Fé: but their researches into climate pursued quite in­de­pen­dently of me took them, one to California the other to Colorado not without prejudice I must admit to New Mexico and Arizona. ­Don’t blame me. The worst of it is from one point of view that they have both cured. I’ll swap promises with you. I’ll agree never to come within five hundred miles of you again without looking in on you if you’ll agree never to come within two hundred of me without looking in on me. Ever yours, Robert

[To Marshall Louis Mertins. TG. Berkeley.]

BENNINGTON VT 1933 OCT 3 PLEASE DISREGARD ANY CHEAP THREE CENT LETTER YOU MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE RECEIVED FROM ME IN MY CAPACITY OF PROSE JESTER AND TAKE IT FROM THIS SERIOUS TELEGRAM IN RHYME AND METER HOW MUCH STRENGTHENED I FEEL IN MY CLAIM TO BEING A CALIFORNIAN BY THIS INVITATION TO GREET YOU TONIGHT IN ABSENTIA189 BE OF LOUD CHEERS LET US AS AUTHORS REFUSE TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN POLITICS LIT­ER­A­TURE NEVER UNDERTOOK TO GIVE A COUNTRY PROSPERITY THE EXTENT OF ITS OBLIGATION IS TO INSURE A FEW ­PEOPLE AGAINST BEING MADE FOOLS OF BY ­EITHER RICHES OR POVERTY IT IS NO WRANGLER IN AN EMERGENCY ITS INFLUENCE IS OVER YEARS LIKE THAT OF THE CONSTITUTION WHICH W ­ ILL KEEP AMER­I­C A AMERICAN A­ FTER

letter also explains RF’s reference to “­t hose ‘cases’ ” in paragraph two. RF’s remarks on Tuckerman ­were not (it seems) published ­u ntil ­a fter his death, when Samuel Golden quoted them in his Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (New Haven, CT: College and University Press, 1966): 143. 189. ​RF had been named honorary president of the California Writers’ Guild and sent this tele­g ram as a greeting to the group as it convened for its second annual meeting. See Mertins, Life and Talks-­Walking (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965): 207.

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OTHER COUNTRIES HAVE ALL BROKEN DOWN AND RUN TOGETHER FROM MUTUAL IMITATION ROBERT FROST

[To “Martin Jay,” the pseudonym that James George Leippert (1909–1964) used in the autumn of 1933 to solicit poems for his fledgling quarterly, which appeared the following year with contributions from, among o­ thers, Wallace Stevens, Robert Fitzgerald, John Peale Bishop, and Willard Maas.190 ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt October 11 1933 Dear Mr Jay: That’s the way to write to a fellow. I s­ hall of course want to do anything I can to please you. Your magazine’s name frightens me a ­little: Tendency.191 I’m not ­going to take it that that means I must be tendential in my contribution. Your friendliness reassures me. What do you say to sending me your copy of my book for me to write a new poem into? That w ­ ill satisfy your first and chief requirement. Then if you like the poem well enough you can use it in your magazine. It c­ an’t be a very long one b­ ecause I have no very long ones on hand. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

190. ​For more on Leippert, see RF’s August 23, 1930, letter to him. See also RF’s August 27, 1927, letter to him: LRF-2, 597 (Leippert had written RF ­u nder the name “Edwin Robinson Leippert,” soliciting a copy of the bookplate J.  J. Lankes had made for RF). Leippert / Jay would soon s­ ettle on the name “Ronald Lane Latimer.” For an account of Leippert’s life and c­ areer, see Ruth Graham, “Mystery Man” (the Poetry Foundation, Web). 191. ​Leippert / Jay changed the name to “Flambeau” before settling on Alcestis, for which he secured several short poems from Stevens. He had e­ arlier solicited poems for a series of paperbound chapbooks called the Lion & Crown, launched while he was a student at Columbia University. Alcestis was the most successful of his ventures in this line, and within a year or two he had made of the magazine a fine press—­a lso called Alcestis—­ based in New York (­u nder which imprint Leippert published Stevens’ long poem Owl’s Clover in 1936). RF never published a poem in any of Leippert’s several ventures.

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[To Warren Bower (1899–1976), American scholar and radio personality, professor of En­glish at New York University. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vt October 11 1933 Dear Bower: Good of you to write me such a nervy letter and give me your slant on the old crowd.192 Lawrence seems to have found a place to flourish mentally socially and physically in Montclair.193 Paul is still ­r unning his risks I suppose. The long summer out h ­ ere in Vermont must be good for him. He’s not more than forty five miles away east over the mountains.194 I see him once in a while, and, in fact, follow him with special interest. I hope h ­ e’ll learn to take care of himself soon enough. I just read his new play through aloud to my wife last night with ­g reat admiration for the dialogue.195 It is certainly a fine piece of reading what­ever it may prove to be as acting: I’m less a judge of the value of situation in a play than of anything else—­that is till I see and hear it cracked on the stage. It is pretty talk though and o ­ ught to go. 196 About your school book. You know how it is or has become with me. I am practically out of teaching and indeed out of relations with the writing boys. My state is more or less kingly.197 A few penetrate to my throne room, but mostly with verse and plays. My impression is that nothing very intensive is done with writing in any Amherst course. That prob­ably is why you got no rise out of anybody t­ here. David Morton the poet of our faculty should be your best bet. He runs a betting club of the gentler rhymsters [sic], where they nightly lay a quarter on their works, or chip a quarter t­oward the jack

192. ​Bower received his MA in En­g lish at the University of Michigan in 1923, when RF was on its faculty as fellow in letters. 193. ​Lawrence Conrad, on the faculty at the New Jersey State Teachers College in Montclair. 194. ​Paul Osborn, who had a summer place in West Brattleboro, Vermont. 195. ​A typescript of Oliver, Oliver, which debuted at the Play­house Theatre in New York in January 1934. 196. ​Bower was at work on what would become his The College Writer (New York: W. W. Norton, 1935). 197. ​A cheeky riff on a line from John Milton’s sonnet “When I consider how my light is spent . . .”: “God doth not need  /  ­Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best  /  Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state  / Is Kingly. . . .”

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pot and the one who is voted victor scoops the jack pot. He’s much more in the writing affairs of the college than I am. I should think your scheme was sound. I dont see anything too unusual or too unconventional about it. I should think it lay exactly in the direction in which ­things had been tending. If you thought it would help I should be glad to say a word to John Farrar for you. You ­were writing as an undergraduate as well as most of the authors we have around us. A lot of undergraduates write as well as “the authors” paragraph for paragraph. I dont see why they shouldnt be used to stimulate each other the way boxers are by being brought to encounter each other as of the same class in the national field.198 A youngster learns by observing his betters, but prob­ably learns more by contending with his equals. Best wishes to you both.199 Yours from of old Robert Frost

[To Ferner Nuhn (1903–1989), American author, critic, and artist. ALS. Iowa.]

South Shaftsbury Vt October 11 1933 Dear Nuhn: I ­shall be glad to back you to my utmost for a Guggenheim. You speak of asking for one to stay at home on. Have they changed their rules to make that permissible?200 It is something I have contended for. I gave as my reason for staying off the committee that I was against bucketing all our talent to Eu­ rope to Eu­ro­pe­anize: Its the likes of you I should like to see given leisure to fulfill what you are where you are. I’m a terrible nationalist. You mustnt mind 198. ​Presumably a reference to the National Boxing Association. Founded in 1921, the NBA had been attempting to regulate the sport, coast to coast (in part to provide a counter to the influential New York State Athletic Commission). Its motto was: ­ “Uniformity—­Cooperation—­Control: Boxing as a National Sport.” 199. ​Bower’s wife, Lesley (1909–2001). 200. ​Established in 1925 by John Simon Guggenheim and his wife Olga, the awards ­were originally titled the “John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships for Advanced Study Abroad.” ­Until 1941, all fellows ­were required to spend their terms outside of the United States.

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me.—­I liked what you sent me as I had liked the ­things I had seen ­here and ­there before.201 Where are you folks ­going when you get through at Yaddo?202 Home to Iowa? Or somewhere ­else to try another part of the United States? I was ­going to say, if you wanted to linger on into the cold in this neighborhood, h ­ ere’s a ­house you could have for nothing. It w ­ ill be empty from November 1st till early spring. You might not find it useful for more than a month or two. T ­ here is no furnace in the cellar. We stayed ­here once comfortably enough however on the open fire in the living room and a coal fire in the kitchen till January 15. The place is of course lonely. You might not like it. The idea merely occurred to Elinor and me. Our best to you both and your proj­ects. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Paul Osborn. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vt Oct 23 1933 Dear Paul: I read it straight through aloud to Elinor and we both admired it for a pretty piece of writing, svelt and shapely. I’ll bet it ­w ill be a ­g reat success.203 Florence telephoned you needed the script; so I’m hurrying it along to the address she gave.204 Good luck in your cast.205 See you sometime soon. Always yours Robert Frost

201. ​Since the late 1920s, Nuhn’s stories, reviews, and articles had appeared in such venues as the New Republic, American Mercury, and the Nation. 202. ​Nuhn and his wife, Ruth Suckow, had both been resident at the artist’s colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. 203. ​It w ­ asn’t. Oliver, Oliver closed a­ fter eleven per­for­mances. It was subsequently published by Samuel French (1934). See also the notes to RF’s October 11 letter to Bower. 204. ​Osborn’s wife, Florence Louchheim Osborn (1901–1967). 205. ​The 1934 production of Oliver, Oliver featured Ann Andrews, Helen Brooks, Alexandra Carlisle, Thomas Chal­mers, Jolyn Fabing, Hugh Rennie, Henry Vincent, and Bretaigne Windust.

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[To Sidney Cox. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury October 24 1933 Dear Sidney: ­Things that did themselves have crowded out the ­things that needed us to do them. I’m dazed to think how long ago I promised to have you h ­ ere or up to Franconia. I dont know how you are, but I’m so constituted that I dont seem to mind being neglected by p­ eople I am sure feel all right t­ oward me. What do you say to coming down Saturday this week and ­going back Sunday?—­ unless you have a football game to keep you.—­Be careful what you say against football or any other college athletics. I think that as they are taken so poetry should be taken and not other­w ise. So I look on them as a model for our kind and a reproach to the other kind of teachers.206 But I ­w ill excuse you from football this week since it ­w ill be me you are deserting it for. Come if you can and w ­ ill. Come as a friend and equal and dont trou­ble your head or silly old diary with trying to decide which wants to see the other more. I didnt mean exactly what you thought I did when years ago I was so incautious as to suggest that you might like to turn to account some of the theories of school, life, and art I let fall in talk but was too lazy ever prob­ably to use in writing myself.207 You took it that I was asking to be Boswellized. That has hurt our relationship a shade if you w ­ ill forgive my saying so. I meant something the most unpersonal. I shouldnt mind a word of credit for an idea of course. A fellow named Gordon Chal­mers recently got his doctors degree for a Thesis on Thomas Browne and Meta­phor at Harvard that ­really owed a lot more to me than he was generous enough to declare.208 You’d never treat me that way. In my judgement you wouldnt be treating me much better if you went to the other extreme and brought my name and ways in ­every other word. Some

206. ​See (again) RF’s remarks in “The Poet’s Next of Kin in College” (CPPP, 768–772), by which he means athletes. 207. ​See RF to Cox, April 19, 1932. 208. ​The title is, in fact, Sir Thomas Browne’s Thought and Its Relation to Con­temporary Ideas (dissertation, Harvard, 1933), subsequently revised and published as Sir Thomas Browne, True Scientist (Bruges, Belgium: St. Catherine Press, 1936). RF had long been a ­g reat reader of Browne. Chal­mers (1904–1956) was soon—in 1934—to be named president of Rockford College (Rockford, Illinois), where Lesley Frost would teach. RF took part in his inaugural ceremonies.

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time you might solve for me the prob­lem of how I was g­ oing to tell the world the princi­ples upon which I had composed. I shrink from prefaces as you know. Once in a while it comes over me to wish some friend would do my explaining for me. It shouldnt take much and it might better be based on my talk in general than on par­tic­u ­lar rambling talks with me. Im just now more or less in trou­ble with well intentioned p­ eople who want to publish stenographic reports of my so called lectures in New York at the New School.209 The objection is the same. I dont want the picturesque setting and charms or uncharms of me. I want the ideas rounded out and rounded up into something more formal than I care to take the responsibility for myself. Enough of this. You’ll gather from it more or less why I was against the larger book you sent me for approval. ­Either the ideas for the ideas’ sake and without the dirt and dross of me or no book at all ever while I live or ­after I die. Try to please me. Gee lets enjoy life. Come for the fun of it when you come. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Robert P. Tristram Coffin. The letter concerns the logistics for a lecture trip to Wells College, where both Coffin and J. J. Lankes ­were teaching. ALS. Bowdoin.]

South Shaftsbury November 1 1933 Dear Coffin: Come ahead on Saturday. Wont it be good to see you both! I’ll ­r ide back with you on Sunday. I may have to do part of the way on the train—­I get so tired on a long car journey. We could time it so as to put me on a train at Schenectady say and pick me up at Syracuse couldnt we?—­and not tell anyone about it for fear of making me look eccentric. You’d be surprised how ­little shocked I am at any originality I commit for my health lately. Come directly ­here: we want you in our h ­ ouse on our farm—­not at a h ­ otel however near. I ­shall have to start back on Tuesday. Elinor is not much better off than I am— if any. I cant leave her for more than a night or two. It’s too bad we are the way we are. I’ve been almost for putting off the visit till ­later, but I want to see you two school ­ma’ams and I cant be sure ­we’ll be a bit better fixed ­later 209. ​Presumably ­t hose between January and March 1931.

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than now.210 I may get my courage to do the ­whole two hundred and forty miles with you, though I believe thats further in a day than I’ve ever ridden the highways in my life.211 Ever yours and Lankes’ R. F.

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. Prince­ton.]

South Shaftsbury Vt November 1 1933 Dear Mr Thornton: The enclosed seems a m ­ istake any honest way we look at it. I cant tell you how it goes against me to have to give back money I may have thought mine even for the least division of a minute. Your firm wants to be careful what it does to a person in my precarious state of health.212 We enjoyed having you h ­ ere, and showing you the country—­g iving you a glimpse of the scenery and an insight into Jimmy Wells.213 ­There is more to that boy, I’m afraid, than psy­chol­ogy and philosophy. He can wait your con­ ve­n ience; and meanwhile you may happen to hear ­things that ­w ill give you a line on him. I must say he has amused me for the last five years. I have taken him for more or less of a dreamer, but I havent thought t­ here was much of any harm in him. I doubt if ­there is—­except perhaps to ­women.214 Lets let him stand.

210. ​RF spoke at Wells on Monday, November 6. 211. ​In an October 29, 1933, letter to RF, Coffin writes: “We can come [i.e., Coffin and J. J. Lankes] up to your place to fetch you by car—­a nd make it easier for you—­Saturday after­noon. I have no classes that after­noon. It is about 240 miles. Perhaps we might stay over in Bennington Saturday night and fetch you down on Sunday” (DCL). 212. ​RF had received a royalty check from Holt by ­m istake and returned it with this letter. 213. ​James Wells (who printed RF’s short play, The Cow’s in the Corn). Wells had been in contact with Thornton in September, and also seems to have visited RF during October. 214. ​Prob­ably a reference to Wells’s elopement with the wife of his partner, Crosby Gaige, in 1928.

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Remember us to the f­ amily. Sincerely yours Robert Frost Thanks for the books—­I mustnt forget t­ hose. I have read and enjoyed again The Prisoner.215 Now for Peter.216 I see ­t here is ­going to be a chance for my Latin.217

[To Frederic Melcher. ALS. UVA.]

South Shaftsbury Vt November 1 1933 Dear Fred: One of the poems, yes, the poem you particularly liked has become an “item” since you heard it read aloud. I enclose it as done by Knopf so that you can look at it and if you like it in this format, use it on a friend or two for Christmas.218 I’m inclined to think it should have been called “Without Prejudice to Anything” to guard against ­people’s thinking I mean to disparage machinery.219 Chase is a fool about machinery and if I am a fool it is about something ­else entirely.220 That you may not feel cheated by this deal of the manuscript you ­were promised I ­w ill copy you out another poem In Time of

215. ​Prob­ably Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda, an old favorite of RF’s. Hope had died in July 1933. 216. ​Very likely Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard, published by Holt in 1933. RF would meet Waddell in 1935 (see RF to Harold Baily, July 8, 1935). 217. ​The opening pages of Peter Abelard contain untranslated Latin verse. 218. ​The Borzoi chapbook of “The Lone Striker.” See RF to Untermeyer, May 18, 1932. 219. ​See the section of “The Lone Striker” beginning: “. . . ​he c­ ouldn’t look inside [the factory] / To see if some forlorn machine / Was standing idle for his sake. / (He ­couldn’t hope its heart would break.)” When RF brought the poem into AFR he affixed a subtitle to it in the t­ able of contents: “or, Without Prejudice to Industry.” 220. ​A reference to economist and social theorist Stuart Chase’s recently published A New Deal (New York: Macmillan, 1933). This book combined technological utopianism and passionate advocacy of a planned economy, including positive references to Soviet Rus­sia. RF’s point is that, while he ­doesn’t mean to “disparage machinery,” neither does he endorse the technocracy envisioned by the likes of Chase.

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Cloud-­burst,221 if anything better than the Lone Striker. (Now ­don’t get your back up on the defensive for your favorite.) You ask me in the wrong place about the misprint in Mountain Interval. I am still in South Shaftsbury and my firsts are all in Amherst. I never heard of the pasted-in leaf you speak of.222 By and by I ­shall know something about my own editions. Tell me what you find out. I’ll have a look when I get to Amherst. Let’s see was ­there anything ­else you asked me? Ever yours Robert Frost

[To John Bartlett. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst Mass December 5 1933 Dear John: ­You’ve got some towns out ­there in Colorado that I surely like to inhabit mentally when I’m awake at night or out walking: and the names of them are Boulder, Larkspur, Gunnison and Crested Butte. The two best are Boulder and Gunnison. I didnt get enough of e­ ither. I believe sometime I would inhabit one of them more than mentally if I werent afraid of their altitude for lowlanders of Elinor [sic] and my age—­comparative lowlanders. Our mountains leave off at five or six thousand where yours begin and our base stations 221. ​Subsequently published in the ­Virginia Quarterly Review (April 1936), and collected in AFR. 222. ​In fact, two misprints ­were corrected in the second state of MI: in both cases this was done by pasting in a new sheet to the stub where the original sheet had been razored out. On page eighty-­eight of the first state, line six (“­You’re further u ­ nder in the snow—­ that’s all—”) is inadvertently repeated. And in line 288 of “Snow,” the first printing of MI has: “When I told her, ‘Come.’ ” This was corrected in the second state (again by pasting in a new sheet) to: “When I told her, ‘Gone.’ ” RF made a number of minor revisions to the texts of the poems in MI when he brought the book into CP 1930. But ­t hese are the misprints and pasted-in sheets Melcher has in mind (or in any case, at least one of them: it is not clear that he knew two corrections had been made). See Crane, 23. We thank Pat Alger for providing the information necessary to complete this note. In pre­sen­ta­tion copies of MI, RF often inked in the corrections (once he was made aware they ­were needed).

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where we are used to breathe are at eight hundred or a thousand.223 The doctors seemed to me evasive on the subject of the danger. They prob­ably want to know more than they do about it and would be willing to have us experiment for them. I certainly felt feeble the first times I exerted myself as at Greeley and Denver224 and I never got over the tendency to gasp once or twice ­every so often day or night awake or asleep. It ­really makes me sorry for now that we are all in such an uprooted state of affairs something might easily come of my liking for the Rockies but for the one ­thing. I think Carol liked parts of Colorado better than anything outside of New ­England. He has no intention of staying in California. Farming ­there is too utterly dif­fer­ent from what he has grown up to. You have heard, ­haven’t you, that Lillian is pronounced a cured person. ­A fter two years or rather a year and a half flat on her back down herself and her lung down the doctor has her on her feet and her lung restored. Its something of a miracle ­because Dr Pottinger [sic] the big operator and authority out ­there wouldnt undertake her with her large adhesion.225 Its only a ­matter of months now when they ­w ill be ­f ree to decide for themselves ­whether they ­w ill risk it back in Vermont again on the same old farm. Their hearts seem set on it and particularly on the orchard of a thousand apple trees MacIntosh, Northern Spy, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious and Red Astrachan, just this year in first crop to count. I can understand their feelings but I question their wisdom. T ­ here I go again trying to run other ­people’s lives. I must question my own wisdom. Too bad I’m not where I can govern the country as a diversion from governing my friends neighbors and relatives. (What a picture I paint of myself. I can rely on you as my partisan from of old to defend me from myself.) I’m back at Amherst d­ oing very l­ittle as yet but picking up the politics of the place. My feller poeticism from the Old South has imperilled [sic] his position with us by chivalrously punching the village policeman on the chin for illegally asking a lady what she had done with five dollars entrusted to her as

223. ​The Frosts’ “base stations” in Amherst and South Shaftsbury are, respectively, 295 and 745 ft in elevation. 224. ​The altitudes of Greeley and Denver are respectively 4,675 and 5,280 ft. 225. ​Francis Marion Pottenger, MD (1869–1961), was one of the world’s leading specialists on lung disorders and founded the Monrovia Sanitarium a­ fter his first wife, Caroline, died of tuberculosis in 1898. In its first ten years, the sanitarium had become famous for successfully treating more than 1,500 patients.

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local representative of the Travellers Aid.226 I dont much take ­either side. You remember how the mob started to tear Cinna to pieces for conspiracy and when told by him it was a ­m istake of identity—he wasnt Cinna the conspirator; he was Cinna the poet, they cried Tear him for his verses.227 I say it as shouldnt say it. My early detaching of myself twice over from colleges when young leaves me with a certain detachment in viewing their trou­bles now I am old.228 I ­shall soon be out with a ponderous book of one poem on how I detached myself from the mills of Man in Lawrence Mass but without prejudice to machinery industry or an industrial age so that t­ here w ­ ill be no m ­ istake in the rec­ord. I’ll send you a copy. What are you publishing? You want to be careful what you say to me in reply about this Demo­cratic Nation and the Demo­cratic Policies for the Salvation of the Soul ­because I have allied myself by marriage with one of the most in­ter­est­i ng if extreme young Progressives in the world and as always with me it is my ­family right or wrong.229 A ­ in’t politics a funny t­hing to be so serious about? I take to such a man as Legge who could be friends with Hoover and Wilson both but loved farming better than men or methods.230 I believe in blackguarding like Hemmingway [sic] if you remember to burst out laughing when you get through.

226. ​Poet and Kentucky native David Morton, RF’s colleague at Amherst, was accused of assaulting Amherst patrolman William  A. Englemann, who had accused Morton’s landlady, Mrs. C. W. Searle, of misappropriating money as an agent of the Traveler’s Aid Society. The Society, established in 1851 to help travelers heading west from St. Louis, expanded into a national organ­ization that also provided aid to immigrants, especially vulnerable ­women and ­children who w ­ ere often forced by circumstance into prostitution. 227. ​See Julius Caesar (3.iii), which Bartlett may have studied u ­ nder RF at Pinkerton Acad­emy. 228. ​From Dartmouth College in 1892, from Harvard in 1899. 229. ​Marjorie’s husband, Willard Fraser, was a progressive and supported FDR. In speaking of the “Demo­cratic Policies for the Salvation of the Soul,” RF doubtless refers to the extraordinary mea­sures taken by FDR during the celebrated “first 100 days” of his administration, during which the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Recovery Act, and the Tennessee Valley Authority ­were all ­either established or signed into law. 230. ​A lexander Legge (1866–1933), who had died two days e­ arlier, served President Woodrow Wilson as vice chairman of the War Industries Board and as a leading economic advisor for the Treaty of Versailles. Legge also served President Herbert Hoover as chairman of the Federal Farm Board.

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The only nonsense g­ oing is this talk about a revolution being on. Revolution with the Supreme Court still sitting undisturbed! You may have heard me say the greatest branch of any government the world ever saw is the Supreme Court of the United States. T ­ here it sits. A friend of mine named Landis has recently made a book called The Third American Revolution.231 I asked him where he got more than one. He thinks the victory of the North in the Civil War was a revolution that brought industry on top and overthrew agriculture. What licked the agriculture of the South was the agriculture of the ­Middle West ­under such ­Middle Westerners as Grant and Sherman.232 The industry that has swept the world was coming everywhere before the war and ­wasn’t the least hastened by the war. One Revolution is all we have had and you’ll wait more years than your allotted for a second. Dont let the Demo­ crats worry you. Young Williams told me how much he owed for his summer to you and Ted Davison.233 I wish I ­were where I could walk a block or two to see you. ­Those streets from the Boulderado over just suited me.234 I suppose it was their contrast with the mountain roads which even if I come out ­there to ­settle down, I s­ hall always be afraid of. Ever yours R.

231.  Benson Y. Landis (1897–1996). The Association Press (New York) published the book. Landis had interviewed RF for Rural America (which he edited) in June 1931. 232. ​ Union Army generals Ulysses  S. Grant (1822–1885) and William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–1891) ­were born respectively in Point Pleasant, Ohio, and Lancaster, Ohio. See also RF to Cox, July 9, 1934 (where the topic arises again). 233. ​Ralph Mehlin Williams, a recent gradu­ate of Amherst, spent time in Boulder that summer, where he met Bartlett and poet Edward Davison, head of the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference. See RF to Williams, August 22, 1933. 234. ​In late June 1932, RF and Elinor stayed at the H ­ otel Boulderado on 13th Street, just a few blocks from the Bartlett home.

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[To Lincoln MacVeagh. See Lawrance Thompson, SL, 401–402. In his t­ able of letters, he reports that the manuscript was, when he examined it, at the Jones Library, but it has (as have several o­ thers) since gone missing, and no rec­ords for it exist at the Jones. Text derived from SL.]

December 11, 1933 Amherst Mass Dear Lincoln: I want to make you an offer. I have been over your Juvenal again by myself.235 I have consulted no one at all about it; and the conclusion I have arrived at is entirely my own. The translation and the versification are a good job. But they only confirm me in the indifference not to say dislike I have always felt for the subject ­matter of the original. I believe it gains in harshness said right out in En­glish. You know me: I can stand sorrow better than evil. A ­little irony is good medicine for the blood; but the out-­a nd-­out satire of Menken [sic] Dreiser and Lewis I should hate to join them in—­I shouldnt know how to join them in b­ ecause I am conscious of my resentments as being merely personal and so not to be trusted to build a cause on.236 I might write a w ­ hole book against the administration of Calvin Coo­lidge and no one would suspect that the inspiration was [a] grudge against him for having dismissed me with a joke when asked by common friends to invite me to the White House.237 No one e­ lse would know it, but I should know it. Now for my offer. I thought of it before you sailed, and should have spoken of it if I had been able to see you to say goodby.238 I’ll tell you what I should like to write a small preface to: a translation into En­g lish of some modern Greek poetry. You say you never heard any race relish their own speech as the modern Greeks do. That must mean lyric poets I should think. Well if the

235. ​This appears to be an elaborate joke. RF may refer not to an ­actual En­glish translation of Juvenal, but to Greek Night, a (Juvenalian) satire of de­cadent, chic New Yorkers by novelist Pitts Sanborn (including tales of nudist parties and speakeasies); MacVeagh’s Dial Press published it in 1933. On the other hand, MacVeagh, an accomplished classicist, might have sent him a translation of Juvenal in manuscript. 236. ​H. L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis. 237. ​The historian Mark ­Sullivan (1874–1952) was one of the friends. See RF to ­Sullivan, August 15, 1926 (LRF-2, 555–556). 238. ​In June 1933, FDR named MacVeagh ambassador to Greece.

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Insull business239 ­hasn’t made your Greece rancid to you and you are still as felicitously disposed to the country half your own, you find some one sad or glad poet or some group of poets to pre­sent to Amer­i­ca (by way of making an accounting of your embassy) and I’ll join you in a book of them. That would look to me like novel fun. My Greeks the Sarris b­ rothers who keep the College Restaurant in Amherst speak to me now and then of modern Greek poets, though what they seem fuller of than any nationals I ever met is politics.240 They and all their clerks read my copy of Thornton Wilder’s ­Woman of Andros.241 One of them said to me “That’s my island—­A ndros.” You have all the qualifications for making the translation. I have the one qualification for writing the preface, namely, sympathy with every­t hing Greek or Greecian particularly since having just now a­ fter all ­these years received my Harvard marks in Greek and Greek composition and found they w ­ ere all A’s. Robert 242 Hillyer looked them up on purpose to prove I was not just nobody from the academic point of view. I s­ hall have to brush up on my irregular verbs from self-­respect. We are having fierce weather. We stuck to the farm with nothing but the big open fireplace for heat till the thermometer went to four below zero. How cold are you?

239. ​British-­born American business tycoon Samuel Insull (1859–1938) had, e­ arlier in the year, fled to France, and then to Athens, to evade charges of mail fraud and violation of federal antitrust laws. He stood accused of having peddled worthless stock in his vast utility holdings ­a fter their collapse at the outset of the Depression. In the autumn of 1933, Insull was on trial in Athens, where the United States, partly through the offices of MacVeagh, was seeking his extradition to face felony charges in Chicago (an affair widely covered in the US press). In 1934, Turkey—to which he soon absconded—­d id, in fact, extradite him. He was tried in Chicago and found not guilty. All the same, Insull’s business practices led to the passage, in 1935, of the Public Utility Holding Com­pany Act, which introduced tight regulations on the industry in which he’d made, and lost, more than half a billion dollars. 240. ​James N. Sarris (1893–1987) and Charles N. Sarris (1892–1990), both born in Greece, operated the College Candy Kitchen, located at 22 Main Street in Amherst (on the menu ­were regular dinners, in addition to confections; the place was popu­lar with students). In 1987, Charles privately published a memoir of his and his b­ rother’s ­career in the restaurant business, My Ninety-­Five Year Journey (Dover, MA: Parthenope Publishing). 241. ​Published in New York in 1930 by Albert and Charles Boni. 242. ​Professor of En­glish at Harvard.

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Our best to you all three. This is Christmas greetings if it gets to you in time; if not, New Years. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Genevieve Taggard (1894–1948), American poet, at this point professor at Bennington College in Vermont, but shortly to move to Sarah Lawrence College in New York. ALS. NYPL.]

Amherst Mass December 15 1933 Dear Genevieve Taggard: We liked your sad ­little intimation of mortality.243 You seemed not as happy about your teaching as we should like to see you. You mustnt let the princi­ples on which t­ hings are done bother you. Bother the princi­ples. The idea of a rounded mind in a rounded body may be funny.244 It is nothing to take sides about. The main ­t hing is your work is more thought of than anybody’s ­else ­t here. Best Wishes from us both for Christmas. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To John Hall Wheelock. ALS. Prince­ton.]

Amherst Mass December 15 1933 Dear Wheelock: McCord’s book should mean the realization of a new poet—­the general  realization: a number of p­ eople have been noticing him for some 243. ​Perhaps a reference to Taggard’s chapbook Remembering Vaughan in New E­ ngland, a single poem illustrated by J. J. Lankes, and issued—by the Arrow Editions Co­operative Association (New York)—in an edition of 400 copies in summer 1933. The poem, a rather dark meditation, begins (for epigraph) with a line from Henry Vaughan’s “The World” (1665): “I saw Eternity the other night. . . .” RF’s phrasing, in any case, inverts the celebrated Wordsworthian formula: “intimations of immortality.” 244. ​A riff on the Latin motto mens sana in corpore sano (typically translated as “sound mind in a sound body”).

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time. 245 I’m glad of him and pleased you should be, too, in confirmation. It goes a long way with me that he has wit. Emotional plunge comes first of course, but it simply must be harnessed to the wit mill to turn mots phrases stanzas and notions. Wit gives a poet something e­ lse to play with than the conventional old poetic resentments against machinery money and the humdrum of instituted society. It protects the professor of beauty from becoming a Kalomaniac.246 I may make too much of nimbleness. But even at my most serious give me nimbleness and “spree.” Sweetness and light has been called for.247 Sweetness and lightness is a good blend—­lightness enough to keep from getting stuck in the sweetness. I’ve been intending to get in to see you and deliver the promised poem in person. The other day I got as far as New Haven, but drew back with a cold. My special reason for wanting to see you personally was to ask if you ­wouldn’t be willing to bring me out with a group of, say, three poems, one l­ittle one one a ­little larger and the one you heard, nay, made many hear me read.248 I’ve liked this way in the past. I’ve been out of the magazines so long I feel a bit timid about the best foot to put forward in starting up again. What should you say to a trio? Y ­ ou’re a busy man I know. I suppose you c­ ouldn’t be persuaded to come to Amherst for a night or a week-­end t­ oward our closer friendship? I could read you a few poems to choose from; but I could do better than that; I could sit round with you for a talk. Always yours Robert Frost

245. ​David McCord. His book, The Crows: Poems, was to be published by Charles Scribner’s Sons (where Wheelock was an editor) in 1934; presumably Wheelock had sent RF an advance copy. 246. ​A nonce word (from the Greek kalos), meaning maniac for the beautiful, or good. 247. ​Notably by Matthew Arnold, in Culture and Anarchy (1869). 248. ​R F h ­ ere is addressing Wheelock in his capacity as an editor at Scribner’s Magazine. The magazine printed “On the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind” in April 1934, “They W ­ ere Welcome to Their Belief ” in August  1934, and “On a Bird Singing in Its Sleep” in December 1934. For the development of ­t hese negotiations, see RF to Wheelock, February 8 and February 19, 1934. As for the poem Wheelock “made many hear him read”: RF recited “On the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind” at a Prince­ton University library dinner on May  4, 1933. Wheelock helped or­ga­n ize the event. See RF to Whitney Darrow, March 13, 1933.

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[To Henry Stuart Hazlitt (1894–1993), American journalist and editor. In 1933, Hazlitt left the Nation, where he had served as literary editor since 1930, to edit the American Mercury. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst Mass December 15 1933 Dear Mr Hazlett [sic]: You asked me for poems when I didnt have any except in pro­cess. I didnt answer at the time for fear of bad luck from talking about intentions. I write now to ask if you would still like something of mine. B ­ ecause if you should 249 say you would—­ Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Prescott Frost. ALS. UM.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] December 21 1933 Dear Prescott: How you have come on! I guess I d­ on’t have to print you any more letters to read if you can write a letter like that.250 Let’s have another when you ­aren’t too busy. ­Great luck to win prizes at ball games in which your side wins too. I wish we could sit out doors and watch ­things. We are ­behind closed win­dows for good. What we see through the win­dow t­oday is ­every single branch of ­every tree with a thread or ridge of snow along it. Snow can only stick and pile up that way when it starts as rain. I always think of you as three thousand miles from snow. You are not r­ eally more than ten or fifteen I suppose. Very likely you can see snow on Mt Wilson right now.251 H ­ eres [sic] more stamps. Affectionately Grandpa 249. ​He did. “Desert Places” appeared in the American Mercury in April 1934, “A Leaf Treader” in October 1935, and “The Strong are Saying Nothing” in May 1936. 250. ​RF had been in the habit of writing out his missives to Prescott in block letters. By 1933, the boy was eight. 251. ​Mount Wilson is ten miles north-­northwest of Monrovia as the crow flies (in the San Gabriel Mountains).

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[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] December 21 1933 Dear Louis This is silence long enough to show the restraint of a humanist which is what I should like to do once in so often but not too often. Our David Morton has been punching a policeman for asking a lady a question nobody but a ­lawyer has a right to ask.252 ­There is something ungenerous about not calling someone a son of a bitch or punching someone or driving a car drunk or trusting ­others to keep you from falling off a roof or leaving it to your audience to supply a meaning to what you say. Did you happen to notice the terrible kind of Death Hemmingway [sic] wished the humanist in his Winner Take Nothing dedicated to your Archie MacLeish.253 He hoped he would die without dignity or decorum. I suppose he must have been ­after Irving Babbitt for getting ­under his skin for a humanitarian sentimentalist. Just about the time he wished it Babbitt was ­dying as if with humanitarian pens stuck into his wax figureativeness, which was good as far as it went, but unfortunately for Hemmingway I’m afraid he died with Graeco-­Roman euthanatos.254 252. ​For details, see RF’s December 5 letter to Bartlett. 253. ​Hemingway’s short story collection Winner Take Nothing (1933), dedicated to Archibald MacLeish, had been published in October. In “A Natu­ral History of the Dead,” Hemingway mocks the New Humanists, suggesting that a serious brush with mortality might shake their faith in the possibility of h ­ uman perfection: “I want to see the death of any self-­called Humanist ­because a persevering traveler like Mungo Park or me lives on and maybe yet w ­ ill live to see the ­actual death of members of this literary sect and watch the noble exits that they make. . . . ​But regardless of how they started I hope to see the finish of a few, and speculate how worms w ­ ill try that long preserved sterility; with their quaint pamphlets gone to bust and into foot-­notes all their lust” (reprint; New York: Collier Books, 1970): 102. Hemingway traduces a passage from Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” the better to bury the humanists: “Nor, in thy marble vault, s­hall sound / My echoing song; then worms s­hall try / That long-­preserved virginity, / And your quaint honour turn to dust / And into ashes all my lust. . . .” 254. ​Irving Babbitt (1865–1933), who had died of ulcerative colitis in July, was the leading light of the New Humanists. A staunch advocate of classical humanism’s self-­ discipline and moderation, Babbitt was highly critical of Rousseau and Romanticism, particularly the latter movement’s glorification of the Romantic hero (and his propensity to vio­lence) and its emphasis on what he called the “sentimental” imagination. Contrary to Hemingway’s confabulation, Babbitt did not abandon his ethical princi­ples and con-

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Hear me use Greek. I feel that it is my peculiar right, nay duty, since my marks in Greek at Harvard w ­ ere published by Robert Hillyer the other day.255 The mercy of my not writing to you lies chiefly in its saving you a lot of rhyme and meter which it would have been if I had written at all. I think it was your spirited poem set me off on my spree: but its been for the last month or two so that I could think of nothing except in rhyme and that the same rhyme steadily till it was exhausted. For example I wrote a w ­ hole lesson in rhe­toric in lines ending in words to rhyme with Flaccus (leaning on Austin Dobson for my rhyming dictionary256). The Flaccus I was talking to (not about) was a protege of mine just out of Dartmouth, not the Horatius late of Rome and the Sabine Hills.257 You o ­ ught to have seen it before it was burnt. Then again you o ­ ught not. You have seen a lot of poetry in your time—­a lot of mine. Time you ­were retired to a pension. I dont mean to imply you act jaded. I heard of you (as well as from you) in Texas. You vivified them down ­there!258 Nobody’s with us for Christmas. ­We’re two elders alone with nothing to think about but thoughts and how to keep them out of our poetry so it w ­ ill tinued working despite terrible pain up ­u ntil his death. As for RF’s reference to “euthanatos,” Greek for “an easy death”: the implication is that Babbitt died with considerable dignity. 255. ​See RF’s December 11 letter to MacVeagh. 256. ​Dobson, a notable rhymer, uses “us” or words ending in “-­us / -­ous” as rhyme sounds twenty-­one times in his Collected Poems (London: Kegan Paul, 1902), but RF has one poem in mind: Dobson’s “A Ballad to Queen Elizabeth (of the Spanish Armada).” ­There, Dobson relies on two-­syllable rhymes involving “-­ack-us” fourteen times: sack us / stack us / track us / back us / tack us / crack us / Flaccus / Bacchus / hack us / thwack­us / pack us / lack us / attack us / rack us (490–491). The line ending in “Flaccus” reads: “Now Howard may get back to his Flaccus.” Charles Howard (1536–1624), first Earl of Nottingham, was Lord High Admiral ­u nder Queen Elizabeth I. The Armada defeated, he could return to reading Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the Roman poet more generally known as Horace. 257. ​Kimball Flaccus (Dartmouth 1933). In 1934 he completed an MA at Columbia University, and in 1934–1935 lived in Dublin (supported by a Richard Crawford Campbell Jr., Travelling Fellowship from Dartmouth). 258. ​As had RF in spring 1933, Untermeyer embarked on an ambitious lecture tour in the autumn of 1933. He spoke at the ­Women’s Club in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on October 17; at Augustana College on “What Amer­ic­ a Needs and Why” on November 6; at the Pierian Club in Dallas on November 15; at Baylor University as the guest of A. J. Armstrong on “The Glory of the Commonplace” on November 16; and at the ­Women’s Department Club in Shreveport, Louisiana, on “What Americans Read and Why” on November 20.

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be pronounced pure by the authorities on purity self-­set up. I am g­ oing to give a lecture on What Poetry Thinks presently in prose if I can.259 I s­ hall begin, Poetry abhors a money-­matter. I have carefully phrased it that far so nobody can sing it—­can they? I am g­ oing to end—­well if I knew how I was ­going to end and get out of the damned t­ hing I shouldnt be as ner­vous and abstracted in com­pany like a neurastheniac the night before he goes over the top. Why do I get myself in for t­ hese ­things you ask me. So do I ask myself. Principally ­because you cant be writing poetry all the time or you w ­ ill produce volumes and volumes till you are self-­buried. Our best to you Toledoans (I seem to want to rhyme that with Minoans and be off.260) You hear the Limerick coming. The sub-­plot would turn on assart—­never mind why.261 But I spare you. Have a merry Christmas with the well-­contrasted boys. Tease them both very wittily for me. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879–1958), American author and reformer. The letter was discovered in a copy of RF’s A Lone Striker that was inscribed to Fisher and her husband John and sent as a Christmas gift in 1933. Mark Madigan explains the circumstances of composition and discovery and published the text of the letter in “A Newly Discovered Robert Frost Letter to Dorothy Canfield Fisher” in the Robert Frost ­Review (1994). ALS. Private.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa December 25, 1933] Dear Dorothy: I’ve had in mind to say your last book suited us best of all your long stories.262 The reason prob­ably was ­because it was straight story telling, at which ­there is nobody can beat you. The sound heart and tenable position it is out 259. ​R F would deliver a lecture at the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference u ­ nder that title on July 29, 1935. 260. ​“Minoans”: inhabitants of ancient Crete. Untermeyer was then living in Toledo with his third wife, Esther Antin Untermeyer (an Ohio native). 261. ​An “assart” is a “plot” of land converted from forest for use as arable land. The “sub-­plot” of a limerick is, of course, the couplet in the ­m iddle. Let the imaginative assem­ble the poem RF heard coming. 262. ​Fisher’s 1933 novel, Bonfire.

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of are assumed: I am left in no doubt of the correctness of your attitude ­toward life. I might be annoyed at my age if I w ­ ere left in doubt. But the trajectory of the story is narrative undeflected by any cross wind of good or bad prejudice. The figure of a story play or poem however serious must be that of a cut caper. The “spree” is the t­ hing. The theme [of] the faltering village beginnings of an ambitious capital ­career should have been played up on the jacket we thought. ­We’re ­here preoccupied with thoughts if not works of infant education.263 Your thoughts are of adult education. I could name a dozen t­ hings more impor­tant than ­either. May the importance of our occupations not ­matter too much to us however. Our best to you both. Merry Christmas, merry all times. Ever yours Robert Frost I’m enclosing you a book for your book.264

[To Wilbur Cross (1862–1948), American literary scholar, editor, professor, politician, and editor of the Yale Review. ALS. Yale.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] Feb 8 1934 Dear Cross (but if cross you be, I commend the enclosed to Miss McAfee265—­because poetry calls for good-­natured indulgence, d­ oesn’t it always?) I was hoping you might find three you could use in a group, two small ones and one of the longer ones. The only one you m ­ ustn’t leave out is Neither Out Far nor In Deep. In fact I should be pleased to see that one put first in any group.266

263. ​Madigan suggests that “infant education” likely refers to Marjorie Frost Fraser’s pregnancy. 264. ​The chapbook version—as has been indicated—of A Lone Striker. 265. ​Helen Flora McAfee (1884–1956), a colleague of Wilbur Cross at the Yale Review. 266. ​“Neither Out Far Nor In Deep” was published in the March 1934 issue of the Yale Review.

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I’ve been very sick and I may or may not be down tomorrow for the inauguration at Pierson.267 I ­shall look in on you if I am down. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To John Hall Wheelock. ALS. Prince­ton.]

Amherst Mass Feb 8 1934 Dear Wheelock I have been very sick for more than a month, or I should have sent t­ hese along sooner.268 And say, ­there is no pressure except in the ­matter of the longest one. You and I between us got you in to a position where you almost have to take that. You can send the small ones all back if you dislike them. I spoke of hoping you might care to use three in a group—no more than three—­t wo small ones to lead off and then the Clouded Mind. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Otto Manthey-­Zorn. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] February 9 1934 Dear Otto: You are sailing from one unfixed point to another unfixed point. You dont know what you are sailing from; much less do you know what you are sailing to.269 All the better you may think. If you are g­ oing to be at sea, you may as 267. ​Pierson College at Yale, established in 1933 (with RF among its fellows). RF evidently did not get down for the inauguration: see RF to Cross, February 17, 1934. 268. ​See RF to Wheelock, December 15, 1933. 269. ​The Manthey-­Zorns ­were sailing for Eu­rope on February 10. Otto had told RF that, ­because of po­l iti­cal turmoil in Eu­rope, they might be spending most of their time in the UK, but by mid-­March they w ­ ere in Berlin, where ­things ­were more normal than they expected (see Donald G. Sheehy, “ ‘To Otto as of Old’: The Letters of Robert Frost and Otto Manthey-­Zorn, Part 1,” New E­ ngland Quarterly 67.3: 389–393).

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well be thoroughly at sea. You cant even tell now how far you ­w ill have travelled when you get to Eu­rope. By that time Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope may have drawn nearer together or further apart. But such uncertainties dont bother us as much as you’d imagine they might bother p­ eople of our stayed 270 upbringing. We’ve got interested in them. Let the Symplegades bump.271 We refuse to be shocked on ­either general or personal princi­ples. Let us take it calmly like the ex-­K aiser feeding fish or sawing wood at seventy.272 Leave it to the neighbors to guess ­whether it is ­because we are too deep or too shallow that we dont hang drown or shoot ourselves with disillusionment. Some fellow273 has written about the world as Waste Lands. Nothing has been laid waste that was not always waste. Nothing has gone loose that was ever ­really firm. Some of the stars are comparatively fixed and so’s friendship. If you think of it when you see them tell Mussolini Hitler and Stalin that I dont much blame them.274 Ever yours Robert

[To Paul Osborn. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass February 10 1934 Dear Paul: ­Don’t let it bother you.275 I’m sure you ­won’t. By this time you know better than anyone e­ lse what went wrong. I mean you know, not why the play failed, 270. ​A pun on “staid” and “stayed” (as in, staying put). 271. ​In the legend of the Golden Fleece, the clashing rocks at the entrance to the Black Sea through which the Argo had to pass. 272. ​Wilhelm II (1859–1941), deposed as German emperor in November 1918, whereupon he retired into a life of exile in the Netherlands. He was enthusiastic about the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany, but this was not reciprocated. 273. ​A put-­down of T. S. Eliot. 274. ​RF’s ­table talk at this time was sympathetic to revanchist nationalism in Eu­rope (see Donald G. Sheehy, New E­ ngland Quarterly 67.3: 391). For a revision of this attitude, see RF to Manthey-­Zorn, January 10, 1935. 275. ​The closing of Osborn’s Oliver, Oliver ­a fter eleven per­for­mances (at the Play­house Theatre).

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but why the play failed with the public or the public failed with the play; both of which deplorables, so far as you are concerned, come to the same ­thing; ­because it’s your look out equally that neither ­shall happen. Nevertheless I stick to it that it was a pretty l­ ittle play. It may have been a shade less of a subject than the Vinegar Tree.276 It may have lacked that play’s hunks of substance. But the form was ­there in ­every phrase. You are absolutely sure fire in the lines. We must talk about it as much as you feel like sometime. I wish I could see you. I should have written sooner but for the long sickness. I have ­really just got my legs over the side of the bed. I guess I’ve lost the winter. I’m not supposed to write much yet. ­There’s talk of our ­going south to get warm. I ­shall resist ­going. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Marie Mattingly Meloney. ALS. Columbia.]

Amherst Mass February 12 1934 Dear Mrs Meloney: I wanted you to have this snow poem sooner.277 But I have been too sick to tell ­whether I liked anything of my own anymore. I had to wait till I got up and got my courage up again. If I am too late to catch the season this year, ­we’ll just have to wait till the season comes round next year. I appreciate your wanting a poem or poems and w ­ ill do anything I can to fit in with your plans. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

276. ​ Osborn’s 1930 play, which enjoyed a run of 229 per­ for­ mances (also at the Play­house). 277. ​Meloney edited the Sunday magazine of the New York Herald Tribune, which published RF’s “Winter Owner­ship” (CPPP, 546) on March 4, 1934. RF never collected it.

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[To Wilbur Cross. ALS. Yale.]

Amherst Mass February 17 ’34 Dear Cross: I’m glad if I still can please you.278 I need all the encouragement you can give me in that kind of poetry to hold me to it. The temptation of the times is to write politics. But I ­mustn’t yield to it, must I? Or if I do, I must burn the results as from me likely to be bad. Leave politics and affairs to Walter Lipp­ mann.279 Get sent to Congress if I ­w ill and can (I have always wanted to), but stick to the kind of writing I am known for. I wish I knew when you ­were likely to be in New Haven. I should like to plan my first visit to Pierson College so as to catch a glimpse of you. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To John Hall Wheelock. ALS. Prince­ton.]

Amherst Mass February 19 1934 Dear Wheelock: In the watches of the night I got scared about that group. I dont see it very well now. The Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind d­ oesn’t go with the smaller ones does it? I think you thought it would read better alone. I’m sure it would. Excuse me if I seem over anxious to get t­ hings right. Ever yours Robert Frost

278. ​Referring to “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep”; see RF to Wilbur Cross, February 8, 1934. 279. ​Walter Lipp­mann. Lipp­mann was author of Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922), a groundbreaking text in the field of po­liti­cal science. But ­t here may be an ele­ment of irony in RF’s reference to him ­here, ­because at the Phi Beta Kappa event at Columbia University in May  1932, RF had read his avowedly “po­liti­cal” poem “Build Soil,” while Lipp­mann had delivered an address arguing that scholars should detach themselves from politics. See RF to Untermeyer, December 12, 1932.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. RF h­ ere discusses Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland’s coauthored collection of poems, ­W hether a Dove or a Seagull (Viking, 1933). Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [February 22, 1934] Dear Louis: I have been in bed with a bug and a tropical temperature again etiolating and emaciating. Other­w ise I should prob­ably have written you sooner about ­those t­ here two married girls’ wind-­baby that they laid as lightly as a blown ­bubble on my doorstep so as not to break it with an odor of pewtativeness I suppose.280 Prob­ably, but not surely, b­ ecause I hardly know what to write ­either to you or to them. If you could have got along without two or three of 280. ​Warner had asked her publisher to send RF a copy of the book; presumably it—­t he “wind-­baby” they together had given birth to—­had landed on his doorstep. And, on February 2, 1934, Warner had written to ask RF’s opinion of the book (the ­matter discussed in the pre­sent letter). She wrote again on May 2 with the same query, expressing sorrow that he had been ill, and so unable to reply in a timely manner. “But at least I can wish you now a convalescence which ­w ill give you all the mood and all the leisure for poetry. I wish myself that wish too; for it is a long time since I stood in a New York bookshop, first reading West-­Running Brook; and though your poems are like aromatic herbs, keeping the same savour however often one turns to them, yet for all that I look forward to another book” (manuscript held at DCL; we thank Jay Satterfield for making it available). Untermeyer’s review of ­Whether a Dove or a Seagull, which appeared in the Saturday Review of Lit­er­a­ture on January  27, 1934, points out that Warner and Ackland dedicated their book to RF, as had Edward Thomas dedicated his Poems (Selwyn and Blount, 1917). An openly gay c­ouple then residing at Frankfort Manor, Sloley, in the county of Norfolk, Warner and Ackland wrote frankly of their physical intimacy. As letters to Untermeyer dating to March 5 and March 19, 1934, indicate, RF seems curiously anxious that Warner supposed he and Thomas had shared similar intimacies. The several letters from her to RF held at DCL, however, make no such suggestion, and do not mention Thomas. A letter from Warner to RF dated August 4, 1933, shows that RF had granted her and Ackland permission—in a letter—to dedicate ­Whether a Dove or a Seagull to him well in advance of its publication. We have been unable to locate the letter, but some idea of what RF said in it may be gleaned from Warner’s reply: “Thank you very much for your letter, and for your kindness in allowing us to dedicate our book to you. . . . ​I ­w ill observe your appointment that we ­shall meet in the Day of Judgement, when, if I am allowed to, I s­ hall say more of your work than that t­ here is a g­ reat deal of it.” (In an ­earlier letter, dated June 12, 1933, she had thanked RF for having “written so many” poems that no ­matter how often she wandered into the “forest” of his CP 1930 she

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the more physical poems in the book, you can imagine how much more philosophically I could with my less cultivated taste. I suspect a hidden joke between you and them at my expense. T ­ here is fleur-­de-­mallaissian laughter offstage at the spectacle of my grey hairs being brought down another peg in sorrow to the incontestible [sic] verities.281 It is pos­si­ble to make too much of the episode—­whether joke or clinical experiment. I am well past the age of shock fixation. But if I promise not to make too much of it, ­w ill you promise too? You wont take it as an infringement of the liberty of the press if I ask you not to connect me with the book any more than you have to in your reviewing and lecturing. ­Don’t you find the contemplation of their kind of collusion emasculating? I’m chilled to the marrow, as in the a­ ctual presence of some foul form of death where none of me can function, not even my habitual interest in versification. This to you. But what can I say to them? Yours ever R.

[To Prescott Frost. ALS. UM.]

Amherst Mass Washington’s Birthday [February 22,] 1934 Dear Prescott: Out in Kansas they have cyclone cellars they go down into when t­ here is a tornado. (They ­ought to call them tornado cellars.) I hear you have been ­going to school in an earthquake cellar in California. I dont see what good a cellar would do in an earthquake. The ­children are better off who have been ­going to school in tents, I should say.282 If I ­were you I should work hard and get

encountered “by some chance of inner of outer weather”—an allusion to RF’s “Tree at My Win­dow”—­a poem that struck her as new.) 281. ​An allusion to Charles Baudelaire’s Le Fleurs de Mal (1857). 282. ​See, for example, the Santa Cruz Sentinel for January 2, 1934: “Thirty-­five hundred tent ­house classrooms ­w ill be constructed at a cost of $1,145,000 for 140,000 school ­children in Los Angeles city to safeguard them from earthquake danger in hundreds of school buildings which the county g­ rand jury found w ­ ere not up to standards of earthquake proof construction. This is nearly half of the ­children in the city schools.” The city

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promoted from the cellar. I dont take much stock in an earthquake cellar, to tell the truth. Tell me when you get so you can read my writing so I wont have to print any more.283 ­Heres a mess of stamps to examine for good ones. We have snow piled higher than your head all along the pavements where it has been pushed in both directions by the snowplows. Y ­ ou’ve missed the 284 deepest and coldest winter in forty years. But all you have to do is go up Mt Wilson to see more snow than we ever thought of seeing. Affectionately Grandpa

[To Willard Fraser. ALS. Private.]

Amherst Mass February 26 1934 Dear Willard: I ­haven’t known the kind of excitement in the ­family your politics give us since I was a young demo­crat campaigning for Grover Cleveland with my ­father in San Francisco in 1884.285 We ­don’t get the hang just yet of your Montana affairs, but The Western Progressive is a ­g reat help and by the time we get out t­ here for our first visit w ­ e’ll be qualified to vote in e­ very re­spect but length of residence.286 I should judge it to be a pretty close state with party ties gone pretty loose. The vote on the impeachment of Gov Cooley [sic] didnt

had yet to complete necessary repairs ­a fter the March 10, 1933, Long Beach earthquake that killed more than 115 ­people. 283. ​Actually, this letter is written in cursive, not the block letters RF used in ­earlier letters to Prescott. 284. ​On December 29, 1933, the temperature in Boston was −17°F. The winter freeze of 1933–1934 killed more than 2 million apple trees in upstate New York and New ­England. 285. ​Fraser was very active in Montana politics. He was a candidate in the four-­man, nonpartisan 1933 mayoral race in Billings (Fred L. Tilton, the incumbent, won); and, in September  1933 he was named secretary of the Montana chapter of the Young Demo­ cratic Clubs of Amer­ic­ a. 286. ​The Western Progressive was a lively po­liti­cal weekly published in Helena, Montana; in 1934, it was edited by Floyd Smith.

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seem to divide on party lines.287 Are ­these times extra wild for Montana? ­There seem to be all sorts of adventures ahead of you. We w ­ ere ­going south for my health.288 We’ve de­cided for the pre­sent to stay right where we are and feed the furnace. We are having a winter you have to re­spect. Many go to Canada for the Canadian winter. They at least ­can’t complain if this year the Canadian winter has come to them. I send you a clipping on our weather from the Bennington (Vermont) Banner. Temperatures ­there ninety miles away have been a l­ittle lower than h ­ ere in Amherst, but not much. Dwight Morrow has been in talking about you and very much like a true friend.289 Life like yours together outdoors makes lasting attachments. I appreciate him better in a talk of the kind. He took very seriously to heart your letter against his settling down to a sheltered life at Amherst. He is moving on for some more education next year. He wants to be a teacher of American history. You and Earl Morris with your fa­cil­i­t y in manual and practical t­ hings scared him out of archaeology, I suspect.290 He means to be some good to himself and his country. You and Marj must be nice to him in your thoughts. He’s your friend. 287. ​On January 19, 1934, a resolution to impeach Montana governor Frank H. Cooney (Demo­crat) on charges of corruption was rejected in the state House of Representatives (50–41). The impeachment mea­sure drew support—­a nd met opposition—­from both Republicans and Demo­c rats. The move to impeach Cooney on grounds that he, and Montana secretary of state Stewart  W. Mitchell, had improperly issued state building and fire-­insurance contracts was led by House Speaker pro tem, Herbert Haight (Demo­crat). 288. ​Fraser had written on January 28: “Marjorie tells me that you are not feeling very gay lately, and have been thinking of ­going to Florida. I think it would be much better for you to come out to Montana. The greater part of the winter is over now. February may bring, w ­ ill bring, some blustery days, but they w ­ ill be short lived, and above all e­ lse, the air h ­ ere is dry and full of health. Marjorie is thriving on it, and I think you would too” (UNH, Lesley Lee Francis Papers). 289. ​For more on the Morrow ­family, see RF to Johnson, October 6, 1931. See also RF to Fraser, April 18, 1932. Dwight Morrow Jr., as has been noted, introduced Marjorie Frost to Fraser. Dwight Jr. graduated from Amherst College in 1933 (in part working u ­ nder the direction of Theodore Baird), and subsequently earned MA and doctoral degrees from Harvard, and a JD at Yale Law School. 290. ​Earl Halstead Morris (1889–1956), a distinguished archaeologist, had done fieldwork in the Yucatan, Guatemala, and New Mexico. Fraser met him in 1932 when he made an extended stay in Boulder and visited the University of Colorado; Fraser was studying archaeology t­ here at the time.

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We or I anyway read your Montana Year Book clean through ­every ­little while in further preparation for our visit.291 You w ­ ill find us ready to pass examinations in the following subjects: Montana Politics National and Local (from the Progressive) Montana Education (from the friend who nearly got strung up for teaching radical ethics or morals at Missoula—­and I have no doubt he deserved kicking if not hanging.)292 Montana Agriculture and Stock Raising (from the Year Book) Montana Climate and Scenery (from the Year Book) Montana Homelikeness (from having you and Marj ­there). We ­shall be along by and bye. I got out of three lectures I was supposed to give this month or next but to make up for it I ­shall have to preach the Baccalaureate sermon in June.293 (If only I had more courage for such t­ hings.) ­A fter that t­ here wont be anything fixed in our calendar for quite a while. Affectionately R. Has Marj written any more poetry lately? Tell her to send another as good as the last. I like my country written about that way.294

291. ​ T he Montana Year Book was issued by the publicity division of the State Department of Agriculture, ­Labor and Industry to stimulate interest in Montana and to encourage tourism (the book covered the flora, fauna, geology, agriculture, and natu­ral resources of the state). 292. ​A n allusion to RF’s friend Sidney Cox who, while a professor of En­glish at the University of Montana, had occasioned scandal when the undergraduate literary magazine he edited printed short stories the local Comstockers considered salacious (see LRF-2, 524). 293. ​Subsequently canceled. 294. ​Marjorie had sent her parents a copy of a sonnet (in alexandrines) titled “Amer­ i­ca”; RF and Elinor would ­later place it in Franconia, a collection of Marjorie’s poetry privately published in 1936 to honor her memory. The poem begins: Before my eyes, and yet so far above my praise I scarcely notice you for days and days on end, As one communes in silence with a life-­long friend, And never once commend the million rainbow ways You rest my heart. . . .

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[To William Henry Dierkes (1908–1989), American poet and anthologist; author of The Man From Vermont and Other Poems (Oak Park, IL: Eileen Baskerville, 1935), the title poem of which is about RF, to whom the book is also dedicated. ALS. Jones.]

Amherst Mass Feb 26 1934 Dear Mr Dierkes: I ­shall be only too happy to autograph any book or books you may send me in answer to a letter like that. I’ll write you out a poem on a fly leaf. Always yours friendly Robert Frost

[To Russell Potter (1894–1970), American educator, director of the Institute of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University (a division of the Adult Education Program). ALS. Columbia.]

Amherst Mass March 1 34 Dear Mr Potter: Allright, w ­ e’ll try again then. I lost something besides my time this winter: I lost confidence in my ability to face winter. But as I get stronger, I can feel my confidence coming back. I’m glad you dont lay it up against me for not keeping my engagement. I ­shall hate it when the day arrives when I have to be given up as not to be counted on any more.—­After­noon of October 24th for Professor Lyon295; eve­n ing of October 25th for you.296 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

295. ​John Lyon (1878–1961), professor of En­glish at Columbia. 296. ​RF’s schedule subsequently changed; he did not read in or near New York City in October 1934.

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[To Scott H. Paradise (1891–1959), En­glish teacher at Phillips Acad­emy, ­Andover. ALS. Private.]

Amherst Mass March 5 1934 Dear Mr Paradise: Through November I thought I might write and accept your invitation when I saw my way clear. Then I got very sick and went to bed for a long time. I appreciate being asked to Phillips, but it is prob­ably just as well I d­ idn’t undertake to come. What I can safely do narrows down more and more to the talks and readings I am expected to give e­ very year or e­ very other year to a few old customers. Carl Sandburg, in on his way by for a night’s rest from campaigning, has been telling us about his pleasant visit with you and his worthy rival in the field of biography.297 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [March 5, 1934] Dear Louis: David McCord was in yesterday talking about what a good time you all had in Boston.298 I like the idea of a poet’s being in charge of the Harvard Fund.299 He runs with all sorts of ­people not just the poetry set. He gets a curious ex297. ​By 1934, poet Carl Sandburg had published two volumes of biography: Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926) and Mary Lincoln: Wife and W ­ idow (1932). His “rival” is most likely Claude Moore Fuess (1885–1963) who had joined the En­glish faculty at Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1908 and served as headmaster from 1933 to 1948. In 1930, he had published a major two-­volume biography of Daniel Webster; among his other works are biographies of Caleb Cushing (1923), Rufus Choate (1928), Calvin Coo­l idge (1940), and Joseph B. Eastman (1952). He and Paradise ­were collaborating on a four-­volume history of Essex County, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, that was published in 1935. 298. ​Possibly on or about December 9, 1933, when Untermeyer delivered the closing lecture in a series sponsored by the Boston YWCA. 299. ​McCord directed the Harvard College Fund for thirty-­eight years.

“The temptation of the times is to write politics . . .”: 1932–1934   385

cess plea­sure out of the lark of each par­tic­u ­lar rhyme in a poem. I like the trait. Its danger is it might sound too clever. You see more of my friends than I do. Did Cowden tell you about his plans for the big prizes at Ann Arbor?300 Something ­ought to come of them if the Muse can be bought. I’m not trying to put her on her pride not to be bought. I leave her to her own disposition as our statesmen to their dispositions in the ­matter of money. I dont see why poetry should abhor a money ­matter, subject always to the code of nobility. ­Those homologosissies again.301 They bother me only a ­little. From a certain way they had in enquiring about E. T. I am lead [sic] to won­der if they think all friendships may be like theirs.302 Maybe I misjudge them. Of course I know they are incapable of ­doing what they did for the joke of it. It might not be unlike the Warner however to do it for the whimsicality. I saw plainly you w ­ ere taken aback when I told you the news. It isnt very serious anyway. Dont pretend you havent heard of more such p­ eople than I have and even encountered them in polite society. It isnt your fault. You have merely been out around more than I. I am more prepared for them than I was when I went to ­England in 1911.303 T ­ here I first read of them in the En­glish Review in a series of articles by the heads of the famous public schools—­Rugby Eaton ­[sic] etc. I had just as soon they stayed far from my sphere. It is not in my nature to want to slap them in the face. I was tempted to tell them I knew the best poem in the book and would tell them which it was but for the fear of coming between two such with thoughts of rivalry in art. You are a hero to let anyone down your throat with a knife.304 It is thought I must be searched for the source of rheumatism I have more or less always and inflammatorily [sic] when I have influenza. I doubt if I dare to go to the 300. ​Roy William Cowden (1883–1961), professor of En­glish at the University of Michigan, served as the first director of the Avery Hopwood Awards in writing. Since its inception in 1935, the Hopwood Foundation has awarded more than $4,000,000  in prize money. 301. ​En­glish poets (and lovers) Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland; see RF to Untermeyer, February  22, 1934. In RFLU, Untermeyer changed the sentence: “­Those two girls again.” 302. ​The letters from Warner to RF held at DCL never mention Edward Thomas or “To E. T.,” RF’s elegy for Thomas (published in NH). What­ever inquiry Warner made (in a letter not held at DCL) likely concerned the poem (and by implication the man). 303. ​Actually, in 1912. 304. ​Untermeyer had just had his tonsils removed.

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t­able or whiff the nepenthe.305 I always notice I am most cowardly when writing or just a­ fter writing. I mind the cellar at night worse then. Ever yours R. I sure did see the letter to Doctor Moore. It was well-­nigh deadly. You arrested my development with ­those figures. 400000 at a time.306

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [March 19, 1934] Dear Louis: For goodness sake be quick and write me out or print me plainly the address of that unnatural307 couplet in ­England. I cant seem to read the heading of the only letter of theirs I can lay my hand on. And I must say something polite to them soon or the silence ­will get too hard to break. I may judge where I have to, but I ­wouldn’t have them think I was anybody’s executioner. The book has beauties of course and they should be acknowledged. Ever yours Robert Amherst for a while yet.

305. ​In The Odyssey (4.v.219–221), Helen laces Polydamna’s wine with nepenthe, a (legendary) drug thought to induce forgetfulness of pain and sorrow. 306. ​Untermeyer explains: “Merrill Moore, a dear friend whom I had ‘discovered’ when he was an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, the youn­gest of the Fugitive Group. Before he died of cancer in 1957, he had written, improvised, or dictated to a soundscriber more than forty thousand sonnets. In 1933, when he was in mid-­career and just getting to know Robert, I wrote a semi-­facetious letter to him calling for a moratorium for poetry. It was published in The Book of Modern Letters [Macmillan, 1933]” (RFLU, 239). Moore was a psychiatrist, which may have led RF to pun on “arrested development” (a term of art in psychiatry, though dating to the 1830s). 307. ​Untermeyer deleted the adjective from RFLU (Warner and Ackland are, of course, the couplet).

5

Marj March 1934–­June 1934 I told you by letter or tele­g ram what was hanging over us. So you know what to expect. Well the blow has fallen. The noblest of us all is dead and has taken our hearts out of the world with her. —­Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer, May 15, 1934

[To Willard Fraser. TG. Private.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [March 25, 19341] WILLARD FRASER 244 BURLINGTON BILLINGS MONT SORRY MARJORIE DOESNT GET WELL FASTER TELL HER FROM ME WITH MY LOVE I THINK SHIRLEY A LOVELY NAME AND SHOULDNT ADVISE CHANGING IT2 I HAD THOUGHT OF JANET AND ELSPETH AND ALISON LOVE TO ALL. ROBERT FROST

[To Willard Fraser. TG. Private.]

[Chicago, Illinois] [Friday, April 6, 1934]3 WILLARD FRASER 244 BURLINGTON AVE BILLINGS MONT ARRIVING SUNDAY MORNING YOUR TELEGRAM KEEPS UP OUR HOPE FOR THE BEST. ROBERT FROST 1. ​In his diary entry for this date, Theodore Baird reports that RF phoned him to report that Marjorie “was in danger” (Baird was friendly with Elinor and Marjorie, and occasionally accompanied them to local events). The Baird diaries are held at ACL. 2. ​Willard and Marjorie’s child, born on March  16, had been named Shirley Robin Fraser. ­A fter Marjorie died of puerperal fever, Willard changed the name to Marjorie Robin Fraser in honor of her ­mother. See Figures 4a and 4b. 3. ​RF had departed Amherst on April 5.

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Figure 4a. RF’s tele­g ram. Courtesy of Robin Hudnut. © The Robert Frost Copyright Trust.

[To George Whicher. TG. ACL.]

[Billings, Montana] [April 12, 1934] PROFESSOR GEO WHICHER AMHERST MASS NOTHING GOOD TO TELL OR PREDICT MARJORIE VERY VERY LOW ALL WE HAVE IS HOPE SORRY WE HAD TO HURRY OFF WITHOUT GOOD BYE W ­ ILL YOU ASK MR JONES4 THE MAIL CARRIER PLEASE TO FORWARD OUR MAIL TO 244 BURLINGTON AVE BILLINGS MONTANA CARE WILLARD FRASER. ROBERT FROST. 4. ​Floyd S. Jones (1890–1972) of 74 Main Street worked as a mail carrier in Amherst throughout the 1930s.

Marj: 1934   391

Figure 4b. The birth announcement for Marjorie Robin Fraser. Courtesy of Robin Hudnut.

[To Carol Frost. ALS. UM.]

244 Burlington Ave Billings Montana April 18 1934 Dear Carol: You realize by this time that Marjorie’s sickness is that worst disease of all, child-­bed fever, and her chances of recovery are small. Our best hope is her having lasted as long as she has. The doctors and vari­ous p­ eople tell us that patients who stand the fever a month very often get the better of it. Marjorie has stood it a month and three days now. Several times she has been at the point of death. Nothing has kept her alive so far but blood-­transfusions. Willard’s friends have come forward in a host to give their blood for her. I never ­imagined anything like it for kindness and friendship. But I try not to give way to ­either hope or fear. I am simply determined in my soul my bones or

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somewhere that our side s­ hall win. Reason is no help. She is a terribly sick girl. She has been out of her mind most of the time for a week and never completely in her mind, though she seems to recognize us and says some ­things more or less intelligible. Yesterday was one of her most desperate days. She sank into a stupor that I could see scared the doctors. T ­ oday she has rallied again a­ fter another blood-­t ransfusion. All her three doctors are with her several times a day and she has three splendid nurses. It’s a fight. She’s keeping it up for her part with a noble courage that breaks our hearts. We all admire her. Elinor can hardly bear the sadness of it. T ­ here is no way of telling how long it may have to go on. The disease has no term. It has been known to last for three months and yet not kill the victim: That however is unusual. I tell you all this so you w ­ ill know what threatens. We have veiled the worst of it from Irma and John. Irma is in no condition to face the terribleness of it. You are beginning to have spring by now.5 The frost must let go of the ­water pipes pretty soon I should think. You say nothing about Prescotts game leg; so we assume he is all right. What­ever the outcome ­there’s no prospect of our being back in New ­England for some time. The ­thing to keep saying is the longer Marj holds on the likelier she is to pull through. Affectionately Papa. ­Will you tell Anson Hawkins to forward mail not to Amherst any more, but to 244 Burlington Ave Billings Montana till further notice.6 You had better write this out for him. R.

5. ​Carol and his ­family had moved back into the Stone House in South Shaftsbury ­a fter their three-­year sojourn in California. 6. ​Anson S. Hawkins (1906–1981) was commissioned postmaster of South Shaftsbury on February 20, 1934. (He was likely related to the Hawkinses mentioned in RF’s November 1, 1931, letter to Carol, and in his January 9, 1932, letter to Van Dore; they all lived within a few doors of each other.)

Marj: 1934   393

[To Lesley Frost. ALS. UVA.]

244 Burlington Ave Billings Montana April 20 1934 Dear Lesley: This is Friday April 20. So you are getting no l­ ater news than my tele­g ram or not much ­later. Marj is having her ninth blood-­transfusion now. The donors have been Willard’s friends and students at the Polytechnic School—­boys altogether and of around twenty.7 Boys are preferred to girls. No one is being used who hasnt had scarlet fever, which develops re­sis­tance to the same streptococci as occur in child-­bed fever. It’s a b­ itter fight. Marj has been delirious for more than a week now but even in her delirium she is the same old Marj in her talk, grim ironical and noble. Her courage is the hardest part of it for us to bear. I dont know what w ­ ill become of Elinor if we lose. Or of Willard—­I mustnt forget him poor boy. We ­don’t mean to lose, though the score is against us at this point. I’m g­ oing to send you a few letters to answer for us while our hearts are so out of all affairs. Just tell p­ eople where I am or we are and why and how sorry. Make them realize it is no light ­matter without ­going into details too painfully. Tell them engagements to read w ­ ill have to wait a while. If all goes well, we shant want to see anyone but Marj this summer. ­We’ll prob­ably stay out ­here. Write us about yourself. Affectionately Papa

[To George Roy Elliott. ALS. ACL.]

244 Burlington Ave., Billings, Montana April 20 [1934] Dear Roy: Still the same desperate chance. The doctors tell us the length of time Marjorie has stood the fever is a favorable sign. She has been sick five weeks. She 7. ​The Billings Polytechnic Institute (founded in 1908).

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has been out of her mind most of the time and never completely in her mind for more than a week. Fatal as most of the facts of the case sound, we are determined to win the same as we would be when our side was far ­behind in a game. I d­ on’t know what w ­ ill become of Elinor if we lose. Of Willard ­either.8 ­Will you do something for me? T ­ here is one letter among the disordered ­jumble on my desk in my study that has turned up in my thoughts to trou­ble my conscience. Someone named Dillingham was the writer. I think it was Dillingham. Anyway he wrote from a big high school in Brooklyn N.Y. inviting me to be guest of honor with them some time in April or May. Its the kind of t­ hing I like to take notice of—­and in fact act on. Could I ask you to write to Dillingham (if that is his name) tell him the seriousness of my predicament and make my excuses? He might be willing to wait for me till next fall. I believe he is an Amherst man, class of ’87 or thereabouts.9 The letter is a long one in type. I wrote Stanley King how ready I would be for anything and every­thing if we come out all right, but how utterly against the world and unwilling to face it if fate fails us. He must be the one to decide what to do about my taking part in June.10 I agree with you I am a pretty bad bet. I seem to find ways of getting out of all obligations this year. I’m grateful to you for filling the bill April 19th.11 Help us with your best thoughts. Always yours Robert

8. ​It appears (on the manuscript) that RF added this phrase ­later, ­a fter he’d begun the paragraph that follows. 9. ​James Darius Dillingham (1865–1939), Amherst College, class of 1887, was principal of Newtown High School in Queens, New York, from 1900 to 1935. 10. ​In Amherst’s commencement exercises. 11. ​At a dinner given by the faculty at the Lord Jeffery Inn for “the Scholars of the Se­ nior Class” (as Theodore Baird notes in his diary for April 19 [the diaries, again, are held at ACL]). Elliott gave a well-­received speech at the event, presumably in RF’s stead.

Marj: 1934   395

[To George Whicher. On letterhead of the ­Hotel Zumbro, Rochester, Minnesota—to which, as the next letter indicates, RF and Elinor had arranged for Marjorie to be flown via private plane for treatment at the Mayo Clinic. ALS. ACL.]

[Rochester, Minnesota] April 29 1934 General Delivery Dear George: I mustnt say it but I fear Marjorie loses ground. She has had good and faithful doctors (except for the one who did the original mischief 12). More than a hundred young ­people in Billings volunteered for the blood transfusions to keep her alive. ­Here at Rochester she has all that modern science and humanity can do for her. But her delirium seems more unbroken. The precious ­human serum so rare and bestowed on us by special ­favor has failed. ­There are still a few ­things to be tried—­one of them another serum, animal but more specific.13 It just misses being exactly right for the organisms diffused in her blood-­stream. It may nevertheless do the work. That and Marjorie’s tenacity and the devotion of Willard and Elinor and the mercy of God are my hope. Ever yours Robert

[To Louis Untermeyer. On letterhead of the ­Hotel Zumbro. ALS. LoC.]

[Rochester, Minnesota] April 29, 1934 Dear Louis: We are ­going through the valley of the shadow with Marjorie we are afraid. She had a baby in Billings Montana six weeks ago and most of the time since has hovered on the verge of death. The harm must have been done by her first doctor t­ here of course. The infection was a terrible one. But once it was

12. ​Dr.  Omar  C. Rathman (1902–1957), then at a clinic (in Billings) called Movius, Bridenbaugh, Culbertson, and Rathman. 13. ​In the early de­cades of the twentieth c­entury, injections of h ­ orse serum w ­ ere sometimes used to treat puerperal fever.

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done her first doctor and the ­others we have called in have done every­thing pos­si­ble for her.14 Three days ago we put her in a small airplane with a doctor and nurse to fly ­here.15 The thousand mile flight seems not to have set her back, and h ­ ere we can expect the miracles of modern science. Rosenow the ­g reat biologist finds he has a serum for a close cousin of the organism diffused in her bloodstream.16 It would be better if it ­were for the exact organism. But that and blood-­transfusions ­every other day and Marjorie’s tenacity and Elinor’s devotion and the mercy of God are our hopes. You ­w ill prob­ably see us home again alive what­ever the outcome, but it w ­ ill be months hence and changed for the worst for the rest of our days. Always yours Robert Frost My favorite poem long before I knew what it was g­ oing to mean to us was Arnold’s Cadmus and Harmonia.17

14. ​RF consulted Drs. James I. Wernham (1874–1969) and Eri M. Farr (1884–1958), who had offices adjacent to one another (nos. 220–221) in the Hart-­A lbin Building in downtown Billings (for more on the man who owned the building, see RF to Willard Fraser, January 22, 1936). A rough draft of a letter (written in obvious distress, with multiple false starts and strikethroughs) indicates that RF sought to cover medical expenses in Billings (in addition to t­hose at the Mayo Clinic)—­a nd gives us an idea of how he felt about Rathman, Marjorie’s first doctor. “It hurts me to have a generalized bill from your office,” he writes. “Wont you be humane enough to send me your own individual bill and give me a chance to show my gratitude where gratitude is due. This is the first I have asked of your clinic. I had nothing to do with Dr. Rathman. I saw nothing of him. I never for a moment recognized him in the case and must insist on leaving him to be dealt with by the Frazer [­sic] family. You [Farr] and Dr.  Whernam [sic] ­were our only doctors” (UNH, Lesley Lee Francis Papers). 15. ​Attended by Dr. Wernham and Louise Sparling (a nurse), Marjorie flew aboard a Wyoming Air Ser­v ice plane pi­loted by Al Lucas; the crew had removed a row of seats to accommodate her stretcher. Lucas flew via Miles City, Montana, Aberdeen, South Dakota, and St. Paul, Minnesota, before landing in Rochester. Willard, RF, and Elinor followed by car. 16. ​Edward Carl Rosenow (1875–1966), an internationally renowned biologist, was head of the Department of Experimental Bacteriology at the Mayo Clinic from 1915 to 1944. 17. ​RF had talked about this poem before in connection with worries about Marjorie and, at that date, Lillian (see the November 1, 1932, letter to Young). See also the next letter to Untermeyer, in which RF returns to Arnold’s poem, and page 6 of the Introduction for discussion of its significance to him.

Marj: 1934   397

[To George Whicher. TG. ACL.]

[Rochester, Minnesota] [May 2, 10:56 A.M., 1934] PROF GEORGE WHICHER AMHERST COLLEGE AMHERST MASS ELINORS LOVE DIDNT SAVE HER FROM LOSS BILLINGS TOMORROW BACK WITH YOU SOON.18 ROBERT.

[To Lesley Frost Francis. TG. UNH.]

[Rochester, Minnesota] [May 2, 12:20 P.M., 1934] LESLEY FROST FRANCIS 15 BROWN ST CAMBRIDGE MASS NO MORE MARJORIE IN THIS WORLD EXCEPT MEMORIES BILLINGS TOMORROW. PAPA.

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [May 15, 1934] Dear Louis I told you by letter or tele­g ram what was hanging over us. So you know what to expect. Well the blow has fallen. The noblest of us all is dead and has taken our hearts out of the world with her. It was a terrible seven weeks’ fight—­too indelibly terrible on the imagination. No death in war could more than match it for suffering and heroic endurance. Why all this talk in f­ avor of

18. ​Theodore Baird reports in his diaries that George Roy Elliott ­stopped by his ­house on this date to inform him of Marjorie’s death: every­one in the Amherst College En­glish Department was now apprised of the loss. Baird, for his part, sent his letter of condolence on May 4 (diaries held at ACL).

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peace? Peace has her victories over poor mortals no less merciless than war. Marge always said she would rather die in a gutter than in a hospital. But it was in a hospital she was caught to die ­after more than a hundred serum injections and blood transfusions. We ­were torn afresh ­every day between the temptations of letting her go untortured or cruelly trying to save her. The only consolation we have is the memory of her greatness through all. Never out of delirium for the last four weeks, her responses ­were of course incorrect. She got ­little or nothing of what we said to her. The only way I could reach her was by putting my hand backward and forward between us, as in counting out and saying with overemphasis You—­and—­Me. The last time I did that, the day before she died, she smiled faintly and answered All the same, frowned slightly and made it Always the same. Her temperature was then 110 the highest ever known at the Mayo Clinic where as I told you we took her but too late. The classical theory was not born out in her case that a fine and innocent nature released by madness from the inhibitions of society ­w ill give way to all the indecencies. Every­thing she said however quaint and awry was of an almost straining loftiness. It was as if her ruling passion must have been to be wise and good or it could not have been so strong in death. But curse all doctors who for a moment let down and neglect in childbirth the scientific precautions they have been taught in school. We thought to move heaven and earth—­heaven with prayers and earth with money. We moved nothing. And ­here we are Cadmus and Harmonia not yet placed safely in changed forms.19 R. 19. ​The relevant lines from “Cadmus and Harmonia” are: And ­there, they say, two bright and aged snakes, Who once ­were Cadmus and Harmonia, Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-­shore, In breathless quiet, a­ fter all their ills; Nor do they see their country, nor the place Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills, Nor the unhappy palace of their race, Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more. ­ here t­ hose two live, far in the Illyrian brakes! T They had stay’d long enough to see, In Thebes, the billow of calamity Over their own dear ­children roll’d, Curse upon curse, pang upon pang, For years, they sitting helpless in their home,

Marj: 1934   399

[To Wade Van Dore. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass May 17 1934 Dear Wade You have my sympathy as always in your trou­bles if they are trou­bles (much depends on how you take them doesnt it?) or at least in your anx­i­eties.20 May all come out well for you immediately and ultimately—in your life and in your poetry. Your news seems serious but not necessarily bad in comparison with what I have to offer in return. Our d­ aughter Marjorie died at Rochester Minnesota last week ­after two terrible months of sickness. We sent her ­there the thousand miles from Billings Montana by airplane in a last desperate hope. But we ­were too late. Our fortunes seem at a low ebb. You m ­ ustn’t be too hard on Eaton. He has liked your poems you know. Such relationships as yours to him this winter end almost always in misunderstanding.21

A grey old man and w ­ oman; yet of old The Gods had to their marriage come, And at the banquet all the Muses sang. 20. ​In The Life of the Hired Man, Van Dore charges his wife—­not for the first or last time, and not without a mea­sure of condescension—­w ith having unduly alarmed the Frosts in letters sent to Elinor. “I fi­nally felt a real twinge of uneasiness about Edrie’s letters. If they contained the same outspokenness her talk did, they ­were certain to splatter surprises. I recalled the letters she had written to me. I never saw her aiming any tears at letters—­t hough I did notice she always avoided the use of waterproof ink in her fountain pen” (202–203). Within a few years, the marriage soured, Edrie embarked on an affair, and, in 1946, she divorced Wade. 21. ​The Van Dores, then living in Canaan, Connecticut, had spent the previous winter inhabiting, and looking ­a fter, Twin Fires, Walter Prichard Eaton’s ­house outside Sheffield, Mas­sa­chu­setts (in the Berkshires). As Van Dore explains, local “gossip had it that Clarence [E. North] (Eaton’s hired man) had been deliberately ‘laid off’ when it was found that I was willing to take his place. Out of a job and without money, he was living with some poor relative not far away, where he spent much of his time airing his Twin Fires grievances to anybody inclined to listen sympathetically” (200). Compounding the prob­lem, and exacerbating the anxiety RF speaks of, ­were the relative poverty of the Van Dores, and Edrie’s frequent bouts of morning sickness; her first baby, Peter, was due in June (he was born on June 10, a­ fter a difficult ­labor).

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If you are asking my advice about selling the ­house, I should think it might be quite all right to convert it into money in your pre­sent need.22 What should you plan to do next? Go back to your folks in Detroit? Sooner or ­later you have got to face the prob­lem of earning a living for three ­people. I’ve told you I dont think you can count on earning it by poetry. Nobody can. Poetry ­mustn’t be presumed on. Other and better advisers to the young than I w ­ ill bear me out in this. I had hoped you had chosen a neighborhood to ­settle down in where you could live modestly on your own garden and the money from some casual l­abor for other p­ eople. Never mind if you have been disappointed this time. You might give up ­there now to try again ­later in some better chosen place. But your judgement must decide it. What­ever you do ­w ill have my approval. I’m enclosing twenty-­five dollars. I wish it could be more. But my heart goes with it to make it seem bigger. You are both brave I know and wont fail to get the most out of the joys of privation and recklessness. Dont take my advice about the h ­ ouse as in any way owlish or my gift as giving me any right to condescension.23 Your fate is your own to toy with as long as you like. Circumstances can be trusted to make you practical at last I suppose. It’s not for me to hurry the pro­cess. Always yours R.F.

[To J. J. Lankes. ALS. HRC.]

Amherst Mass May 17 193324 Dear J. J. You h ­ aven’t heard our news prob­ably. We have no more ­daughter Marjorie in this world. We are back home from her death to divide what is left of our lives among what ­children we have left. It was child-­bed fever—­seven weeks

22. ​Van Dore did not then sell his ­house (nor, he suggests in The Life of the Hired Man, had he told RF he so intended). 23. ​The “gift” is possibly the $25, but RF had bought the ­house for them. 24. ​In a moment of bereaved confusion, RF ­m istakes the year.

Marj: 1934   401

of it—­w ith more than a hundred blood transfusions and serum injections. They cant tell me anything in war could be more terrible. Ever yours R.F.

[To Lawrence Conrad. TG. ACL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [June 8, 1934] LAWRENCE H CONRAD 74 BELLEVUE AVE UPPER MONCLAIR NJ YOU MAY ALWAYS DO ANYTHING YOU PLEASE TO HELP MY CAUSE BLESS YOUR HEART.25 ROBERT FROST.

[To Otto Manthey-­Zorn. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass June 10 1934 Dear Otto: Sorrow is no more sorrow than it was before it struck us. It didnt need to be made personal for us to get the idea. The princi­ple remains the same. We’ve been having it borne in on us by the general experience all along the way that compassion means only partly ­dying with ­those who die. We may never laugh as well again, but we ­shall live to laugh. We ­shall rejoice, if never again to the point of elation. But I was long since non-­elatable. The spirit is only somewhat subdued and deadened so that when we have to die in full ourselves we wont have quite so far to descend into the valley. This ­isn’t much to offer as news from Amer­i­ca in exchange for your news from Germany. Let’s see what e­ lse is ­there. We linger on among our friendliest surroundings on earth ­here at Amherst. But college breaks up next week

25. ​On June 17, Conrad read a number of RF’s poems on a radio show (“The New Poetry”) broadcast by WOR, a radio station in Newark, New Jersey, near where he taught at Montclair State Teachers College.

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and turns us all loose to seek coolness in our summer places. Stanley King has been over-­considerate. For the second time this year he lets me out of my engagements. I have been no good to anyone all year, but he seems not to lay it up against me. I mean to be well and prosperous from now on for a while. It wont be so long before you are home again to hear the gossip too small to write about the Daves and Harries. You remember the Chal­mers at Mount Holyoke? Well he is g­ oing to be President of Rockford College.26 I’ll tell you when you return how we may be interested indirectly. Be cheerful about us. It isnt as if we ­hadn’t had time to learn from prose and poetry the perilous terms we live and love on. Ever yours Robert

[To Margaret Broomell (1911–1994). Draft of a TG, inscribed, in RF’s hand, on the back of an incoming letter. Date derived from internal evidence. DCL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [June 11, 1934] Find your letter waiting for me.27 Speaking out of question just now. Avoiding anything very public since recent misfortune. But happy to be with you Saturday eve­n ing to make amends for last year if you say word. Or ­shall we wait till next reunion when I could speak or read.

26. ​Before taking up the presidency at Rockford, Gordon Chal­mers had taught at Mt. Holyoke College (1929–1934). As for the “indirect interest,” Lesley Frost would soon join the faculty at Rockford. 27. ​In her capacity as chairwoman of the Reunion Committee of the Wellesley College class of 1933, Broomell had, in a June 6 letter, invited RF and Elinor to attend a special dinner at the college on Saturday, June 16. She had also asked RF to address the gathering. We can find no evidence that he did ­either. However, he did speak in a number of towns in and around Boston in the spring of 1935; perhaps he made good, in that season, on the suggestion he offers in closing the pre­sent tele­g ram.

Marj: 1934   403

[To George Lynde Richardson Jr. (1895–1934), American educator and member of the En­glish faculty at Phillips Exeter Acad­emy in New Hampshire. ALS. Phillips Exeter.]

Amherst Mass June 15 1934 Dear Mr Richardson: You have doubtless put my silence of late down to my general badness about letters. But this time the trou­ble with me has been real trou­ble. We have been in Montana and Minnesota for weeks fighting for the life of our youn­gest ­daughter—­only to lose her in the end. She died of child-­bed fever and no death could have been more cruel in peace or war. It is a terrible check. You are such a friend I wanted to tell you. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Gorham Munson (1896–1969), author of Robert Frost: A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense (1927). ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass June 16 1934 Dear Mr Munson: ­Will you help me with this?28 I fail to find anything in my back mail it could refer to. I have no doubt been missing letters in my absence at the Mayo Clinic. You speak of being twice presumptuous. Not at all. You c­ ouldn’t be in urging yourself upon my attention. With me another person’s business always takes pre­ce­dence over my own trou­bles however serious. Self-­importance is a fault I try to avoid. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

28. ​We do not know what the query pertains to.

6

FERA and Loathing in Key West July 1934–­March 1935 Well one hundred and fifty miles south of Miami, six hundred south of Los Angeles, three hundred south of Cairo in Egypt and sixty miles at sea we reached Key West by train over a string of keys and bridges. . . . ​T he only ­thing at all socially disturbing is the presence in force of Franklin D. Roo­se­velt’s FERA. This has been one of the Administrations pet rehabilitation proj­ects. . . . ​T heir g­ reat object they say is to restore the p­ eople to their civic virtue. When in history has any power ever achieved that? —­Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer, January 10, 1935

[To Cornelius Weygandt (1871–1957), American scholar and author. Precise date derived from postmark. ALS. Alger.]

South Shaftsbury VT July [8,] 1934 Dear Weygandt: Your book was already inscribed to me by its contents before you wrote on the fly-­leaf.1 As to what you wrote on the fly-­leaf, namely that I had helped you to know and love New Hampshire, I’m proud if that is true. It is equally true that you have helped me know and love New Hampshire and w ­ ill have more still before I have finished reading this book aloud to Elinor. The first ­thing I read to her as it happened was The Seven Won­ders of Sandwich and I must say I admired your ability to take the upper hand of your neighbors and overpower them with the heartiness of your compliment.2 Any lurking meanness ­there may be in ­people gets no chance to show itself to you.

1. ​ T he White Hills: Mountain New Hampshire, Winnepesaukee to Washington (New York: Henry Holt, 1934). The book—an example of what Weygandt called “the higher provincialism”—­brings together travel writing, local history and legend, and portraits of notable residents of the state (including RF). Though most of his writing in this vein was devoted to his native Pennsylvania, Weygandt published three more books about New ­England: New Hampshire Neighbors: Country Folks and ­T hings in the White Hills (New York: Henry Holt, 1937), November Rowen: A Late Harvest from the Hills of New Hampshire (New York: D. Appleton, 1941), and The Heart of New Hampshire: T ­ hings Held Dear by Folks of the Old Stocks (New York: Putnam, 1944). 2. ​Sandwich is a hamlet in Carroll County, New Hampshire, at the time a summer retreat popu­lar among artists and writers.

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What an open sunny unsinister h ­ uman result you get in contrast for instance with a book like Stars Fell on Alabama 3 which comes out in the same year with yours and might be superficially taken as in the same class. I want life to seem your way. I’m grateful to you for having it that t­ here ­were merry Puritans.4 ­There w ­ ere all sorts of Puritans ­weren’t t­ here? Understanding such as yours (and Sam Morison’s too5) must hasten the day of justice to the Puritans and dress [sic] the balance that Hawthorne threw so far out. A good many of your subjects I could be tempted to use for a second North of Boston if you had not thought of them first. But you have other subjects entirely beyond me. You search more deeply and curiously into the region than ever I could. It takes you to reveal New Hampshire to New Hampshirites. If we werent tried old friends I might envy you such hits and finds as your stories of the egg for a knitting needle and of the snapper in the swill-­barrel.6 You assume full responsibility for your written word dont you? Well then that last paragraph on me without much construing sounds dangerously like an invitation to visit you again up ­there pretty soon.7 Anyway I mean to hold you to it. We’ve never seen the droviers ­house for all ­you’ve bragged so much about it.8 A drovier built it you say. A drovier (of another kind of ­cattle) apparently lives in it—­three months in the year. It should be worth a visit. Ever yours Robert Frost9

3. ​By Carl Lamson Cramer, published by Doubleday in 1934. A native New Yorker, Cramer (1893–1976) lived in Alabama from 1927 to 1934 while teaching at the University of Alabama. His book brings together sketches of the ­people and landscape of the state; it became a best seller. 4. ​One of the chapters in The White Hills is titled “Of Merry Puritans, The Hutchinson ­Family, and ‘Tenting To-­n ight on the Old Camp Ground.’ ” In 1938, Weygandt would contribute an essay titled “The Merriest of the Puritans” to the Works Pro­g ress Administration (WPA) Guide to New Hampshire. 5. ​Samuel Eliot Morison (1887–1976) wrote a number of works of American history, often touching on the Puritans. RF likely has in mind his 1930 book, Builders of the Bay Colony (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). 6. ​Weygandt recounts the tale of a New Hampshirite who keeps a snapping turtle “in a swill-­barrel as if he ­were a porker in a pen” (326). 7. ​Weygandt had a place in North Sandwich, New Hampshire. 8. ​See the chapter in The White Hills titled “The Drovier’s House” (“drovier” being an archaic spelling of “drover”). 9. ​­Here, the notation “over” directs Weygandt to the postscripts.

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You trou­ble my conscience about not living in New Hampshire. When I strayed from t­ here it was less impor­tant where I lived than it grows to be now. I may have to steal back when no one is looking to make remarks. And if I do it may be to Errol as a tribute to the suggestiveness of your pen.10 R.F. You make quite a case for your being a New Hampshirite by inheritance. My descendants give me a better claim on New Hampshire than my ancestors do, though I believe my f­ather and grand­father ­were born in the state.11 If I go back to my first American ancestor,12 it takes me to Maine (town of Eliot) where distant cousins of mine hold the original acres as I understand it. I have only been ­there once and got too large a dose of f­ amily history at once to discriminate the ingredients with certainty. The place is known and visited as the Frost Garrisons.13 ­There are two block garrison ­houses still standing on it in a state of perfect preservation ­after two hundred years. I’d like to take you t­ here some time for a picnic. R.F.

[To Sidney Cox. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [circa July 9, 1934] Dear Sidney: I’m proud of you for a book like that.14 Lets see them beat it. It’s all front-­ line stuff and shows how far forward you fight. The l­ittle booms are good writing. Where did you find Cooley? He’s a real find. I have always admired that book of his, though I doubt if I would ever have had the courage to 10. ​Another reference to a chapter in The White Hills: “Say, Mister, Do You Know Errol?” 11. ​Three of RF’s c­ hildren ­were born in Derry, New Hampshire (Carol, Irma, and Marjorie). And Irma, her husband John Cone, and their son John Cone Jr,. lived in New Hampshire when the pre­sent letter was written. RF’s ­father, William Prescott Frost Jr., was born in Kingston, New Hampshire; his ­father was born in Hancock, Maine. 12. ​Nicholas Frost, who immigrated to Maine circa 1630. For a detailed account of RF’s Maine ancestry, see Henry Hart, The Life of Robert Frost: A Critical Biography (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2017): 1–8. 13. ​Constructed in the 1640s and used as defenses during King Philip’s War (1675–1678). 14. ​ P rose Preferences: Second Series, ed. Sidney Cox (New York: Harper, 1934).

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propose him thus boldly.15 But then I am not an anthologist-­critic and not trained up to the responsibilities of one. I marvel at Louis Untermeyer in his advocacy of such as Merrill Moore.16 What nerve! I should be much surer in public about Cooley. In private I should be absolutely sure. Two or three of your names are new to me, I’m grateful to say, and many of the pieces. It is all honestly fresh material—so dif­fer­ent from some of the anthologies we know of that merely make themselves out of prior anthologies. The George Moore has always been a favorite memory of mine.17 I happen at this moment to be reading Paul Elmer More’s Socrates in the Shelburne Papers.18 He’s one Ive too long postponed. As far as I’ve got, I admire your repre­sen­ta­tions entirely. If I had a word of fault to find it might be for Evelyn Scott’s ineffably old-­south feminine snobbish dirt on Grant.19 Gee what a painfully g­ reat man she makes of Lee. How does she know that Grant looked hard at Lee and Lee averted his eyes?20 All you have to do is read Grant’s Memoirs to prove he 15. ​Charles Cooley (1864–1929), who had been a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, and whose acquaintance RF had made in the mid-1920s. The book in question is Life of the Student: Roadside Notes on H ­ uman Nature, Society and Letters (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1927), from which Cox had extracted a section for his anthology. For RF’s high estimation of Life of the Student see his letter to Mary Cooley (Cooley’s ­daughter), September 19, 1927 (LRF-2, 601). 16.  See RF to Untermeyer, March 5, 1934 (note 306). 17. ​“Cycling With  AE,” an essay by Irish novelist George Augustus Moore (1852– 1933). 18. ​Paul Elmer More (1864–1937), American journalist and literary critic. His essay on Socrates was first collected in Shelburne Essays: Sixth Series (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909). 19. ​Evelyn Scott (1893–1963), American novelist. Cox had included a chapter (“Two Generals”) from her Civil War novel The Wave (New York: Cape and Smith, 1929); it touches chiefly on the surrender at Appomattox. 20. ​Scott writes, in a scene depicting the surrender: “At length Lee seemed satisfied. He looked up from the paper [on which the terms for surrender had been set forth] and the two pairs of eyes met. It was now Lee’s turn to feel disturbed. The strangely open expression, rebukeful and even trusting, and at the same time demanding, which he observed on Grant’s face, and which suggested the anxiety of a child, was something the Confederate general could not interpret. . . . ​Lee shrank from the intimacy with which he was being observed. It seemed to him that his humiliations should be apparent enough already. When Grant indicated to him the vacated chair by the ­table, Lee felt a faint, unreasonable disgust for the ‘At your discretion, General,’ and the tone in which it was uttered, just as he strongly disliked accidental meetings of eyes, and half suspected that an apparently sincere deference masked self-­congratulation of some sort” (561).

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was a very modest man to whom the situation of the surrender at Appomattox must have been as embarrassing as to any northern gentleman. I ­w ill not venture to speak for the southern gentleman. That’s just the way the likes of Evelyn Scott would have tried to work herself up to speak of you or me Sidney. I think it amounts to a betrayal of our class for you to encourage her. Take Grant’s coat she makes so much of. It wasnt the ill fitting finery she makes out.21 It was a common private’s coat with two chevrons of three stars each merely pinned on it to show his rank for business purposes—­a carelessly assumed uniform I suppose to go to meet the truly g­ reat in. I doubt if it was chosen to humiliate anybody. Every­thing of evidence Grant did to Lee showed the noblest consideration of defeat. American history ­shouldn’t be written by ­women novelists with En­g lish sympathies for the arrogant old slave-­holding days. Your ­people ­were prob­ably abolitionists. Mine ­were not: so I would have more excuse than you for letting the south have its way about what kind of p­ eople on both sides fought the war and ­whether or not it was to ­free the slaves.22 Some southerners have been saying lately (and allowed to get away with it) that the war was waged by the industrial north to

21. ​“What [Lee] saw was a stocky, carelessly mannered, emphatic figure, in a handsome bebraided coat too large for it, and, above the gilt-­edged collar, features somewhat younger than his own, a full beard, greying hair—­nothing very dignified or impor­tant ­there beyond the borrowed importance of gold-­starred shoulder straps” (561). Grant’s Personal Memoirs bear RF out: “When I had left camp that morning I had not expected so soon the result that was then taking place, and consequently was in rough garb. I was without a sword, as I usually was when on ­horse­back on the field, and wore a soldier’s blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was” (New York: Charles Webster, 1885): II. 489. Lee, by contrast, wore a full-­d ress uniform and a ceremonial sword. 22. ​RF’s grand­father, William Prescott Sr., had been an overseer at the Pacific Mill in Lawrence, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, and, like many Northern men involved in the cotton textile industry, had Southern commitments. His son, William Prescott  Jr. (1850–1885) (RF’s ­father), was a brash young Copperhead and, at about the age of thirteen, ran away from home bound for V ­ irginia and Lee’s army (likely during the Gettysburg campaign). He made it as far as Philadelphia, before he was found and shipped back to Lawrence. But he named his son ­a fter the Confederate general: Robert Lee Frost. As for Cox’s “­people”: his ­father Arthur Elmes Cox (1858–1942) was born in Buckinghamshire, ­England, and immigrated to the United States in 1872. Cox’s ­mother and most of her antecedents ­were, however, New En­glanders dating back at least to 1726 (they lived chiefly in Maine and New Hampshire). Cox himself was born in Lewiston, Maine.

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put down agriculture.23 The fact is it was the agricultural m ­ iddle west that 24 licked the agricultural south. The civil war wasnt the smallest incident in the worldwide industrial revolution of the last ­century. Lee and Grant ­ought to be done together some time for the contrast in generalship more than in clothes and graces. Lee was the tragic figure of a fighter who never saw anything beyond winning b­ attles. His vision w ­ asn’t large enough for a w ­ hole war or even campaign. His dispositions for ­battle ­were beautiful. His two ­great divisions u ­ nder Longstreet and Jackson ­were like pistols in his two hands, so perfectly could he ­handle them.25 But ask yourself where he could have thought he was ­going when he set off on the raids that ended at Antietam and Gettysburg.26 What was he ­doing when he let Grant come on 23. ​RF refers to the so-­called Fugitive Poets and / or Southern Agrarians who had, in 1930, published a collection of essays suffused with the Lost Cause mythos: I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (New York: Harper & ­Brothers, 1930). Historian Frank L. Owsley’s contribution to the book averred that the “irrepressible conflict” Republican William  H. Seward spoke of in a celebrated 1858 speech was not, in fact, “between slavery and freedom, but between the industrial and commercial civilization of the North and the agrarian civilization of the South” (74). As for the slaves, Owsley spoke of them as “hardly three generations removed from cannibalism” (62). And RF is correct: the Southern Agrarians ­were largely “getting away with it.” The historiography of the 1920s and 1930s, as regards the Civil War and Reconstruction, was decidedly pro-­Southern. 24. ​Lincoln, of course, was raised in Indiana and made his ­career in Illinois. And soldiers from the Midwest (Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio), fighting u ­ nder Midwestern generals such as Grant and Sherman (both born and raised in Ohio), had, by the summer of 1863, split the Confederacy in two, seizing Vicksburg on July 4, thereby placing the Mississippi River entirely u ­ nder Union control. (Most major Union victories during the early years of the war w ­ ere in the western theater.) 25. ​Perhaps most notably at the B ­ attle of Second Manassas (August  28–30, 1862), where, ­u nder Lee’s command, Generals James Longstreet (commanding infantry) and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (a cavalry commander) and the Army of Northern V ­ irginia decisively defeated Union forces ­u nder General John Pope—­a victory that emboldened Lee to embark on his invasion of Mary­land which, if successful, he hoped would deliver a blow to northern morale and damage the Republican Party in the fall Congressional elections; the invasion instead ended with his defeat at Antietam on September 17 (­a fter which, on the twenty-­t hird, Lincoln issued his provisional Emancipation Proclamation). Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania the following year likewise ended in defeat at the B ­ attle of Gettysburg (July 2–4). Never again would Lee invade Union territory. 26. ​The questions are answerable, though RF is correct to suppose the campaigns ill conceived. As for Lee’s aims at Antietam, see the previous note. In the Gettysburg cam-

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victory by victory cleaning up the west till the war was lost before ever he had to encounter him for the final show down? He was the ­g reat man of the south. He should have taken it upon himself to think and act on the ­grand strategy of the w ­ hole front from Vicksburg to Richmond. Say he didnt have Jefferson Davis with him.27 He should have had by force and persuasion. Grant had to teach Lincoln Halleck Stanton and the rest of them.28 The war was one ­g reat turning movement grasped as such, first by the mind of Grant and altogether and step by step in his execution. You may not like generals in general, but you have to concede him rank with the greatest our race has had. The World War brought out nobody to match him. I am touched by Lee—so noble in character, so brilliant and punishing a smiter in the field, but so lost in the larger ­things of statesmanship and strategy. He was not large enough to see the United States. I suspect he was merely romantic beyond a certain point of mentality. I suspect him of a secret resolve never to set foot outside of his native state but to have it out in ­Virginia win or loose [sic].29 Other­w ise he might well have gone to deal with Grant before he had aspaign, Lee hoped to refresh his exhausted army with rich Pennsylvania forage, and then descend on Philadelphia or Baltimore, isolating Washington, DC. 27. ​Confederate president Jefferson Davis was slow in appreciating to the full Lee’s abilities (Generals P. G. T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston ­were his closest advisors during the first phase of the war). 28. ​Lincoln, General-­i n-­Chief Henry Halleck (1815–1872), and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814–1869) regarded Grant with skepticism in the early phases of the war, particularly ­a fter the ­Battle of Shiloh (April 6–7, 1862), which—­notwithstanding that Grant and his command defeated Albert Sidney Johnston’s Army of Mississippi (and killed Johnston himself)—­had been so bloody an affair as to shock the nation. Northern papers vilified Grant, slandering him as a drunkard. Demands that he be removed soon reached the White House. Lincoln famously retorted: “I ­can’t spare this man; he fights.” Nonetheless, Halleck reor­ga­n ized the armies in the western theater and relieved Grant of field command. The setback was short-­lived. By July, Grant was again commander of the Army of the Tennessee. 29. ​W hen offered a position as major general in the Union Army (to defend Washington, DC), Lee replied in an April 18, 1861, letter to Francis Blair (an advisor to Lincoln): “Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon ­Virginia, my native state?” He resigned from the US army, and, as the war commenced, assumed command of all military forces in ­Virginia. In June 1862, he was named commander of the Army of Northern V ­ irginia (the South’s chief fighting force, whose ranks included men from V ­ irginia and the states of the Deep South).

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sumed such proportions. He must have realized however dimly by the time Grant got to Chatanooga [sic] that where Grant was the war was. But he had registered a vow with himself perhaps in consistency when he gave up all the states for a few of the states that he would r­ eally never be devoted to any state but one. He was parochial. He couldnt see largely. I might even represent him in a ­whole novel, if I wrote history that way, as valuing himself for his loyalty to the First Families of V ­ irginia alone.30 In which connection, I may add, that my friend J. J. Lankes has been such a success with his woodcuts in ­Virginia that he has been honored with a chance of being listed in a book of the First Families of V ­ irginia for the sum of five dollars.31 He was born of German parentage in Gardenville near Buffalo New York and has earned much of his living illustrating tomato cans. I cant see that his Virginian honors have turned his head.32 All this merely to amuse you and distract me from our sorrow. I’ll tell you a short story for your third book when you get to it. Oh I do think it the most wonderful short story I ever read. It has every­thing. It is called A. V. Laider. Max Beerbohm wrote it.33 Where are you in the near f­ uture? Ever yours R.F.

30. ​Lee was the son of Major-­General Henry “Light-­Horse Harry” Lee III (1756–1818), a cavalry commander during the American Revolution and, ­later, governor of ­Virginia (1791–1794). His grand­father, Col­o­nel Henry Lee II (1730–1787), served in the ­Virginia House of Burgesses, the ­Virginia Revolutionary Convention (1774–1776), and the ­Virginia Senate (1780). 31. ​The Order of the First Families of V ­ irginia was officially established in 1912. Membership, of course, was by invitation only. 32. ​J.  J. Lankes and his ­family had moved to ­Virginia in 1925, mainly for economic reasons; he published ­Virginia Woodcuts with the V ­ irginia Press (Newport News) in 1930. It had received extensive and very enthusiastic coverage statewide. Even ­a fter taking up a position at Wells College, Aurora, New York, in 1932, Lankes kept his f­ amily in V ­ irginia and continued his professional ties to the state. 33. ​The En­glish artist and writer Max Beerbohm’s short story “A. V. Laider” first appeared in ­Century Magazine in June 1916.

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[To Thomas Moult (1893–1974), British journalist, novelist, poet, and editor. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont U.S.A. July 25 1934 Dear Mr Moult: I ­shall be glad to have you take “On the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind” for your book.34 We all know you do our poems good by your notice. I looked for you when I was in London a few years ago35 to thank you for past notice of this kind and particularly for a review of my work you once wrote;36 but you w ­ ere out of town and I got sick and had to come away before your return. I ­shall hope to see you some time. Meanwhile best wishes. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Helen Adams (1879–1967), ­sister of Frederick Baldwin Adams Sr. (1878–1961), whose wife (Ellen Walters Delano) was a cousin of Eleanor Roo­se­velt and aunt of Frederick Baldwin Adams Jr. (1910–2001), with whom RF also corresponded. ALS. Alger.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 27 1934 Dear Miss Adams: I should be happy and amused to have you quote me as taking Arnold’s passage of the Oxus figuratively.37 He may not have been conscious that he was 34. ​ T he Best Poems of 1934 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1934): 118–119. The poem first appeared in Scribner’s Magazine in April. 35. ​In the autumn of 1928. 36. ​Likely a lapse in memory: Moult had published no essays on RF. See LRF-2, 372. 37. ​See Arnold’s “Sohrab and Rustum,” which RF often quoted, and which he assigned to students at Pinkerton Acad­emy and elsewhere. ­There, Arnold describes the “passage” of the river Oxus (aka Amu Darya) from the Pamir mountains to the Aral Sea: . . . ​for many a league The shorn and parcell’d Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles— Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain-­c radle in Pamere,

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speaking of himself, but it is a meaning that was always just below the surface with him in his poetry. He was a professor of certainties in his prose but in poetry look at him passim. His foiled circuitousness all the way from the high cradle to the longed-­for waves of the Aral, is what I like him for. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Howard George Schmitt (1910–1989), American businessman and book collector. This letter initiates a lifelong friendship. ALS. Private.]

South Shaftsbury VT July 27 1934 Dear Mr Schmitt: I am sorry to have caused you anxiety about your book, yet not too sorry ­because it tells me how much you care for the book.38 You may well won­der what more did I want than the much used appearance of the book and all t­ hose book marks to give me that assurance. I hope the new poem I wrote in wont take away from the book for you.39

A foil’d circuitous wanderer—­till at last The long’d-­for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of ­waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-­bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea. Adams had written RF on July 13: “In your poem ‘New Hampshire’ you quote Matthew Arnold’s phrase ‘foiled circuitous wanderer’ as though he called himself that. Is his description of the Oxus as a ‘foiled circuitous wanderer’ meant to apply to his own unsatisfying journey from some ‘high cradle’? It ­hadn’t occurred to me to read it symbolically—­a nd as I am hoping to form a l­ittle class to read 19th ­century poetry it might be in­ter­est­i ng to be able to quote you as interpreting that passage figuratively. May I do so?” (letter held at DCL). RF speaks, in “New Hampshire,” of “Matthew Arnoldism, / the cult of one who owned himself ‘a foiled / Circuitous wanderer,’ and ‘took dejectedly / His seat upon the intellectual throne . . .’ ” (CPPP, 161). The latter phrase is from Arnold’s “The Scholar Gypsy.” 38. ​Schmitt had, many weeks ­earlier, sent his copy of CP 1930 to RF for a signature. 39. ​RF inscribed and signed a fair copy of “On a Bird Singing in Its Sleep”—­essentially identical to its finished form—­above the dedication: “For Howard George Schmitt / July 25 1934.”

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I’m awfully slow with letters. It is only by luck that I ever write one of them in time. Sincerely your friend Robert Frost

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 2 1934 Dear Edward: You wrote me in the spring that your young poetess would send me a book she was just having with the Yale Press.40 I was pleased for you that one of yours was having the honor of having a book. The book never turned up. I meant to ask for it as my right a­ fter you had got my expectations up or buy it for the cause. But you know how I am and I have been worse lately and with better excuse. You prob­ably h ­ aven’t heard of our loss in the spring. Our youn­ gest d­ aughter died a­ fter just a year of married life. It w ­ ill be hard for us to pick up an interest in t­ hings right off again. But we live on and w ­ ill presently be ­doing what’s to be done if only mechanically. See that I have the book, ­won’t you?41 I wish I might meet the poetess. If she ­were to be numbered among the many who go riding round in the summer she might well look in on me for a talk u ­ nless she is more shy than I believe I am formidable. You say she seems too unassertive for teaching. Thats too bad. I should think teaching would be better for a poet’s poetry than editorial or clerical work in a publisher’s office. I have heard Lincoln MacVeagh (late proprietor of the Dial

The poem appeared first some five months ­later in Scribner’s Magazine (December 1934); RF collected it in AFR. 40. ​Shirley Frances Barker (1911–1965), whose The Dark Hills U ­ nder won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for 1933. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire with the class of 1934. 41. ​Barker herself sent a copy. Lawrance Thompson claims, on evidence that is circumstantial at best, that RF was infuriated by Barker’s verse, and in par­tic­u ­lar by its repre­sen­ta­tions of New ­England social conformity and sexual repression. RF’s scurrilous, and unpublished, “Pride of Ancestry” was, according to Thompson, a direct riposte (YT, 471–474). This may be, but RF’s ­later references to Barker are generous and encouraging: see RF to Lewis, February 12 and September 18, 1935.

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Press, now ambassador to Greece42) say The nearer the books the further from lit­er­a­t ure. He meant the nearer the business of books. A lot of young writers get the notion that if they could be where manuscripts are being read and judged it would make them authorities and so authors. At best the jobs are critical (that is when they rise above the clerical) and lead nowhere but to more criticism—­possibly for The Times Supplement, Books, or the Saturday Review—­and so on up by a series of toe and fin­ger holds till the nails are all worn off. I make it as bad as pos­si­ble. The better the poet the more I should like to scare her off the publishers business.43 But tell me more. Her own wishes must be considered. Ever yours Robert

[To Charles R. Green (1876–1968), American librarian, director of the Jones Library in Amherst. Date derived from postmark. ALS. Jones.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [August 4, 1934] Dear Mr Green: Maurice Firuski’s recollection of what happened in the m ­ atter of the first sheets of North of Boston coincides with mine except in the minor and unimportant detail of why I didnt buy the sheets myself.44 I didnt buy them ­because I shouldnt have known what to do with them. Also I set no particuly [sic] value on them. I could have had them for next to nothing. I came near letting them go by. It was the merest accident that I happened to mention them to Maurice. The tragedy he speaks of namely of his covers having been found out by the bibliographers [sic] detective work was something I should think he as a specialist in first editions himself might have foreseen.45 However it 42. ​FDR named MacVeagh ambassador to Greece in 1933 (see also the notes to RF’s December 11, 1933, letter to MacVeagh). 43. ​Barker did not, in the event, enter the publishing business; she became a librarian. 44. ​For an account of disposition of t­ hese unbound sheets (and related m ­ atters), see LRF-2, 272n207. 45. ​Firuski had rebound, in green cloth, fifty-­n ine copies of ABW that Simpkin, Marshall (London) had bound in blue (the original, 1913 edition had been green). (Simpkin, Marshall came into possession of the remaining unbound sheets of ABW when David

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doesnt ­matter. I’m not sure he is quite right about the number of t­ hose sheets. Nor does that ­matter very much. I bought quite a lot of them from the Dunster House two years ago for destruction in the furnace and for giving away for what they are—­imperfect firsts. I gave the Dunster House more for a part of them than I should have had to give Haines for them all.46 Mrs Olds was up ­here yesterday after­noon telling about how hot you had had it in Amherst.47 Drink plenty of iced tea, but hold the fort till frost-­time again. Sincerely yours Robert Frost I should add for your encouragement I’m well. I wish I could say as much for Mrs Frost. I s­ hall hope I may next time.

[To Helen Flora McAfee (1884–1956), American scholar and editor at the Yale Review. ALS. Yale.]

Franconia, New Hampshire August 16 1934 Dear Miss McAfee: I d­ on’t believe I could bear to see t­ hose two so-­different rhymes with “pause” so close together. I­ sn’t poetry r­ eally ridicu­lous ­after all?48 You could I suppose change the order of the poems and put Moon Compasses first, A Missive Missile second and Afterflakes last. Or you could throw one of the short ones out.49 How should you like to swap one of them for something new?

Nutt went bankrupt.) His ­m istake lay in assuming that bibliographers would not notice that ­t hese fifty-­n ine books differed ever so slightly in size from the “true” first edition of ABW. See Crane, 15. 46. ​John Wilton “Jack” Haines (1876–1966), British solicitor, poet, and botanist. RF befriended him while living in Gloucesterhire in 1914–1915. Haines had acted as intermediary with Simpkin, Marshall and Com­pany in the business of the sheets. 47. ​In fact, a heat wave had left more than fifty dead, from Chicago to New ­England. 48. ​“Moon Compasses” contains the couplet, “I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause / Between two downpours to see what ­t here was”; “Afterflakes,” the couplet “And the thick flakes floating at a pause / ­Were but frost knots on an airy gauze.” 49. ​All three of the poems ­were published in the Autumn 1934 issue of the Yale Review, with “A Missive Missile” indeed in the m ­ iddle.

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I’d just been saying if I ever gave way to Buckmanism50 (sp.) the most sensationally shameful ­thing I had to confess in open meeting (where of course I should have to guard against getting into trou­ble with the law) was rhyming the same or nearly the same way in a book or even lifetime. I hope you are not in Eu­rope or somewhere where you c­ an’t be reached to save me. Sincerely yours Robert Frost Address for next few weeks Franconia New Hampshire [To Robert Hillyer. ALS. UVA.]

Franconia N.H. September 5th 1934 Dear Robert To think that you ­shouldn’t have been brought into the Institute before this. I should have assumed you ­were in. ­Will you have your friend the painter write to me for any help I can give? ­Isn’t t­ here some nomination form I should put my name to? I’m not a very active member and not very well up on procedures. That’s where I differ from good old Hamlin Garland who seems to have new candidates e­ very year.51 I have cared for your poetry a long time now. It must be nearly twenty years ago that I visited Kent School with a volume of yours in my hand to get me into the president’s office.52 So your reward from the Pulitzers was in some sense my reward also.53 50. ​“Buchmanism”: nickname for a crusade led by the Pennsylvanian missionary, Frank Buchman (1878–1961). Public confession of sin—­particularly of sexual sins—­was a salient feature of group meetings or­ga­n ized by Buchman and his adherents. 51. ​The National Institute of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898; architects, artists, writers, and composers of notable achievement ­were eligible for election. Hamlin Garland was a charter member and collaborated in writing its constitution. He was elected vice president in 1907. The identity of Hillyer’s painter friend remains elusive. 52. ​Founded in 1906, the Kent School is a private secondary school in Kent, Connecticut. Hillyer graduated from Kent in 1913 and wrote the lyr­ics of the school song. The book RF had in hand was Hillyer’s first: Sonnets and Other Lyr­ics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917). 53. ​Hillyer’s Collected Verse won the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

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We wish we could get to see you at Pomfret and must sometime.54 We are too much complicated with f­ amily just now however. And besides we are hay-­ fever-­bound in the mountains till October. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Sara Handy McClintock (1875–1963), American musician and m ­ usic teacher. ALS. Private.]

Franconia N.H. September 6th 1934 My dear Mrs McClintock: Some psychologist was recently asking me (in what I judged to be a form letter) if I had had any remarkable coincidences in my experience. This certainly would be one of them. I am Scotch enough to feel it as weird-­unco.55 Not the least strange part of it is that you should speak of having hated New ­England at first. My ­sister and I began by showing all sorts of contempt for its smallness. We would use a penny or one-­cent piece as a symbol of Boston and a five-­cent piece (the least money we had ever seen in the west) as a symbol of San Francisco.56 I have said in public my inspiration always seemed to come from seeing merit where not every­body could see it—­where it was hard to see it. I can remember when I was flattered with the thought of being able to see good in New En­glanders. I had reached eigh­teen then. Now it would be reversed: I’m afraid if I got enthusiastic over the west it would be with some such surprise of superiority. The “closeness” that at first struck me as meanness in the New E ­ ngland character has come to be the restraint of art.57

54. ​Hillyer’s ­family home was in Pomfret, Connecticut. 55. ​“Unco”: strange, unusual, uncanny; Scottish dialect. 56. ​Costs of transporting goods led to inflation in the West such that—­indeed—­ pennies (and often nickels) simply did not circulate (being, essentially, worthless). 57. ​McClintock, though born in Hyannis, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, was raised in California. She moved back east as an adult, ultimately settling (in 1908) with her husband Thomas McClintock, a physician, in Brooklyn, New York. ­Later in life she privately published a volume of verse about her f­ amily history. As for “closeness” or restraint in art: see RF to Cox, September 19, 1929, and April 19, 1932.

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I often think of Woodward’s Garden and especially of the g­ reat cage of vari­ous conflicting animals ­there known as the Happy ­Family.58 Two of my poems in my last book A Peck of Gold and Once by the Pacific are Californian.59 The first recalls the talk of the extra-­red sunsets for a year or more from volcanic eruption in the Pacific.60 And starting with a prejudice against New ­England, look where you have come out. It looks as if that must be the best way to start. We must all meet some time. I believe I am expected at Columbia early in November.61 I am away off ­here in the Mountains and h ­ aven’t my calendar with me; so cant be exact. Perhaps if the New E ­ ngland Society wanted me then it could be arranged.62 The Brooklyn Institute has asked me again this year, but I think it is too soon.63 I think your two poems are both real finds for subject ­matter and also very well managed. Sincerely yours Robert Frost Amherst Mass a­ fter Oct 1st

58. ​In 1866, Robert B. Woodward established Woodward’s Gardens, a four-­acre zoo, arboretum, and amusement park in the Mission District of San Francisco. “The Happy ­Family” RF refers to was a menagerie held in a single, large cage; among its population (which varied over time) ­were sea lions, bears, black swans, deer, and rare birds. 59. ​In WRB. 60. ​The eruption of Mt. Krakatoa in 1883 altered the atmosphere of the entire planet for several years, and among its effects ­were astonishing red sunsets vis­i­ble as far away as California (and places even more distant, such as New York State and Northern Eu­rope). 61. ​We have been unable to document any appearance at Columbia in November. The likelihood is that RF cancelled the engagement. Elinor, having overtaxed herself in 1934, suffered a severe attack of angina pectoris in early November—­severe enough that her doctor (Nelson Haskell) feared for her life. His advice to her and to RF was to winter in Florida (Lillian, Carol’s wife, had been given the same counsel), and so began the ­family’s plans to go to Key West. 62. ​McClintock was a member of the New York branch of the Society of Mayflower Descendants. 63. ​The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (now the Brooklyn Museum of Art) was established in 1823 by Augustus Graham. Again, Elinor’s ill health would prevent RF from speaking t­ here.

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[To Otto Manthey-­Zorn. Date derived from postmark. ALS. ACL.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [September 11, 1934] Dear Otto: We are glad to have you back in this country with us again.64 We have missed you and are anxious to see you both. We would say come up, but you are prob­ably too tired of travel and we s­ hall be down t­ here in a week anyway. You must have a lot more to tell than you could have written in the freedom of foreign lands. I won­der if you are as willing as you w ­ ere that other nations should take what desperate mea­sures they please to save themselves. How slightly desperate our mea­sures seem compared with theirs. We ­ought to be very thankful for what we ­haven’t as yet quite lost. I didnt intend to come back to Franconia. But t­ here seemed no other place for ­either Irma or me. We ­hadn’t dug out any other burrow I mean. Another year we now say. But I dont know. When we reach the point of owning any more real estate we sort of draw back. ­There’s a thirty acre place with small ­house and barn we can have in Lancaster for eight hundred dollars.65 The view is what we would be paying for mostly. We hesitate. Every­thing seems high-­priced. Franklin D. has made it pos­si­ble for ­people to hang on to property by taking over mortgages at lowered interest.66 I can still forgive him that and a few other ­things. Now he is joining forces with Upton Sinclair.67 I ­can’t be too cross, b­ ecause it grows surer everyday that what we w ­ ere w ­ ill prevail— 64. ​From the Manthey-­Zorns’ lengthy sojourn in Eu­rope. See the February  9 and June 10, 1934, letters to Manthey-­Zorn. 65. ​Lancaster, New Hampshire, is in Coös County, twenty miles northwest of the Presidential Range (in the White Mountains). 66. ​Referring to the protection extended to financially troubled ­house­holds by the Home ­Owners’ Loan Corporation, established by the Roo­se­velt administration in June 1933. 67. ​Sinclair was r­ unning for the governorship of California on the Demo­cratic ticket. On August  31, the United Press reported that Sinclair was en route to the “Summer White House” in Hyde Park, New York, for a private audience with FDR. Sinclair’s radical program for the alleviation of economic hardship included, inter alia, state repossession of property and premises not in current industrial / agricultural use. Sinclair won 38% of the vote, but was comfortably defeated by the Republican incumbent, Frank Merriam, with 49%. (It is worth noting that in 1930, r­ unning as a Socialist, Sinclair had polled less than 4%, and the Republican winner more than 72%.)

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or mainly prevail. But why bother you with politics of which you must have had enough to last you the rest of your life. I could easily swear off on them and may for New Years. Plenty ­else is terrible without resorting to such unrest. A definition of politics is misunderstanding as much as pos­si­ble in order to get something against the other party, or better using misunderstanding to drive each other into opposition. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Charles H. Foster. Date derived from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [September 12, 1934] Dear Charles: Forgive me for not having written you the letter I intended to write about Paul Engel [sic] when I should have read him fairly.68 Before we try him we have to ask ourselves how good we want him to be at his age.69 He strikes me as both too loud and too long. But then strength may be manifested by loudness and length. I hate to think so. Nevertheless it may be. Lets give the boy a chance. At least he is manly unaffected and unprecious. He hews the wood that someone to come a­ fter him or he himself in a l­ ater phase w ­ ill carve fine. I should like to deal with him generously you may imagine for the country’s sake. Another good ­thing about him is his love of his country. It is about time someone turned up in our lit­er­a­t ure of a disposition not to complain of whats set before him. All times all countries all ­people are bad. Oh yeah! So are they all good. It doesnt take rank as an idea to put it e­ ither way. And I should rather imply it than say it outright e­ ither way. But I confess I have had enough of the

68. ​Paul Engle (1908–1991), American poet, had recently published his first two volumes of verse, Worn Earth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932), and American Song (New York: Doubleday, 1934). The latter met with considerable acclaim. It vibrates with Whitman-­style exuberance at the exceptional quality of every­thing American (“rutting elk,” “live machines,” Manhattan’s “arrogance of energy,” e­tc.), and pours scorn on the “Nations of Eu­rope” (“we leave you now to drag / Your worn-­out bellies on the sun-­warmed rock”). 69. ​Engle was in fact five years Foster’s se­n ior.

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divine unrest and dissatisfaction habituals.70 I’ve had too much. I may like to tell myself scarey [sic] bed-­time stories for the bad dreams that w ­ ill result. I like sinister effects. I even like sordid effects. But you have to allow and provide for effects wearing out. They arent effects u ­ nless contrasted well and often. With me it has to be ­every few days or even hours. I’m the opposite with effects to what I am with friends. Friends are forever: but the one ­thing about artistic effects is not to get bogged down in them. Keep your extricativeness working. I have never r­ eally lived with the sordidities of my time. I havent objected to having them t­ here to resort to for their sensation when I wanted it. But a good deal of the time I have forgotten them. I ­really rather dislike them for being so much on principal [sic] and professionally what they are. And I dont mind seeing them go out of style—if they are g­ oing. The rise of Paul Engle may mean that we are in for a less belly aching generation. From what I hear ­people say, he is being taken as part of the new gospel of American Fascism. Amusing—­fun—­and all that—­but of course entirely beside the point. The still small voice is all I am susceptible to.71 Lets all see what you can give us. I have had a lot to think of this year. You must realize that. I’ve had to neglect friends. Pretty soon I’ll be back in Amherst and ­we’ll be seeing each other again. I’ll bet you’ll have become such a social worker you want to take me in hand to do me good. I was asked by one of the departments in Washington the other day what me and my fellow craftsmen would like done for us.72 What would we? I for one would like to be improved in all my faculties. Ever yours R.F. The ­little poems are good. They are still flung too f­ ree. You must clench them. You know that in theory. Practice it. Silence used to help me—­not saying a word for ­whole days. 70. ​The phrase (repeated in the next letter) appears in scores of poems and essays in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and seems to have first appeared in the dedication to Theodore Martin’s 1865 translation of Goethe’s Faust (London: William Blackwood and Sons). But the idea of divine unrest is (as RF understood it) traceable to George Herbert’s poem “The Pulley” (which RF mentions in another letter to Foster, dated December 18, 1935; for details, see the notes to that letter). 71. ​1 Kings 19:11–12. 72. ​Remarks perhaps clarified by RF’s February 12, 1935, letter to Lewis.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. On the back of the last page, RF has drawn a map of the region around the Fobes farm, where the ­family often summered to relieve his hay fever. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [September 15, 1934] Dear Louis: We have been in our not unusual ­family confusion, but we see a few days to ourselves ahead, Sunday to Wednesday or Thursday, and wish you could make us your promised visit then. The best day for us to have you come would be the earliest—­Sunday—­and the best day to have you go the latest. We had thought before this to have found bought and occupied our next farm, our fifth in life. But though we have sought it with divine unrest we have not attained to its peace that passeth understanding. ­There are farms to be had of good outlook and f­ ree from hayfever. I could show you a small one in Lancaster to be had for eight hundred. I begin to suspect the difficulty is not with the farms but with me. I may be like an airplane that has lost its landing gear: I can never alight anymore. At any rate I contemplate with horror the moment when my gas gone I s­ hall have to alight. I dreamed of making a forced descent into a graveyard and knocking down e­ very gravestone in the place. It ­w ill be part of the fun of your visit for you to see if you can help us decide on a farm and for us to see if we can keep from deciding on one. ­We’ll cover Coös County and live off the country. ­We’ll make the farm prob­lem our entire proj­ect. We wont talk too much. ­We’ll consider politics settled and the question of who went into sheer landscape first the writers or the paint­ers. (The writers never went into it, if you ask me. Nobody reads or writes landscape by the yard, as paint­ers paint it. Not even in the most natu­ral of nature poetry was nature ever anything but the background to the portrait of a lunatic a lover or a farmer.)73 Yes I consider politics settled by the conclusion I reached last night amid the many movements of my mind that no change of

73. ​According to Untermeyer, RF and landscape designer Lee Simonson had debated the ­matter: Simonson “contended that the writers had never considered the landscape as anything but a setting, a picturesque but unimportant backdrop, ­u ntil the paint­ers gave it character of its own; that ­u ntil then Nature was regarded by the writers as something composed of fearful heights, arid wastes, doom-­dealing wilds, savage animals and endless threats. Robert held that the true poets, as distinguished from the sentimentalists, accepted nature from the beginning without making it e­ ither miraculous or malign”

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system could possibly make me one bit better or abler, the only two ­things of any importance to me personally. Now back to my abstraction once more. With Mycerinus I can say: The rest I give to plea­sure.74 On the other side of this I give you a diagram not of how to live but of how to find our cottage at the entrance to the Fobes Farm. Ever yours Robert

[To Robert Spangler Newdick (1897–1939), then a young professor of En­glish at Ohio State University. This letter inaugurates Newdick’s relationship with RF. In 1935, he would begin a never-­completed biography of the poet. ALS. ACL.]

Franconia, New Hampshire September 16 1934 Dear Mr Newdick: You may be sure I appreciate an interest that could carry you so far with my book.75 If you w ­ ill accept it, I think you o ­ ught to have a copy of it from my hand for thanks. I never realized before how completely I could be summed up in the four seasons of the year; though I am not unaware of always having lived like a countryman in the day’s weather. A friend of mine says the first ­thing he does when he comes out doors is look at the sky, instead of at the doorsteps for safety. I’m the same. The state of the sky, direction of the wind, and temperature are my bearings in every­thing I do. I should hate to miss (RFLU, 243). RF adapts Theseus’s lines in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream: “The lunatic, the lover and the poet / Are of imagination all compact . . .” (5.i.8). 74. ​See Matthew Arnold’s “Mycerinus,” whose eponymous hero, an Egyptian king of the Fourth Dynasty, abdicates, saying: “The rest I give to joy. Even while I speak / My sand runs short. . . .” 75. ​Newdick had written RF on July 30: “Beginning in October we ­shall use your Selected Poems (1928) in our classes in recent and con­temporary lit­er­a­t ure, and therefore I am becoming more professional—­a nd perhaps professorial—in my study of your poems. That, however, is not the immediate point. The immediate point is, Am I anywhere near rightness in my cyclic-­seasonal regrouping of your Selected Poems? My object is, of course, to assist my students in knowing you and your work.” Newdick enclosed with the letter a typed sheet listing RF’s poems, reordered by season. See Robert Newdick’s Season of Frost: An Interrupted Biography, ed. William A. Sutton (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1976): 87–88.

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the least glow of northern lights that might be mistaken by a city person for a city below the horizon. Nothing flatters me more than having anyone take the trou­ble to find me out. H ­ aven’t I said in a very early poem that my reason for hiding is to be found out?76 New se­lections from a book, rearrangement of a book, are its best criticism. This “Selected Poems” is in a way self-­criticism. I made it. And to anyone who asked me point blank (for his thesis) what I thought of my own work I might reply, Perhaps you can infer from a comparison of my Selected Poems with my Collected Poems. Sincerely yours Robert Frost I’ve been wondering if I could add a dozen poems from West-­running Brook to the Selected without throwing it out of shape.77 R.F.

[To Henry Dierkes. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont September 20 1934 Dear Mr Dierkes: Your book ­shall be trea­sured for though it is too much about me for real comfort, it is charmingly made and has an in­ter­est­ing history.78 Next time you send me a poem it can be on another subject. I wrote one a month or two ago

76. ​See “Revelation,” in ABW (CPPP, 27–28), which begins: We make ourselves a place apart  ­Behind light words that tease and flout, But oh, the agitated heart   Till someone find us ­really out. 77. ​R F would expand his Selected Poems in December  1934 (the first edition had appeared in 1923, the second in 1928). From WRB, RF chose the following six poems for inclusion (placed throughout the volume in the following order): “Spring Pools,” “Acquainted With the Night,” “Once by the Pacific,” “Tree at My Win­dow,” “The Bear,” and “West-­Running Brook.” 78. ​Apparently Dierkes had sent RF a typescript of what would become The Man From Vermont and Other Poems (Oak Park, IL: Eileen Baskerville, 1935). The title poem is about RF (who is also the book’s dedicatee). See also RF to Dierkes, March 7, 1935.

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on a Roadside Stand.79 I may swap a copy of it with you ­later for yours (if you ever write it) on your gasoline station. Of course I like to have my poetry admired and s­ hall value your friendship, but two ­things you must do to foster it: you must let me be lazy about writing letters and you must help me keep my mind off myself. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [September 22, 1934] Dear Louis: What’s this? Why the Hell ­don’t you keep me informed? I look to you for the wherewithal to do my talking writing and thinking. I rely on you to keep me abreast of the times. So does Lee Simonson.80 So do countless ­people. I dont like to have to be told t­ hings by some reviewer back in the sticks.81 Did you tell me what to think of Paul Engel [sic]?82 No! Irascibly R.

79. ​Collected first in AFR. 80. ​Landscape designer Lee Simonson. See RF’s September 15, 1934, letter to Untermeyer for context. 81. ​According to Untermeyer, this “mock outburst” was occasioned by a review (sent to RF by Willard Fraser) in the September 9, 1934, issue of the Billings Gazette of Edmond Kowalewski’s 1933 volume of poetry, Deaf Walls (Philadelphia: Symphonist Press, 1933). The reviewer, Don McCarthy, had poked fun at Kowalewski’s pretensions to having inaugurated “a cataclysmic revolt against the bovine contentment of mediocrity,” and to be making Philadelphia a “vortex of an American re­nais­sance”: “Much like the sound of reveille to the ears of a group of ex­pec­tant youth on the opening morning of a [Citizens’ Military Training Camp] session, comes the announcement in a symphonic poem entitled ‘Deaf Walls’. . . .” See RFLU, 244–245. It is ambiguous what RF is pretending to be so angry about: Kowalewski’s evident grandiloquence, or McCarthy’s snideness; prob­ably, for dif­fer­ent reasons, both. But the main burden of the joke (with Untermeyer as its butt) is that RF should have had to be told by a reviewer based in Billings, Montana, of an event so epochal in the history of American poetry. 82. ​See RF to Foster, September 12, 1934.

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Expecting you and Ester83 [sic] ­here at S. Shaftsbury.

[To Frederick C. Martin (1883–1945), a Vermont politician. It would appear that the manuscript of this letter is a draft of the one RF actually sent, but ­we’ve been unable to locate the latter, if it survives. AL—­unsigned. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt September 24 1934 Mr Fred C. Martin84 Collector, Burlington Vt Dear Sir: I seem to have gotten my income taxes into a tangle. The letter you had enclosing seventy-­five dollars on account was not intended for you at all, but for the Vermont Commissioner of Taxes at Montpelier.85 I mailed on the same day with that a check of $159.49 to the Collector of Internal Revenue at Burlington. At least the second check was correctly made out and it trou­bles me that it should not have reached you. I am afraid I called the State Commissioner Collector of Internal Revenue too, though I addressed him I am very sure at Montpelier. W ­ ill you help me straighten the m ­ atter out. I won­der if your department has not received both checks. Very truly yours

83. ​Again, Untermeyer’s third wife, Esther Antin. Untermeyer quietly substituted “nevertheless” for her name when he printed the letter in RFLU: “P.S. Expecting you nevertheless ­here at S. Shaftsbury” (245). When that book was published (1963), he was married to Bryna Ivens (having divorced Antin in 1944). 84. ​At the time, Martin, who maintained a residence in Bennington, was collector for the US Internal Revenue Ser­v ice, District of Vermont. In 1934, Martin, a supporter of FDR and the New Deal, ran for the US Senate on the Demo­cratic ticket. He lost by some 4,000 votes to Republican Warren Austin (1877–1962). Vermont had, at that date, never sent a Demo­crat to the Senate. 85. ​Edwin Morse Harvey (1876–1955).

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[To Harold Rugg. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt September 25 1934 Dear Rugg: I never had any one find me out so much so quickly and easily.86 Now I ­shall know where to turn whenever I want to know anything. I o ­ ught to ask you if you can tell the ­f uture as well as the past. I’m more and more impressed with my discovery. In­ter­est­i ng that ­t here should have been in the country and away back in the country at that time in our history a man of such good taste good sense and good expression. He speaks of his attachment to our institutions po­liti­cal and religious. I saw at once that what­ever he might be as poet he was no inconsiderable person.87 I felt his force and authority. He was gentle and fine too. His farewell to the Muse (“the client calls”) touched me.88 Thrice governor of Maine. Well well. I’ll be looking for manuscript or e­ lse writing some. Ever yours Robert Frost

86. ​That is, find several of RF’s earliest published poems. See also RF to Rugg, November 14, 1934, and February 8, 1935. 87. ​Enoch Lincoln (1788–1829), a Massachusetts-­born politician and attorney, who served in the House of Representatives from 1818 to 1826 (first representing Mas­sa­c hu­ setts, then Maine), and as governor of Maine from 1827 to 1829. In 1816, he published The Village; a Poem with an Appendix (Portland, ME: Edward ­Little). The poem (composed chiefly in heroic couplets) is historical and po­liti­cal in theme; its appendix, in prose, touches on subjects ranging from slavery to criminal law to religion. The “discovery,” as the subsequent letter clarifies, was made in the com­pany of Cornelius Weygandt. For more on RF’s interest in Lincoln, see the December 30, 1934, and mid-­September 1935 letters to Melcher. 88. ​Lincoln’s poem ends with the “Village bard,” his law business pressing, bidding adieu to the Muse: “the client calls, / The vision flies, the air built fabric falls.”

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[To Cornelius Weygandt. ALS. Alger.]

South Shaftsbury Vt September 27 1934 Dear Weygandt: ­Here’s three for a retainer.89 I ­shall issue so’more to you when I get some more paper. Poems are just like money: you can turn them both out while the paper holds out.90 The good poet I found while antique-­shopping with you proves as you read on to have been a ­lawyer—­not a clergyman. He was Enoch Lincoln of Fryburg Maine (his “village adjacent to the White Hills”). He went to congress for eight years and was three times governor of the state of Maine. He died at the age of forty-­t wo. How widespread cultivated men w ­ ere in the early days of the Republic. The most remote villages w ­ eren’t without them. He speaks in the preface of his “ardent attachment to his country’s institutions, po­liti­cal and religious.” I’d like to have known him. We liked seeing you up t­ here—­the mountaineer in his mountains.91 Ever yours Robert Frost

89. ​The enclosed poems have been separated from the letter. However, this letter was auctioned in a lot containing several additional letters to Weygandt; and with the lot came fair copies of the following poems by RF: “Afterflakes,” which he then called “Snow Falling ­a fter It Clears”; “On a Bird’s Singing in Its Sleep”; “Canis Major,” which he then titled “On a Starbright Night”; and “Clear and Colder.” We thank Pat Alger for advising us ­here. “Canis Major” had already been collected in WRB, the other three would appear in AFR (suggesting that they constituted the “retainer” RF ­here sent). 90. ​To combat deflation, FDR took the United States off the gold standard in 1933; the money supply therefore vastly increased in 1934, cheapening credit (the better to stimulate the economy). 91. ​Weygandt was an avid outdoorsman. See RF’s July 8, 1934, letter to him.

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[To Harrison Smith Morris (1856–1948), Philadelphia-­based industrialist, editor, and patron of the arts. Date derived from postmark. ALS. Prince­ton.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [September 27, 1934] Dear Morris: Do you know what I think? I think I attracted attention to this picture92 by losing my heart to it that day at the Welches.93 ­Either you or I or she betrayed me. Word reached the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan has got in ahead of me. You ­w ill say I can enjoy it with the rest of the ­people on the walls of the Metropolitan. I cant, I wont. I refuse to look at it on any walls but my own. Crossly R.F.

[To Lesley Frost. Date derived from internal evidence.94 ALS. UVA.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [October 1934] Dear Lesley: The difficulty of a job like that is to keep it from getting out of your mind for a single instant that you are speaking for us the Frost ­Family and not just 92. ​Morris had sent RF a half-­tone reproduction of a picture by Thomas Eakins (1844– 1916), Max Schmitt in a Single Scull. Most of Eakins’s work was done in, and featured as its subject, Philadelphia. In January 1933 Morris had contacted RF about the possibility of his buying a “small Eakins,” with Morris acting as intermediary. 93. ​The manuscript reading is uncertain. The name as written seems to be “Welches” (the capital “W” is clear), but a more likely candidate is “Milches.” When seen by RF, Max Schmitt in a Single Scull was owned by Eakins’s w ­ idow, Susan Hannah Macdowell Eakins, and held at the Milch Galleries in New York City. The coproprietors of the Milch Galleries, Edward Milch (1865–1953) and Albert Milch (1881–1951), w ­ ere both married, the former to Leonora Haas (1870–1949), the latter to Lillian Smalls (1883–1946); e­ ither of ­these ladies could be the “she” to whom RF refers. As RF indicates, the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased the painting from the Milch Galleries in 1934. 94. ​During the fall of 1934, Lesley Frost held a teaching post at Rockford College (Rockford, Illinois). But in late October or early November she made a trip to Cambridge—­where the talk the pre­sent letter speaks of was to be delivered—as Elinor Frost’s November 13, 1934, letter to her indicates (FL, 168).

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for yourself. In the last year or two owing to a nasty slap I got from an American follower of Eliots, I confess I have several times forgotten my dignity in speaking in public of Eliot. I mean I have shown a hostility I should like to think in my pride unworthy of my position. I could wish you would do better for us. For the most part describe rather than judge, or seem to judge only in a occasional ironical shading or lightly and unvenomously ­toward the end. Pre­sent them nearly as they would pre­sent themselves. Remember you are my ­daughter you are speaking in Cambridge and Eliots ­sister Mrs Sheffield the wife of my instructor in En­glish at Harvard may very well be in your audience.95 Show no animus. Be judicial. D ­ on’t take anybody alive too seriously. Let me tell you a few t­ hings about the new Movement you may or may not have taken in amid all the talk you have had to listen to. Ezra Pound was the Prime Mover in the Movement and must always have the credit for whats in it. He was just branching off from the regular poets when we arrived in ­England. His Δωρια (Doria)96 had won second prize in a contest where Rupert Brooke’s Dust97 had won first. Δωρια was a more or less conscious departure. The coming in second made it very conscious.98 One of the first ­things Pound thought of was that rhyme and meter made you use too many words and even subsidiary ideas for the sake of coming out even. He and his friends Flint H.D. and Aldington used to play a game of rewriting each ­others [sic] poems to see if they couldnt reduce the number of words. Pound once wrote to me that John Gould Fletcher failed as a f­ ree verse

95. ​Eliot’s older ­sister Ada (1869–1943), married to Harvard professor of En­glish Alfred Sheffield (1871–1961). RF had, indeed, taken a class from Sheffield when he was at Harvard (1897–1899). 96. ​The poem appeared in the landmark anthology Des Imagistes (London: Poetry Bookshop, 1914) 97. ​Published in Poems (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1911). 98. ​We have been unable to substantiate this tale, which e­ ither derives from literary gossip RF picked up in London in 1913 or is a distorted memory of another prize altogether. Poetry magazine awarded William Butler Yeats a prize of £50 for his poem “Two Kings,” which had appeared in its October 1913 issue. Yeats declined the prize and suggested instead that £40 of the money be given to Pound in recognition of his “vigorous imaginative mind.” (The remaining £10 Yeats said he would keep to have a book plate made as “a permanent memory” of the generosity of Poetry magazine.) See “A Word from Mr. Yeats,” Poetry (January 1914): 149–150.

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writer ­because he failed to understand the purpose of f­ ree verse, which was, namely, to be less f­ ree not more ­f ree, with the verbiage.99 Pound began to talk very early about rhythm alone without meter. I assume you’ll find in Reed [sic] his latest descendant a full statement of the doctrine of Inner Form, that is to say the form the subject itself takes if left to itself without any considerations of outer form.100 Every­thing ­else is to have two compulsions, an inner and an outer, a spiritual and a social, an individual and a racial. I want to be good, but that is not enough; the state says I have got to be good. Every­thing has not only formity but conformity. Every­ thing but poetry according to the Pound-­Eliot-­R ichards101-­Reed school of art. For my part I should be as satisfied to play tennis with the net down as to write verse with no verse form set to stay me. I suppose I could display my energy agility and intense nature as well in e­ ither case. That’s me. Remember you are speaking for them and do them justice. But what­ever you do, do Pound justice as the g­ reat original. He was the first Imagist too—­a lthough I believe our friend T. E. Hulme coined the name.102 An Imagist is simply one who insists on clearer sharper less muddled half realized images (chiefly eye images) than the common run of small poets. That’s certainly good as far as it goes. Strange with all their modernity and psy­chol­ogy they didnt have more to say about ear images and other images—­even kinesthetic. Pounds tightness naturally tended to stripping poetry of connective tissue. Nevermind connections—­they’ll take care of themselves—if only you make your poetic points. The method gives a very ancient Old-­Testament flavor to expression. The same aspiration t­ oward brevity and undersaying rather than oversaying has led to the poetry of intimation implication insinuation and innuendo as an object in itself. All poetry has always said something and implied the rest. Well then why have it say anything? Why not have it imply every­

99. ​Frank  S. Flint (1885–1960), British poet and translator; H.  D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886–1961), American poet and novelist; Richard Aldington (1892–1962), British poet (and husband of H. D. from 1913 to 1938, though they lived the latter de­cades of the marriage separated); John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950), American poet. All lived in E ­ ngland during the mid-1910s (as of course did RF). 100. ​See Herbert Read, Form in Modern Poetry (London: Sheed and Ward, 1932). 101. ​En­glish literary critic I. A. Richards. 102. ​T. E. Hulme (1883–1917), British poet, critic, phi­los­o­pher, and translator (whose salon RF sometimes attended in 1913).

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thing? Harte [sic] Crane has gone to g­ reat lengths h ­ ere.103 ­There is some excuse for their extravagances. It is true much poetry is simply flat from being said too fully outright. I suppose Gertrude Stein has come in confluently to encourage the intimators or innuendots. A l­ ittle of her is fun, but goes a long way. I read that negroes w ­ ere chosen to sing her opera b­ ecause they have less need than white men to know what they are talking about.104 That is a t­ hing that can be reported without malice. “The bailey beareth away the bell” poem is taken as justification of poetry by elipsis [sic] hiatus and hint.105 It’s a fine poem beyond cavil. I wish somebody could write more like it. Gerard Manly Hopkins’ obscurities and awkwardnesses are some more of their Bible. Hopkins is well enough. His friend Robert Bridges judged his limitations very

103. ​Hart Crane’s obscurities w ­ ere such that, on publishing his poem “At Melville’s Tomb” in Poetry in October 1926, Harriet Monroe saw fit to append to the issue an exchange of letters between her and Crane debating ­whether he had, in fact, taken too many liberties with figurative language. The letters, and Monroe’s notes on them, are available online at the archives of Poetry. See “A Discussion With Hart Crane” (pages 34–41 of the October number). Crane, born in 1899, committed suicide in 1932. 104. ​ Four Saints in Three Acts (­music by Virgil Thompson); the libretto was revolutionary and depended more on the sounds of words than on any narrative they might be supposed to convey. The opera opened at the 44th Street Theatre (Broadway) on February 20, 1934, featuring an African American cast. 105. ​A n obscure ballad from the ­fourteenth (or fifteenth) ­century, variously titled “The Bridal Morn” or “Bridal Morning,” as in Arthur Quiller-­Couch’s Oxford Book of En­ glish Verse (1901), an anthology RF favored: The maidens came   When I was in my ­mother’s bower; I had all that I would.   The bailey beareth the bell away;   The lily, the ­rose, the ­rose I lay. The silver is white, red is the gold: The robes they lay in fold.   The bailey beareth the lull away;   The lily, the ­rose, the ­rose I lay. And thro the glass win­dow shines the sun. How should I love, and I so young?   The bailey beareth the lull away;   The lily, the ­rose, the ­rose I lay. (42) “Lull” in the second and third instances of the refrain is more often given as “bell” (repeating, verbatim, the wording of the first).

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fairly.106 His poem about All Pied ­T hings good as it is disappoints me by not keeping, short as it is, wholly to pied t­hings.107 I’m sending you this long poem by Perse as a further instance.108 I read the Proem in Chapel one morning with success. I had to practice up a way to perform it. Most of the boys laughed but some t­here ­were who pretended to be subconscious of what it was about. On the same princi­ple a child of two three and four gets legitimate plea­sure out of hearing Milton’s Paradise Lost read aloud. If the child’s legitimate he does. We’ve got to keep control of our hysterics. Above all t­ hings no vindictiveness. From Pound down to Eliot they have striven for distinction by a show of learning, Pound in old French, Eliot in forty languages. They quote and you try to see if you can place the quotation. Pound r­ eally has g­ reat though inaccurate learning. Eliot has even greater. Maurice Hewlett leaned on Pound for medieval facts.109 Yates [sic] has leaned on him for facts and more than facts. Pound has taught Yates his l­ater style of expression.110 Not many realize this. T ­ here’s a significant reference to Pound in the preface to Yeates [sic] last book.111 Last we come to who means the most, Pound or Eliot. Eliot has written in the throes of getting religion and foreswearing a world gone bad with war.

106. ​Bridges edited the first volume of Hopkins’s work: Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (London: Humphrey Milford, 1918). (Hopkins published very l­ittle of his poetry while alive, but he had sent a number of poems in manuscript to Bridges, starting in 1867 and ending in 1889, the year of his death.) For a rather dif­fer­ent view on Bridges’s custodianship of Hopkins (one less favorable to Bridges), see the postscript to RF’s September 23, 1931, letter to Untermeyer. 107. ​“Pied Beauty.” Presumably RF has in mind references in the poem to such dubiously pied ­t hings as “Landscape plotted and pieced—­fold, fallow, and plough; / And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.” (The word “pied” was [as per the OED] originally applied to friars’ black-­a nd-­white habits.) 108. ​ Anabase (1924) by the French poet and diplomat Saint-­John Perse (pseudonym of Alexis Saint-Léger Léger [1887–1975]). T. S. Eliot published a translation of the poem in 1930 (­u nder the title Anabasis). See also RF’s June 24, 1932, letter to Untermeyer. 109. ​ Maurice Henry Hewlett (1861–1923), British historical novelist, poet, and essayist. 110. ​For more on Pound’s influence on Yeats, see RF to Bobrowsky, December 14, 1932. 111. ​Yeats indicates in a note, not a preface, that he borrowed one line of poetry from Pound’s Cantos in his 1933 volume, The Winding Stair: “The sun in a golden cup,” which he places in “­Those Dancing Days are Gone.” RF may have this in mind or he may have mistaken the ­matter.

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That seems deep. But I dont know. Waste Lands—­your g­ reat grand­mother on the grand­mother on your m ­ other’s side! I doubt if anything was laid waste by war that was not laid waste by peace before.112 Claim e­ very ­t hing for Amer­i­ca. Pound Eliot and Stein are all American though expatriate. Affectionately Papa You’ll notice Eliot translates this song113 This Auden is what I read the boys114 Auden is their latest recruit Notice in Eliots Ash Wednesday how he misquotes Shakespeare’s “Desiring this mans art and that man’s scope”115 Why does he do it if on purpose? Is he improving on Shakespeare or merely giving him an in­ter­est­i ng twist up to date? Ash Wednesday is supposed to be deeply religious—­last phase before ­going to Rome.116 Send it back

112. ​Compare RF’s remarks in the letter to Untermeyer of May  15, 1934, telling his friend of Marjorie’s death: “Why all this talk in ­favor of peace? Peace has her victories over poor mortals no less merciless than war. . . .” 113. ​Presumably the proem to Perse’s Anabasis. 114. ​W.  H. Auden (1907–1973), British poet and critic. The enclosures RF speaks of ­were separated from the letter and did not, so far as we can determine, survive. 115. ​See the third line of Eliot’s poem: “Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope . . . ,” adapted from Shakespeare’s sonnet 29 (“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”)—­a sonnet RF discusses in detail in “The Constant Symbol” (see CPPP, 789). 116. ​Eliot’s book Ash Wednesday: Six Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 1930) was his first since converting to Anglicanism in 1927. Thenceforward Eliot identified as an Anglo-­ Catholic but never, as RF puts it, went to Rome (i.e., converted to Roman Catholicism). Interestingly, RF gave a lecture on Eliot’s poetry at the Amherst College chapel on March 6, 1932. Theodore Baird escorted him t­here, and memorialized the event in his diary (the diaries are held at Amherst College); unfortunately Baird reports nothing of what RF said in his lecture, though the pre­sent letter may provide some hints as to how he spoke of Eliot when called on to do so formally.

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[To Wilbert Snow. Text derived from Codline’s Child (367).]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [November 1934] Jimminy criquetts Bill: I d­ on’t know ­whether I want any more lectures than I have bit off this year.117 I’d like damn well to see you and correct your aberration of heat and cold. I ­don’t want you to get too far from the abnormal. I say to myself if I can only keep Bill Snow fresh and wild I d­ on’t care how intelligible an old age Gertrude Stein decays into.118 Your long poem goes all right for me.119 I mean it hears all right and I get sights out of it. But as you once took too much stock in Haeckel; so you now take too much stock in Eddington.120 I ­can’t bear you should be wrong twice. ­Because if you ­were, I should have to class you with the out-­boys on the New Republic who once fondly believed in art for art’s sake but have been lately maladjusted by Moscow to a belief in art for the state’s sake. If you want someone to follow, follow me. Let me tell you something I have just found out by experimenting in the back shed. A circle representing rest has but one centre. But the minute it comes to life, begins practicing law (natu­ral), the minute it starts g­ oing round or anything starts g­ oing round it, it elongates into an ellipse and shows two centres, one imaginary, one substantial, mind

117. ​Snow had once again invited RF to lecture at Wesleyan University. 118. ​Stein had published her most “intelligible” book to date in 1933: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (New York: Harcourt, Brace). The book made her a bona fide celebrity in the United States. 119. ​Snow had sent RF a “long philosophical poem” called “Tides” (Codline’s Child: The Autobiography of Wilbert Snow [Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1968]): 367. 120.  Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), German biologist, phi­los­o­pher, and artist. Haeckel was the most significant late-­n ineteenth / early-­twentieth ­century pop­u ­lar­izer of Darwinian evolution, in any language, although in some areas his views diverged sharply from Darwin’s. His often gorgeously illustrated books ­were widely translated into En­ glish. He promulgated a sophisticated version of recapitulation theory (“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”) and was a trenchant Social Darwinist (sufficiently trenchant, and racist, to appeal to the Nazis). Arthur Eddington (1882–1944) was a British astronomer, physicist, and phi­los­o­pher. Like Haeckel he had a gift for popu­lar exposition, in Eddington’s case of Einstein’s physics. He had come to global prominence as leader of the Príncipe solar eclipse expedition (1919), the results of which ­were hailed as observational proof of the general theory of relativity.

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and ­matter, Haeckel and Eddington. Of the two foci of the earth’s orbit, the sun, the one made manifest, is possibly the less determinative in our destiny. So much we may safely affirm. T ­ here are ­things in your poem as I say. But it sticks in my mind that they might be better by themselves. I may be prejudiced in ­favor of the old you. We are ­going south till March or April to see if it w ­ on’t change our luck back to what it always was before. Any letter of protest w ­ ill be forwarded from Amherst, Mass. D ­ on’t mind anything I say or do; we are r­ eally very fond of you folks.121 R.F.

[To Louis Untermeyer. RF enclosed fair copies of three poems: “The Lone Striker,” “A Leaf Treader,” and (with no title) what would become “­Triple Bronze.” The first two appeared in AFR (with the title of the former revised to “A Lone Striker”); RF collected the third in AWT. ALS. LoC.]

Amherst Mass November 2 1934 Dear Louis: Where does one address you at this time of year? Ubiquity, U.S.A.? Nay but seriously, I’ve been wishing you w ­ ere where it would be con­ve­n ient for you to visit us before we light out for Salubrity, Flaw. on November 26th. Maybe I havent got about this in time to reach any agreement between you and the office of the President. Tell me as soon as you can when possibly you could come and what it would cost the college to hear you on a subject. If I am too late for now, we ­shall have to wait for my come-­back in April. The Kings (we never say King and Queen at Amherst)122 both want you very much and so do I. Speed is called for. Ever yours Robert Frost And now Agee—­Oh gee!123 Aint that long one a terrible travesty of Birches, Home Burial and The Fear combined! And the psy­chol­ogy of having a w ­ oman

121. ​Snow and his wife Jeanette. 122. ​Stanley King, president of Amherst College, and his wife Margaret. 123. ​Untermeyer had spoken favorably of James Agee’s Permit Me Voyage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1934.

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so both­ered over a still born child!124 Take the very first ­little lyric in this book.125 What is such a ­t hing if it isnt pretty flawless? ­There are five flaws to eight lines. You cant have anything between a joy—­one joy. “Many could” is painful outside parentheses. The euphemism of “everyway” is unpleasant. Why not say ­every which way? What does “wind not up” mean? I’ve heard this being kind to a boy called winding up a l­ittle ball of yarn. Wolfer night ­doesn’t interrupt love. Night brings lovers together. He means wolfer day. Of course he means Death, if you’ll only help him with a l­ittle understanding. Climbs! Why climbs. No luck at all in my first two dips. What am I ­going to say to the kid? “Hereafter in a better book than this I s­ hall desire more love and knowledge of you.”126 R.

[To Wade Van Dore. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass November 12 1934 Dear Wade: I’m sorry if your job doesnt turn out as supporting as you hoped it would. I have no doubt Walter does the best he can for you. It is hard for a city person to realize about farming.127

124. ​RF refers to Agee’s blank-­verse narrative, “Ann Garner.” The farmwife of the title delivers a stillborn child in midwinter, and, grief-­stricken, withdraws from society. 125. ​That is, the first of Agee’s “Lyr­ics” (a series of four other­w ise untitled poems): Child, should any pleasant boy Find you lovely, many could, Wind not up between your joy The sly delays of maidenhood: Spread all your beauty in his sight And do him kindness ­e very way Since soon, too soon, the wolfer night Climbs in between, and ends fair play. 126. ​See As You Like It (1.ii), where Lebeau says to Orlando: “Hereafter, in a better world than this, / I ­shall desire more love and knowledge of you.” 127. ​Walter Hendricks (who then lived in Chicago). Van Dore, his wife, and infant son Peter ­were spending the winter looking ­a fter a large property Hendricks had recently

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About your other and more impor­tant m ­ atter: Of course you must try for a new book soon. But please give up the idea of its being the long poem against Robinson.128 He is my personal friend and I admire a lot of his poetry. Your attack on him could only hurt my feelings and hurt me with him. I am sure you dont want to distress me and give me any more trou­ble than I have to think of. My suggestion would be if you must write and publish something to hit them between the eyes or on the end of the chin, why [not]129 say in verse some of the radical social ­t hings I have heard you say in conversation. You ­were saying last summer it had got so it was as shameful to ask for a real job as it was to ask for help from the government. It seems to me you have something sensational ­there if you ­w ill say it straight from the shoulder. Make a story of a person who came to your conclusion and the steps and incidents by which he came. See that the work is done with your poetic richness. I mean have the lines loaded as in your short poems. I think the Stephen Daye Press might take an interest in you as now a Vermonter.130 But for goodness sake stay a Vermonter for a while. Are you comfortable and are ­there milk eggs and stored-up vegetables? I’ve been thinking of you and meaning to write when I knew your exact address. Ever yours R.F.

purchased in Marlboro, Vermont (some ten miles west of Brattleboro). Van Dore explains: “Edrie and I expected a fair amount of financial help from Walter in October since we had incurred extra expenses coming up from Huxley Hill [Van Dore’s place near Sheffield, Mas­sa­c hu­setts], buying supplies for [our son] Peter, and preparing for the winter. He did send money, but not as much as we needed. The bottom of the depression had been reached, and t­ here ­were no signs of a national recovery. I wrote Frost another report on our scenic and financial situation, also mentioning that I felt it was time I tried to publish a new book” (Life of the Hired Man, 209). 128. ​E.  A. Robinson. Van Dore says nothing about such a poem, though he does speak, in Life of the Hired Man (1986), of undertaking the following: “a book-­length poem that in honor of my son I would call Peter Goes to Work. This was to describe my adventures in all sorts of jobs” (212). 129. ​Van Dore supplies this correction (unmarked) in his Life of the Hired Man (209). 130. ​In 1932, the Stephen Daye Press was founded, in Brattleboro, Vermont, by Vrest Orton.

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[To Joseph Blumenthal. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass November 12 1934 Dear Mr Blumenthal: I’m hurrying the pictures back. On this showing, Nason I think, is nearer my idea. Ganso isnt as good in the country as he seemed in the park.131 Maybe he is merely less lucky this time. But Nason ­isn’t perfect. We have to remember however that neither of his pictures is designed for the space even. Art to order is a big risk. Can you show me what you get? Whoever does the job should be sympathetic enough to read the ­whole book to get the spirit. It’s a small book.132 We both enjoyed having you. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Harold Rugg. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass Nov 14 1934 Dear Rugg: I ­shall be honored I’m sure.133 But ­there are ­things to consider. I ­shall have to see the poems and pass on them. I have some notion of what Warning and

131. ​Thomas  W. Nason (1889–1971), American woodcut artist, illustrator, and engraver; Emil Ganso (1895–1941), German-­born American woodcut artist, painter, and engraver. Presumably RF refers (“in the park”) to Ganso’s 1929 lithograph Summer Night, Central Park. 132. ​Blumenthal designed and printed (for Henry Holt and Com­pany) a special edition of ABW, issued in December 1934 and illustrated by Nason (see Crane, A2.2). For details, see the notes to RF’s June 3, 1933, letter to Thornton. 133. ​Rugg had proposed a small edition of poems RF published in the 1890s. The proposal bore fruit as Three Poems (Hanover, NH: Baker Library Press, 1935), a twelve-­page booklet reprinting “The Quest of the Orchis” (­later retitled “Quest of the Purple Fringed” and collected in AWT [CPPP, 311]), “Warning” (CPPP, 503), and “Caesar’s Lost Transport Ships” (CPPP, 501). The poems first appeared (respectively) in the In­de­pen­dent on June 27, 1901, September 9, 1897, and January 14, 1897. See also RF to Rugg, February 8 1935.

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Caesar’s Lost Transports, none of what The Bugle Call might be.134 They may all prove worse than I could bear, though the first two sound like ­things I have liked some time in a dream. I know of another I wish we could find for you. I’ve forgotten its name, but it was about purple-­fringed orchids. Shubrick Clymer, collector of me, once made me a copy and would prob­ably be willing to make me another. Now about terms. To make a book too rare isnt fair. An edition of no more than fifty and an allowance of no more than five to me would merely get me into trou­ble with valuable friends. You must print a hundred and let me have twenty five. That’s all I ask. I should put them away and only yield them one by one as I was forced by just claimants who w ­ ouldn’t speculate in them.135 What say you? Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Lambert Davis (1905–1993), American editor and publisher. In 1934, he was managing editor at the ­Virginia Quarterly Review. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst Mass November 14 1934 Dear Mr Davis: You did get yourself in deep, ­d idn’t you? But dont let it bother you more than a moment. Your embarrassment is my gain.136 You put me in the stra134. ​“ The Bugle-­Call,” by the Canadian poet Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald (1864– 1922), appeared in the same issue of the In­de­pen­dent (August 20, 1896) that printed RF’s “The Birds Do Thus” (CPPP, 500); hence Rugg’s confusion. For an assessment of RF’s early published work, see Jonathan Barron, How Robert Frost Made Realism M ­ atter (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2015). 135. ​In the end, one hundred copies ­were printed, and it was stipulated that none ­were for sale. It is not the destiny of all goods to go to market. Nontheless, “speculators” in rare books now buy and sell copies of Three Poems for upward of $3,000. 136. ​In “Robert Frost and VQR” (Web), Jon Schneider and Julia Kudravetz provide an account of events addressed in this letter: “In October of 1934, Managing Editor Lambert Davis placed an advertisement listing upcoming VQR contributors and, where he intended to write the poet Robert Francis, wrote Robert Frost’s name. Lambert Davis wrote a thorough apology to Frost with this twist: ‘Also, it seems to me that our only way out now is to publish a poem of yours in the next issue.’ ” The misadventure continued when RF s­ topped in Charlottesville in December and no one at VQR was t­ here to

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tegic position of being asked for a poem, a position in which I dearly like to be put; and you c­ an’t blame me ­after what I went through with editors when young. What should you say if I witheld [sic] the poem now to deliver it in person with pomp and circumstance on my way south in early December. Would that be rubbing it in? It would give me a chance to see several ­people I like much and often think of. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Nathaniel Abalino Cutler (1868–1941), American educator, at the time principal of Athol High School (Athol, Mas­sa­chu­setts). The letter is presumably RF’s response to an invitation to speak at the school. ALS. Private.]

Amherst [Mas­sa­chu­setts] November 14 1934 Dear Mr. Cutler: ­There c­ an’t be much lecturing or reading for me this winter. I am being sent south for my health and am not expected back before April. The health is no very serious ­matter but serious enough for caution. I am sorry I am so unavailable. Thank you for your kindness in thinking of me. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Joseph Blumenthal. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass November 23 1934 Dear Mr Blumenthal: We’ve hesitated a moment longer. The picture for the title page is fine.137 My doubt of the design for the cover is perhaps due to the fact that no grain

receive him. Davis wrote an apology, but RF did not reply. “Iris by Night,” “A Figure in the Doorway,” and “In Time of Cloudburst” appeared as a trio in the April 1936 issue of VQR. 137. ​As Blumenthal describes it in Robert Frost and His Printers: “a beautiful rendering of an old abandoned fence post with a vine r­ unning through and around it” (Austin, TX:

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of any kind has been associated with the scythe in New E ­ ngland or anywhere 138 ­else in Amer­i­ca I think, for longer than my life time. If the wisp he used for ­binder had been weeds, Joe Pye, Golden Rod or Turtle Head or even Timothy or Red Top hay,139 I should have been easier in the mind. But I still cling to the idea of a bristle of three or four or five scythes, roughly circular as a w ­ hole like a handful grab of jack-­straws. None of this is too impor­tant, but it is a ­little to me. Always yours Robert Frost

[To Otto Manthey-­Zorn. ALS. ACL.]

707 Seminole Ave Key West Florida December 17 1934 Dear Otto: We’ve brought up ker-­bump where you might have guessed we would bring up. You may think of us as cast away by Doc Haskell140 on a desert island or rather deserted island (twelve thousand out of twenty four have left it in the last ten years) with nothing to eat but guava jelly breadfruit copra limes and

W. Thomas Taylor, 1985): 23. In the years to come, he would use the image frequently, in printing RF items. 138. ​See “Mowing,” in ABW (the book u ­ nder discussion h ­ ere), where the scythe is used to mow hay, not reap grain. Thomas Nason’s design featured several scythes standing upright and bound together by strands of wheat. 139. ​Joe Pye weed, common name for Eutrochium purpureum (a member of the sunflower ­family); goldenrod, common name for Solidago (of the aster ­family); turtlehead, common name for Chelone (related to snapdragons); Timothy grass, a perennial, cultivated as forage since the seventeenth c­ entury in New Hampshire (Timothy hay); redtop hay, common name for Agrostis alba. All had been grown in New E ­ ngland for hundreds of years. 140. ​Dr. Nelson Cary Haskell (1866–1952), an Amherst physician of long standing (he had studied at the college, graduating in 1887, and then begun practice in the town in 1897). As has been noted, Haskell treated Elinor for angina in New York in November 1934, and recommended that the Frosts winter in the south. He would l­ater, in April 1938, be one of the nineteen honorary pall ­bearers at Elinor White Frost’s funeral. See FL, 169, 197–198.

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canned goods nothing to read but a one-­volume history of Rome which we brought with us to see if we ­couldn’t cure ourselves of the dangerous habit of drawing historical parallels between anything happening now and the acts of Caius Lincinius [sic] Stolo, Caius and Tiberus [sic] Gracchus, Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus and so on down to Alexander Severus who turned the last real Romans out of the Senate and filled their places with Wops.141 It certainly is a disease with me to think I can get any help for the pre­sent out of the past. ­There is nothing so deluding as a comparison of ages. I am reading Brisbane’s editorial column in the Miami Herald for real­ity.142 I am writing this on a nice piece of driftwood. I dont mean sitting astride it in the Gulf of Mexico. It is not as bad as that and if it ­were I shouldnt have to worry much with the ­whole US Govt concentrated ­here in force to rescue any body in any kind of trou­ble whatsoever. So help me I didnt know the safety I was getting into in coming to Key West. Elinor ­w ill absolve me of having got her involved more or less personally in the New Deal on purpose. But it is a portentous fact that I have brought her to the pet salvation proj­ect of her President and mine.143 It’s the damndest joke yet. ­There’s fatality in it. 141. ​RF’s survey of Roman history from republic to dictatorship and principate turns on issues of agrarian reform and po­liti­cal repre­sen­ta­t ion (as did the New Deal). As tribune in 376 BCE, Caius Licinius Stolo proposed that a more lenient schedule govern repayment of plebian debts, that land holdings be ­limited, and that a plebian be regularly chosen as one of the two consuls. Tribune in 133 BCE, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus revived Licinian laws which had been neither repealed nor enforced in order to restore a dwindling class of in­de­pen­dent farmers; he was murdered at the instigation of the senate. As tribune in 123 BCE, Caius Sempronius Gracchus renewed the laws of his ­brother Tiberius, won the support of urban masses by instituting a “corn dole” (lex frumentaria), and proposed a broad extension of the franchise; he was killed by rioters in 121 BCE and his reforms abolished. Alexander Severus, emperor from 222 to 235 CE and Gibbon’s exemplar for the modern prince, sought to limit corruption and to secure peace and order by weakening the dominance of the army and restoring the prestige of the senate; he was murdered by soldiers. 142. ​A rthur Brisbane (1864–1936), an influential journalist of conservative leanings, and a power­f ul figure in William Randolph Hearst’s media empire. His writing was syndicated nationwide. 143. ​Key West was a major proj­ect of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. With two-­t hirds of its inhabitants on relief in 1934, the local government bankrupt, and its infrastructure in shambles, on July 2, 1934, governor David Scholtz declared the town to be in a state of “civil emergency,” and municipal authority was transferred to the Florida Emergency Relief Administration, ­u nder the direction of the regional FERA administrator, Julius F. Stone (1901–1967). Stone considered relocating the entire population

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I begin to believe I am called to be the Laureate of the ­whole crazy business ­whether I like it or not. I wrote a sketch of it prophetically for my ΦBK in May 1932 before it was heard of or thought of.144 And ­here I am providentially and not other­w ise where I can hardly keep from being a part of it. Be prepared for the worst in blank verse. We almost retreated two or three times last week to the inclemency of home in New ­England. I figured Elinor was being let off easy in being taken to a south sea island accessible by railroad. But u ­ ntil her subconscious was convinced that the island wasnt ­going to rock u ­ nder her she was actually seasick from associations of smell. I was homesick and so was she. I was price sick and so was she. You ­ought to hear the wild talk about the boom ahead. Miami is full of itself once more. Well anyway we are more than a hundred miles south of t­ here, and the boom the all-­h ighest in Washt has decreed for this land’s end is not due for a year or two yet. It is still the hard luck place that had the cigar manufacturing and lost it to Tampa that was promised fifty thousand winter population by the President of the Atlantic Coast RR and didnt get it ­because he died and that had a U.S. Naval Station and lost it in the crash of 1930.145 I’ll tell you more next time. of Key West to Tampa. That proved infeasible, so Stone appropriated more than $1 million in FERA funds to revitalize the town and attract private capital investment. For more on the state of Key West in the 1930s, see Gary Boulard’s “State of Emergency: Key West in the ­Great Depression,” Florida Historical Quarterly 67.2 (October 1988): 166–183, and Durward Long, “Key West and the New Deal, 1934–1936,” Florida Historical Quarterly 46.3 (1968): 209–218. 144. ​“Build Soil,” delivered as Phi Beta Kappa Poem at Columbia University on May 31, 1932. 145. ​RF’s reference to “hard luck” touches upon significant moments in Key West history. In 1885, Vicente Martinez Ybor (1819–1896), dissatisfied with Key West’s paucity of fresh ­water, the difficulties of shipping, and the militancy of local ­labor, moved his cigar manufacturing business to east Tampa (Ybor City). Over the next de­cade, most of Key West’s other cigar manufacturers followed. In 1905, the Florida East Coast Railway, owned by Henry M. Flagler (1830–1913), began construction of the Overseas Railroad to link Key West to the mainland. One of the g­ reat engineering feats of its time and built ­u nder terrible, often deadly conditions, the railroad was completed in 1912; on January 22 of that year, the first train disembarked in Key West at 10:43 a.m. ­A fter Flagler’s death in 1913, however, his larger plans for development in Key West went nowhere. (The railroad would be destroyed in the ­Labor Day hurricane of 1935 that also took the lives of hundreds of World War I veterans employed by FERA to construct a Key West roadway; it was eventually completed, using much of the former railroad structure, in 1938.) During the Spanish–­A merican War the entire Atlantic fleet was stationed in Key West (the USS

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The night of the big freeze in Florida last week, the thermometer dropped to 40 in Key West. I s­ hall be 60 in March.146 Ever yours Robert

[To George Roy Elliott. ALS. ACL.]

707 Seminole Ave Key West Florida December 17 1934 Dear Roy: You who are about to travel so soon yourself ­can’t say much against my travelling. How r­ eally do you discriminate in pronunciation and definition between travel and travail?147 We admit we have been utterly miserable thus far. But we are always worse abroad at first than ­later. It is so outrageous to my native pride to have to establish my respectability with landladies and bankers. Their ­whole vocabulary comes from having examined applicants for their niceness in clothes position and pocket­book. I go to a real estate agent for a ­house and what ­shall I tell him I am? What in modesty? ­Here in Key West we have a national rehabilitation proj­ect ­r unning every­thing. I am dragged by the house-­renting clerk before the Rehabilitator in Chief to see if I ­w ill do, that is to say, mea­sure up to his idea of what the new citizenry must look [like] as if it thought felt and acted on u ­ nder God and the President at Washington. The Rehabilitator is a rich young man in shorts with hairy legs named Stone. Maine sailed from its naval base). In September 1930, the Key West Naval Station established during World War I had been ordered closed, for economic reasons, by President Hoover; only forty officers remained garrisoned ­t here (though the navy would return in force once the US entered World War II). 146. ​Sixty-­one, in fact. 147. ​In his reply, dated December 23, 1934, Elliott quotes Touchstone (As You Like It, 2.iv): “Ay, now am I in Arden; the more foole I; when I was at home, I was in a better place: but travellers must be content.” And then adds: “I looked up the above passage in the Folio of 1623, hoping it would read ‘travailers’ for your sake, but it ­doesn’t, and I dare not alter a sacred text. . . . ​The root was of course Latin ‘Trabs,’ a beam, obstacle; and ‘travail’ was the original word and meaning. I suppose the ‘travel’ became differentiated as travelling became safe and easy. Contrast Modern Key West with ancient Cathay, and be content, be good” (DCL).

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He has recently distinguished himself for something charitable in Buffalo.148 He is very close to Franklin Roo­se­velt and Vincent Astor149 —­can bring the President down this winter on Vincent Astors yacht to give this par­t ic­u ­lar proj­ect his personal blessing. The lady assumes to recommend me for a ­house in town.150 What can be said for me? What have I said for myself. For one ­thing hesitatingly that I come from Mass. (Im not sure that it wouldnt be honester to say from Vt.) It sounds as if I w ­ ere concealing something: I ask myself which would be claiming most—to say I was from Mass. or Vt. I simply w ­ ill not boast. The lady wants me to understand Key West is no tooth-­pick and suspender colony like Sarasota Winter Park and St Petersburg. She can see I am the kind to appreciate that. I remind her of a Mr Tibbets from Maine a real gentleman they have just admitted to the payment of ­house rent. I said yes my name Frost was often mistaken for Tibbets on the telephone. She cried Humor! What the New Deal wants more than anything e­ lse especially in Key West is some humor into it. Did I stand accepted then in their sight oh Lord?151 What was my occupation they wondered as we stood t­ here looking sidelong up and down each other. I was certainly old enough to be retired. But from what? From being a farmer, from being a teacher, or from being an Arthur? Or wasnt I ­going to satisfy their curiosity by telling them? The fact was they ­were turning me into a criminal while they waited to decide my fate. They ­were turning me into an e­ nemy of every­thing Rustic in Amer­i­ca and an egg for the Ogpu to deal with.152 Not that I blame them altogether. I am much to

148. ​­Until lately Julius Stone had lived in Buffalo, New York, where he was vice president of the Columbus McKinnon Chain Com­pany (which his ­father owned). 149. ​Astor (1891–1959), son of John Jacob Astor IV (1864–1912), businessman and philanthropist, and, from 1928 to 1930, commodore of the New York Yacht Club. He had considerable property in Bermuda. 150. ​In a December 1934 letter to Lesley Frost, Elinor describes the place: “The ­house we are ­going into is right on the ­water. It has an upstairs and downstairs. The owner, a 50 yr. old ­w idow, lives upstairs. The rent is 35 dollars per month” (FL, 173). 151. ​Psalms 19:14. 152. ​OGPU: The Joint State Po­l iti­cal Directorate, pre­de­ces­sor to the KGB, which operated in the USSR from 1923 to 1934. It was much in the news at the time RF wrote this letter. Leonid Nickolaiev, one of its agents, had assassinated Sergei Kirov (head of the Communist Party in Leningrad) on December  1, an event that occasioned the first of Stalin’s show ­t rials.

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blame for being caught once more where I have to be my own sponsor by out-­ and-­out declaration or by ­little indirections with seeming casualness let fall. Let p­ eople stay at home where they neednt be forever telling ­others not to be afraid of them, ­either socially or financially. You’ll be excited to learn a­ fter being kept in all this suspense, did we get a ­house from the authorities or not. We did, we did! But not on our face value. We never should have got by if it hadnt been for our name. Some clerk a Jew in the background who had been d­ oing some hard research broke the all-­ round constraint by doubting You aint the Frost (I forget his first name) who writes poetry for Michigan University? ­There are five Frosts writing poetry, I said, two men and three w ­ omen.153 I’m no [sic] one of the w ­ omen. I was saved now provided only I would pay my rent for the w ­ hole winter in advance. It makes me sick for home. Ever yours R.F.

[To Joseph Blumenthal. ALS. ACL.]

Seminole Ave Key West Florida December 18 1934 Dear Mr Blumenthal: I can relax and enjoy ­these two ­things you are ­doing for me ­because one is nothing new to the public and the other is not for the public at all.154 Your printing and bookmaking is what I am interested in chiefly. I have telegraphed my receptivity. I ­shall be impatient till the t­ hings come. This is a funny place to be. It has been made a crown de­pen­dency. That is to say it comes directly ­u nder the Imperator at Washington without intervention of ­either a city mayor or state governor. I expected to find it a busted cigar town. It turns out to be a busted land-­boom town—­a ll cut up into

153. ​The ­women ­were: Frances M. Frost (1905–1959), Elizabeth Hollister Frost (1887– 1958), and Evelyn Graham Frost (1903–1934) (they all published work in Poetry). We have been unable to identify the other male “Frost.” 154. ​The item not for the public is “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (RF’s Christmas poem for 1934, designed and printed, as was the 1934 edition of ABW, by Blumenthal).

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speculators [sic] lots—­with hardly a h ­ ouse on them.155 It w ­ ill have to do now ­we’re h ­ ere. Always yours Robert Frost

[To Charles R. Green. ALS. Jones.]

Seminole Ave Key West Florida December 18 1934 Dear Mr Green: Reluctance may have been published ­later than I have thought. I know Mitchell Kennerly [sic] was editor of what­ever it was published in at the time when it was published.156 I won­der if that ­wouldn’t be clue enough for Shubrick Clymer. If not I give up on this one as I do on Now Close the Win­dows.157 Leonora Speyer had something to do with an anthology of modern American poetry, some of it mine, published in Germany in En­glish, but she has forgotten. I believe Alfred Kreymborg helped her, or she him, with the book.158 We dont like it yet down ­here at the extremity. But thats the kind of travellers we always are. I dont expect to like it in Heaven at first. Always yours faithfully Robert Frost

155. ​Landowners in Key West had suffered heavi­ly when the Florida real-­estate ­bubble of the early 1920s burst. 156. ​Actually, “Reluctance” appeared in the Youth’s Companion on November 7, 1912, during Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe’s second term ­t here as editor. Mitchell Kennerley edited the Forum from 1910 to 1916, during which period RF’s poem “My November Guest” appeared in the magazine (in November 1912). 157. ​“Now Close the Win­dows” did not appear in a magazine; it was published first in ABW. 158. ​ American Poets: An Anthology of Con­temporary Verse (Munich, Germany: Kurt Wolff, 1923). Kreymborg’s name is not associated with the book. Leonora Speyer (1872–1956) was a Pulitzer Prize–­w inning American poet and concert violinist. RF would have known her as president of the Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca, and as a member of the faculty at Columbia University.

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Ask Shubrick Clymer to send Harold Goddard Rugg Librarian at Dartmouth College a copy [of] The Quest of the Orchis, w ­ ill you please? I o ­ ught to be surer of Clymer’s address. Is it Chesham, New Hampshire?159 R.F.

[To Ruth Suckow. ALS. Iowa.]

Seminole Ave Key West Florida December 18 1934 Dear Miss Suckow: It was too bad you ­were out. But no loss without some gain. I ­shall have read your book by the time I come back to Washington and so be better prepared to meet you.160 From all I can learn, I am safe in saying that. And maybe I ­shall have written my own book of state eclogues, one of which I am down at this rehabilitation proj­ect getting material for w ­ hether I want it or not.161 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Amy Robinson, whom we have been unable to identify. ALS. DCL.]

Seminole Ave Key West Florida December 18 1934 Dear Mrs Robinson You d­ idn’t think I was g­ oing to charge you anything for that small ­favor. Dont expect me to charge you. Charge yourself according to your conscience 159. ​In 1932, Clymer and his wife Anita built a summer h ­ ouse near Harrisville, New Hampshire (within which Chesham is an unincorporated community). It is now on the register of historical places, owing to its distinction as the best example of Colonial Revival architecture in the Harrisville District. 160. ​In 1934, Suckow’s longest novel, The Folks (New York: Farrar and Rinehart), was published to laudatory reviews. Suckow and her husband Ferner Nuhn w ­ ere living in Washington, DC, where Nuhn worked as a writer for the US Department of Agriculture. 161. ​In speaking of “state” eclogues RF has in mind a state of the u ­ nion, not the government as such: The Folks is a regionalist novel about an Iowa f­ amily.

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and what the trea­sury of the Club ­w ill bear and give the ­whole sum (­whether it is ten cents or one dollar) to your church or city charities with your compliments and mine. You see where we have got for our health—­about as far as is pos­si­ble in this direction ­under the American flag. ­There is of course the Canal Zone still further south if Key West isnt warm enough or natu­ral enough.162 Its unnaturalness for the time being is due to its being entirely on the charity of the U.S. Govt. All its officers have abdicated in ­favor of Franklin D. Roo­se­velt. We dont know what to think of it as yet. Best wishes to you both. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Harold Rugg. Dated from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

[Key West, Florida] [December 20, 1934] Dear Mr Rugg: The one I like best of the three poems you found is Caesars Lost Triremes.163 The first stanza of Warning (if I remember the name) is rather good. It was written before Kiplings Recessional and owes nothing to his refrain. I won­der if it was printed before.164 What was the year of the Queens jubilee?165 The other ­little one I wish you could get along without.166 Why not use The Quest of the Orchis in its place? I have been meaning to find you my copy of The 162. ​The Panama Canal Zone was a United States territory from 1903 to 1979. 163. ​In other words, “Caesar’s Lost Transport Ships.” A trireme is a type of Roman galley, so named from its three banks of oars. For the proj­ect in question, see also RF to Rugg, September 25, 1934, November 14, 1934, and February 8, 1935. 164. ​That is, before Kipling’s poem had appeared. 165. ​ “ Warning” was printed in the In­de­pen­dent on September  9, 1897. Rudyard Kipling’s “Recessional” was written in the same year—­t he year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The refrain of Kipling’s poem is “Lest we forget—­lest we forget!”; that of “Warning,” “You ­w ill forget, you ­w ill forget” (with variations in the second and third stanzas). 166. ​This is presumably “The Birds Do Thus.” Rugg, having initially misidentified Helen MacDonald’s “The Bugle-­Call” as by RF, seems now to have proposed for republication the poem that RF had placed in the In­de­pen­dent back in August 1896. RF, in turn, is nixing Rugg’s suggestion.

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Quest of the Orchis. But it must be hiding from me. I think Mr Shubrick Clymer of Chesham New Hampshire w ­ ill supply you with a copy if you tell him I urged you on. Let me know if he d­ oesn’t and ­we’ll see what can be done. Look where I am. I say it is for Mrs Frost’s health and she says it is for mine. Neither of us likes it very much yet. But a­ fter all it is part of the earth (a small part, two or three miles long by a mile or so wide, about a dozen times the size of my farm in South Shaftsbury but all cut up into speculators’ ­house lots about the size of ­family lots in a graveyard.) And what­ever ­g reat thinkers may say against the earth, I notice no one is anxious to leave it for ­either Heaven or Hell. Heaven may be better than Hell as reported, but it is not as good as the earth. Even as a child I could tell from the way my elders acted about it. This town has been nationalized to secure it from its own speculative excesses. The personal interest of Roo­se­velt in his second coming167 has been invoked and both mayor and governor have abdicated till we can see what absolute authority can do to restore the prices of the speculators’ graveyard plots and make Key West equal to Miami. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To William Lusk Field (1876–1963), American educator. Between 1917 and 1942, he was headmaster of Milton Acad­emy in Milton, Mas­sa­chu­setts. The letter is inscribed in a copy of “Two Tramps in Mud-­Time,” RF’s 1934 Christmas card. ALS. Milton Acad­emy.]

Key West Florida December 24 1934 Dear Mr Field: I c­ an’t always tell what I can do at the stand-­and-­deliver of a tele­g ram. I have to take time to think. Of course I should like to come to see you all at Milton again; and if you would wait till I arise from ­these latitudes in April I should think I could come.168 Sincerely yours Robert Frost 167. ​A joke not merely about FDR’s decision to resurrect Key West. FDR—­who co-­ owned with John Lawrence a h ­ ouse­boat named The Larooco—­had been a frequent visitor to the island during the winters of 1923–1926 (he sought relief from his paralysis in swimming). 168. ​RF read at Milton Acad­emy on May 3, 1935.

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[To Groff Conklin (1904–1968), assistant editor at the University of Chicago Press. ALS. Wisconsin– ­Eau Claire.]

[Christmas 1934] Dear Mr Conklin: Thanks for your fresh translation of the Vigil.169 I’ve been having lines of it run in my head with some of the original Et nemus comam resolvit de maritis imbribus.170 In requital have this from me171 and remember me as always a friend of what you do Robert Frost

[To Marshall Louis Mertins. ALS. Berkeley.]

Key West Florida Dec 26 1934 Dear Mertins: I wish we might see each other for a talk. But look where I am this time for someone’s health. We have had a g­ reat sadness since I saw you last. My ­daughter Marjorie who wrote good poetry but sad, died tragically at the birth of her first child last spring. That was in Billings Montana. We ­were t­ here a long time with her at the end. It seems as if my wife would never be the same again. The daughter-­i n-­law who lay sick in Monrovia for two years has completely recovered. Carol is back on his New E ­ ngland farm with her. T ­ here was always the chance while they ­were in California that Carol would find some foothold as a farmer in California and by settling t­ here make a Californian of me again. But farming is so dif­fer­ent in California from what he grew up to in New Hampshire and Vermont that he never seemed to know how to go about it. Some of you [sic] friends out ­there ­ought to have connived a ­l ittle at 169. ​The Pervigilium Veneris  (or  Vigil of Venus), a Latin poem  of uncertain authorship dating to the late Roman empire. Conklin had self-­published a translation of it for use as a Christmas card. 170. ​As translated by J. W. Mackail: “. . . ​a nd the woodland loosens her tresses ­u nder nuptial showers” (Catullus, Tibullus and Pervigilium Veneris [New York: G.  P. Putnam, 1918]): 349. 171. ​A copy of RF’s Christmas card for 1934.

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our getting a start on the coast. I dont altogether give up the idea yet. Dont take it as a promise that commits me in the least, but you might see me out ­there at your big ­table in November, though that is a trifle early I’m afraid for my plans (very very vague as yet.) I should like to see you more than a l­ ittle. And I should like to see Garver and Shippey and Garland.172 I can get cross with Garland about small ­things. (He’s been saying in a recent book that he found me unpractical as he had expected to find me.173 Dad blame it, ­he’ll spoil me for getting a job with the CWA if he doesnt look out.)174 But he’s a fine old-­timer and I’m getting old myself. I wish I had I wish you would send me your d­ aughters [sic] ­whole name175 so I could send her the se­lection I have just made from my five books to amuse myself and anyone e­ lse who may won­der what my self-­preferences are.176 Her having espoused my cause at U.C.L.A. must not go unrewarded. I enjoyed your Longfellowan sonnets about Chaucer and about your old teacher. The gentleness of your nature comes out in them. We must swap a poem now and then. H ­ ere’s one of mine called Two Tramps in Mud-­time and

172. ​Garland Greever (1883–1967), professor in the En­glish department at the University of Southern California; Hamlin Garland; and Henry Lee Shippey (1884–1969), American author and journalist who for many years wrote a popu­lar column in the Los Angeles Times. 173. ​Garland had included a portrait of RF in After­noon Neighbors: Further Excerpts from a Literary Log (New York: Macmillan, 1934). The account is of a July 30, 1926, visit to RF’s farm in South Shaftsbury. Garland writes: “I found [Frost] as fine, as philosophic and as impractical as I had suspected him to be.” What he means by “impractical” is, in part, explained by what follows: “Mrs. Frost, whom I had never before met, impressed me as a loyal but disheartened ­l ittle ­woman. She was sweetly patient, but her face in repose was sad; and I wondered if she enjoyed farm life as well as her husband did. . . . ​This puts a dif­fer­ent light on Robert’s serene challenge to the commercial world. He is f­ ree to come and go, but she must remain ‘on the job.’ . . . ​[Frost’s] noble simplicity of character is exactly what his books indicate, but I carried away a vivid picture of his toiling wife who would, I suspect, welcome something of the comfort which a flat offers to the h ­ ouse­w ife” (337–338). 174. ​The Civilian Works Administration, a New Deal employment program launched in November 1933. 175. ​­Virginia Lee Mertins de Vries (1912–2010), who would gradu­ate from UCLA with a BA in En­glish in 1936. 176. ​ SP 1934.

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I consider it to be against having hobbies.177 I dont know what you consider it to be. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. DCL.]

Seminole Ave Key West Floriday December 26 1934 Dear Mr Thornton: You are prob­ably back by now. Then welcome. And I hope you are having happy holidays with the ­family. We are literally combing the beach of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico for Christmas. I was presented by the waves with a fairly respectable lap-­board to write my next book on.178 The books came and I must say of the Selected that I like the form you have given it better than ever. But ­there is one very very disappointing ­thing about it. That dedication to Mrs Thomas has got in again. How could it have ­after all I have said.179 Mrs Thomas ceased to be a friend of ours some years ago. I’m deeply humiliated to be put in the position of trying to keep it up with her ­after it is over. I hope not too many copies of the book have been bound up and that something can be done to discontinue the m ­ istake. I hope also that this can be entirely between you and me—­I mean kept from the public and the collectors. Lets see if they ­will find out the change for themselves and lets not help them in the least to surmise the reasons. I dont want a story made out of it.

177. ​Where the title of “Two Tramps in Mud-­Time” appears in the ­table of contents for AFR, RF adds a subtitle: “or, A Full-­Time Interest.” 178. ​For the “lap-­board,” see also RF to Manthey-­Zorn, December 17, 1934. 179. ​Helen Thomas, w ­ idow of Edward Thomas; SP 1923 had been dedicated to her. For the acrimony with which RF now regarded her, see LRF-2, 674, 678–679. RF had attempted, and failed, to get the dedication removed from the 1928 edition of the book (see YT, 636). Three hundred copies of SP 1934 shipped with the dedication page in it before RF had them remove it.

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The other book 180 is a lovely piece of printing and binding. My only misgiving ­there is the decoration on the cover for which I am to blame. That dark square with the scythes looks like a hole let into it I’m afraid. I won­der if you dont think so. I wish a copy could be tried with the scythes rather dim on the sand color of the cover. Maybe it would be better with nothing at all. I sort of cling to the idea of the scythes though. W ­ ill you ask Melcher what he thinks? Sincerely yours Robert Frost ­Didn’t the Two Tramps come out well?

[To Joseph Blumenthal (who provides the date in a handwritten note on the manuscript). ALS. ACL.]

[Key West, Florida] [December 29, 1934] Dear Mr Blumenthal: As I have said the Two Tramps is fine. A Boys W ­ ill is simply beautiful in the printing and binding. T ­ here is a flaw in my plea­sure ­there however and I am myself entirely to blame. I’m not sure of ­those scythes. In the end I may want them left off altogether. Before it gets that far what should you say to trying them directly on the cover without any frame or panel or a dimmish red themselves on a smudge of gold. I wish we w ­ ere in New York where I could be argued with. I hate to give them up and yet I have a bad artistic conscience about them.181 Are you sending your personal imprint of Two Trams [sic] to the Joneses of Ann Arbor?182 ­Because if you are it would be overwhelming for me to send them my imprint. I suppose Charles Green of Amherst would like to get one

180. ​The second US edition of ABW, published in 1934. 181. ​As Blumenthal indicates in Robert Frost and His Printers, the request came too late. The book was already at the bindery. Nason had revised the device on the cover from scythes bound together with strands of wheat to (as Blumenthal explains) a “new drawing of three upright scythes supporting each other without help from a ­binder of any kind” (23). The image was stamped on the cover in gold on a dark brown panel. See RF to Blumenthal, November 23, 1934. 182. ​Howard Mumford Jones and his (second) wife Bessie Zaban Jones.

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each of all the four imprints.183 So would Harold Goddard Rugg Librarian at Dartmouth and Shubrick Clymer of Chesham New Hampshire. Should I have spoken sooner for them? Im enclosing my check for all that postage. I appreciate a l­ittle excess of zeal in your clerk. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Frederic Melcher. ALS. UVA.]

Seminole Ave Key West Florida December 30 1934 Dear Fred: Are you collector enough for it to be impor­tant to have Two Tramps with the imprints other than your own? I’m sending it with ours. Joe Blumenthal and Dick Thornton ­ought to let you have theirs. I should like yours if you have any left. I wanted to ask you about the cover of A Boys ­Will should you have seen it. I’m afraid I have hurt it with my scythe-­suggestion. The dark patch trou­ bles me. How does it strike you? Would it be any better with the scythes done directly on the sandy-­colored cloth? Had every­thing better come off? Whats getting into me? I used to be glad of any format I got? I’m beginning to be skittish. Did you ever get any word of Enoch Lincoln’s The Village?184 Can you find out some good book however profound of Justice Cordozas [sic] and have it sent me h ­ ere charged to me. We need reading. Can a book of

183. ​Blumenthal had printed one set for RF and Elinor, one for Henry Holt and Com­ pany, one for Frederic Melcher, and one for himself. RF’s Christmas cards would, over the years, be issued in a number of imprints (each bearing the name of the person or ­family who would mail the card out). Many collectors now seek complete sets of imprints for each card. 184. ​See the postscript to RF’s mid-­September (1935) letter to Melcher; RF, it appears, had asked Melcher to hunt up a copy of The Village. For more on Lincoln, see the notes to RF’s September 25, 1934, letter to Rugg.

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Max Beerbohms called Seven Men or Nine Men still be obtained?185 I’d like that too—at my own expense. This is Kayo Huaso as the Spaniards named it. It might have been translated into Bone Key. Instead it was corrupted into Key West.186 It is a very very dead place b­ ecause it has died several times. It died as a resort of pirates, then as a ­house of smugglers and wreckers, then as a cigar manafactury [sic] (the Cubans moved over h ­ ere to get inside the tariff wall187) then as winter resort boom town. Franklin D. Himself has taken it personally in hand to give it one more life to lose. FERA is all over the place. It is tropical all right but it is rather unsanitary and shabby. It has a million dollars worth of concrete sidewalks with no ­houses by them. It has three races not very well kept apart by race-­prejudice, Cubans Negroes and Whites. The population once 25000 has shrunk to 12000. We live not twenty feet from the w ­ aters of very quiet seas. What with coral shoals and other ­little keys, the wind has to be a West Indian hurricane to get up much waves. We are fifty miles at sea and the lowest temperature ever recorded was forty degrees above zero. I sleep ­under one sheet and wear one thickness of linen. P ­ eople that know say it is a Honolulu 188 five thousand miles nearer home. A third of the p­ eople at least speak Spanish but ­there is not a Spanish book in the poor public library. Neither is ­there a book with a star map. I went to make sure if the new big star we had raised was Canopus, Sirius’ rival.189

185. ​Benjamin Cardozo published The Nature of the Judicial Pro­cess in 1925 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press); this is likely what RF was sent. Max Beerbohm’s Seven Men, a collection of short stories, was published first in 1919. 186. ​Legend has it that Cayo Hueso was named for the bones of the (now extinct) Calusa Indians. In about 1700, tribes allied with the British drove them south from the Everglades region to which they ­were native, key by key, ­u ntil, reaching Key West, they ­were compelled to make a stand—­a nd ­were slaughtered. The earliest historians of Key West report, albeit on slim evidence, that the victors abandoned the bodies of the Calusa where they lay without burying them, such that when next the Spaniards arrived, the island was strewn with bones. 187. ​In the 1850s, Congress laid new tariffs on Cuban-­made cigars and, once the failed Ten Year’s War of In­de­pen­dence (1868–1878) made conditions even worse among poor Cuban cigar makers, many relocated to Key West for precisely the reason RF ­here gives. 188. ​­Until admission of Hawaii as a state in 1959, Key West was the southernmost city in the United States. 189. ​Canopus (Alpha Carinae) is the brightest star in the constellation of Carina, and the second brightest star a­ fter Sirius. It is not vis­i­ble in latitudes above Richmond,

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Send me two or three recent copies of your Weekly ­w ill you?190 This is Christmas begging. Do you know its just come to me that you had an apology owing you for the way I flunked out of the Presidency of P.E.N.191 You raised me to that exalted position. I left it like a tumble-­down Dick without grace or dignity.192 I ­really forgot about it ­after that terrible night when I sat by and let Canby preside for me. What brought it all back was the way Dashiel [sic] has treated me about the poems of mine John Hall Wheelock has been making him print and pay for. I ­d idn’t feature a single one not even On the Hearts Beginning to Cloud the Mind. To make it pointed he featured ­others’ poetry.193 Vengeance was his and he took it. Lets see you never did anything to me for failing you. I guess you are a real internationalist pacifist. I am always on the look out for one: but I dont often find a real one. Most of us act from the old motivations. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Otto Manthey-­Zorn. ALS. ACL.]

Seminole Ave Key West Florida December 30, 1934 Dear Otto: Its apparently sure enough we s­ hall stay h ­ ere a while for you to send a few books I am g­ oing to need. I know what a trou­ble it w ­ ill be, but I see no way ­ irginia. It culminates—or reaches its zenith in the eve­n ing sky—at midnight on V December 27. 190. ​ P ublishers Weekly. 191. ​See RF’s December 4, 1931, tele­g ram to Melcher. 192. ​Nickname of Richard ­Cromwell (1626–1712), son of Oliver ­Cromwell, earned for his precipitous fall from power as Lord Protector of ­England, Scotland, and Ireland. 193. ​The details of RF’s gripe with Alfred Dashiell (managing editor of Scriber’s Magazine) are not entirely clear. Dashiell did tuck “On the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind” way at the back of the April 1934 number of the magazine (though it had a page to itself). The only other poem in that number, by Isidore Schneider, appears well before RF’s. But in any case, the more notable (and reader-­catching) fact about that issue of the magazine is that it featured the concluding chapter of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night.

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out of it but to ask your help. I promised Louis Untermeyer last year I would go over his works this winter and tell him what certainly he ­ought not to omit from a volume of se­lections he is to have published in 1935.194 I should have brought his works with me but for vari­ous reasons I left them ­behind. They would have been a load in my bag, and I half hoped my need of them could wait till I got home. It seems ­there is haste. So if you ­will break into our home with the key and dig them out and pack them up and ship them by express. They are in their alphabetical order in the book-­case with the glass-­doors in my study. One book more. T ­ here is some where round among the books jumbled at the left of my par­tic­u ­lar chair in my study or on some ­table in one of the other sitting rooms a stout Untermeyer’s Anthology of Modern British and American Poetry. I want that too. And I’d like out of some recent poets that should be in a heap on a t­ able in the front room a book by Agee, one by Taggard, one by Flaccus.195 That’s all. It occurs to me that Charles Green has ways of getting books packed and shipped that we ordinary ­people h ­ aven’t; and I know he would be willing to help if you said I asked him to. You can have no idea how balmy a summer winter can be on a tropical island fifty miles out at sea. It is sunny a good deal of e­ very day. The total rainfall for the winter months is five inches. The lowest temperature ever recorded was forty degrees above zero. Two or three times a year it may go as low as sixty. For all the lack of winter rain t­ here is a humidity rather greater than at Amherst in the summer. A glass of ice ­water gathers dew very fast. Some of this may be from the surf spray, for we are only fifteen feet from the ­water. Still the surf is seldom big in this sea of coral shoals and keys. The question of how high the temperature goes seldom enters our heads. It stays somewhere between seventy and eighty day and night. I wear linen and sleep ­under one sheet. The papers carry long news articles on the weather up north contriving to make terrific what I suppose we regularly take up t­ here at home as a m ­ atter of course. ­Every wave of cold or snow that goes over you we get the full good of not suffering h ­ ere. Lesley was flying east last week on a day that sounded impossible.

194. ​ Selected Poems and Parodies (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935). See RF to Untermeyer, January 30, 1935. 195. ​James Agee, Permit Me Voyage (mentioned already: see RF to Untermeyer, November  2, 1934); Genevieve Taggard, Not Mine to Finish: Poems 1928–1934 (New York: Harper & ­Brothers, 1934); and Kimball Flaccus, Avalanche of April (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934).

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It seems to be easier to write from abroad home than from home abroad. I guess thats easily explained. Ever yours Robert

[To John Bartlett. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. UVA.]

[Key West, Florida] [January 1–2, 1935] Dear John: I have been intending to write you a Christmas letter of consolation for the way ­things have been g­ oing with your a­ dopted party and so by consequence with the republic.196 If only anything ­were clear it would be easier to talk. But ­there was a government once that began to put itself into the ­people, the object of its activity, to stiffen them so that t­here would be sure to be something ­there to govern. It kept ­doing for them out of the taxes till a day came when ­there [was] nothing positive enough left to tax. The last known it was making farmers pay taxes on any abandoned farms in their neighborhood as well as on their own. It was forcing the rich into the office of tax collector so that they could pay out of their own means what they failed to collect. The ­thing ran awhile longer before it went to pieces and began all over. The pieces ­were a long time lying around loose. I can just see a l­ ittle boy named Freddy Ordway looking at me in the class where we studied about that country.197 A government must feel a funny lost feeling when it has nobody but its own reflection to govern. It must be grateful to gangsters (it shows itself grateful to gangsters you’ll notice) for holding up their end in the conversation—­the give and take between governor and governed. A cat can fool itself into thinking a spool has life of its own, but even a cat soon tires of the make-­ believe. What it wants is generations of mice coming on from sources it does not have to supply. 196. ​Bartlett was a staunch conservative and Republican. 197. ​Frederick Ira Ordway (1894–1974), though two years younger than John Bartlett, was a classmate at Pinkerton. Presumably RF recalls ­here discussions of the fall of Rome in his classroom ­t here. As for Ordway: he went on to Phillips Exeter Acad­emy and afterward joined the Royal Flying Corps in Canada. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1920 and became a successful financier and banker in New York City.

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I paint a terrible picture of the past. The only fault I find with it is that like the pictures of winter in the north one reads in the Florida newspapers it may not be true. It may not be true of the past though history seems to say it is. It may have nothing in it to fear for the pre­sent. I dont see how we can get outside of t­ hings to know that without the danger of ­mental distension.198 All this may not be the decline of the west. I should feel sheepish to be too tragic about it. Let me not dramatize what, if it is happening, is too gradual over centuries for me to pretend honestly I can see it as drama. The most you and I can do is hang on to a few princi­ples of religion and life by which to judge and act. ­Things may come out our way. Even ­those who seem against us may be for us. At any rate we ­shall have done our part. One of the best ­things about the world is its badness. Is greed no more? Is competition over? Is war? It is our ­enemy who say so. It wont need us to confute them and all the thinking they are bound up in. To each according to his need. To each fame according to his aspiration. No more in school or out of school s­ hall we discriminate between first and second. I’m asked to suggest a plan for treating all authors alike.199 My answer is give every­body who claims to be an artist a minimum fame. A Cuban comes to my door with the worst painting I ever saw for sale. I say to him beamingly like a fond parent: You paint him (assuming that that’s the way a Cuban would speak En­glish). “Si Señor.” “What for you no paint for U ­ ncle Sam on the FERA?” “Not bad enough to come in u ­ nder.” “You are not, then, Señor, minimum-­fame boy?” He thummed [sic] his nose. “All right I pay you minimum price.” Down by the aquar­ium has Franklin D set up a studio for northern artists on the rocks.200

198. ​See RF’s (circa) March 21, 1935, letter to the Amherst Student (below): “it is as dangerous to try to get outside of anything as large as an age as it would be to engorge a donkey. Witness the many who in the attempt have suffered a dilation from which the tissues and the muscles of the mind have never been able to recover natu­ral shape.” A number of other phrases in this letter also find echoes in that letter-­essay. 199. ​See RF to Lewis, February 12, 1935. 200. ​The Key West Aquar­ium, a FERA-­sponsored attraction, opened in 1935. The Public Works Art Program, another of FDR’s relief programs, commissioned artists to create works that would promote nationalism and the “rediscovery” of Amer­i­ca. ­Under the leadership of Julius Stone, Key West artists had been commissioned to beautify the town to attract more tourists. An art gallery was established adjacent to the aquar­ium on Mallory Square, where ­c hildren and adults could take art classes. In addition to RF, literary luminaries who visited Key West that winter included John Dewey, Wallace Stevens, Max Eastman, S. J. Perelman, John Dos Passos, and Archibald MacLeish.

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It makes me mad this young Cuban pretender isnt taken into it. But I have been madder before and done nothing about it. And sadder too. Affectionately R. I failed to get this poem201 to you sooner for want of proper governmental incentive. It’s not that I d­ on’t know where I am t­ hese days. I’m as tough and self-­possessed as ever. But where I am has been too many places. For a month I was on the road with my usual allowance of lectures and then home hunting for us two and on top of that for Carol, Lillian, and Prescott. We found it harder this time to get satisfied. This town is an interestingly shabby place with a history of bygone piracy smuggling and fi­nally Cuban cigar manufacturing over ­here from Cuba to get inside the tariff wall. All is gone except the hope of becoming a popu­lar Florida resort. That hope has dwindled since its height twenty years ago when the railroad came in over sea bridges and from small key to key.202 Streets ­were laid out then with concrete walks and esplanades along the beaches. A few h ­ ouses got started but only a few. The fifty thousand expected havent come yet.203 The native population has shrunk from 25000 to 12,600. I dont believe the natives know what they are missing. Their only trou­ble has been hunger. They have eaten the wildlife out of existance [sic] since 1929 and they gobble up the coconuts as fast as they fall. The town is spotted with good old ­houses of former prosperity. Close around ­these are hovels and hovels. You may have read this is one of the Government’s chief proj­ects. Some idea was entertained of moving a lot of the wretchedest away but nobody wanted to go and nobody knew where to put them. So a ­whole trainload of the FERA descended on the town to save it by reviving the real estate boom with propaganda and public works. The FERA has taken over the renting of all h ­ ouses and the cleaning up of ruins and rubbishful lots. It has reopened the small beach ­hotel (with a big noise last night which was New Years.)204 We dont know what we think of it and dont need to know. Carol and Participating artists had to apply to qualify for the program and w ­ ere selected on the basis of artistic merit. 201. ​The enclosure has gone missing. 202. ​For details, see the notes to RF’s December 17, 1934, letter to Manthey-­Zorn. 203. ​Actually, Key West attracted more than 40,000 tourists during the winter of 1934–1935. 204. ​Henry Flagler’s Casa Marina H ­ otel, designed by Thomas Hastings (1860–1929) and John M. Carrère (1858–1911)—­designers of the Metropolitan Opera House and the

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Lillian arrived yesterday having done 17000 [sic] miles from South Shaftsbury.205 Its an accident and an adventure (just one more). We had no idea of finding anything like the FERA ­here and bulking so large in proportion. The weather beats all—­day and night temperatures the year round between 60 and eighty. Very ­little difference between summer [and] winter. ­Water all off the roof from autumn rains. No rains in winter. Air might be too soft for some. Somewhat humid as you might expect on a South Sea island. Soil rather thin on the coral.206 Stores small town and poorish. I couldnt find a manilla envope [sic] high or low. Library nothing. Naval station, army post customs ­house. Cuban orchestra.

[To Edward Davison. ALS. DCL.]

Box 6 Key West Fla Jan 5 1935 Dear Ted: New Year’s resolutions ­were got up to divert us with lightness from the prob­lem of becoming perfect as we are told we should become. I say it with severity. But perhaps I had better be afraid I am wasting my moralities [on] one already so perfect that he has put the last touch to his perfection in a modesty that would conceal perfection; like the tenth ­century bishop who secretly drank nothing but ­water in his fine goblet at the drinking ­table: and when this was suspected and his goblet was looked into, God to preserve his virtue intact changed the w ­ ater into wine for the once: which was the last water-­i nto-­w ine miracle I find recorded and if anyone knows of a l­ater I wish he would let me know.207 I can always be reached through my publishers.

New York Public Library—­opened on New Year’s Eve, 1920, seven years ­a fter Flagler’s death. By the 1930s, the once-­elegant ­hotel had fallen into receivership and, with the help of FERA money, was restored and reopened on New Year’s Eve, 1934. 205. ​As he generally preferred to do, Carol drove. 206. ​The Florida Keys are exposed portions of an ancient coral reef (which you can actually feel, in places, walking barefoot). 207. ​We have been unable to clarify the reference to the “tenth ­century bishop.”

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The sooner you come the better—­both of you.208 The journey by automobile takes a long time on account of the two ferries of an hour and a half apiece. I think the cheapest and best way to make it is by train on a round-­trip ticket.209 We have a car to meet you with and show you around our dilapidated South Sea Island with. You w ­ on’t like it in a minute. As for us we dont have to like it. We are ­here for practical purposes. ­We’ll talk about my visiting you and the University. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Joseph Blumenthal. ALS. ACL.]

Key West Fla Jan 6 1935 Dear Mr Blumenthal: If I had been thinking as a bibliophile I should have spoken for one each of all the imprints.210 I’m just as well pleased we are neither of us bibliophiles. My collection of myself has no special need of being complete. Dont worry about the other book ­either. I like it fine—so well that I can well forget my misgiving about the decoration on the cover.211 With me t­ hings like that are arrived at by trial and error. I wish I had been in New York as you say. I could have tried my scythes the three ways then, in the panel, on the open cover, and entirely off. It was my venture. I’m not now sure that it was so bad as to do much harm. ­We’re getting used to this tropical island where we ­were cast away by the doctor. One t­ hing to be said for it: it is not like anything e­ lse in Florida. It has

208. ​Davison and his wife, Nathalie. Davison was currently teaching at the University of Miami but would soon take up an appointment as professor of En­glish at the University of Colorado at Boulder. 209. ​The Overseas Railroad linking Key West to the mainland had been operating since 1912 (see RF to Otto Manthey-­Zorn, December 17, 1934, for more details). Ferry ser­ vices to Key West ­were slow and expensive. Ironically, FERA, about which RF was so skeptical, had become involved in the extension of the Florida Overseas Highway to Key West, which on completion would render the ferries obsolete. 210. ​For details, see RF to Blumenthal, December 29, 1934. 211. ​See RF to Blumenthal, November 23, 1934.

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had and may still have Florid aspirations. We are ­here anyway, before it even looks likely to fulfill them. We are on the very tip of the island where you cant tell w ­ hether you are on the Gulf or the Atlantic. This is the only spot in the United States where ­t here has absolutely never been a frost. Coconut palms, sunlight, gentle surf. The total winter rainfall averages five inches. At first it offended us that ­there was no part of the city not spotted with slums, negro Cuban or American. Now it rather charms us. Many of the ­people speak no En­glish. Duval the mean main street was a jam of promenaders Saturday night. Kresses Five-­and-­ten was a jam of shoppers not buying much.212 ­There has never been a sewerage system in a city that once numbered 25000 (now numbers only 12000). It has some rather unsanitary smells that with the help of the sight of waves made Elinor seasick at first.—­Remember me to Mrs Blumenthal.213 Sincerely Robert Frost

[To Ellen Search Richardson (1894–1983). ALS. Phillips Exeter.]

Key West Florida January 7 1935 Dear Mrs Richardson: I had grown to be very fond of your husband; so much so that, as you know, I turned to him for sympathy last year in our loss. Our loss seemed the hardest of any. It looked to us as if we c­ ouldn’t bear it. But the loss of the one right beside you in life is the hardest I can reason or imagine.214 I had one of my best times with him that Saturday after­noon he picked me up in Milford and drove me to Exeter.215 We talked a ­great deal about poetry, his poetry, my poetry, all poetry. I know that you believe what I believe. And I know that we

212. ​The S. H. Kress com­pany opened a “five and dime” store in Key West in 1912. 213. ​Ann White Blumenthal (1902–1990). 214. ​George Lynde Richardson Jr. died on November 20, 1934. He had served on the En­glish faculty at Phillips Exeter Acad­emy and ­later as director of admissions. He married Ellen Search in 1918. 215. ​Most likely Milford, New Hampshire, approximately fifty miles from Exeter.

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r­ eally believe it. ­Don’t forget my friendship for you and the ­c hildren, ­w ill you?216 I am speaking for my wife too. ­Don’t forget our friendship. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Elizabeth Washburn Tucker Cushwa (1890–1976), wife of Frank William Cushwa (AM Harvard, 1903), Odlin Professor of En­glish at Phillips Exeter Acad­emy. ALS. ­Phillips Exeter.]

Key West Florida January 7 1935 Dear Mrs Cushwa: I have been on the go pretty much all the time since you dropped me at the door of the St Botolph in the rain.217 That was my season for ­going, when I try to crowd every­thing in together so as to have the rest of the year ­f ree and clear for anything that turns up in my mind. I fancy it tells me how it feels to be a candidate in the last stages of r­ unning for the Presidency. In l­ ittle of course I mean. And it gives me the sweeping views of my country I may need for my next epic. I saw your husbands native state this time (for the first time) and I made a pilgrimage to the old mill outside of Clarkburg [sic] where Stonewall Jackson lived as a boy.218 Stonewall Jackson is one of my favorite Puritans.219 The best of it all was Exeter, though you treat me with a kindness ­there that I know I s­ houldn’t approve of. The best and the saddest. (How that can be, d­ on’t ask me.) I ­shall never think of Exeter again but to miss Richardson.220 I had a fine long last talk with him about school and poetry on our sixty-­m ile ­r ide to Exeter that Saturday eve­n ing. 216. ​A son, George L., was fifteen at the time of his ­father’s death, and a d­ aughter, E. Aime, was eleven. 217. ​The St. Botolph Club is located at 199 Commonwealth Ave­nue in Boston. 218. ​Frank William Cushwa (1882–1939) was born in Martinsburg, West ­Virginia. Jackson’s Mill, approximately twenty miles south of Clarksburg, West V ­ irginia, was named for the grist mill of Cummins Jackson, who was Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s half-­u ncle. During his ­mother’s illness and ­a fter he was orphaned by her death in 1831, Jackson spent some eleven years t­ here. 219. ​Jackson was a devout Presbyterian, a strict Sabbatarian, and personally austere— to the point of eccentricty. 220. ​See previous letter.

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My kindest to you and your husband. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Edward Davison. The letter appears to have been written in haste (hence all the missing words, quite rare in a RF letter). ALS. DCL.]

Key West Fla Jan 9 1935 Dear Ted: Yes I’ll come for that money or any money you tell me the University can afford.221 But I want you to let me mould the job a l­ittle more to my style. I’ll do one public lecture I dont give a damn how public and in place of the other you propose, I’ll take two classes yours or anybody’s e­ lse combined. I like teaching but all I can say for lecturing [is] that I return over and over with fresh won­der that my ­mother’s son can do it and live. It is my supreme bravery. If I had ever scaled buildings on fire or faced bullets, I suppose lecturing would [have] been [an] anti-­c limax and I s­ houldn’t have been interested in it. If my plan wont do, please forget it. We wont have it an [sic] business engagement. W ­ e’ll just come up to return the visit you two are g­ oing to make us. Ever yours Robert

[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

Key West Fla Jan 10 1935 Dear Louis: In this letter I am g­ oing to tell you where we got off (the train); in my next I s­ hall tell you where you get off. Is it your idea to have a volume of se­lections

221. ​The University of Miami. RF delivered a lecture ­there (“Before the Beginning and A ­ fter the End of a Poem”) at the Winter Institute, on March 1, 1935. See Figure 5.

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Figure 5. RF at the Winter Institute. Reproduced from Helen Muir, Frost in Florida (Miami: Valiant Press), 1995.

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such as the rest of us have had lately?222 We’ve just added a dozen to mine—­I mean Elinor and I have.223 Once in so often I get into a creative state where my next composition has to be a new arrangement of my poems. The mood is past in a few hours. I think it comes from utter discouragement, when I get so low I can well agree with Mr Masters that I have written nothing.224 Then slightly recovering my manhood if not my critical sense, I brace myself to a point where I ­will stand for at least some of what I have written. ­These anyway! I say the world has got to show cause why they should be dismissed. I set out to have it a very very small book—­just a few almost sure ­things. But it grows on me from parental fondness. Leaving out one poem in f­avor of another seems invidious. Thats the way The Line Gang, and A Soldier get in, and Waiting (Afield at Dusk) should have got in.225 Well one hundred and fifty miles south of Miami, six hundred south of Los Angeles, three hundred south of Cairo in Egypt and sixty miles at sea we reached Key West by train over a string of keys and bridges. It is an island about ten times as big as your farm, and fairly dense with a population, equal parts negro Cuban and American, 12000 now, which is a reduction from 25000 since the cigar business went to Tampa a few years ago. ­There is no sanitation.226 The ­water is all off the roofs and ­a fter it goes through ­people I dont know where it goes. Every­thing is shabby and even dilapidated. ­There are as many stinks as ­t here are nymphs who rule ­o’er sewers and sinks (Delete sewers).227 ­There are mosquitoes. But ­there is no Yellow Fever any more. ­There is no malaria. T ­ here has never, absolutely never, been a frost. The air is balm. The total winter rainfall is 6 inches. (The climate is separate you see from 222. ​For Untermeyer’s Selected Poems and Parodies see RF to Manthey-­Zorn, Decem­ber 30, 1934. 223. ​To SP 1934. RF would enlarge the book again in 1936. 224. ​It is unclear ­whether RF refers to any par­t ic­u ­lar remark Edgar Lee Masters made. Likely he simply has in mind that Masters had published eigh­teen books of poetry to date (to RF’s five). 225. ​The first and third poems named ­here w ­ ere collected first in ABW, the second in WRB. 226. ​For details about Key West, see the notes to RF’s December  17, 1934, letter to Manthey-­Zorn. 227. ​See Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Cologne”: I counted two-­and-­seventy stenches, All well-­defined and several stinks! Ye nymphs that reign o­ ’er sewers and sinks . . .

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that of Florida.) The range of temperature is between 70 and 80. T ­ here are very few winter visitors—­fewer even than the natives would like to claim. The jam on the ­little main street Saturday eve­n ing is entirely native—­the opposite to what it is in Miami. You wont see a stranger. You elbow nothing but the Spanish-­speaking Cuban and the Boston-­accented Negro228 and American (The pirates who founded the city w ­ ere apparently from Boston.)229 Food is cheap though ­there is no such variety of it as in Amherst for instance. The market for every­thing including note paper is ­limited. We are on the point of the island exactly between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The waves break 20 feet from our door—­Elinors and mine. Carol Lillian and Prescott live down town by the Customs House and Post Office equally distant from the abandoned Navy Yard and the small Army Post. Havana is six hours by shallow seas full of coral reefs: Yucatan not twice that. Airplanes would make Yucatan in two hours. So we are almost back in the flesh where I started to think from.230 T ­ here are said to be traces of Mayan culture in Key West (Cayo Hueso, which being translated, should be Bone Key.)231 Hemingway 228. ​Not Black folk from Boston, but ones who sounded as if they ­were ­because they spoke with a Ca­r ib­bean brogue: during the colonial period a large proportion of Black inhabitants of Boston had their origins in Jamaica, the Barbados, and Monserrat; and, during the national period, in the sugar and fruit trades linking Boston to Jamaica. In addition, most of Key West’s African American population descended from ­people who emigrated to Key West from the Bahamas during the Reconstruction (1865–1877) (see Maloney’s Sketch of the History of Key West: 24). The WPA Guide to Key West (New York: Hastings House, 1941) reports that “most of the white and Negro inhabitants from the Bahamas speak with a cockney accent and retain cockney words and phrases” (24); that is, they spoke with British rather than Ca­r ib­bean accents. As for the Cubans: most of ­these descended from men and w ­ omen who fled to Key West to escape Spanish rule during and a­ fter the failed Ten Years’ War of Revolution (1868–1878). 229. ​One candidate for a “Boston Pirate” is Charles Gibbs (born James D. Jeffers [1798– 1831]), a native (white) Rhode Islander who settled in Boston, and, subsequently, taking to sea, plundered the Ca­r ib­bean, including the area around Key West. Though legendary for his cruelty, he was not among the found­ers of the city. T ­ hese men w ­ ere instead chiefly from greater New ­England, V ­ irginia, and Pennsylvania, and, in referring to them as “pirates,” it is pos­si­ble that RF has in mind the Wall Street speculators and profiteers mentioned in his February 8, 1935, letter to Green. 230.  RF’s first foray into poetry, “La Noche Triste,” derived its details from William Prescott’s The History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843). 231. ​A rchaeologists sent by the Works Pro­g ress Administration undertook excavations on Key Largo in the 1930s, where the Maya ­were believed to have built a ­temple many centuries before the Spaniards reached the New World; they may also have con-

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is said to be ­here much of the time. But he knows not me and I know not him. He seems to be less noticeable in town than the Bianchi in Amherst.232 The only t­ hing at all socially disturbing is the presence in force of Franklin D. Roo­ se­velt’s FERA. This has been one of the Administrations pet rehabilitation proj­ects. No taxes had been paid on anything. Every­body was riding round in cars without silencers and without licenses. T ­ here was talk of transporting seventy five ­percent of the crowd. But nobody could think of anybody who would want them. So the author of a book called Compulsory Spending is ­here with a staff to put every­body at work on public improvements, some building some tearing down and some general cleaning up of filthy vacant lots. We had to get our rent through them.233 They are mildly and beneficently dictatorial. Both the Mayor of the Town and the Governor of the State have abdicated in their f­ avor. Their g­ reat object they say is to restore the p­ eople to their civic virtue. When in history has any power ever achieved that? You see how much I am interested. I did think when I set out I might give you my ideas on Pound in his latest.234 But I should be as interested as I am in the politics and economics of Key West, and you might not be interested at all. You have prob­ ably already delivered yourself on him professionally. My opinion would be good in a way, better than of any of the rest of t­ hose annuals. But what a garble of reading and nothing e­ lse. The w ­ hole book is made out of the newspapers, current non-­fiction books and the minor classics you get in advanced college courses in Greek and Latin. Absolutely nothing else—­not an idea of his own not an observation of life not an experience outside of print. The best t­ hing in the book is the story of the Afghans who came to Geneva to see if they

structed stone structures on other keys (the origins of which are unclear) as aids to navigation (the Maya ­were the largest seafaring population in the pre-­Columbian Ca­r ib­be­a n). 232. ​Martha Dickinson Bianchi, niece of Emily Dickinson and quite a presence in her native town. RF was suspicious of her; see RF to Untermeyer, July  20, 1930, and to Conrad, October 26, 1930. Ernest Hemingway lived between 1931 and 1939 at 907 Whitehead Street, Key West. The h ­ ouse was one of the finest on the island and one of the first with indoor plumbing and a swimming pool. 233. ​Julius  F. Stone  Jr. wrote Compulsory Spending: A Means to Economic Prosperity Through the Forced Circulation of Money (Washington, DC: Ransdell, 1934). For context regarding Stone’s work in Key West, see RF’s December 17, 1934, letter to Manthey-­Zorn. 234. ​Ezra Pound’s Eleven New Cantos XXXI-­XLI had been published by Farrar and Rinehart (New York) in late 1934.

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could buy cheap any guns we might be disarming ourselves of.235 If only I could be sure Ezra concocted that. He ­ought to be called Greater Garbler.236 Ever yours Robertus

[To Otto Manthey-­Zorn. Dated from postmark. ALS. ACL.]

[Key West, Florida] [January 10, 1935] Dear Otto: Thanks for being so prompt with the books.237 A ­ fter such an example I must be prompt to do my part with them. I doubt if much more is expected of me than to name a dozen or twenty poems out of them that must not be left out of Louis’ Selected. Well ­here I go at them. It all comes to this it seems to me: we dont want Hitler and we dont want Mussolini. Nor would Germany and Italy have wanted them except for the social ruin brought on them by the war. They only have them ­because they had to have them. The g­ reat won­der to me is that out of all their confusion and chaos t­ hose countries could have found for themselves tyrrannies [sic] so exactly to their need of the time being. The marvel of it is I suspect what has imposed on us. Chalmoogra [sic] is so good for leprosy we cant help wishing it would be good for our measles.238 I’d just like to know if Roo­se­velt ever fancied himself in their role. I’ve heard of a w ­ oman who went crazy with the notion she was with child when [she] wasnt with child. Just so this country has gone crazy with the idea that it is big with revolution. But Roo­se­velt may get cured of any delusions of grandeur he may have had and in time to save 235. ​See canto XXXVIII: And two Afghans came to Geneva To see if they cd. get some guns cheap, As they had heard about someone’s disarming. And the secretary of something Made some money from oil wells . . . 236. ​A pun on the name of Swedish-­born film star Greta Garbo (1905–1990), whose first “talkie,” Anna Christie (1930), was marketed by MGM with the tag­l ine “Greta Talks!” 237. ​See RF to Manthey-­Zorn, December 30, 1934. 238. ​Chaulmoogra oil, a traditional treatment for leprosy in Indian and Chinese medicine, taken up by Western doctors in the second half of the nineteenth ­century.

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himself from looking as if he had had them. Democracy with all its faults is the worlds best bet till the p­ eople’s virtue all leaches out of them. Then we can start over again with a monarch but only pro tem. till we can get back with a chastened populace to the liberal ease of democracy. I dont quite make out from any paper I have seen down ­here what the full import of the Supreme Court’s decision was on the Texas oil control code.239 But I should say it eliminated for a while anyway every­thing Tugwellian. Good-­bye Tugwell Warne and Bradley.240 Congress alone can bring their menace back by specific amendments to the Constitution. I was a l­ ittle taken aback to read that the one dissentient vote in the Court was Cardozo’s with whom I had what I thought a quite reassuring talk when I was in Washington.241 He made a hero of Holmes242 with his doctrine of more or less in the practice of princi­ples. ­There is much that is socialistic in the state as it is. From year to year the state’s decisions are as to w ­ hether we s­ hall have more or less that is socialistic. No action is forward. It is always a variable between two limits. Security for instance. How much may the state try to give us of it? We have to determine I say what is its opposite so that we can know what we w ­ ill be getting less or more of as

239. ​In Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan (de­cided January 7, 1935), the Court struck down a provision of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) authorizing the president to forbid interstate shipment of oil produced in violation of state production quotas. 240. ​Rexford Tugwell (1891–1979), an economist at Columbia University and a policy maker during the New Deal; he was a strong proponent of federal planning and often scornful of the ­free market. He became something of a bogeyman among anti-­New Dealers and would leave FDR’s administration at the end of 1936. RF had recently met him in Washington (see YT, 678). Colston Warne (1900–1987) was an economist and, from 1930, a professor in that subject at Amherst; hence a colleague of RF and Manthey-­Zorn. Warne was a prominent advocate of consumer rights, and in 1928 had cofounded what was to become the Consumers Union. ­Labor specialist Phillips Bradley (1894–1982) was a professor of po­l iti­cal science at Amherst. 241. ​The majority opinion in the Texas oil control case had declared the del­e­ga­t ion of powers to the president ­u nder the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) to be “too vague.” Justice Cardozo’s dissenting opinion held that adequate standards for del­e­ga­t ion had been set and argued that laws “framed in the shadow of a national disaster” could not be expected to provide for “unforeseen contingencies.” Benjamin Cardozo (1870– 1938) was fairly consistent in his liberal beliefs, so RF should perhaps not have been surprised by his defense of FDR. RF and Elinor had visited Washington in early December 1934 (where RF gave a talk before the National Council of Teachers of En­glish on December 1, and also met Cardozo). 242. ​Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935); Cardozo succeeded him on the Supreme Court in 1932.

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we are getting more or less of security. If you are writing it out as a paper to deliver be sure to let me see it. We like this balm better. Our New York paper is always of day before yesterday. The FERA lets us alone. The man who runs it holds himself above most writers. He has himself written. You may have heard of his book. It is called Compulsory Spending. I suppose he means More Compulsory Spending. Ever yours Robert

[To William Lyon Phelps. ALS. Yale.]

Key West Florida January 12 1934243 Dear Mr Phelps: I want to report to you in few how it has come out with the son-­in-­law for whom you got the scholarship at Yale.244 You prob­ably remember how it happened b­ ecause you remember every­thing. Indeed your part in it was a feat of memory. Some of your boys used your name to persuade me to read at Yale for nothing.245 ­After the reading you w ­ ere good enough to thank me in person and offer to do anything you could for me in return. With what I thought g­ reat presence of mind, but mostly in irony, I asked you to help my son-­in-­law to a scholarship in the Yale School of Architecture. The reason for my irony you might never guess: I ­don’t quite like it that whereas the lesser colleges all pay me money for lecturing, the greater colleges seem to expect to pay no one but foreign visitors. I have laughed about it with the foreign visitors. So you can see my irony is not very bad-­natured. And by accepting the situation so far as to accept two invitations to Yale, I have condoned anything I had to complain of. Moreover look at how the balance stands now between me and Yale. The first time I went ­there for nothing I made the lifelong friendship of Stephen Benet and John Farrar (they w ­ ere the undergraduates I sat nearest at the Elizabethan Club)246 — 243. ​RF mistakenly dated this 1935 letter to 1934. 244. ​John Cone. For details, see RF’s September 1, 1929, letter to Bartlett. 245. ​Back in March 1931: hence the quip about Phelps’s “feat of memory.” 246. ​The Elizabethan Club, a literary society at Yale founded in 1911; RF had read ­t here on May 18, 1917 (see LRF-1, 545). Stephen Benét (1898–1943), American writer, Yale class of 1919; John Farrar, Yale class of 1918.

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if that can be called nothing. The second time I get a very valuable scholarship for one of my f­ amily. You brushed aside the irony of my request, if you noticed it, and to my surprise remembered and acted on the substance of it. You must know how I feel about such deeds in a naughty world, which the pre­sent world is supposed especially to be.247 It is that they keep it from being a naughty world. Dean Meeks248 has been splendid to and for my son and I think would tell you my son has done more than ordinarily well in Architecture. This ­w ill be the third and last year. ­Don’t you think the lady who finds “ornery” so disagreeable in sound should be shown that it is nothing but the word “ordinary” as we no doubt once pronounced it and as the En­glish in ­England pronounce it to this day? It might teach her that sense is every­thing in a word. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Edward Davison. Year—­incomplete for reasons unclear—­derived from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

Key West Fla Jan 12 19[35] Dear Ted: All right, March 1st, then, for the open lecture-­reading combination. You ask for a subject for the programme. It wont make too much difference if I fail to live up to it I suppose. Right now I feel as if I would like to talk on “Before the Beginning and a­ fter the End of a Poem.” If that d­ oesn’t seem taking, how about “What Poetry Thinks” or “Can Poetry Be Taught?” They arent all the same subject ­matter, so be careful how you choose. Can Poetry Be Taught was what I was down for at Washington but I was kept from getting far with it by Henry Wallace Secretary of Agriculture of the United States of Amer ­i­ca.249 You may have heard of his repressive proclivities. W ­ e’ll be at

247. ​­Here RF anticipates the remarks which open his (circa) March 21, 1935, letter to the Amherst Student (see below; now cited as “Letter to The Amherst Student”). 248. ​Carroll Meeks (1907–1966) taught architectural history at Yale. 249. ​Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965) served as Secretary of Agriculture from 1933 u ­ ntil 1940.

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whichever you say the Railroad Station or the Airport on whichever day you say Jan 15th or 16th*, to meet you. Make it both. Carol Lillian and Carol [sic]250 flew off to visit the old deserted fort at the Dry Tortugas this morning.251 Ever yours Robert *Friday isnt 15th Saturday isnt 16th

[To George F. Whicher. ALS. ACL.]

Key West Jan 12 1935 Dear George: The enclosed went across my mind the other night like a cloud across the moon.252 ­T here is nothing appropriate in it to anything down ­here—­nothing 250. ​RF means Carol, Lillian, and Prescott. 251. ​Fort Jefferson, on the island of Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas, some sixty-­seven miles from Key West. It had been deserted since 1906. A week before RF wrote this letter, the Roo­se­velt administration designated the fortress a national monument. 252. ​See RF’s postscript; he did not, in fact, send a copy of “Departmental” (the poem ­here described). He sent instead a hand-­sewn booklet featuring a fair copy of “A Serious Step Lightly Taken” (which RF would collect in AWT, and for which see CPPP, 334; the booklet is held now at Amherst College, and we thank Mike Kelly for making it available). The poem is inscribed on the recto sheets of the booklet, while on the verso sheets appear a series of marginalia pertaining to the poem. See Figure 6. Opposite stanza 1 RF writes: “My preference is always for a bare utility map without legends and Howard Pyle pictures.” Howard Pyle (1853–1911) was a widely published American illustrator, and proprietor of the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. Opposite stanza 2 of “A Serious Step” RF writes: “Riddle: When is a period sometimes used before a proper name?” For stanza 3, RF provides this gloss: “It is to allay geo­g raph­ic­ al imagination that we go visiting places.” Opposite stanza 4 are ­t hese remarks: “Society is a structure of two kinds of promises: t­ hose we make for ourselves and t­ hose our ancestors have made for us.” Opposite stanza 5: “A form of the blues familiar enough but as yet unsung.” Stanza 6: “It is a far far better ­thing to replace trees than to try to prolong them with chaining their branches and filling their cavities with cement.” Stanza 7 receives the longest gloss: “The En­glish have had the language six hundred years. We had had it three—­a lready half as long. When they have had it twelve hundred, we ­shall have had had it three fifths as long. Thus their proportional advantage ­w ill grow less and less till I shan’t be surprised to see it lost sight of by history entirely and the language ascribed to us outright.” Fi­nally,

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Figure 6. Leaf from a hand-­sewn booklet featuring a fair copy of “A Serious Step Lightly Taken,” with the poet’s marginalia. © The Robert Frost Copyright Trust.

particularly appropriate. The events recorded in it took place down h ­ ere. But they might just as well have taken place in New E ­ ngland. Ants seem to be ants pretty much everywhere. Their characteristics are called forth by sugar on a table­cloth equally north and south. If I could not by force or cunning wrest my poem to fit my being where I am cast away by the doctor on this 50-­percent deserted island the question was how was I ­going to bring it in between me and anybody ­else. It wouldnt satisfy the requirements merely to print it in a magazine appropos [sic] of nothing. In my desperation casting about, I caught at the last word of the last line253 to connect it with you trying stanza 8 (the last) receives this gloss: “Thirty Presidents of eight years each + fifteen of four years each = three hundred years exactly.” In the reply which prompted RF’s next letter to Whicher, Whicher riffs on the verbal details of “A Serious Step” (for which see the notes to RF’s January 23 letter to him). 253. ​The poem concludes: “But how thoroughly departmental.” For more on this line, see RF to Untermeyer, February 22, 1936.

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to be even feebly departmental with En­g lish at our Amherst College. You barely succeed. You envy ­those in equivalent positions at Mount Holyoke and Harvard. But desist. By so much more than you do of them do they fall short of ants that it is as if you ­were in the same row boat with them trying to overtake a liner that got away from the wharf while, tua culpa, you w ­ ere being given a farewell dinner party at the Commodore by your friends.254 But nonsense aside, you must have gathered from the postmark on the inappropriate-­to-­Christmas poem I sent you that I am not yet fallen among Hamilton Holt.255 I am deep in writing a novel (­shall I say?) to be called w ­ hether I finish it or not Arthur Brisbane or Stuck Way Back in the Eighties with Clarence Darrow.256 In it I ­shall exibit [sic] two old men incapable of suffering disillusionment from having lived in the expectation of seeing some perceptible step taken in evolution, ­human or animal. Fifty years and Nothing Yet would be another name for it. You remember how blithely Mrs Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman (if I get her right name257) in a r­eally brilliant poem makes fun of t­ hose of us who assume we cant change our natures. On their naive assumption starting with the end of the Franco Prus­sian War we might 254. ​Presumably the Commodore ­Hotel in New York City. 255. ​Hamilton Holt (1872–1951), a liberal and a reformer in politics, was then president of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida (and see the closing sentence of the letter). RF’s “inappropriate-­to-­Christmas poem” for 1934 was “Two Tramps in Mud-­Time.” 256. ​ A rthur Brisbane, American newspaper editor (mentioned also in the December 17, 1934, letter to Manthey-­Zorn), real-­estate investor, and columnist (at the time, his syndicated column “­Today” reached more than 20,000,000 readers). Clarence Darrow (1857–1938), American ­lawyer (and celebrated attorney for John T. Scopes in the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925). As for “Way Back in The Eighties”: that’s when Darrow got his start as a litigator, in Chicago. It was in the 1880s that Brisbane’s c­ areer took off as well (in New York). Both ­were idealists and socialists in youth (Brisbane’s f­ather Albert [1809– 1980] was a utopian socialist and disciple of Fourier), though Brisbane (unlike Darrow) abandoned his youthful radicalism and wound up a confirmed conservative. 257. ​He does. Gilman (1860–1935) was an American feminist, poet, novelist, and short-­ story writer. RF refers to her poem “Similar Cases,” collected in Gilman’s In This Our World (1898). One section of the poem concerns a neolithic man, an “enterprising wight,” who imagines a f­ uture of cities, wars, money, and freedom from material privation. He is shouted down by his fellows: Cried all, “Before such t­ hings can come, You idiotic child, You must alter H ­ uman Nature!” And they all sat back and smiled . . .

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well by this time all have evolved into Miss Wooleys of refinement.258 The best ­thing in Pound’s latest ’leven is the story of the two Afghans who turned up at Geneva to see if they mightnt pick up cheap any arms we ­were disarming ourselves of. I promise to read that to Hamilton Holt if he holds me up on my way out of this in March.259 Our best to you all four.260 Give the poem to Stephen if you rebuff it. Ever yours Robert At last moment departmental ditty withheld for emendation ­under national rehabilitation act and something ­else substituted.

[To Frederick B. Adams Jr. (1910–2001), bibliophile, collector, and, ­later, director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. ALS. Alger.]

Key West Florida January 20 1935 Dear Mr Adams: Neither Mrs Frost nor I have any distinct recollection of any North of Boston bound in blue-­g rey with edges all trimmed and black lettering on the spine. Mrs Frost seems to think we may have seen such a t­ hing in somebody’s possession, but she isnt at all sure. We paid absolutely no attention to such ­things as editions printings and bindings till Maurice Firuski bought in ­England the remaindered sheets of North of Boston and A Boys ­Will and put covers on them in Amer­i­ca. Come to think of it I never have known ­whether he put covers on A Boy’s ­Will in Amer­i­ca or not.261 I have meant to ask: Have you

258. ​Mary Emma Woolley (1863–1947) was an American educator, peace activist, and suffragette. In 1935 she was well into her tenure as the eleventh president of Mount Holyoke College. Given the context, the Franco-­Prussian War (1870–1871) may ­here figure as having occasioned the short-­lived Paris Commune, the collapse of the Second French Empire, and the advent of the Third French Republic (which endured u ­ ntil the Nazis invaded France). 259. ​For Pound’s lines, see the January 10, 1935, letter to Untermeyer. They concern war; Hamilton Holt was a pacifist. 260. ​George, his wife Harriet Ruth Fox Whicher (1890–1966), and their two sons Stephen Emerson Whicher (1915–1961)—­later, eminent scholar of Emerson—­a nd John Fox Whicher (1919–1972). 261. ​For Maurice Firuski and ­t hese volumes see RF to Green, August 4, 1934; and, for a detailed account, LRF-2, 272n207.

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shown your blue grey North of Boston to Fred Melcher? Why ­don’t you write to Mr Shubrick Clymer of Chesham N.H. to see if he has it listed for the book he is about to bring out about my editions and formats? I’m sure he would like to see your copy if he ­hasn’t seen it. You [sic] be ­doing me a ­favor if you wrote to help him. Completeness means much to him and to me for him. I myself am out of this collecting me. I began too late to be in the r­ unning. The only t­ hing in which I have the advantage of you all is the ­l ittle booklet called Twilight. ­There ­were two copies of that printed, but I have reason to fear only one has survived.262 The poems The Birds Do Thus, Caesars Lost Transport Ships and Warning didnt get into Twilight and have never been reprinted to this day. But two of them, Caesar’s Lost Transport Ships and Warning together with another old one that has turned up, The Quest of the Orchis, are being put into a leaflet by Harold Goddard Rugg and some of his young friends at Dartmouth College. I persuaded them not to include The Birds Do Thus.263 I might ask you a question. You havent happened on a poem of mine called Reluctance in magazine form have you? Charles R. Green—of The Jones Library Amherst Mass—­wants very much to locate it for the bibliography he and Shubrick Clymer are ­doing. I should suppose it would be found in The Forum at the time when Mitchell Kennerly [sic] was editing it somewhere around 1908-9-10-11.264 I may be entirely wrong. I think Reedy copied it into his Reedy’s Mirror. I know Thomas Mosher of Portland used it in one of his cata ­logues.265 It fi­nally brought up in last place in A Boys W ­ ill.266

262. ​RF destroyed the other. See the notes to RF’s February 9, 1929, letter to Melcher. 263. ​See RF to Rugg, December 20, 1934. 264. ​An error. See the notes to RF’s December 18, 1934, letter to Green. RF is correct as to his second point, though: William Marion Reedy did reprint the poem in Reedy’s Mirror, the literary journal he edited from 1896 to 1920. 265. ​Thomas Bird Mosher (1852–1923), a Portland, Maine–­based printer and publisher, had paid RF to use “Reluctance” in his Amphora (a short anthology); see EY, 389. See also LRF-1, 62, 131. But Mosher put it to other uses: see the notes to RF’s June 10, 1935, letter to Newdick. 266. ​It closes the book fittingly. The last stanza reads: Ah, when to the heart of man   Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of t­ hings,   To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end   Of a love or a season?

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I’m enclosing a copy of Two Tramps in an imprint you prob­ably h ­ aven’t got. If you’ll come up to Amherst some time w ­ e’ll talk about Edward Thomas. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To William Branford Shubrick Clymer. ALS. Alger.]

Key West Florida January 23 1934267 Dear Mr Clymer: Just the briefest word to tell you that Mr Frederick B. Adams of 520 East 86th St New York City has a “first En­g lish edition of North of Boston bound in blue-­g rey cloth with all edges trimmed black lettering on cover and spine and the publisher’s name on the spine given as Nutt instead of D. Nutt.” So he writes me. I asked him to let you know. This is in case he should forget or neglect. Is this something none of us has seen or heard of before? The weather is perfect ­here in its way. The thermometer barely moves in the seventies. We are getting three summers in rapid succession, two up ­there and one down h ­ ere between them. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To George F. Whicher. ALS. ACL.]

Key West Fla Jan 23 1935 Dear George: A Bee for my Ant, huh? Or rather a Drone. I scanned your Drone narrowly askance to see if t­ here was any sting in it in retaliation for the sting you seem to assume from my witholding [sic] it at the last moment must have been in

267. ​Again, RF inadvertently mistook the year. The letter dates to 1935.

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my Ant.268 But how foolish on both our parts. Your Drone cant carry any sting for me for the s­ imple reason that no Drone carries any for anyone. And take my word for it and the internal evidence of the enclosed, my Ant is not a Stinging Ant. He is merely an amusing l­ittle piece of nature faking so barefaced that I found I was ashamed of it—­was and am still. But ­a fter having piqued your suspicions as I evidently have (though unintentionally) I can see I owe it to you to let you satisfy yourself that it was my scientific and artistic scruples that lead [sic] me to quash my Ant work and nothing personal about you and departments.269 Im sure I could have presumed a good deal more on our friendship to tease you about any t­ hing I pleased. Lord I dont care how departmental you are or how presidential Gordon Chal­mers may have to be or how professorial a soul I may be accused of being.270 But you ­aren’t very departmental and I’m not professorial for all my love of teaching and indoctrinating. I have thrown away the Amherst College Directory we brought with us for the prevention of homesickness and ­w ill henceforth wear in my bosom instead your Vestiges of Man Discerned in the Fossils of the Connecticut Val-

268. ​Again, “Departmental.” Whicher begins the January 17, 1935, letter to which RF ­ ere replies as follows (the verbal details are drawn from the fair copy of “A Serious Step h Lightly Taken” that RF had sent him on January 12, concerning which see the notes to that letter): “Whadya mean by getting me all departmentally aroused and then putting me off with two burrs and a snake? I d­ on’t care if forty-­five presidents equal three hundred years (they ­don’t equal one Supreme Court). I want the ANT quick. I’ll trade you a bee for it, albeit a bee that d­ oesn’t come off, and to make the balance more equal I throw in the departmental actions I’ve had in the past five years. Let any Justice of the Peace in Key West be the judge if you have not wronged me. Or have you?” (letter held at DCL). ­There follows, in Whicher’s letter, praise of RF’s “un-­Christmas” poem for 1934 (“Two Tramps in Mud-­Time”), some Amherst College gossip, and a report of Gertrude Stein’s January  9 visit to Amherst, including details of an exchange between Stein and Otto Glaser (mentioned ­later in RF’s reply, and given in a note below). As for “The Drone”: Whicher had also been sending RF poems of his own from time to time, and this was presumably one of them (though all enclosures associated with Whicher’s January  17 letter have been separated from it). 269. ​He ­d idn’t quash it. The poem appeared in the Yale Review in Winter 1936, and in AFR. 270. ​For Chal­mers, see RF to Cox, October 24, 1933.

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ley.271 It reads like four citations for honorary degrees. Why h ­ aven’t we picturesque material right at home for conferring honorary degrees on at the rate of one convocation a week without sending out of town for subjects?272 I w ­ ill say that in that one page with your “more brain less beard” your “gigolos” and your “Convocation” you show yourself able to stir up the worst passions of my nature. The Drone is of course the poem of the lot. The thoughts of youth are long long thoughts.273 Glazer [sic] proved a weak spokesman for the other side.274 He was unfortunate in his choice of a blind passage and again unfortunate in his choice of 271. ​Reference unclear. The joke may concern Joseph Barratt (1796–1882), a British-­ born scientist, botanist, and physician who emigrated to the United States in 1819 and settled in Middletown, Connecticut. He taught at the Acad­emy of Norwich (Vermont), and at other places, but late in life developed a theory that during the Triassic period the Connecticut Valley had been home to kangaroos, ostriches—­a nd to a four-­toed hominid species which he dubbed Homo tetradactylus. He published a pamphlet advertising t­ hese findings in 1874; in 1880 he was committed to the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane. At this point, conjecture yields to whimsy. Whicher may have sent RF an article about Barratt (perhaps Frank Hallock’s 1923 booklet, Joseph Barratt, MD, Physician and Botanist of Middletown, Connecticut [reprinted from the Bulletin of the Medical History of Chicago]), or RF may have read it some time back. Alternatively, Whicher may have sent RF drafts of a poem or article he was working up about Barratt: in replying to the pre­sent letter on January 28, 1935, Whicher writes: “I am too sweet-­natured to continue the Connecticut Valley Fossils, but I enclose a poem on the Immaculate Conception which I wrote for a Catholic friend. What he said about it discouraged me from trying to get it printed in the Knights of Columbus Weekly” (DCL). Or Barratt may not figure into the m ­ atter at all. 272. ​A mherst had lately conferred (as Whicher reported to RF) an LLD degree on president James B. Conant (1893–1978) of Harvard. 273. ​RF adapts the lines from Longfellow’s “My Lost Youth” that gave him the title for his first book: “A boy’s w ­ ill is the wind’s w ­ ill, / And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” Presumably “Convocation” is the title of yet another poem Whicher sent RF—­now lost. In replying to this letter, Whicher writes (on January 28): “I have had to give up the Men of Straw poem that I sent you. I put it in a letter to my f­ ather—­cross my heart if I had any thoughts of the Poetry Society of Florida—­a nd next I knew Jessie Ritten­house had it read at one of her meetings” (DCL). 274. ​In colloquy with Stein. (She was then on her 1934–1935 tour of Amer­i­ca and lectured at Amherst College and at Smith. RF also got his dope on Stein from Amherst colleagues Theodore Baird and Otto Manthey-­Zorn. She was the talk of the town at the time. For another assessment of Stein, see RF to Lesley Frost, October  1934.) Otto  C. Glaser (1880–1951) was professor of biology at Amherst from 1916 to 1948. In his letter to

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a somewhat275 known to every­body. Gertrude heaped confusion on him. She seems to be one of the bright and ready. She seems to have been satisfied to have her fallacy come out on top. No misgivings ­there apparently. Tell me something I dont know, says the small boy. He is asking as usual what isnt good for him. Tell me what I know but didnt know I knew. Deepen me where I am. I should like to have been t­ here to see how far she has r­ eally been or is prepared to go. I cant seem to get her from report. ­There is an elementariness in her subject-­matter that suggests infantilism. Genius has been made of for never having grown up. Stanley King wrote that you all liked her. I cant say I dont judge. But I am as yet only in pro­cess of judging. Shes in my lower courts. I expect I ­shall have to carry her up to my Supreme Court. If we dont all forget about her too soon. Remind me of her ten years from now if you think it necessary. Ever yours Robert

RF, Whicher relays the following exchange: “Glaser. What am I supposed to understand when I read the line: All the envelopes hang on the peach trees. Stein. Pear trees. It makes a difference. Glaser. Pear trees, then. But am I supposed to get any meaning from the words, or how am I to understand them? Stein. What can you understand? Glaser. Well, if you say ‘Go to the door’ I can understand that. Stein. Is that as much as you can understand? [The seraphs failed to frown from myrtle beds] Glaser. No. I can understand πr. Stein. How many ­people do you think understand πr? Glaser. Most ­people. Stein. You exaggerate. Only some ­people. Some ­people understand my line if ­t hey’ve been to the Riviera and seen papers boys put on the fruit trees. It’s only a numerical difference. Mrs. Glaser (sotto voce, but not very sotto). Well, some ­people may be taken in, but ­t here ­w ill be ONE ­WOMAN in Amherst who ­doesn’t appreciate Gertrude Stein” (letter held at DCL). Glaser quotes at the head of this exchange a line from Stein’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts (“The envelopes are on all the fruit of the fruit trees”); and, in brackets, Whicher adapts a line from Emerson’s “Uriel”: “The seraphs frowned from myrtle beds. . . .” He had lately published an essay on Emerson titled “Uriel in Amherst” in the Amherst Gradu­ates’ Quarterly (23.4 [August 1934]: 281–292), an offprint of which he’d sent south to RF and Elinor. 275. ​ Πr (pi × radius).

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[To Percy MacKaye (1875–1956), American dramatist and poet. ALS. BU.]

Key West Florida January 26 1935 Dear Percy: The only talk of mine ever taken down verbatim as a ­whole was the Education by Poetry I gave before the Alumni Council two or three years ago.276 That must be what you are a­ fter. Fred Allis should have a printed copy of it for you.277 But if he hasnt and you ­w ill let me know l­ ater, I am very sure I can find you one when I get back to Amherst and South Shaftsbury in April. I dont know where I said poetry is words become deeds.278 Prob­ably in one of the talks I have scattered over the country since 1915.279 One of my weaknesses is an aspiration to say scientifically poetic ­things about poetry. They seldom get into print ­because I refuse to have them ready in definite form for the reporters. I w ­ ill leave them to be wrung from me in the exigency of speaking to an audience. I have them very sharply in mind afterward and often think of writing them down for a book of prose someday. But then ­there is the fear of fixing them so fast in mind that I should never be able to think of anything new. You know how I am.280 And its too bad in a way, for I have had some fairly good ideas and I have named some fairly good titles. “Vocal Imagination” is one that I recall.281 On March 1st I ­shall talk at Miami University on Before the Beginning and a­ fter the End of a Poem. I am ­going to make an exception for exception’s sake and write out a double talk for Amherst in April 276. ​RF delivered “Education by Poetry” at Amherst on November 15, 1930, before a meeting of the Amherst Alumni Council; it was subsequently published in the Amherst Gradu­ates’ Quarterly in February 1931. See CPRF, 270–272 for details about the preparation of the lecture for print. 277. ​Frederick Allis (1871–1941), then secretary of the Amherst Alumni Association. 278. ​The remark appears in print in RF’s “Some Definitions,” published by the publicity department at Henry Holt and Com­pany in 1923 as part of a pamphlet titled Robert Frost: the Man and His Work: “My definition of poetry (if I ­were forced to give one) would be this: words that have become deeds” (CPPP, 701). 279. ​When RF returned from his three-­year sojourn in E ­ ngland. 280. ​R F once suggested to Sidney Cox that he collect the best of ­these talks into a book; see RF to Cox, April 19, 1932. 281. ​RF often spoke on this theme and would again at Harvard (in March 1936) during his tenure as Charles Eliot Norton lecturer. See CPRF, 136–139 for the text of an essay RF wrote (but never published) on the subject.

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on What Poetry Thinks. The President wants to bring me to earth in a small book this time.282 The first lecture ­w ill ­settle with ­those who dont think poetry should think 283 (I can just hear their poetry thinking it) and t­ hose who think poetry thinks thoughts special to itself. The second lecture ­w ill show that poetry thinks only what the rest of the world thinks but more imaginatively and [with] stricter discipline. Two bad winter influenzas in succession de­cided us to see what three summers in succession without intervention of winter would do for us. This is the last place I ever thought I would arrive at and its the last place in the U.S. It is a South Sea Island. I feel as if I ­were trespassing on Stevenson Melville and Norman Hall.284 But I mustnt apologize. Ask me further if ­there is anything. Ever yours Robert

[To Morton Dauwen Zabel (1901–1964), American author, critic, and editor. He was associate editor of Poetry from 1928 to 1936 and then full editor for a year. ALS. Chicago.]

Key West Floriday for my sins January 29 1935 and a very ­l ittle longer Dear Mr Zabel “Writing again” d­ oesn’t exactly describe it. I am always writing a l­ ittle—­a few a year. But in my old age I seem to be getting lazy about publishing. If 282. ​Presumably President Stanley King of Amherst. RF never published a book of prose, despite several times promising to do so—­most scandalously ­a fter delivering but not publishing (contractual obligations notwithstanding) his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1936. The typescript of the lectures, prepared for him by Harvard University Press, “dis­appeared” while in his possession. See YT, 435, 674–675. 283. ​See RF to Foster July 28, 1933. 284. ​Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) sailed into the South Pacific in 1888, making stops in Tahiti, Samoa (where he died), and elsewhere; during his 1841 voyage aboard a whaling vessel, Herman Melville (1819–1891) jumped ship in Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas (where his first novel, Typee [1845], is set); James Norman Hall (1887–1951), American novelist and coauthor (with Charles Nordhoff) of Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), spent most of his l­ater life in Tahiti.

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I am “publishing again” at the moment it is ­because friends have literally invaded me and taken the poems away from me. They do that entirely for my good. They d­ on’t want me entirely forgotten among the new poets crowding the stage. It warms me to be asked for poems and I appreciate their concern for me and yours too as shown in your kind letter. I have long had it in mind to copy out something to send you. Poetry is one of the few places it would seriously bother me to be left out of for good and all. Your invitation catches me away off down ­here with nothing but almost blank note-­books to draw on. I can get you something but I ­shall have to take a ­little time to send for it and I fear ­w ill be too late for your anniversary number and that’s too bad for me. I’ll send it anyway; and ­will you please let me know if the chance is still open.285 With best wishes to Harriet Monroe, Lew Sarett you and the rest, Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Marshall Louis Mertins. The tele­g ram is dated by day and month but not year; “1935” is penciled in above the text. TG. Berkeley.]

KEY WEST FLA JAN 30 [1935] MONEY FRIENDSHIP AND HONOR BUT I CANT YIELD TO THE TEMPTATION THIS SPRING ALL TIED UP IN ENGAGEMENTS AT AMHERST YALE ETC THANK PRESIDENT SPROUL FROM MY HEART286 ROBERT FROST

285. ​R F would next appear in the April  1936 number of Poetry, which featured “At Woodward’s Gardens” and “Ten Mills” (CPPP, 266–267 and 281–283). 286. ​Robert Gordon Sproul (1891–1975) was president of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1930 to 1958. At Sproul’s request, Mertins had asked RF to deliver the Charter Day address for an honorarium of $500. See Mertins, Life and Talks-­Walking (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965): 210.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

Key West Florida January 30 1935 Dear Louis: I should like to tell you something that would r­ eally help you t­oward making your book one projectile.287 I should like to think of some plan on which all you ever wrote could be rearranged with the sharpest at the point the broadest at the base and the explosives in the ­middle. The sharpest would be made out of your wit the basic out of your rustic and h ­ uman sympathies (which is where we come nearest together) and the m ­ iddle out of the rebel in you. You wouldnt think of a book like that I suppose and I suppose you are right. My idea would be to have a book like that for now—­not unlike my Selected Poems and then l­ ater the w ­ hole works in the order in which they w ­ ere 288 written. I know something about it but not every­thing. I sympathize with Esther’s wish to leave nothing out.289 That would be one book and ultimately the more impor­tant. But right now I could see good war in letting them have the other sort of t­ hing like a bolt from the blues. I should have talked this over with you that day at Breadloaf [sic] and found out just how definitely you know your own mind in the ­matter. What you asked for as I remember it was a list of twenty or so that I should be sorry to see you omit. Suppose I just name you a few that have stayed by me; ­those that have stuck to me without my trying to stick to them. That can tell a very true story. ­A fter all I de­cided to play with my plan. Pay no attention to me. But what an entering290 book it would be. Robert Prelude Jewish Lullaby Two Jewish Folk Songs

287. ​Untermeyer’s Selected Poems and Parodies. 288. ​R F always carefully reordered the poems printed in his “selected” editions, without regard to chronology. 289. ​Untermeyer’s third wife, Esther Antin. Untermeyer ignored RF’s scheme and arranged the poems in chronological order, by date of publication. 290. ​Given the ballistic meta­phors RF uses in the letter, is not at all clear that this is a misprint for “entertaining.”

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­Water ­Water Wine-­flower Stay ­Here To-­night (?)291 You could well give us a lot more of ­these adjectiveless folk t­ hings.292 The Point

Feeble Whistler Member of the Supreme Court293 Critique of Pure Rhyme To a Self Confessed Phi­los­o­pher Portrait of a Jewelry Drummer The Flea bites of Clement Wood294 Song Tournament Etc The Load (in three parts)295

I. Rebellion Prayer On the Birth of a Child Calliban [sic] Steel Mill Strikers To the Child of a Revolutionist He Goads Himself Etc.

291. ​“The Leaf,” from Food and Drink (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932). 292. ​This sentence appears vertically in the left margin, as do the following two. While not exactly “adjectiveless,” the poems RF h ­ ere names are spare and relatively (for poetry) ­f ree of modifiers. 293. ​“Portrait of a Supreme Court Judge,” included in “Six Epigrams” (also from Food and Drink). 294. ​Actually, “Portrait of a Friend,” the friend in question being the poet Clement Wood (1888–1950), though he is nowhere named in the poem. Untermeyer places “Portrait” (in Selected Poems) with t­ hose from his 1917 volume, ­T hese Times, but it did not appear t­ here (in the section subtitled “Thirteen Portraits”). In fact, Untermeyer printed it first in Selected Poems. In any case, “Portrait of a Friend” is an Italian sonnet, and its sestet hardly flatters its subject (who in the octet is likened to a “flea”). 295. ​On another page is a variant list for “The Load” that omits all titles given ­u nder the heading “Ishtehar”; Untermeyer omits this in RFLU.

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II. Race Lost Jerusalem Roast Leviathan Etc. III. Ishtehar The Eternal Masculine The Burning Bush Inhibited The Woodpecker Mozart Feuerzauber Etc. I find the New Adam 296 least like you in any of your kinds. Basic

Last Words before Winter Return to Birds Scarcely Spring Dog at Night Disenchantment The Long Feud Country Eve­ning Digging Ten Years Old Positano and so on to end with 297 Rich Return Transfigured Swan Mingling city and country home and foreign parts.

296. ​Title poem of The New Adam (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920). 297. ​RF has hand-­d rawn an arrow, h ­ ere, pointing to the last two poems, before which he places a bracket, thus: {.

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[To Charles R. Green. ALS. Jones.]

Key West Florid Feb 2 1935 Dear Mr Green: The only way to find out what this Rodker edition is is to write to John Rodker at the address you have. I remember him as a poet who went into fine printing and has done some very good work including an edition of Ezra Pound’s early Cantos.298 I ­d idn’t know he had touched me.299 Do you suppose he may have merely rebound the Collected of Henry Holt? I should like to know myself. Now that you get me started, I recall another new poem of mine at about the same time with The Grindstone and On a Tree Fallen Across the Road in Farm and Fireside. I have gone and forgotten its name.300 It was not quite up to the other two and I d­ idn’t take it into my books. It was about a man who got mad one Sunday morning when he found his three only apples stolen and right before his neighbors on their way to church began trampling flat his own Sunday-­go-­to-­Meeting hat.301 Id like to see it again if you find it. You do all the work and I do all the guessing. We have had it very cold ­here too—­night ­after night of sixty five above zero Farenheit [sic]. The night it was fifty below in Franconia N.H. it is said to have dropped to fifty above ­here. Key West has never had a frost since the last ice age. Always yours Robert Frost

298. ​ A Draft of the Cantos 17–27 of Ezra Pound (London: John Rodker, 1928). John Rodker (1894–1955) was a British poet and publisher. His Ovid Press had issued the first edition of Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1919). 299. ​No item associated with Rodker appears in the Clymer / Green bibliography. 300. ​The poem RF ­can’t recall the name of is “The Gold Hesperidee,” which appeared in Farm and Fireside in September  1921. Farm and Fireside also published, in 1921, “The Grindstone” (June) and “On a Tree Fallen Across the Road” (October). The latter two are collected in NH; RF would soon bring “The Gold Hesperidee” into AFR. 301. ​See CPPP, 258–259.

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[To Robert P. Eckert (1903–1966), British scholar and biographer. ALS. Bodleian.]

Key West Florida February 2 1935 Dear Mr Eckert: Do you want to wait for me a l­ ittle longer? I should like to give you something new in prose or verse for your book about Edward Thomas,302 and it is just pos­si­ble that I may have something. Of course feel ­f ree to use the one called To E.T. Do you know I’m inclined to like the poem better for a permanent t­ hing with the last two stanzas left off? What do you say to our leaving them off?303 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Harold Rugg. This letter is written on a colophon for Three Poems. Rugg had sent the colophon to RF for approval. See RF to Rugg, November 14, 1934, for details, and RF’s stipulations regarding the edition. ALS. DCL.]

Key West Florid February 8 1935 Dear Mr Rugg: This has my approval. I dont suppose you want the dates of the poems. They could be only approximate. Caesar’s Lost Transports about 1892 Warning about 1895, The Quest of the Orchis about 1901. You may prefer the definite

302. ​ Edward Thomas: A Biography and a Bibliography (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1937). 303. ​­Those final two stanzas provide specificity (about the place and manner of Thomas’s death) and topicality (a description of the Germans “thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine”—of course, more topical than ever in 1935). The first three stanzas of the poem have the kind of high generality appropriate to “permanence.” Eckert did not reprint the poem, though he listed it and “Iris By Night”—­a nother poem by RF memorializing his friendship with Thomas, though not by name—in an appendix citing biographical and critical assessments of Thomas (282).

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dates of publication in the Ind.304 or no dates at all. Wishing you and the boys good luck in this enterprise is wishing myself good luck.305 Faithfully yours R.F. Put the best foot forward—­The Quest of the Orchis—­wont you?306

[To Charles R. Green. ALS. Jones.]

Key West Florid February 8 1935 Dear Mr Green: Few get praise bestowed on them so pleasantly in their life-­time. We wont go into w ­ hether or not I deserve what David Lambuth says for me.307 We have it in writing and we intend to keep it. I s­ hall always be grateful to him. I have sent the publication list in a separate envelope.308 It is still at 63 above in the eve­n ing called cold h ­ ere. But the sun shines all day ­every day. T ­ here is no g­ reat number of winter visitors and for them the place is nothing but a tannery. T ­ here is nothing to go to or look at but [the] spectacle of the FERA rehabilitating the natives—­negro Cuban and Yankee. The Yankees it seems are Yankees who came h ­ ere two or three generations back from small towns in New ­England. Some of them got very rich speculating on the New York Stock Exchange when ­there was no telegraph and they had to do it by mail and the mail boats. One gave a complete dinner set of solid gold to a d­ aughter at her wedding. The most noticeable ­thing about Key 304. ​The In­de­pen­dent. 305. ​“The boys”: members of Daniel Oliver Associates, an undergraduate club of bibliophiles at Dartmouth. They printed Three Poems. See also RF to Rugg, March 23, 1935. 306. ​Rugg did. 307. ​David Lambuth, professor of En­glish at Dartmouth College, wrote the preface for Clymer and Green’s Robert Frost: A Bibliography (Amherst, MA: Jones Library, 1937), which concludes with this panegyric: “Other poets have spoken—­w isely, courageously, poignantly—­about living. At its greatest, the speech of Robert Frost is not about living— it is living. This is a strange power, and in it resides the majesty of the man. Not to have felt this is not to have known his stature” (12). 308. ​See the text following the pre­sent letter and given ­here as its postscript.

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West now is a look of poverty and dilapidation. The Cubans from want have all turned petty thieves and beggars. They are said to be worse in Havana. Sincerely yours Robert Frost The Favour—­London Mercury—is the same as Snow Dust and Dust of Snow309 On a Star-­bright Night—­Is that the same as Canis Major?310 The Same Leaves is called In Hardwood Groves in the Collected.311 The Common Fate must be something I have changed the name of. I cant remember it.312 Won­der if West-­r unning Brook shouldnt be abbreviated differently. A Time to Talk was first published in a magazine at Plymouth State Normal School, Plymouth New Hampshire in 1915 16 or 17.313 ­There was a poem in The Boston Transcript at the time of the invasion of Greece by the Turks. When was that? Some thirty five years ago?314 ­There may have been more in B. T.315 I see no mention of a book I took part in with several poems (including A Girl’s Garden) in ­England pretty soon ­after coming home to Amer­i­ca. I must have had a copy. Edward Thomas (with the pen name of Edward Eastaway) was in it with some of his very first poems.316 I dont know what you can do about this ­unless you wrote to J. W. Haines Esq. Midhurst, Hucclecote, Gloucester, Eng.

309. ​“Dust of Snow” appeared first ­u nder the title “A Favour” (London Mercury, December 1920), and then as “Snow Dust” (Yale Review, January 1921). 310. ​It is—as published in the New York Herald Tribune on March 22, 1925. See RF to Young, December 11, 1932. 311. ​The poem appeared first (as “The Same Leaves”) in the Dearborn In­de­pen­dent on December 18, 1926, and was added to the contents of ABW in CP 1930. 312. ​“A Peck of Gold” was published first ­u nder the title “The Common Fate” in the Yale Review (July 1927). 313. ​In June 1916, in The Prospect (Plymouth Normal School). 314. ​“Greece” appeared in the Transcript on April 30, 1897, coincident with the Greco-­ Turkish War (April 5–­May 8, 1897). 315. ​“God’s Garden” appeared in the Transcript on June 23, 1898. 316. ​ An Annual of New Poetry 1917 (London: Constable, 1917), which, as it happened, Clymer and Green neglected to list in their bibliography. In addition to “A Girl’s Garden,” the book includes (by RF) “Christmas Trees,” “The Line-­Gang,” “Pea Brush,” “The Oven Bird,” and “Hyla Brook” (all collected in MI). The book prints eigh­teen poems by Thomas (­u nder the pen name to which RF refers).

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You prob­ably havent time for this. Let it go. R.F. Then ­there ­were the few childish ­things in The Lawrence High School Bulletin between March 1890 and June 1892.317 I only mention them in conscientious frankness.

[To Edward Davison. ALS. DCL.]

Key West Florid February 12 1935 Dear Ted: I’ll tell you what could be. Boulder has too painful memories for Elinor to brave yet awhile.318 I should have to come without her and on her account I ­shouldn’t want to be gone as long as ten days. Five or six days w ­ ere what I gave the Institute for six hundred dollars last time.319 You could easily get in all you propose in five or six days: two recitals, two class visitations and a round ­table. Say you’ll make Campbell give me six hundred for five or six days and I’m yours.320 Take my side like a good American by inclination.321 And one t­ hing more. Do your best to have Lesley t­ here wont you? S­ he’d be a drawing card with me of course.322 Ever yours Robert

317. ​RF published seven poems in the Bulletin (1890–1892). See CPPP for a list (959) and for the poems (485–498). 318. ​­Because Marjorie Frost had lived (and met her husband) in Boulder in the early 1930s; her parents visited her t­ here in the summers of 1931 and 1932. 319. ​The annual Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference sponsored by the University of Colorado, Boulder. RF had been ­t here in July 1931. 320. ​Walter M. Campbell (1885–1965), director of the Conference. 321. ​Davison was born in Glasgow and educated at Cambridge. He emigrated to the United States in 1925. 322. ​Lesley Frost had embarked on a successful writing ­career of her own. Her novel Murder at Large appeared in 1932 (to good reviews).

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[To William Branford Shubrick Clymer. ALS. Alger.]

Key West Florid February 12 1935 Dear Mr Clymer: Elinor is better at remembering my books than I am. Mr Adams’ book is nothing new then. I was afraid it was.323 Mr Green wants to know if I remember the “aind” in A Boys W ­ ill and when 324 it was corrected. I ­don’t. “Twilight” must have been done into book in 1893—­Elinor and I think in October.325 I remember writing the poem called Summering in the late summer in Boston and taking it right in to show it to Chas. Hurd who was then literary editor of The Transcript.326 He advised me not to let him have it ­because I needed money and he was paying none. Pretty soon afterwards I walked twenty-­five miles back home to Lawrence. I have stolen in my ­later work from the poems in Twilight just as I have from poems I have thrown away. Better start spring up ­there. We are beginning to think of remigration. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Marshall Louis Mertins. ALS. Berkeley.]

Key West Florida February 12 1935 Dear Mertins: Is the idea to rush me off my feet out of New E ­ ngland back into my native state? Sometimes publishers try to rush me off my feet into their enthusiasm

323. ​See RF to Clymer, January 23, 1935. 324. ​Clymer and Green note in the bibliography, in their description of the first American edition (New York: Henry Holt, 1915): “The first copies contained a misprint ‘Aind’ on the last line of page 14, which was ­later corrected to ‘And’ ” (27). The reference is to the closing line of “My November Guest”: “And they are better for her praise.” 325. ​In 1894, actually. 326. ​Charles Edwin Hurd (1833–1910).

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for their latest greatest book in the history of lit­er­a­t ure. Ask them how deep in the silt of ages I am planted. I am a bridge pier in the m ­ iddle of the river. You w ­ ere in too much of a hurry to see me again. An amenable fault. I most of all should be able to excuse you for it. But if you w ­ ill quiet down and listen for a moment without answering you ­w ill hear that what I am saying is: You would have been sure to see more of me as a visitor out ­there if you or I or somebody had been able to locate my son out t­ here on some kind of ranch. I said that partly for the fun of it to tease you. I had pretty well satisfied myself t­ here ­were no ranches in the SOUTHLAND327 within our means and no kind of farming within our education and experience. You chose to infer that I was hinting for a job for myself in some one college or all the colleges in California. Goodness, my child, I am not in need of a job. Havent I told you all Amherst College does to bind me to her in lifelong gratitude? I am a full professor at Amherst with no obligations or duties, but to stay in residence three months a year, deliver one lecture or perhaps two a year, and go on having a book of verse once in a few years. What I might thank you and the Californians for (you put it into my head) is an invitation to spend a week each at a few of your colleges next winter at five hundred dollars a week. I would do one public lecture go to two or three classes and conduct two round t­ ables of the chosen. Let’s not look beyond next winter. I can see several kinds of advantage in an arrangement like that if you care to work it up. I s­ hall have to be getting out of the cold again they tell me; and it had better be in my native state I should think than down ­here among the FERAL Floridities. No reflection on Florida intended. I merely mean California has claims on me, and I have a leaning of the sentiments ­toward my native state. And please dont put yourself or anybody ­else about too much for me. You may see me out t­ here uninvited and for nothing anyway. I am sending the book for Mrs ­Virginia Mertins de Vries328 Ever yours Robert Frost

327. ​Mertins notes that RF often poked fun at the Los Angeles Times for calling Southern California THE SOUTHLAND. See Life and Talks-­Walking (183). 328. ​Mertins’s ­daughter. The book is a copy of RF’s SP 1934. See RF to Mertins, December 26, 1934.

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I was sorry I couldnt come for the cele­bration.329

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. ALS. Jones.]

Key West Florida February 12 1935 Dear Edward: ­There is hope of your having me late in April or late in May if you ­will write ­after I get back to Amherst and have found out what I am in for ­there. I have been hearing from the lips of Edward Bruce himself the dispenser of money ­under FERA to artists, that he has in mind, and Roo­se­velt has in mind, to go even further from the idea of dole and relief work and to appropriate money in­def­initely for the encouragement of all the arts in Amer­i­ca by subsidy to young poets paint­ers and musicians.330 He is very close to Roo­se­ velt and speaks with authority. ­There is many a slip of course. But if anything comes of this plan Shirley Barker o ­ ught surely to be one to benefit by it.331 The money ­wouldn’t be big—­say a thousand a year, and accepting it would lay you ­under no obligation not to earn all you could by poetry or jobs teaching e­ tc. Honor would attach to it even more than to a Rhodes scholarship or Guggenheim fellowship ­because it would come from a republican state and not from a rich man’s coffer-­coffin.332 I’ll tell you more when and if I hear more. Ever yours Robert Frost 329. ​The Charter Day festivities held at the University of California, Berkeley. See RF to Mertins, January 30, 1935. 330. ​Late in 1933, FDR named Edward Bright Bruce (1879–1943) head of the Public Works of Art Proj­ect (PWAP). He would also direct the Section of Painting and Sculpture (­later called the Section of Fine Arts) and the Trea­sury Relief Art Proj­ect. For the most part—­notwithstanding RF’s hopes for poets—­f unds distributed through ­these programs supported visual artists. At its height—1933 to 1934—­the PWAP employed 3,700 artists at a cost of more than $1.3 million. Edward Bruce was himself a paint­er; he and his wife Margaret “Peggy” Stow Bruce wintered in Key West. In 1935, the Works Pro­g ress Administration split into five separate programs, which now included the Federal Writers’ Proj­ect (established in July  1935). That program would employ some 6,600 writers, editors, art critics, researchers, and historians. 331. ​See RF to Lewis, August 2, 1934. 332. ​British mining magnate, South African politician, and ardent imperialist Cecil John Rhodes (1853–1902) established the scholarship that bears his name. John Simon

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[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Key West, Florida] [February 17, 1935] Dear Louis: Wont you see Italy as no American has ever seen it before.333 I’m a haughty devil for a demo­crat. I hate to be caught touring with the tourists and seeing only what is advertised to be seen. I refused to look ­England in the features the w ­ hole three years I was t­ here, and came home safely unable to exchange observations with anybody e­ lse who had ever been t­ here for culture purposes. What I encountered nobody could have shown me for money; t­ here w ­ ere not trip tickets to it. T. E. Hulme for instance.334 I went as an exporter anyway not as a self accredited importer of Eu­ro­pean art into our system. You go as an exporter too. That w ­ ill give you dif­fer­ent eyes and ears. I only meant to be mildly suggestive about your book.335 I’d no more think of putting your poems into a plan in a book than I’d think of putting your words together into an idea in a poem. When we go to press we makers are alone with our Maker.336 We have the momentary weakness to wish ­t here ­were h ­ uman help in deciding what we ­w ill keep or reject. But no we are condemned to loneliness. Nobody can satisfy us but ourselves and we but poorly. (­There seem to be exceptions to my rule. Merrill More [sic] is funny to be able to let you make up his book into six facets of a man not to mention separate

Guggenheim (1867–1941), heir to the Meyer Guggenheim mining fortune, headed the American Smelting and Refining Com­pany from 1919 to 1941; in 1925, he and his wife Olga Hirsch Guggenheim created the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 333. ​Untermeyer’s The Donkey of God (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932)—­a collection of stories based on Italian folk tales—­won an award sponsored by Ente Nazionale Italiano per il Turismo (ENIT) for the best book about Italy by a non-­Italian. Rather than accept a cash award, Untermeyer and his wife Esther accepted an all-­expense-­paid trip to Italy, which culminated with a reception in Rome by Benito Mussolini. The ­couple set sail in April. 334. ​F. S. Flint, RF’s first En­g lish friend and confidante, introduced him to T. E. Hulme in 1913. See LRF-1, 118–119. 335. ​See RF’s January 30, 1935, letter to Untermeyer. 336. ​The word for “poet” derives from the ancient Greek word for “maker”: ποιητής (poiētḗs).

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his good from his bad. And by the way what you wrote in the postface was one of the best and most entertaining pieces of your prose.)337 And by the way I think you overvalue A. McL’s article. It is the prose of a college educated and practical publicist trying hard to think. Restated it says publishers o ­ ught possibly (he won­ders) to play up originality in art more than they do ­because the originality of ­today in art is the revolution of tomorrow in politics.338 He’s been reading O’Shaughnessy’s poem about us ­music makers having built Nineveh and overthrown Babel.339 Tell me any poetic or belle lettre originality of any day that became the revolution of any day following.

337. ​Untermeyer was instrumental in assembling Merrill Moore’s second collection of sonnets, which Untermeyer titled Six Sides to a Man (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935). The “six sides” correspond to sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and thought. In his epilogue to the book, Untermeyer writes: “The paradox of creation and conflict, this order out of chaos is common to e­ very poet. In the case of Dr. Moore [a psychiatrist] the pro­ cess is more than usually self-­revealing. The ­factor that usually deranges his aim is that his intuitions and unconscious associations are not in league with and sometimes even opposed to his conscious intentions” (170–171). 338. ​Archibald MacLeish’s “The Writer and Revolution” appeared in the Saturday Review of Lit­er­at­ ure on January 26, 1935 (and was l­ ater reprinted in Ten Con­temporary Thinkers, ed. Victor Amend and Leo Hendrick [New York: ­Free Press of Glencoe, 1954], the text we quote from h ­ ere). In it he suggests that “both publishers and critics frequently exert upon writers an intellectual influence which may easily become destructive and which any writer who proposes to continue writing must oppose.” And he adds: The real point, the point I wish to make is this. The Revolution is in fashion. But revolution i­ sn’t. And the writer’s only interest as a writer is with revolution—­w ritten by itself without the The. The Revolution, the po­liti­cal and economic overthrow of one class by another is the last art in a pro­cess of ­human change which has had a long history. Whereas the revolution itself, the revolution of the spirit is the first art in a change which has not yet begun. (179) 339. ​See the last stanza of Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s “Ode” (1874): We, in the ages of lying In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; And overthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world’s worth; For each age is a dream that is ­dying, Or one that is coming to birth.

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Let’s talk sense. Words­worth and Emerson both wrote some politics into their verse. Their poetic originality by which they live was quite another ­thing. So of Shelley. His originality was sufficient to give him his place. His politics ­were of the order of Godwins and Orages.340 If you want to play with the word revolution, ­every day and new poem of a poet is a revolution of the spirit: that is to say it is a freshening. But it leads to nothing on the lower plane of politics. On the lower plane of thought and opinion the poet is a follower. Generally he keeps pretty well off that plane for that reason. Who wants forever to be setting to rhyme the greatness of Rousseau? Keats, Browning? Somebody set ­going the idea that art is an escape.341 The very word escape can hardly be kept out of the minor poetry since. I heard Thorpe of Ann Arbor make it out that in Hyperion Keats anticipated evolution when he had the old gods go down before the new. Hell he did. Keats merely set out to show you the ­g reat revolution of form getting the better of power.342 But why talk about it. A McL. was wrong in thinking the object of the artist is to be untimely—­not to be in 340. ​William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Po­liti­cal Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (London: Robinson, 1793), the first British treatise to promote anarchism, profoundly affected Percy Bysshe Shelley’s politics. Alfred Richard Orage was a socialist, trade u ­ nionist, and spokesman for the Social Credit Movement. 341. ​The claim that a literary work might be “escapist” in the sense of turning its attention and that of its readers away from a purposeful engagement with society had acquired, by the 1930s, a sense more pejorative than descriptive. RF would himself be charged with “escapism” by leftist reviewers of AFR. The charge so rankled RF that it likely played a part in inspiring his late poem “Escapist—­Never,” collected in his last book, ITC (CPPP, 434). 342. ​See The Mind of John Keats (New York: Oxford University Press, 1926), by Clarence Thorpe (1887–1959), professor of En­glish at the University of Michigan. In it he remarks of Hyperion: The sentences in regard to the gregarious march of the ­human intellect, and the work of Providence subduing the mightiest minds to the ser­vice of their time are indeed significant. The first reveals the cheery optimism so characteristic of Keats—in spite of occasional gloomy outbursts—in regard to the world’s advance t­oward perfection, “a march of the h ­ uman intellect,” indicating a sense of steady progression, just as in Hyperion the poet visions a world in evolution passing successively from stage to stage. (45) And see—in connection with RF’s remarks above—­t his passage in his notebooks: “Keats an evolutionist ­because he tried to write an epic of Jovian hierarchy supplanting the Saturnian? Nonsense. He was thinking only of the final triumph of one infinity over another, definition over indistinctness, the Greek over the Asiatic, form over size”

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fashion.343 The artist’s object is to tell ­people what they havent as yet realized they w ­ ere about to say themselves, or might claim they w ­ ere about to say themselves. First they are displeased then they are pleased at this for psychological reasons we wont go into. The publisher comes in right ­t here to help in the transition between their being displeased and pleased. Dont read all this. Ever yours Robert the Devil

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from RFLU. ALS. LoC.]

[Key West, Florida] [February 18, 1935] Dear Louis: Honest and truly i­ sn’t that just a Pound-­gang editorial.344 The thesis is our object in life is to be untimely: our publishers object is to have us timely. Where then do we and the publishers meet? Do they weaken ­toward us or do we weaken ­toward them or do we both weaken ­toward each other. I couldnt be both­ered with such considerations. My object in life is to be first-­hand with some t­ hings of the senses and the mind and to strike no false personal note to set my nerves on edge. ­Those two ­matters taken care of, my difference ­will follow and take care of itself. With the right nature its difference w ­ ill at first frighten it. Imagine seeking calculating a difference a hitting em where they

(NBRF, 361). Hyperion—­based on the Titanomachy—­recounts the overthrow of the Titans by the Olympian gods. 343. ​MacLeish asserts: “The condition of a writer’s success as a writer—­ignoring as long as we may his success as a manufacturer of seasonable novelties—is not timeliness. In fact it is the precise opposite of timeliness. The condition of any writer’s success as an artist is the refusal to accept the fash­ion­able esthetic dogmas of his time” (178). 344. ​Again, MacLeish’s “The Writer and Revolution.”

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a­ in’t345 and wont be for a hundred or two years at least. And imagine Alfred346 being asked to leave all and publish such inutility ­either for glory or profit. Gee! But of course a man doesnt have to think to be a poet. A. McL [sic] may be as wrong as he pleases if he gives me a quality to savor in his verse. Do you know the quality may be of wrong-­headedness in his case just as with Joyce it may be cloacality.347 I like your sardonix about war. You may think you can stop war or at least that war ­ought to stop. That makes you a Quaker. The position is tenable. It ­can’t be called bad thinking ­because it is isnt thinking. Pacifism is instinctive. It is a dream of wiping out the last infirmity of noble minds and so is the height or last word of nobility.348 But dont ask me to listen [to] t­ hese technical kids who believe they can calculate a place to spill where no dog has spilled before by mea­sur­ing distances equally from all the posts in town. “No fairs if you dont use a post.” You remember Lawrence Conrad once of Michigan. He has worked his way up in the automobile factories and topped off with a college education you remember. Henry Ford drove him somewhat radical. He has been working on a novel about the ­labor prob­lem out in Detroit. He calls it “F.  O.  B. Detroit.”349 What I saw of it I liked. He wants to know if I have any suggestions 345. ​RF echoes Hall of Fame baseball star “Wee” Willie Keeler (1872–1923), famous for the phrase: “Keep a clear eye, and hit ’em where they ­a in’t.” And in his remarks about a poet’s “difference,” he anticipates remarks he would soon make—in the summer—in the introduction he supplied for E. A. Robinson’s King Jasper (1935): How does a man come on his difference, and how does he feel about it when he first finds it out? At first it may well frighten him, as his difference with the Church frightened Martin Luther. T ­ here is such a t­ hing as being too willing to be dif­fer­ent. And what ­shall we say to p­ eople who are not only willing but anxious? What assurance have they that their difference is not insane, eccentric, abortive, unintelligible? (CPPP, 741) 346. ​Alfred Harcourt, Untermeyer’s publisher. 347. ​Long a feature of Joyce’s work, and duly taken note of by his early reviewers. RF may have particularly in mind the rapturous dump Leopold Bloom takes in Ulysses (chapter 4, part 2). 348. ​A n echo of John Milton’s Lycidas, where fame is “that last infirmity of noble mind.” 349. ​Conrad wrote RF on February 10: “My novel with factory background and full of working-­c lass figures, was ready just when that ‘turn to the left’ movement started. My novel is ‘left,’ but it i­sn’t selling any doctrine. It went round the publishers, falling between

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about publishers. Do you think you could get Alfred to give him a special chance with his readers. ­Here is timeliness more or less accidental but quite frank and shameless. Lawrence is a poor devil I wish somebody could use as a novelist. If I seem irritable it is prob­ably due to the horribleness of having to look on at the redemption of a city that has lost its self re­spect to the New Deil.350 I brought you in to the conversation when I was asked by the Edward Bruce at the head of Art Relief ­under the Fera [sic].351 He asked if poetry could be considered an art like painting you could expect to live by. He wanted to be nice to poets if I could assure him t­ here ­were any. I said ask you. He speaks for the President and the Missus without intervention of Ickes or anyone.352 So be nice to him if he turns to you for advice. He put the t­ hing on the high plane of encouraging art by pension rather than giving work for relief. He said he was ­going to reduce the number of paint­ers pensioned from 2600 last year to 1000 next. How many poets did I think t­ here ­were? I said ask you. I believed you had figured t­ here w ­ ere 400000 writing and trying for publication, but I doubted if you would say more than a hundred or two would be worth pensioning. Elinor said a hundred. I said two hundred. The pensions would run in­def­initely and be small—­just honorary grubstakes—­but honorary not charitable. He thought a thousand dollars a year would be enough and yet not enough to lie back on. So did I. I couldnt tell what the prospects might be. Ever yours R. two requirements. It was too strong for t­hose seeking delicate writing; it was not entirely kosher for ­t hose who ­were then certain we ­were ­going to have a proletarian novel in Amer­i­ca. . . . ​But in all, [my novel] is full of h ­ uman beings, trying their best to live their lives in our time. It is called ‘F.O.B. Detroit’ ” (DCL). The abbreviation stands for “­free on board,” a shipping term: ­free if shipped to Detroit, in this case, but not ­free if shipped anywhere beyond Detroit or other than Detroit. Another Michigander and friend of Lawrence Conrad, Wessel Smitter (1893–1951), would eventually publish a novel ­u nder the title F.O.B. Detroit with Harper and B ­ rothers in 1938—­t hough w ­ hether he took the title from Conrad or not is unclear. (Conrad never published a novel u ­ nder this title.) 350. ​Robert Burns often uses this Scots word for “Devil” in his poetry; and the Scottish spelling ­here brings out (in the succeeding sentence) that other Edward Bruce—­ brother of Robert the Bruce and for a short time High King of Ireland. 351. ​See the notes to RF’s February 12, 1935, letter to Lewis. 352. ​Harold Ickes (1874–1952), Secretary of the Interior during FDR’s administration, was responsible for implementing many New Deal programs, including the Public Works Administration.

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[To Norreys Jephson O’Conor (1885–1958), American poet and scholar. ALS. Huntington.]

Key West Florida February 18 1935 Dear O’Conor Look at where I am; and isnt it too bad? I suppose you ­couldn’t be persuaded to stay with your ­mother till April 1st.353 ­Because if you could ­there would be hope of seeing you then. We s­ hall be coming up along then. T ­ here’d be lots 354 to talk about. I must look for your book. I dont read the reviews much and I lose track of what’s g­ oing on even with my friends. I’m better than I was when last you saw me fighting an open fireplace and London fog bronchitis.355 But Elinor is not strong or well. Let me know what your plans are. I should hate to have you come and go without a glimpse of you. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Padraic Colum (1881–1972), Irish poet, novelist, and playwright. ALS. DCL.]

Key West Florid February 18 1935 Dear Padraic: It is ­going to be fine to see you and Molly again.356 The last time we met was in Dublin, and that seems a long time ago. I remember your starting at a run to greet the new President of Ireland across the street, but suddenly slowing down to a walk when half way ­there for fear of being mistaken in your intentions.357 I’m always wanting to hear something authoritative once 353. ​Maria Jephson O’Conor, née Post (1855–1948). She lived in New York. 354. ​ Godes Peace and the Queenes; Vicissitudes of a House, 1539–1615 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), a historical account of Weston Manor House in Oxfordshire, and a 1597 slander suit involving Sir John Norreys and the Earl of Lincoln. 355. ​During RF’s 1928 trip to France, E ­ ngland, and Ireland (where O’Conor was in 1928). 356. ​Colum’s wife Mary Gunning Maguire (1884–1957), writer and literary critic. 357. ​The Colums had many friends in Irish politics (two of whom, Patrick and Willie Pearse, had been executed for the part they took in the Easter 1916 uprising). RF ­here

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in so often about Ireland and how she doth stand: though the centre of po­ liti­cal excitement has shifted of late to other places. One of my poetic boys Kimball Flaccus, whom you may know, has taken it into his head to go to Dublin for his college gradu­ate work.358 He looks on your home town as still the centre of poetical excitement anyway. But I won­der if he isnt wrong. You are all scattered abroad.359 Three of you live much of your time in the United States. I dont know what to say to you for that. Maybe I ­shall by the time I get to Coral Gables.360 I wish I could bring Elinor. She is sorry to miss the chance to be with you both. Ever yours Robert Frost Harriet Moody has been in my mind all through my letter, though I h ­ aven’t 361 brought her in.

refers to William Thomas Cosgrave (1880–1965), first president of the Executive Council of the Irish F ­ ree State (an office equivalent to prime minister); he served from 1922 to 1932, succeeding Michael Collins, when the latter was assassinated on August 22, 1922 (hence RF’s quip about Colum’s having been afraid his “intentions” might be “mistaken”). The event ­here described occurred during RF’s 1928 visit to the country (September 29–­October 3), which coincided with a return trip home Colum had made (he was then living in New York). 358. ​See the notes to RF’s December 21, 1933, letter to Untermeyer. 359. ​Due to the increasingly conservative (and quasi-­t heocratic) turn in Irish government, first ­u nder Cosgrave and then Éamon de Valera (1882–1975), the country was, by the mid-1930s, not congenial to young radicals or to artists. RF likely refers (in addition to Colum) to Irish poets George Russell (AE) (1867–1935) and James Stephens (1880–1950). Russell, a friend of both Colum and RF, spent much of 1931 in the United States, before settling in ­England in 1932. He had also lately returned to the United States on a lecture tour—­December 1934 to March 1935—­t hat would prove to be his last: he died in Bournemouth, ­England, in July 1935. Stephens—­a nother friend of both Colum and RF—­left Ireland to live in London in 1925, and thereafter undertook several extensive lecture tours in Amer­i­ca. RF may also have in mind the American lecture tour William Butler Yeats embarked on in October 1932, a visit that lasted well into the following year. 360. ​On February 12, Colum had lectured at the University of Miami’s Winter Institute (in Coral Gables); he was scheduled to speak ­there again during the week of the twenty-­fourth. 361. ​Harriet Brainard Moody, w ­ idow of the poet William Vaughn Moody, had died in 1932. Colum and his wife ­were among her many literary friends, and RF and his wife had met them at Moody’s apartment on Waverly Place in New York on a number of occasions.

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[To Cornelius Weygandt. ALS. DCL.]

Key West Florida February 20 1935 Dear Weygandt “Education by Poetry” was about the only one of my reckless talks on the platform ever taken down entire and preserved.362 I must have copies of it in South Shaftsbury somewhere. But the surest way to get it would be from Frederick Allis Alumni Secretary Amherst College. He prob­ably has copies and if he ­hasn’t I ­shall be mad at him. Let me know w ­ ill you. 363 What do you say to the enclosed? Crowding memories gathered to it. Is it permissable [sic] for poetry to stoop so far as the lowly hen? I have a weakness for keeping poultry—­a lways have had. I began in the back yard in San Francisco when I was seven or eight. This is the strangest city in the United States t­ oday—­governed directly by the President without intervention of mayor or governor. Every­body is on relief and working lazily with hoes digging up all the native vegetation in the vacant lots. It is symbolic. The motto of the New Deal: Every­thing native must be extirpated. Your protégé Tugwell was down ­here on our island at the time Wallace cut off a lot of his followers—­Jerome Frank Fred Howe Gardener [sic] Jackson. Rex went home in a hurry almost uncrowned.364

362. ​See the notes to RF’s January 26, 1935, letter to MacKaye. 363. ​Presumably a draft of “A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury,” which first appeared in the April edition of the Atlantic Monthly and was ­later collected in AFR. 364. ​Rexford Tugwell, an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, where Weygandt taught as professor of En­g lish, was (as noted above) among FDR’s most influential advisors. He served as director of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). Henry A. Wallace was Secretary of Agriculture in the Roo­se­velt administration. When this letter was written, Jerome Frank served as special counsel to the Reconstruction and Finance Association. Appointed in 1933, Frederick C. Howe served as head of the Consumers’ Counsel, one of the agencies affiliated with the AAA. Gardner Jackson, who had helped or­ga­n ize the defense of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco, worked u ­ nder Frederick Howe in the Consumers’ Counsel agency. In 1935, Chester Davis, who had replaced George N. Peek as head of the AAA, purged Frank, Howe, and Jackson from it owing to their “leftist” po­l iti­cal tendencies.

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The climate has been good for me. The ­others are not so sure they like it.365 I may write a novel to be called Beginning in Key West. One of the ladies of the government would figure in it as Eve ­because she goes around whispering with delight “On the eve!”—­meaning of revolution as in Spain which she has just returned from and as in Cuba since we are more than half Cubans in population.366 She thinks [the] Spanish American revolution has got hold of the United States at this edge and cant help spreading. So do a lot of her friends I suspect. I c­ ouldn’t come back to such nonsense another year. I’m too sensitive to politics. The Weygandt name ­w ill be in the University Cata­logue one more generation at least then.367 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To William Lusk Field. ALS. Milton Acad­emy.]

Key West Florida February 22 1935 Dear Mr Field: May 3rd ­w ill be fine for me and seeing you all at Milton again w ­ ill be a pleasant part of getting back to New ­England. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

365. ​Elinor, Carol, and Carol’s ­family. 366. ​Cuba had been in a state of unrest since 1933 and, in early 1935, the Miami papers ­were full of speculations about an imminent revolution. The short-­l ived October revolution of 1934 (in Spain) set the stage for the civil war that would come two years ­later. 367. ​Weygandt’s son Cornelius Nolan Weygandt (1904–2004) joined the engineering faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 1935. During the 1940s, he worked on the ENIAC proj­ect at Penn. He retired in 1975.

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[To Edward Davison. ALS. DCL.]

Key West Feb 24 1935 Dear Ted: I come, but not without misgivings as to my adequacy to the fight you have put on of prose against poetry. It is a last-­m inute recourse, no doubt, to save the institute with the intelligent­sia of a place like Miami.368 Controversy is hardly my ele­ment. All you bring up from the Florid depths is the name of Edgar Guest.369 It goes without saying that mea­sured in ­every way but one poetry is worse than prose. I should be afraid neither McFee nor Miami would have heard or thought of that one. I suppose all I need do is come in my elephants skin suit and act obtuse. What was it somebody said about a cup?370 I ­shall drop off the train Tuesday the 26th when at its own sweet w ­ ill it ar371 rives. Cocoanut [sic] Grove is my station. It goes against me not to bring Elinor. W ­ e’ll talk about Boulder when I get t­ here.372 Can you find me an extra tennis racket and w ­ ill you give me satisfaction on the tennis court for what you did to me in Arlington?373 Ever yours Robert Frost

368. ​Referring to RF’s forthcoming lecture on “Before the Beginning and ­A fter the End of a Poem” at the Winter Institute (March 1, 1935). The tough-­m inded British-­born writer (and former naval engineer) William McFee (1881–1966) was scheduled to talk about the superiority of prose to poetry, to which provocation RF in his concluding lecture was supposed to respond. He did so, according to the Miami News, with gusto. The newspaper diplomatically pronounced the exchange a “no-­decision contest,” but one that simply by taking place reflected well on a city “sometimes accused of having no interests beyond racing, gambling and night clubs” (Miami News, March 3, 1935). 369. ​Edgar Guest (1881–1959), a prolific and popu­lar purveyor of light, sentimental verse. RF did not think highly of him (see, for example, LRF-2, 310). 370. ​Matthew 26:42, the account of Christ’s agony in Gethsemane: “If this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy ­w ill be done.” 371. ​On the Florida East Coast Railway. 372. ​See RF to Davison, February 12, 1935. 373. ​Arlington, Vermont (near South Shaftsbury), where RF sometimes played tennis.

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[To Marshall Louis Mertins. ALS. Berkeley.]

Key West Florida March 3 1935 Dear Mertins: Dont bow your head in shame before me but in my affairs try not to be so headlong. Nothing is very impor­tant at our age you know. Why bother to get the fussy details right when every­thing is coming right in a lump sum so soon. Let me not scare you. I’m not fey. I merely mean that in fifty years from now ­we’ll be about at the end of our old age pensions. The oldest person I could find in the Key West grave yard yesterday (Sunday) was a veteran of the war of 1812 who died in Key West at 108 years. But many have lived to be older than that. His inscription wound up “A good citizen for 65 years.”374 He must have been a bad citizen for 43 years then. That’s what undermined him and shortened his life. I hope your d­ aughter got the book.375 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. DCL.]

Key West Florid March 3 1935 Dear Mr Thornton: I’m sure it ­w ill be good advance advertising for the next book to let Henry Canby have Two Tramps.376 I was told at Miami they sold all the books you sent them. I had as good a time up t­ here as I could expect to have among a lot of conflicting poets and

374. ​Thomas Romer (1783–1891) was an African Bahamian who was born in Nassau and served in the War of 1812 as a privateer. His gravesite is included in the Key West Cemetery Map & Self-­Guided Tour (Web). 375. ​See the closing line of RF’s February 12, 1935, letter to Mertins. 376. ​Likely RF is in error. “Two Tramps in Mud-­Time” had been published by Canby in the October 6, 1934, issue of the Saturday Review of Lit­er­a­ture. The poem in question ­here is prob­ably “Not Quite Social,” which appeared in the March 30, 1935, issue of the Review, and would also be included in AFR.

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professors.377 One of them called me to my face an old fox b­ ecause he failed to draw me on his side in the quarrels. Life never ceases to be new. Thank you for sending the books to Mrs Brown at the Casa Marina on consignment.378 The f­ avor is to me. I dont know that many of the books w ­ ill be sold but some trou­ble had to be taken to keep good w ­ ill. I play tennis on the Casa Marina court and I have to be careful not to act as if my literary life was none of the rich common p­ eoples’ business. Best wishes to the firm and the f­ amily. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Lawrence Conrad. ALS. DCL.]

Key West Florida March 3 1935 Dear Lawrence: You w ­ ill see from the enclosed how I have gone to work.379 I have answered Alfred Harcourt’s letter with such confirmation as was needed. Now is the time for you to strike I think. May it come out all right. Luck may not have every­thing but it [has] all too much to do with our fates. Justice Cardoza [sic] told me he got his start upward by a m ­ istake the Italian voters made in 380 thinking his name was Italian. —­Be sure you reach some one in authority. I suppose the best way would be to send the MS to Alfred Harcourt himself with a brief letter mentioning me and Louis.381 Ever yours Robert Frost

377. ​See RF to Davison, February 24, 1935. 378. ​The Casa Marina ­Hotel in Key West. For details about it, see the notes to RF’s January 1–2, 1935, letter to Bartlett. 379. ​Conrad had asked RF help him secure a publisher for his second novel. RF had ­earlier advised him to hold off submitting it to Harcourt, but now favored the idea. See also RF’s February 18, 1936, letter to Untermeyer. 380. ​The name is Sephardic Jewish. Benjamin N. Cardozo won his first election (by a narrow margin) to the New York Supreme Court in 1913. His ascent thereafter was rapid. In 1932, Hoover nominated him to sit on the US Supreme Court, where he served u ­ ntil his death. 381.  Again, see RF to Untermeyer, February 18, 1935.

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[To Idea Louise Strong Hammond (1859–1938), American painter. ALS. Newberry.]

Key West Florida March 6 1935 My dear Mrs Hammond: I saw something of your ­daughter and her husband when I was at Coral Gables last week, but not as much as I had hoped and expected to.382 Maybe the shortcoming ­w ill be made up to me when I am back their way in latter March. I look on them as old friends in this scurrying world. The poem you may mean is called Dust of Snow.383 But I have written many on snow, so many in fact that I have been accused of trying to get my name permanently associated with snow so that it w ­ ill work both ways: if you see snow you w ­ ill think of frost and if you see frost you w ­ ill think of snow. But didnt you always do that? T ­ here is nothing new ­there anymore than t­ here is to anything good t­ here is in the New Deal. I’m not r­ eally designing. Another snow poem I wrote fairly well is The Onset. Properly understood it is a profoundly reassuring poem.384 Most of mine are on the reassuring side I suppose; though t­ here are some dark ones. I find all the statesmen absolutely darkened in Washington, even the noble Mr Henry Wallace. My poem The Runaway though written years ago is about such ­people.385 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

382. ​Divorced from Paul Tietjens in 1914, Eunice Strong Hammond—­t he ­daughter RF refers to—­married Cloyd Head in 1920 (though she retained the surname “Tietjiens” for her published works). 383. ​“Dust of Snow” was collected in NH, as was “The Onset” (mentioned subsequently). 384. ​See its closing lines: I know that winter death has never tried The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap In long storms an undrifted four feet deep As mea­sured against maple, birch and oak, It cannot check the peeper’s silver croak; And I ­shall see the snow all go down hill In ­water of a slender April rill That flashes tail through last year’s withered brake And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake. (CPPP, 209) 385. ​“The Runaway” appeared in the Amherst Monthly ( June 1918) and was collected in NH. In public readings, RF often gave it an allegorical twist, suggesting that it was

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[To Henry Dierkes. ALS. Jones.]

Key West Floriday (till March 20) March 7 1935 Dear Mr Dierkes: I have said even less perhaps than I might have in my marginal notes on your galley proofs. But I mustnt start writing prefaces. You have my confidence and admiration. Quote my notes as much as you like on your jacket.386 Dedicate the book to me if you werent [sic] already dedicating it to your wife. I should be proud of it. My only qualifications are as to your taste now and then and your firmness of inner form: some of it is too easily done and could have some w ­ ater squeezed out of it without seeming too dry. You ask for this or I shouldnt venture one discordant remark at the moment of the publication of your first book.387 Forgive me. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. ALS. Jones.]

Key West Florid March 21 1935 Dear Edward: Could you have me in the neighborhood of May 3rd? I have to be at Milton388 on that day and I am trying to arrange with them at Dartmouth for May 6th. You s­ hall fix the price.

(in part) about men who ­were enduring their first real experience of fear and sorrow (being “winter-­broken,” as the poem has it). 386. ​He did—­t hereby distinguishing himself as one of only three poets ever blurbed by RF (the others are John Holmes and Thomas Hornsby Ferril). Generally, RF did all he could to avoid joining what Nicholson Baker has memorably called (in The Anthologist) “the interfaith blurb universe.” It was yet another way of staying out the politics of poetry, as against the art of it. 387. ​ T he Man From Vermont and Other Poems (Oak Park, IL: Eileen Baskerville, 1935). The title poem is about RF (who is, in fact, also the book’s dedicatee). See also RF to Dierkes, September 20, 1934. 388. ​Milton Acad­emy in Milton, Mas­sa­c hu­setts.

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We are deserting Key West in a few days. Our next address w ­ ill be c / o 389 Prof Orton Lowe, University of Miami, Coral Gables Florida. By April 5th we should be back in Amherst. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Gladys Ewing Combes (1893–1974), American clubwoman and poet. ALS. DCL.]

Key West, Florida March 21 1935 Dear Mrs Combes: You see where I am this winter as a result of the rather serious sickness that kept me from coming to visit you and Doctor Dillingham at your Newtown High School last winter.390 I ­shall be happy to write in any copies of my books you ­w ill have sent me, but perhaps you had best wait and send them when I get home to Amherst Mass on the seventh of April. Between now and then I s­ hall be in transition and mail w ­ ill have a poor chance of overtaking me. You dont ask me to say what poems I liked best in your magazine.391 I’m glad you dont. Im a bad judge when cornered. The prize poems w ­ ere very fine. I was most charmed however by ­those three in the garden. I ­shall remember that. It dawned on me so beautifully in the end. I was afraid ­there was ­going to be something the ­matter with ­those ­there the way ­there is with almost every­thing and every­body in books now-­a-­days. And ­there was abso-

389. ​Orton Lowe (1872–1938), professor of En­glish at the University of Miami, an or­ga­ nizer of the Winter Institute, and author and editor of several books for c­ hildren. 390. ​James Darius Dillingham (1865–1939) graduated from Amherst College in 1887 and became superintendent of the Corona School District in Newtown (now Elmhurst), New York, in 1904. He was the moving force b­ ehind the opening of Newtown High School in 1894 and served as its principal u ­ ntil 1935. 391. ​Actually, Fledgling Flights (Montpelier, VT: North Montpelier Press, 1934), a booklet identified in its preface as “Verses written by the winners in the Annual Poetry Contests conducted for the students of the Newtown High School, Elmhurst, New York, and by The Poetry Group of The Salon of Seven Arts, Inc.”

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lutely nothing the ­matter with them: they ­were merely their ages—­and such in­ter­est­i ng ages strung out so well. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To the Amherst Student, a college newspaper, which had sent congratulations to RF on the occasion of what was then believed to be his sixtieth birthday (RF would ­later find out that he was born in 1874, not 1875). The manuscript of this open “letter” does not survive, though a draft of it exists in RF’s notebooks (see NBRF, 391–393). For a detailed account of the textual history of the letter, see CPRF, 279–281. The text h­ ere is as given in CPRF, 114–115. We assume RF wrote the letter shortly prior to departing Key West. The Amherst Student published it on March 25 (unsigned), even as RF was resettling in his Sunset Ave­nue home.]

[Key West, Florida] [circa March 21, 1935] It is very, very kind of the Student to be showing sympathy with me for my age. But sixty is only a pretty good age. It is not advanced enough. The ­g reat ­t hing is to be advanced. Now ninety would be ­really well along and something to be given credit for. But speaking of ages, you w ­ ill often hear it said that the age of the world we live in is particularly bad. I am impatient of such talk. We have no way of knowing that this age is one of the worst in the world’s history. Arnold claimed the honor for the age before this. Words­worth claimed it for the last but one. And so on back through lit­er­a­ture. I say they claimed the honor for their ages. They claimed it rather for themselves. It is immodest of a man to think of himself as ­going down before the worst forces ever mobilized by God. All ages of the world are bad—­a g­ reat deal worse anyway than Heaven. If they w ­ eren’t the world might just as well be Heaven at once and have it over with. One can safely say a­ fter from six to thirty thousand years of experience that the evident design is a situation h ­ ere in which it w ­ ill always be about equally hard to save your soul. What­ever pro­g ress may be taken to mean, it ­can’t mean making the world any easier a place in which to save your soul— or if you dislike hearing your soul mentioned in open meeting, say your decency, your integrity. Ages may vary a ­little. One may be a ­little worse than another. But it is not pos­si­ble to get outside the age you are in to judge it exactly. Indeed it is as dangerous to try to get outside of anything as large as an age as it would be

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to engorge a donkey. Witness the many who in the attempt have suffered a dilation from which the tissues and the muscles of the mind have never been able to recover natu­ral shape. They ­can’t pick up anything delicate or small any more. They c­ an’t use a pen. They have to use a typewriter. And they gape in agony. They can write huge shapeless novels, huge gobs of raw sincerity bellowing with pain and that’s all that they can write.392 Fortunately we d­ on’t need to know how bad the age is. T ­ here is something we can always be ­doing without reference to how good or how bad the age is. ­There is at least so much good in the world that it admits of form and the making of form. And not only admits of it, but calls for it. We ­people are thrust forward out of the suggestions of form in the rolling clouds of nature. In us nature reaches its height of form and through us exceeds itself. When in doubt ­there is always form for us to go on with. Anyone who has achieved the least form to be sure of it, is lost to the larger excruciations. I think it must stroke faith the right way. The artist, the poet might be expected to be the most aware of such assurance. But it is ­really every­body’s sanity to feel it and live by it. Fortunately, too, no forms are more engrossing, gratifying, comforting, staying than ­those lesser ones we throw off, like vortex rings of smoke, all our individual enterprise and needing nobody’s cooperation; a basket, a letter, a garden, a room, an idea, a picture, a poem.393 For ­these we ­haven’t to get a team together before we can play. The background is hugeness and confusion shading away from where we stand into black and utter chaos; and against the background any small man-­ made figure of order and concentration. What pleasanter than that this should be

392. ​The most likely referents of this criticism are John Dos Passos (currently in Key West—­see RF’s March 23, 1935, letter to Lesley) and Thomas Wolfe (slighted in a June 29, 1935, letter to Nuhn). 393. ​See Emerson, “The Method of Nature”: “The history of the genesis or the old my­ thol­ogy repeats itself in the experience of e­ very child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a par­tic­u ­lar chaos, where he strives ever to lead ­things from disorder into order. Each individual soul is such, in virtue of its being a power to translate the world into some par­tic­u ­lar language of its own; if not into a picture, a statue, or a dance,—­why, then, into a trade, an art, a science, a mode of living, a conversation, a character, an influence” (Essays and Lectures, ed. Joel Porte [New York: Library of Amer­i­ca, 1982]: 122–123). See also RF’s remarks in a July 1936 talk at Bread Loaf: “I am just ­going to make short work of that and tell you where poetry—­where ideals—­may exist. I suppose they exist in the making of form—­wherever that is. You take a poem, a picture, a garden, a ­family, a state—­a ll forms achieved in dif­fer­ent media” (CPRF, 282).

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so? ­Unless we are novelists or economists we ­don’t worry about this confusion; we look out on it with an instrument or tackle it to reduce it. It is partly ­because we are afraid it might prove too much for us and our blend of democratic-­ republican-­socialist-­communist-­a narchist party. But it is more b­ ecause we like it, we w ­ ere born to it, born used to it and have practical reasons for wanting it t­ here. To me any l­ ittle form I assert upon it is velvet, as the saying is, and to be considered for how much more it is than nothing. If I ­were a Platonist I should have to consider it, I suppose, for how much less it is than every­thing.

[To Hervey Allen. ALS. Pittsburgh.]

Key West Florida March 22 1935 Dear Hervey: It was so kind of you to think of having us at The Glades and a stay ­there would have meant so much to us.394 But I guess nothing can be as we would like to have it this year. To Elinor’s general sickness the long months at Key West have only added home-­sickness. We are in such haste to get back to our own h ­ ouse we have de­cided to give up any idea we had of lingering on the way. We both want to see you for a glimpse if you are still ­there when we pass. But it w ­ on’t be worth while making ready to receive us for our day or two—­arranging about help and a car and teaching us the ropes. We had best stay at that h ­ otel near the university. It is on my conscience that I o ­ ught to throw in one more hour’s work in the classroom ­there for some who have complained of having been left out of the two classes I had. Then I want to say good bye to two or three I left too unceremoniously. This is my chance to say without too much embarrassment what I have been intending and intending to say till now I admit it is too late. Just before I went to Coral Gables and a year or two a­ fter your book came out, I thought I might disarm your anger at me if I telegraphed “Hasten to report my plea­ sure in your book. Predict many thousands w ­ ill read it.”395 But ­every time I

394. ​Allen’s home in South Miami. 395. ​R F refers to Anthony Adverse (1933), Allen’s widely praised, best-­selling novel—­a sprawling epic set during the Napoleonic era (in Eu­rope, Africa, and the Amer­ic­ as) that comes in at nearly 600 pages.

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was on the point of writing its praises I found the critics w ­ ere one jump ahead of me in what I had thought up to say. The ­little left to say grows steadily less. The poetry of it is the g­ reat t­ hing to me. It is as impregnated with poetry as pine stump is with pitch.396 None but the poetical can write novels to my taste. I should have said we w ­ ill arrive in Coral Gables on the night train of March 27. I wish you could be ­there. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Robert Hillyer. ALS. UVA.]

Key West Florid March 22 1935 Dear Robert: It is good of you not to let Harvard forget the old regular poet whom she taught Latin and Greek. I was just thinking I might have to resort to eccentricities if I hope to attract her attention. That put me in too hard a place for my age—­sixty by the time you get this letter. Yes I should like to come. The time, four-­t hirty on April 17th, seems all right.397 You see where we are in all humility.398 I mean you see what we have come to. It has done me more good than it has Elinor. You are a large part of what I ­shall be looking forward to. Ever yours Robert Frost

396. ​RF’s meta­phor may be informed by the structure of the novel: volume 1 is titled “The Roots of the Tree,” and its three “books” are subtitled “In Which the Seed Falls in the Enchanted Forest,” “In Which the Roots of the Tree Are Exposed,” and “In Which the Roots of the Tree Are Torn Loose.” The last “book” of the novel (in volume 3) is subtitled “In Which the Tree Is Cut Down.” Allen takes as an epigraph a passage from that most poetic of prose stylists, Sir Thomas Browne, and, in any case, he’d already published eight books of poetry before Anthony Adverse came out. 397. ​R F read at Harvard on this date. (Hillyer, together with Bernard DeVoto and David McCord, would, ­later in 1935, be instrumental in arranging for RF’s appointment, in 1936, as Harvard’s Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer.) 398. ​One might expect “humidity,” but the manuscript is clear.

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[To Harold Rugg. ALS. DCL.]

Key West Florida March 23 1935 Dear Mr Rugg: Anxious as I am to see what you have made of my poems I think I must wait till I get back to Amherst.399 We have been on the point of heading homeward for several days and ­w ill prob­ably leave h ­ ere on Monday. My mail ­w ill have a hard time finding me for the next two weeks. I hate to have impor­tant ­things forwarded and reforwarded till ­there is no room on the envelope for another legible address. You must tell me the names of the fine-­printers I have to thank.400 Perhaps I could sign my name to their copies for them. I ­haven’t forgotten that you want me to find you some of my manuscript for preservation at Dartmouth.401 I appreciate the honor of your request. I know what’s good for me. ­We’ll talk about this further when I am in Hanover in May. So send the brochures to Amherst soon ­after the fifth of April please.402 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

399. ​See RF to Rugg, November 14, 1934, and February 8, 1935. The booklet in question is Three Poems. 400. ​Daniel Oliver Associates of Dartmouth College, a book-­collecting club, prob­ably named, according to an article Rugg published in the Dartmouth Library Bulletin 2.2 (March 1935), for Daniel Oliver (Dartmouth class of 1785), who donated forty-­four volumes to the college library in 1783. We cannot say who among the members of the club was chiefly responsible for the “fine printing,” which was done in Calson Oldstyle type, but RF did write one (on April 20, 1935; see below) to thank him for the booklet: Raymond D. Builter. We thank Jay Satterfield for his help in this matter. 401. ​A nd thus was begun what would become the largest collection of manuscripts associated with RF. 402. ​ T hree Poems.

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[To Lesley Frost. ALS. UVA.]

Key West Florid March 23 1935 Dear Lesley: No news and no further advice. I merely wanted to say Elinor and I share your prejudice against the idea of adult education. Beyond a certain point lessons in school (day or night school) are degrading.403 Y ­ ou’ve had enough. You would be outraging yourself if for any reason on earth you subjected yourself to being teacher-­taught. We’ve all of us come to that conclusion several times before. It costs something ­every time to come to it. Let’s not get where we w ­ ill have to come to it again. You make the crowd around you, even some of the better ones, look as if they had wrinkles in their souls. They may be better than they seem to us. Their ways however are not our ways. You should not be broken to fit their mould. With the best intentions in the world both Gordon and Roberta404 may be quite capable of designs on you that might be fatal. You have to look out. And you’ll have to get out if the position gets too false. As you say, the ­whole ­thing can be thought of as a flyer in the academic. What do you think of Kantor’s verse?405 I see he has a book out. What do you say to McLeish’s [sic] Panic?406 Elinor and I are not ­going to be poisoned with poetry as a care any more. You’ll have to tell us about what is passing. You are young and tough-­spirited. We are leaving this hot bed for the open air next Wednesday (March 27). To Santa Fe, Carmel, Greenwich Village, Montmartre and Peterboro, add Key 403. ​Lesley had obtained a teaching position at Rockford College in the fall of 1934. For someone without an undergraduate degree, such a position was rare, and the context suggests the administration demanded that Lesley take eve­n ing classes to finish an undergraduate degree as a precondition for retaining her position. 404. ​Gordon Chal­mers and his wife Roberta Swartz Chal­mers (1903–1993). 405. ​Novelist, screenwriter, and anthologist MacKinlay Kantor (1904–1977) published Turkey in the Straw: A Book of American Ballads and Primitive Verse, a collection of his previously published poems, in early 1935 (New York: Coward-­McCann). 406. ​Archibald MacLeish’s Panic: A Play in Verse (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935) centers on the fall of the world’s richest man, a banker named McGafferty, who loses his fortune during the banking panic of 1933. The play premiered March 14 at the Imperial Theatre in Manhattan, with Orson Welles playing the lead role in his first per­for­mance on the American stage.

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West.407 Arty Bohemias! I have stayed away from the ­others. The Lord delivered me into this one to punish my fastidiousness. ­Don’t make my sentiments public or it might follow me to the grave. We got h ­ ere and then panic-­stricken said ­things to the FERA who found us a h ­ ouse to live in. I exclaimed when I heard that John Dos Passos might live upstairs: “My God two Arthurs in the same ­house! It would be a regular word-­factory.” It was an unguarded moment—­and made enemies of Dos Passos and Hemmingway [sic]. Never mind. But the story that grew out of it must be left to die if it ­w ill. Uneasiness about such ­things and about Carroll waiting round and about the ­hotel servants tanning on what we ­were lead [sic] to suppose was our private beach have kept Elinor from getting the start upward we hoped for. She thinks the moist warmth of the tropics has been bad for her. I ­don’t think we can tell. Anyway it ­w ill be good to get back to Amherst. My immediate schedule looks rather full: Miami University (at Coral Gables), Foxcroft V ­ irginia, Normal Schools at Trenton and Glassboro, N. J. then my two public lectures on “Before the Beginning and ­after the End of a Poem” at Amherst, then Milton Mass., University of New Hampshire, Dartmouth, Harvard and Yale.408 Then one more honry degree—­t his one at Elinor’s St Lawrence University.409 This last is supposed to be kept secret. Waves waves waves all the time, though not very large in this shallow sea with a reef-­barrier like a south-­sea island. The ­water is exactly seventy five feet from our door by mea­sure­ment made just now while the letter waited. Enclosed for Lee and Elinor410 is a grass burr I got making it.

407. ​The cities listed ­here ­were well known for their art colonies and bohemian haunts. 408. ​RF would lecture and read at the University of Miami on March 1; at the Trenton State Teachers College on April 2; at Glassboro Normal School (now Rowan University) on April  3; at the Paul Bergan Literary Festival at the Foxcroft School in Middleburg, ­Virginia, on April  4; at Harvard on April  17; at the University of New Hampshire on May 3; at Dartmouth on May 6; at Milton Acad­emy on May 17; and at Yale for two days, May 22–23. 409. ​From which Elinor graduated in 1895 (the year she married RF). Illness prevented RF’s g­ oing to St. Lawrence (in Canton, New York) in 1935. He was awarded a degree instead in June 1936. See also RF to Sykes, June 1, 1935. 410. ​Lesley’s ­daughters.

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Let me know if and when you hear from Boulder.411 Also let me know if you dont hear in two weeks. Affectionately Papa Just the same I think it would be a novelty if you got up your Latin secretly and the first ­thing they knew you ­were reading some rarer Latin poets with a group at Maddox House412 a few times next year.

[To Alice Jennings (1881–1963), an elementary school teacher in New London, Connecticut. Dated from internal evidence: March 26 was RF’s birthday. ALS. DCL.]

[Key West, Florida] [circa March 26, 1935] Dear Miss Jennings: Please thank all the c­ hildren for me and have them see if they can tell me what I mean by this riddle-­poem I am writing out for them: He has dust in his eye and a fan for a wing, A leg akimbo with which he can sing, And a mouthful of dyestuff instead of a sting.413 It must seem ungrateful of me to bother them with a hard question in return for their birthday greetings. But what ­else could they expect in a school and of a teacher? With best wishes to them and you Sincerely yours Robert Frost

411. ​Lesley initially accepted a position to teach con­temporary poetry at the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference in August 1935, but declined the invitation via wire at the last minute, thus angering conference director Ted Davsion, who had made the arrangements with RF. For more context, see RF’s tele­g ram to John Bartlett circa August 20, 1935. 412. ​Maddox House was the home of the Rockford College literary society, which Lesley directed. 413. ​“One Guess,” published in AFR in 1936.

7

Further Ranges and a Harvard Year April 1935–­December 1936 As you may imagine, I should be most happy to be your Charles Eliot Norton Professor next spring; and that not alone for the honor of the appointment. I should value also the compulsion the lectures would put me ­under to assem­ble my thinking right and left of the last few years and see what it comes to. I have reached a point where it would do me good. —­Robert Frost to John Livingston Lowes, December 18, 1935

[To Lesley Frost. TG. ACL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [April 11, 1935] MISS LESLEY FROST, ROCKFORD COLLEGE 914 RIDGEWOOD AVE­NUE ADVISE ACCEPTING BUT YOU DECIDE MY ACCEPTING DEPENDS ON YOURS SO WIRE ME ­TODAY BY WESTERN UNION1 ROBERT FROST.

[To Sidney Cox. This letter is inscribed in a copy of  Three Poems. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [mid-­April 1935] Dear Sidney: You are sent this for the good writing of one poem and the good printing of three poems.2 “Warning” is a curiosity. It was accepted and in print about a month a­ fter the appearance of Kipling’s of the same, or almost the same refrain. My inference seems reasonably safe that it was written before I saw 1. ​At issue again is ­whether or not RF and Lesley would accept invitations to speak at the University of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference in Boulder. As has been noted, Lesley ultimately declined, but RF went. He gave a five-­day course, culminating with a reading on August 1. 2. ​“ The good writing of one poem”: “The Quest of the Orchis,” which RF would bring into AWT ­u nder the title “The Quest of the Purple-­Fringed.” He never reprinted the other two poems. For the “good printing” see RF’s March 23, 1935, letter to Rugg.

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Kiplings. Yet I wouldnt believe it if it rested on my own unsupported story. The Caesar one I wrote in the Lawrence High School. Badly as Caesar was taught he made a g­ reat impression on me. I suppose that was ­because of the general spareness of education in t­ hose days. Impact is less felt when too frequent. Places have worn out for my imagination since I became a traveller. Ever yours Robert

[To Edward Ames Richards (1898–1964), American poet and scholar. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. St. Lawrence.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [mid-­April 1935] Dear Ed Richards: I liked seeing you again and having poems from you as of old.3 The poems have gained in definite meaning.4 I enjoyed them and I wish all I had to do was say go your ways to the editors with them and be published. It would make all the difference in your life w ­ ouldn’t it? Dont leave judgement to me. I’m your friend and perilously indulgent. Fight through. Lodge something with undeniable effect.5 You have been in trou­ble and out of trou­ble without my knowing a t­ hing about it till too late for sympathy.6 Our profoundest sorrows hardly make a ­r ipple to the eyes of a friend. Whats ­going on t­ here? Something serious we may suspect. A person might be in the passions of death and I look on unfrightened. It is a good deal easier to recognize what has happened than what is happening.7 We cant tell what is happening to the United States right now. I gather that you w ­ ere on the point of taking a false step, but you caught yourself in time. We came to a point where it looked as if we might lose our

3. ​RF passed through New York City in mid-­April, ­a fter lecturing in New Jersey and ­Virginia and en route to Amherst. Richards lived in New York City at the time. 4. ​Richards enclosed with the letter seven poems in typescript. 5. ​Richards—­a favorite student of RF’s at Amherst (class of 1921)—­would publish his first book of poems, Time Strikes, in 1939. 6. ​In October 1934, Richards had left his wife and ­c hildren, convinced his marriage had been a m ­ istake. RF h ­ ere responds to a letter announcing that Richards had rejoined them. 7. ​An idea RF would fasten to the page in “Carpe Diem,” collected in AWT (CPPP, 305).

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youn­gest ­daughter last year. We acted with desperate determination to save her. We lost her and nothing can be done about it. You didnt know about us any more than we did about you. It sometimes seems we are too much cut off from each other. I dont believe this talk about the brevity of life. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass April 16 1935 Dear Mr Thornton: We are back where we are supposed to belong. My five hour glimpse of New York was hardly enough to last me for the year. You’ll see me down again soon. ­Will you give me the name in print of the Ohio professor who is at work on my bibliography. I have a letter from him with a difficult signature. Should you say it was Robert S. Newdick? It ­w ill do no harm for both of us to write him gentle letters. And I’m afraid my obligations wont be met with less than a dozen each of the new books—­A Boys ­Will and the Selected. W ­ ill you please have them sent along. It is still wintry ­here. Never mind, better luck in June. Ever Yours Robert Frost

[To Robert Spangler Newdick. The note is inscribed in a copy of Three Poems. ALS. Private.]

April 16 1935 Amherst Mass Dear Mr Newdick: This may interest you as an “item” and a piece of printing if nothing ­else.8 The only poem in it I care for is the Quest of the Orchis, which might well 8. ​See RF to Harold Rugg, December 20, 1934.

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have gone into a A Boys ­Will. Caesar’s Lost Transport Ships was a high school piece. All three poems ­were published in the old In­de­pen­dent. Submittively yours Robert Frost

[To Clarence Louis Gohdes (1901–1997), American literary scholar and editor. The letter concerns galleys for an article by Robert Newdick about RF’s early unpublished work. Newdick had titled the piece “The Juvenilia of Robert Frost,” but it was published in May 1935 as “The Early Verse of Robert Frost and Some of His Revisions.” ALS. Emory.]

Amherst Mass April 19 1935 Dear Mr Ghodes [sic]: Juvenilia seems a fairly doubtful word to apply to all I did in verse between eigh­teen and thirty-­eight especially as it would have to cover The Death of the Hired Man The Black Cottage and the House-­Keeper of North of Boston which date back to 1906.9 But that is a small m ­ atter to demur to. Of course I am only flattered by such close attention as Mr Newdick gives me.10 He has surely overlooked nothing. He might have added that the answer to the question ­W hether I do or dont revise is that I do and I ­don’t. Such a t­hing as Nothing Gold Can Stay was written in two parts, the first five lines in 1900, the last three lines with much trou­ble in the two or three years just before

9. ​RF would often maintain that t­ hese poems w ­ ere composed well before the publication of NB in 1912. As Donald G. Sheehey has argued, all surviving manuscript evidence suggests that the inspiration for the poems, and even early versions, may date to that period but that the poems themselves w ­ ere written in 1912–1913. 10. ​Newdick would ­later gather copious amounts of information for a planned unauthorized biography of RF. Having composed only about one hundred pages, Newdick died unexpectedly in 1939, leaving ­behind all of his notes and notes from close associates of RF he had interviewed or corresponded with. William A. Sutton would ­later gather Newdick’s materials and assem­ble them into Newdick’s Season of Frost: An Interrupted Biography of Robert Frost (Albany: SUNY Press, 1976). See also RF to Newdick, September 16, 1934.

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New Hampshire came out in 1923.11 Mr Newdick might like to know this. He seems a true friend. I must thank him—­and you too. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Marie Leontine Bullock (1911–1986), president of the Acad­emy of American Poets. ALS. AAP.]

Amherst Mass April 20 1935 My dear Mrs. Bullock: I thought I had written you of my approval. It is getting so I remember a letter as having been written when it has been no more than formulated in my mind. Of course I am in f­ avor of Amer­i­ca’s ­doing more for her poets than any other nation.12 I read a Phi Beta Kappa Eclogue on the subject once at Columbia University. And I have just come home from trying to plant in the right quarters at Washington the idea of a civil list for poets musicians and artists ­here such as they have in E ­ ngland.13 I have no par­tic­u ­lar purchase to pry anything loose and am in no position alone. So let me join you in your good work. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

11. ​Multiple manuscript drafts of the poem exist. The Eden meta­phor that closes the published version—it first appeared in the Yale Review in October 1923 and was collected in NH—­was not pre­sent in a draft sent to George Roy Elliott in 1920. 12. ​In 1934, Bullock had founded the Acad­emy in New York City; it was officially incorporated in 1936. 13. ​See also RF to Foster, September 12, 1934, and RF to Lewis, February 12, 1935.

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[To Raymond Builter (1914–2011), then a student at Dartmouth College (the letter is addressed to the dormitory in which he resided: room 205, Fayerweather). ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass April 20 1935 Dear Mr Builter: I want to thank you for your part in the lovely book you have made of my juvenilia. One of the poems is good isnt it? The ­others arent too disgracefully bad and the fine printing w ­ ill cover, I hope, the glaringness of their faults. I wish whichever of you two fellows collects me would say so: I have a small first besides the enclosed I could add to his collection.14 I surely appreciate being made of in my old age. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Alan Valentine (1901–1980), at the time out­going Master of Pierson College, Yale, and professor of history. Draft of a tele­g ram, composed on the reverse of letter from Valentine to RF dated May 14, 1935. TG-­unsigned. DCL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa May 15, 1935] Most happy to accept. Can you name day now. Please have it May 24.15 Fixed engagement ­here on twenty-­second.16 Cant promise any verse.17 14.  Either Builter or another member of Daniel Oliver Associates (the student organ­ ization that printed Three Poems [see RF to Rugg, November 14, 1934, February 8, 1935, and March 23, 1935]). Builter was indeed a collector of RF. Books inscribed to him survive, one, A Masque of Mercy, now in the collection of Pat Alger, whom we thank for sharing the inscription with us: “Christmas 1947 / A prophet of evil c­ an’t trust a merciful God to go through with it. / Robert Frost / To Ray Builter / with compensatory thoughts.” 15. ​Valentine had invited RF to attend the induction of the new Master of Pierson College at Yale—­A rnold Wolfers—­proposing for the event e­ ither May  22 or May  24. For Wolfers: see RF’s April 13, 1936, tele­g ram to him. 16.  Wolfer’s induction took place on the evening of May 22. The subsequent telegram to Brooks suggests that RF, and Elinor, did get down to New Haven for it, although RF also appears to have lectured at Amherst earlier in the day, at Johnson Chapel, on “Good and Bad Originalities.” 17. ​In his letter of invitation, Valentine had expressed his “hope” that RF “might be induced to come and read a few lines written, in not too serious a vein, for the occasion” (letter held at DCL).

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[To Van Wyck Brooks (1886–1963), American literary critic. Year derived from internal evidence. TG. DCL.]

Amherst Mass May 18 [1935] AT PIERSON COLLEGE YALE WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY COULD YOU GET ELINOR AND ME T­ HERE FRIDAY MORNING FOR OVERNIGHT WITH YOU18 ROBERT FROST

[To “Mr. Barton,” whom we have been unable to identify. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass May 22 1935 My dear Mr Barton: I appreciate your taking an interest in a poet away down ­here out of bounds.19 My books are few in number. The first two, A Boy’s W ­ ill and North of Boston, w ­ ere first published in E ­ ngland. All five of them, the two already named and Mountain Interval, New Hampshire and West-­r unning Brook have since been published in the United States. All five have been brought out in one book in E ­ ngland by Longmans Green and Com­pany in this country by Henry Holt and Com­pany.20 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

18.  Brooks lived in Bridgewater, Connecticut, thirty miles outside New Haven. 19. ​RF’s phrasing suggests that this “Mr. Barton” may have been a Canadian collector or bibliographer: relative to Amherst, from which this letter was written, he would have to have been way up ­t here—­i.e., north of western Mas­sa­c hu­setts—­taking his interest in RF. Had he merely been in Vermont, where RF resided much of the year, it seems unlikely that RF would have addressed him in this manner. 20. ​ CP 1930.

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[To Earle Bernheimer (1897–1986), financier, department store heir, and bibliophile. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass May 22 1935 Dear Mr Bernheimer: Eleven years is a long time to have stayed my faithful collector. I s­ hall be only too happy to autograph another Mountain Interval for you. If you send it soon, the best place to send it ­w ill be Amherst Mass where I ­shall be lingering a while yet for Commencement. I have to speak to the graduating class this year for once in a way. ­There is to be a very thorough bibliography some time this summer.21 Mr Shubrick Clymer has made it. The Spiral Press of Joseph Blumenthal ­will print it. The Jones Library (Charles Green, Librarian) ­will bring it out. I understand ­there w ­ ill be five hundred copies at two-­fi fty a piece. I am sending you ­under separate cover a small “item” you may care for.22 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Eddy Sykes (1861–1949), president of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, from 1919–1935. Draft of a tele­g ram, written on the reverse side of a letter of invitation from Sykes. Date derived from internal evidence. TG-­unsigned. DCL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa June 1, 1935] Regretful last minute decision. Mrs Frost in no condition to make the journey. My coming alone without her would mean nothing.23 Should add we have 21. ​Actually, the book did not appear ­u ntil 1937. 22. ​ T hree Poems. 23. ​Elinor Frost graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1895. In a letter dated February 8, 1935, Sykes had invited RF to Canton to receive an honorary degree (Doctor of Letters) at the university’s commencement ceremonies (scheduled for June 19, 1935). The letter makes no reference to Elinor, and Sykes appears to have been unaware that she was an alumna. Evidently, RF took offense at that, and at the omission of what he calls the usual “courtesies,” so his wife’s health was only part of the reason for the decision not to go to Canton. However, RF did take an honorary degree at St. Lawrence in June 1936.

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received no suggestion of how we ­were to bestow ourselves in Canton. No program of ceremonies we might be expected to attend, none of the customary courtesies. From ­m istake doubtless. Both very sorry.

[To Howard George Schmitt. ALS. Private.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] June 6 1935 Dear Mr Schmitt: You r­ eally must forgive me for being no letter-­writer. Wild ­horses c­ ouldn’t draw me into correspondence with any but the closest friends. I sympathise with you in your loss of your favorite poet: and I am glad you have one of the three best collections of his works.24 That must be some consolation. Collectors have their compensations. Do call on me sometime. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Robert Spangler Newdick. ALS. LoC.]

Amherst Mass June 10 1935 Dear Mr Newdick: I want to tell you how sorry I am about your bad luck in finding Shubrick Clymer ahead of you with a bibliography. I’m not satisfied, however, that yours doesnt make a place for itself. You have gone into t­ hings that he hasnt. And you must have made discoveries all your own. I left judgement to Thornton and Melcher both of whom ­were much impressed with what you had done and inclined to think that in a year or two ­after Clymer you might well have a turn. Thornton asked me to tell you to wait. Several of you now know more about me and my books than I do myself. The article in American Lit­er­a­ture frightens me with the closeness with which

24. ​E. A. Robinson had died on April 6, 1935. Schmitt had a remarkable collection of his books and a number of letters written to him by Robinson.

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it follows on my trail.25 I s­ hall have to walk in r­ unning ­water for a mile to see if I cant throw you off. That about leaving out part of The Youth’s Companion’s name was a home one. The only t­ hing you failed to notice was my tucking the acknowl­edgments away in the end of the book where I hoped no one would notice them.26 I hated to have to mention the damned magazines but was afraid I had no right to leave them out. I made them as inconspicuous and hard to identify as I could off hand. Of course ­t here was no deep plotting. ­T here was no motive for that—­I found a publisher so suddenly and unexpectedly. I left the MS with the first publisher I thought of and within two days I had been summoned in to sign a contract. I believe I r­ eally forgot the poor old New E ­ ngland Magazine, as I forgot the extent of my obligation to The Youth’s Companion.27 I should be very grateful to Mark Howe who was then poetry editor as I have since learned. I had carried the idea that Reluctance had first appeared in some magazine not named in my list.28 Neither Clymer nor Charles Green (Jones Library, Amherst) had been able to run it down for all their trou­ble. I couldnt help them much. All I recalled was that Thomas Mosher had used part of it in his Amphora and Reedy had quoted it in Mirror.29 It is news to me personally that October went into The Youth’s Companion.30

25. ​Newdick’s “The Early Verse of Robert Frost and Some of his Revisions” appeared in American Lit­er­a­ture in May. See also RF’s April 19 letter to Gohdes. 26. ​The acknowl­edgments appeared on page 51 of the David Nutt first edition of ABW: “Certain of t­ hese poems are reprinted by courteous permission from:—­T he Forum, The In­de­pen­dent, The Companion.” 27. ​“A Line-­Storm Song” appeared in the New ­England Magazine in October 1907, and “Into My Own” (as “Into Mine Own”) in May 1909; both are in ABW. 28. ​­A fter being rejected by the Atlantic Monthly, “Reluctance” appeared in the Youth’s Companion on November 7, 1912. Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe edited the magazine from 1888 to 1893 and from 1899 to 1913. 29. ​A lthough RF had given Thomas Mosher permission to publish “Reluctance” in the first edition of Amphora (1912), Mosher instead published the poem as a prelude to his 1913 Cata­logue of Imprints. ­A fter Mosher’s death in 1923, the Mosher Press reprinted the poem in the Second Amphora (1926). For more context, see RF to Adams, January 20, 1935. 30. ​As Clymer and Green also note, “October” first appeared in the Youth’s Companion on October 3, 1912.

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I’m glad you think my changes are improvements.31 Of course I never held that nothing could be done about a poem once it was written. When I am coordinating well (in good form mentally and physically) I notice I falter in the verse very l­ittle and get in my best strokes as I go. The Mountain for instance was all done in one sitting and stands ­today pretty exactly as I wrote it. I was saying in public the other night a poem discovers its subject in the writing.32 That is why when I feel a poem begin I dont let it develope [sic] ­unless I am where I can attend to its full and entire development once for all. I stave it off till I am alone with it. I suppose not many first drafts of any poems are in existence. Not many of mine are. It might amuse you to have a sworn-to first draft of one of my most recent.33 I suppose I shouldnt be exposing myself to your researching eye. But Im not afraid of anyone so friendly. Keep the piece as a memento or having made the most of it throw it away. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Frederic Melcher. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] June 19 1935 Dear Fred: Fine! I’ll send you the money if you decide to keep the book. You took it all in—­what the original covers ­were e­ tc.34 I think we had best wait to get in our helpful licks about the Amherst College Library. T ­ heres a lot to it I h ­ aven’t told you yet. The beautiful l­ ittle new ­house libraries are not being used by the boys at all. This ­will be our reason for bringing up the subject of effective librarying next fall. I ­will have the President35 31. ​RF changed a number of lines when he brought his early poetry into ABW. 32. ​RF would ­later expand this idea into the central argument of “The Figure a Poem Makes,” which first appeared as the preface to his CP 1939. See CPPP, 776–778. 33. ​RF enclosed a draft of “Not Quite Social,” already published on March 30, 1935, in the Saturday Review of Lit­er­at­ ure and l­ater collected in AFR. 34. ​Almost certainly a reference to the 1934 edition of ABW (the cover of which RF had consulted Melcher about: see RF’s December 30, 1934, letter to him). 35. ​Stanley King.

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look into the neglect of the libraries and suggest to him having a talk with you and some such ­people as Rush of Yale.36 Meanwhile I’ll tell you what would be an influential stroke: Fletcher ­going out is the son of the famous librarian Fletcher of days gone by.37 He ends a dynasty and a tradition. Wouldnt it make an article to interview him about the past and ­f uture?38 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Charles Jay Connick (1875–1945), American painter and stained glass designer. ALS. Alger.]

Amherst Mass June 20 1935 Dear Charles Connick: Of course use my verse if you are sure it is charming. Then I can see it again. I had forgotten I thanked you for the beautiful medallion in verse.39 O ­ ught to make terms now that I have you in the weaker position. I r­ eally need one more medallion to go with the one I have, and would have asked to buy one sooner or ­later. My hesitation came from fear you wouldnt think I could afford your price and so would feel obliged to give me another as a pre­sent. But you are to believe me: I am a rich man for a poet. I wish you could have seen my pink slip before Congress had it wiped out and withdrawn from public inspection.40 U ­ nless you have a rule against selling stained glass to any but 36. ​Charles Everett Rush (1885–1958), at the time associate librarian, Yale University. 37. ​Robert  S. Fletcher had been head librarian at Amherst College since 1911; his ­father, William I. Fletcher, had preceded him in the post (from 1883 to 1911). RF seems to ­m istake one detail: in 1935, Robert Fletcher took a medical leave from Amherst; he w ­ asn’t “­going out” (he retired in 1939). 38. ​Presumably the suggestion is for Publishers Weekly. 39. ​Connick had made a stained glass medallion (inspired by RF’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­n ing”). In gratitude, RF penned an eleven-­line tribute (see CPPP, 550). Connick printed the tribute—­w ith the permission given h ­ ere—­a longside a reproduction of the medallion in his Adventures in Light and Color (New York: Random House, 1937). 40. ​Calls that the tax rec­ords of wealthy business interests be made public led Senator Robert LaFollette Jr. (1895–1953; Progressive Party, Wisconsin) to introduce an amendment to section 55(a) of the 1934 revenue bill requiring all taxpayers to submit, in addition

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churches, please sell me the mate to the medallion you gave me. Other­w ise I may get mad and not let you use my verse in your book. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] June 21, 1935 Dear Louis: Jus a min—­till I can achieve my in­de­pen­dence. Then I ­w ill write you adequate. You ­w ill never know—no one ­w ill ever know—­because I dont like anyone to know—­how busy the after­noon of a quietist can be at times. Reputation is a cumulative congestion. What this child needs is a place to go to. But I was not born an immortal bird to be served up one peacock’s tongue among many at a Lucullan banquet.41 If I am, trust me to be found singing when the pie is opened.42

to ordinary tax returns, publicly available forms reporting their names, addresses, gross income, net income, and tax liability. The form, printed on pink paper, was generally known as a “pink slip.” Pressured by wealthy citizens, who orchestrated a publicity campaign u ­ nder the banner “Sentinels of the Republic,” FDR felt compelled to sign a repeal of LaFollette’s amendment in April 1935. 41. ​A lavish feast, named for Licinius Lucullus (188–56 BCE), Roman general of the first c­ entury BCE, famous for banquets featuring such delicacies as pike livers, pheasant and peacock brains, flamingo tongues, lamprey spleens, and other exotic foods from all corners of the empire. 42. ​See the nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Six-­Pence”: Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds, Baked in a pie. When the pie was opened The birds began to sing; ­Wasn’t that a dainty dish, To set before the king.

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The Adirondack mountains have looked on Mussolini and Mussolini looks on the Papal See.43 I ­shall want to hear all about it. And did he stop (you) and speak to you? What do you say we see each other soon-­soon. I can hardly wait to hear my judgement confirmed or reversed on the ­g reat iamb of Italy.44 In­ter­est­ing news about Esther’s being admitted to the bar of New York. I suppose that may mean moving ultimately from Toledo. An office in Albany for the winter would give you weekends at the farm if you wanted to keep the farm ­going. But I mustnt make plans for ­people any more than Franklin D should be allowed to. I wish Esther would specialize in cases arising ­under the New Deal legislation. It was only in a dream to be sure but I am still rankling with a new elaborate law I read in very fine print in my sleep last night. It was designed to keep any poet from reading in public for a larger fee than any other poet. It had apparently been drawn up very carefully by the Poetry Society of Amer­ i­ca to leave no loopholes. ­There was a good deal of Latin in it: which comes of my having had insults lately from George Whicher’s ­father,45 the old man who addressed you so familiarly at the first meeting as Lewis.46 I’m in f­ avor of more discrimination and then some more. H ­ ere without regret one sees ranks conditions and degrees. Go to your more discriminating anthology,—so long as in discriminating against ­others you discriminate in ­favor of me.47 It was designed to be a sad world, how sad we wont keep telling each other over and over as we would have to if our heads ­were thick. You

43. ​Untermeyer—­whose 1932 book The Donkey of God (based on Italian folk tales) won an award for the best book on Italy by a non-­Italian—­met Mussolini in Rome in April. Mussolini had, in the Lateran Treaty of 1929, formally recognized the Vatican as an in­de­ pen­dent state; Pope Pius XI had, for his part, encouraged and legitimated fascist authority in Italy. 44. ​A reference to Mussolini’s ever-­more dictatorial regime, and a scriptural pun. See Exodus 3:14: “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the c­ hildren of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” RF employs the pun to dif­ fer­ent effect in a June 12, 1948, letter to Lawrance Thompson: “Tell them I AM Jehovah said. And as you know I have taken that as a command to iamb and not write ­f ree verse” (SL, 530). 45. ​George Meason Whicher (1860–1937), who had moved to Amherst ­a fter retiring from Hunter College, where he taught Latin and classical lit­er­a­t ure. 46. ​Untermeyer pronounced his name “Louie.” 47. ​Untermeyer’s Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology, Fifth Revised Edition (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936).

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should have heard me holding forth to the boys at commencement on our Darkest Concern.48 I darkened the sunny fine day for them inexorably. Have any poems you like for the new anthology. S­ hall we talk about that when we gather? Remember me to the Duce when you write your guessed letter.49 Ever yours Robertus Amherst for a few days yet.

[To Ruth G. Reeves (1892–1984), secretary of the Alumnae Association at Hollins College, Roanoke, V ­ irginia. ALS. Hollins College.]

Amherst Mass June 26 1935 My dear Miss Reeves: ­Will you be so kind as to tell me who the F. L. Janney of your Found­ers Day issue is, and where I may send her my thanks for the poetical ­thing she wrote about my poetry?50 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

48. ​R F delivered the speech on June  14, warning se­n iors of the dangers of po­liti­cal extremism (right and left). A draft of an essay ­u nder the title “Dark Darker Darkest” exists in RF’s notebooks, and gives us a more detailed idea of what he may have said: “­Here where we are life wells up as a strong spring perpetually from piling ­water on ­water in with the dancing high lights upon it. But it flows away on all sides as into a marsh of [its] own making. It flows away into poverty into insanity into crime. This is a dark truth. . . . ​ But dark as it is ­t here is darker still” (NBRF, 327). See also RF to Nuhn, June 29, 1935. 49. ​That is, RF is guessing that Untermeyer w ­ ill send Mussolini a thank-­you note for having received him as a guest. 50. ​Francis Lamar Janney (1889–1965) was then a professor of En­g lish at Hollins College. He—­R F ­m istakes the sex, likely ­because Hollins was a ­women’s college—­had written an essay on RF for the Hollins Alumnae Quarterly (February 1935). David Lambuth, professor of En­g lish at Dartmouth College, had given RF a copy (Lambuth’s wife, Myrtle Spindle Lambuth, was a Hollins alumna).

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[To James Hayford (1913–1993), Vermont-­born poet, musician, and educator. Hayford graduated from Amherst in 1935, upon which honor he was awarded the first (and, as it turned out, only) Robert Frost Fellowship for poetry ($1,000). ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass June 29 1935 Dear Hayford: I failed to give you the one piece of advice ­really impor­tant, namely, that you can have the w ­ hole or any part of the thousand at any time a­ fter July 1st by writing to the trea­surer of Amherst College. I dont suppose we can ­either of us expect ever to have as good a time again with that fellowship as we both had that day of its first award. But I hope you’ll have almost as good a time while the money lasts. I ­shall prob­ably never be as sure again of my choice for the appointment. My safest way is not to think of it too hard, just as yours is not to try to profit too much. Easy does it for both of us. You know I ­don’t believe very much in prizes. But I deny this you have is a prize. It is just a fellowship like any other except that it is more for meditation than anything e­ lse, as its name of desert or bo tree51 fellowship is intended to convey. But it is not too strictly for meditation nor too strictly for loneliness, remember. Into your own hands and judgement I commend you. ­These formalities concluded, we ­w ill say no more about it when we meet, as I hope we ­shall now and then forever. I go home to South Shaftsbury Vermont next Thursday. Late in July I go to Boulder Colorado for a week or so.52 On August 7th I talk to em at Middlebury Vermont. Then I head for Franconia New Hampshire to escape the chief ­thing in life I have fled, hay-­fever. If I drive I ­shall hope to look in on you at Montpelier en route. Dont count on me though. I seem at everbodys beck and call this year. I am settling down next year. Ever yours Robert Frost

51. ​­A fter the Bodhi Tree, ­u nder which the Buddha attained enlightenment. 52. ​To attend the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference.

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[To Ferner Nuhn. ALS. Iowa.]

Amherst Mass June 29 1935 Dear Ferner: You can have the h ­ ouse two months beginning August 1st for fifty dollars, for half that, or for nothing at all. If I let you pay Carol anything, it is only to encourage him and save you from feeling u ­ nder obligations to help get a job in the government for another son just graduated from the Yale School of Architecture first in his class.53 We must see something of each other while you are ­here and try if you at the heart of ­things, a heart specialist as it ­were, cant find out what’s the ­matter with me that I take the depression with such sinful unseriousness. Just to give you an idea: I seized the hopeful occasion of our so-­called Se­n ior Chapel (last time for se­niors in college, their last chance of salvation) to hold forth to them on our Darkest Concern. I trust I darkened the day for them—­darkened their lives. I gave them waves. The President54 of the college stood by me or rather sat and what­ever he may have thought about my doctrine against all doctrine radical and conservative, was so pleased with my spirit or informality or something that he founded then and ­there in my name and honor a new desert or bo-­tree fellowship of the value of one thousand dollars, the purpose of which is to keep one person a year of my choosing from g­ oing abroad for a year or to further college for a year or to too big a city for a year. The President and I are to be sole judges of what is too big a city. Nothing need be produced in the year. Nothing need come of it but meditation written or unwritten. I had remarked on the platform that the most social ­thing you could do was stay alone some of the time. In return for not being held answerable to anyone for anything, the beneficiary agrees provisionally that if being comparatively alone makes him ner­vous or evil minded he w ­ ill take as a corrective no more than a part-­time job and that preferably of an ­humble nature55 such as teaching in a small country high school or setting type in a printing office, selling goods in a general store or cultivating a vegetable garden. Let him show some imagination ­here.

53. ​RF’s son-­i n-­law John Cone (­Irma’s husband). 54. ​Stanley King. 55. ​As per the manuscript (and Cockney pronunciation: “an ’umble”).

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On top of all I had a chance to tell Walter Lipp­mann not to be so gloomy about our having no traditions; and I told him (taking him by one lapel—­not ear.)56 And please dont you be so gloomy. I dont want you to be. I care for you far more than I do for him. I never have lacked for traditions if by traditions we mean t­ hings to go by in a predicament. You have traditions enough for your purposes. We dont like to have to state them on ­every questionaire [sic]. But we know where we can lay our hands on them at our need. I never was where I couldnt find something to throw at a foreigner if he got too fresh about my manners and customs. This was the worst year since 1492 for tent caterpillars, though I say it whom it goes against to have to allow anything is any worse than anything e­ lse. I take some pretty untenable positions. I seem driven to by p­ eople like Thomas Wolf at the door.57 But a­ fter all the g­ reat t­ hing is not to forget what song the Miller sang beside the river D—. (I may explain I used to think the D stood for a word that couldnt be said ­because it was a bad one.)58 ­Here I am preoccupied with the sorrows of mankind in general and neglecting to ask politely for your weather in Washington. I should sympathize with you also about the Republicans out of office (not in.) They act as if they thought they ­ought to be allowed to run this depression b­ ecause they brought it on and so ‘tis theirs peculiarly. Dont mind the Supreme Court ­w ill you? It is my favorite governing body in the world’s history and must continue to be though it slay—­you.59 56. ​Walter Lipp­mann had warned in A Preface to Morals (New York: Macmillan, 1929) of the corrosive “acid” of a modernity that “not merely denies the central ideas of our forefathers, but dissolves the disposition to believe in them” (68). For more on RF’s attitude to Lipp­mann, see the letter to Cross, February 17, 1934. 57. ​RF puns on the name and often tortured sensibility of American novelist Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938). 58. ​The River Dee flows through parts of both Wales and ­England, forming part of the border between them. A traditional En­glish folk song of multiple versions, “The Miller of the Dee” (or “­There Was a Jolly Miller Once” or “The Jolly Miller”) first appeared in print in Isaac Bickerstaffe’s play, Love in a Village (London: W. Griffin, 1763). The burden of its philosophy is in two lines: “I care for nobody, no not I, if nobody cares for me,” and “Let o ­ thers toil from year to year, I live from day to day.” 59. ​In the spring of 1935, Justice Owen Roberts began casting his swing vote with Justices Pierce Butler, James McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter to create a conservative majority in opposition to FDR’s New Deal agenda (of which Nuhn was a supporter; from 1934–1936, he worked as a staff writer for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration).

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Our best American to you both60 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Paul Osborn. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 7 1935 Dear Paul: Elinor has been having one of her bad times. I d­ on’t believe it is safe to say we can come over for Oliver Oliver.61 One ­a fter another of the ­family come on us at this time of year and it just has to be admitted that we are not as equal to the ­family and social demands on us as we once ­were. I dont like to talk about diseases, but since about six months ago Elinors case has been serious and from now on can never be anything e­ lse.62 If she is careful of herself and we are careful of her, we need be nowhere near the end of the story for a long time yet. I am trying to dissuade her from the journey west this summer with its attendant emotional strain. But ­t here are t­ hings ­t here she thinks have claims on her.63 That has to be reckoned with I suppose and made the best of. I tell you all this for sympathy and understanding. I ­shall run over some day to see you.64 Best of luck to the play—­a nd to the next one. Ever yours Robert Frost

60. ​Nuhn was married to Ruth Suckow. 61. ​Osborn’s play Oliver, Oliver had closed shortly ­a fter opening on Broadway in January 1934; but the Brattleboro (Vermont) Theatre inaugurated its first season with a revival of the play (staged July 10–12). 62. ​Angina pectoris. 63.  Willard Fraser and his mother Sadie brought the Frosts’ granddaughter Robin down to Boulder for a weeklong reunion with RF and Elinor. See YT, 423. 64. ​At Osborn’s summer place in Brattleboro.

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[To Harold J. Baily (1887–1964), American ­lawyer and trustee of the Brooklyn Public Library. Dated from Baily’s stamp on the first page of the letter. ALS. DCL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 8, 1935] Dear Mr Baily: I received Doctor Keyser’s book and began on [sic] with a chapter I heard him deliver at Columbia before ΦBK when I was delivering a poem on the same occasion ten or fifteen years ago.65 I ­shall get deeper into the book l­ater. Thank him for me. I may be too old to make up for lost time in athletics. But it is never too late to be saved for mathe­matics. I keep up a smouldering in some ­things like mathe­matics Latin and astronomy. Two or three of my most memorable late nights ­were with Oldsie getting his help on some of the new ideas in matematics [sic].66 Some one gave me a four inch telescope the other day:67And I was recently down in New York welcoming in Latin verse the distinguished scholaress and translatress from E ­ ngland Helen Waddell.68 All this is very superficial as you may imagine. It is a confession of what I ­can’t quite let alone.

65. ​Cassius Jackson Keyser (1862–1947), American mathematician and phi­los­o­pher, Adrian Professor of Mathe­matics at Columbia from 1904 to 1927. RF and Keyser shared a stage at Columbia for a Phi Beta Kappa event in 1921, on which occasion RF delivered an early version of “Build Soil”: see LRF-2, 162. Keyser had talked on the subject of “The Nature of Man,” dealing with the concept of man as a “time-­binder,” a development of the philosophy of “General Semantics” associated primarily with the Polish American scholar Alfred Korzybski. (For an account of the address see the Columbia Daily Spectator, 44.150 [June 1, 1921]). The book Baily had sent RF is Keyser’s Mathematical Philosophy: A Study of Fate and Freedom (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922), chapter 20 of which is on the subject of “time-­binding.” 66. ​George Olds, president of Amherst from 1923 to 1927. He had been professor of mathe­matics at Amherst during Baily’s time ­t here. 67. ​Reference uncertain. Louis Untermeyer had given RF a telescope in 1931 and, given all the star meta­phors in the next letter (to Untermeyer), he may well have given him another. 68. ​Helen Waddell (1889–1965), born in Tokyo into an Ulster Presbyterian f­amily, raised in Tokyo and Belfast (so in no way “En­glish”): translator from Chinese and Latin, author most famously of Peter Abelard (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1933), her only novel. RF had read it in 1933 (see RF to Richard Thornton, November 1, 1933). Waddell had been in New York since early June 1935, on her first visit to the United States.

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Why d­ on’t you come to see me when you are in Amherst some times? Sincerely yours Robert Frost We are intending to print my Se­nior Chapel talk if I can remember it.69 We thought ­there might be a book of that, The Education by Poetry piece and one or two ­others.70 The poem I read parts of was Arnolds Sick King in Bokara.71 You dont try to keep up with every­t hing I write do you by any chance? R. F.

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 8, 1935] Dear Louis: I ­wasn’t ­here when your tele­g ram came. No luck. We ­d idn’t subside at Amherst till last Saturday—­more than two weeks ­after commencement. I had been wondering the last few years what use I was round the place. Well a use was found for me. I lectured, so to call it, three times, on How a Poem Picks up Thought, New Ways to be New, and Our Darkest Concern. The last proved the best though I was scared in it the worst. I burst forth like a Nova in ­those last days portending wars, pestilences and the end of this pre­sent Administration at Washington. I ­rose for the moment from well below the sixth or visible-­to-­the-­naked-­eye-­magnitude to about the third or second magnitude. Then I sunk back never again to blaze perhaps. The President thought it best to reward me at once before my effect was lost. I’ll brag a ­l ittle more when I see you—­not much. I’m a sad t­ hing now. But I’m tough. I have several t­ hings to talk over with you, your news and mine. I won­der if ­there isnt some halfway-­place where we could meet for a night’s talk. Elinor is not fit for anything. She is trying to save up energy for a melancholy journey to the terrible scenes in Colorado and Montana. I am d­ oing my best to

69. ​See the notes to RF’s June 21, 1935, letter to Untermeyer. 70. ​This—as would all of RF’s plans to collect his talks and essays—­came to nothing. 71. ​“The Sick King in Bokhara” (as it is correctly spelled) is in Matthew Arnold’s first book of poetry, The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems (London: B. Fellowes, 1849).

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dissuade her from such a pilgrimage. We cant have a soul in the ­house for a while. And I dont want to be away from her long at a time. Ever yours Robertus Gelu72

[To Robert Newdick. ALS. ACL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 8 1935 Dear Mr Newdick: ­Here we are at last where we mean to stay for several weeks. I had better say exactly how many and indeed give you my calendar for the summer so you can calculate your own chances of finding me. I s­ hall be in South Shaftsbury, Vermont from now till July 24th, in Boulder Colorado or on the train between h ­ ere and t­here, from July  24th  till August  5th, at Breadloaf August 8th and 9th (prob­ably) and from then on till late in September at the Fobes Farm near Franconia New Hampshire. I have to take to the White Mountains for my hay fever, less fatal of late than it used to seem, but still to be considered. I hope you w ­ ill let me see you some time on your travels. I have to explain about our hospitality that on account of my wife’s condition (since a loss in the f­amily last year) we are not entertaining anyone in the h ­ ouse. When I want to have a good talk with anyone as I do with you I put him up at a small ­hotel near by so we can have a long eve­n ing together. We ­ought to feel well introduced and old friends, what with all the letters that have passed between us and especially the description of you and your ways in the newspaper you sent.73 The hospitality, l­ imited as it has to be, is cordially proffered. Do show up. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

72. ​Latin for “frost.” 73. ​We have been unable to identify this item.

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[To George Norlin (1871–1942), president of the University of Colorado. Date derived from internal evidence. The letter is unfinished and was never sent, and no letter corresponding to it exists among the Norlin papers held at the University of Colorado. ALS. Private.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 8, 1935] Dear Mr. Norlin: The time is almost at hand for me to rise to your level.74 We ­shall set out for Boulder on the 24th or 25th. The question you h ­ aven’t time to answer is ­whether by way of preparation I should take a course in climbing home mountains, Bald three thousand, Stratton four thousand, Lafayette five thousand, Washington six thousand, gradation, or in reaching gradation the recent American authors that seem most to have impressed you.75 I’ll make you an offer. I’ll start reading them, if you’ll stop reading them. In that way I’ll be the only loser if it ­shall prove my system ­can’t take care of their poison. You’ll be the gainer. ­They’ll come out even, in that ­they’ll merely be exchanging one reader for another albeit a somewhat less respectful one. I see you are taking Thomas Wolf [sic] to the bosom of your summer faculty where I can hardly expect you not to read him.76 I’m sorry ­because that carries you over into the next generation of the sort of ­thing I mean. Well I cant ask the impossible of you, but if I let you read him, w ­ ill you in thy name promise me (in the name of the good talks we had at Columbia) that you w ­ ill try to end with him? Robinson is not to be confused for a moment with ­these prize bellyachers. His plaints are not complaints, his griefs are not grievances.77 Nothing can be done about him. No good can come of him, no change in our society or government. The prize bellyachers on the other hand are mostly lesser Rus­

74. ​That is, ascend to Boulder, elevation 5,328 ft, for the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference. 75. ​Though some of the phrasing is a l­ittle odd (“gradation,” e­ tc.), this is in fact what the manuscript says. 76.  Thomas Wolfe, at this date author of Look Homeward, Angel (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929) and Of Time and the River (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935). Wolfe took part in the 1935 conference (July–August), as did Robert Penn Warren, Whit Burnett, Mignon Baker, and Martha Foley. 77. ​RF’s remarks echo what he would say in the introduction he was even then preparing for Robinson’s last book, King Jasper (1935; see CPPP, 741–748).

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sians. As the Checkoffs78 [sic] have achieved a ­g reat revolution and ultimate happiness in Rus­sia so ­there and emulators ­here may well hope to bring on a one-­horse revolution and proximate happiness in Amer­i­ca. Perfect happiness can only exist at the source of happiness. [. . .]

[To Dorothy Charlotte Walter (1889–1967), secretary of the League of Vermont Writers. ALS. VHS.]

South Shaftsbury VT July 21 1935 My dear Miss Walter: Your choosing the height of the hay-­fever season and a place below the hay fever line makes it impossible for me to accept your invitation to come and speak to you.79 I am very very sorry. For years I havent been able to breathe much south of St Johnsbury80 in late August and early September. Sometime perhaps you ­w ill be having a meeting above the hay-­fever line or at a better time of year for me.81 Thank you for thinking of me. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

78. ​Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904), Rus­sian playwright and short-­story writer. RF may be punning on “Chekists,” the name given colloquially to the Soviet secret police in the 1920s. 79. ​The 1935 meeting of the League of Vermont Writers was held in Manchester, Vermont, a town just north of South Shaftsbury, at the Burr and Burton Seminary. 80. ​St. Johnsbury, Dorothy Walter’s hometown, is located in the northeast corner of Vermont. 81. ​­W hether to oblige RF or not, Walter held the next meeting of the League of Vermont Writers in Newport, Vermont, five miles from the Canadian border, and so well above the hay-­fever line; and indeed, RF read ­t here, on August 28, 1936.

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[To Wallace Stevens (1879–1955), American poet and insurance executive. ALS. DCL.]

The Boulderado ­Hotel Boulder Colorado July 28 1935 Dear Wallace: Look at where I am exposing myself to the sun now. It is all in the f­ amily cause. We wont go into that. I’m writing merely to hold your friendship till I can get home and get down to see you in the fall.82 It relieves me to know that you h ­ aven’t minded my public levity about our g­ reat talk in Key West.83 I’m never so serious as when playful. I was in a better condition than you to appreciate that talk. I ­shall trea­sure the memory of it. Take it from me ­there was no conflict at all, but the prettiest kind of stand-­off. You and I and the Judge found we liked one another. And you and I ­really like each ­others’ [sic] works.84 At least down under­neath I suspect we do. We should. We must. If I’m somewhat academic (I’m more agricultural) and you are somewhat executive, so much the better: it is so we are saved from being literary and deployers of words derived from words. Our poetry comes choppy, in well-­ separated poems, well interrupted by time, sleep, and events. Hurrah for us in private!

82. ​In fact RF and Stevens would not meet again ­u ntil February  1940—­a nd in Key West, not Hartford, Connecticut. See YT, 665–666, for details of the events alluded to in this letter. 83. ​RF and Stevens first met on the beach in Key West, Florida, in February 1935. Stevens invited RF to dinner but drank to excess during the cocktail hour he hosted with his friend Judge Arthur G. Powell (1873–1951). Hence RF’s quip about being in a “better condition” to “appreciate” the encounter. The two poets apparently argued. Stevens recounted the events in a March 13, 1935, letter to Harriet Monroe: “[T]he cocktail party, the dinner with Frost, and several other ­t hings became all mixed up, and I imagine that Frost has been purifying himself by vari­ous exorcisms ever since” (The Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966]: 278). RF talked about the occasion at the University of Miami, and word of his gossiping got back to Stevens, via, RF came to believe, the Harvard literary critic F. O. Matthiessen (see RF to Untermeyer, May 8, 1936). For a more detailed account of the episode, see Arlo Haskell, “The Trou­ble with Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens” (Web). 84. ​This might be read as polite dissimulation; see, again, YT, 666.

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I’ll have someone look for the dictionary you sent.85 I’ll save my thanks till I can muster them adequate. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To the First National Bank of Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts. ALS. Private.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 12 1935 Dear Sirs: Please deposit to my checking account the enclosed eight hundred dollars in checks.86 Very truly yours Robert Frost

[To John Bartlett and his wife Margaret (1892–1949). Typescript of Western Union Tele­ gram. Date derived from typescript. UVA.]

[Windham, New Hampshire] [August 20, 1935] Very sorry I ­can’t be with the best class I ever taught in any school or college. Ragweed makes it impossible.87 Remember me to every­one pre­sent. Very sorry. Robert Frost

85. ​ Harper’s Latin Dictionary, ed. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, first published by Harper and B ­ rothers in 1879. See Letters of Wallace Stevens, 275. Stevens loved dictionaries. 86. ​Earnings from RF’s recent appearances at the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference and from a talk given in Santa Fe (July 29–­August 5, 1935). 87. ​The Pinkerton Class of 1910, with which John and Margaret graduated, had scheduled a reunion in Derry, New Hampshire (where Pinkerton was located, in southern New Hampshire, just above the Mas­sa­chu­setts state line).

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John and Margaret why would you go to having parties at a time of year when I c­ an’t come to them? If you d­ on’t call on us on your way home I ­shall be as mad as a Writers Conference.88 I mean it.

[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

Franconia New Hampshire August 21 1935 Dear Louis: I wanted you to see this before I sent it into Macmillans but they got ­after me and I had to send it ­today.89 They may not like it. If not it ­w ill save me the trou­ble of deciding what I o ­ ught to charge for it.90 I hope you’ll like it a l­ ittle. ­There is some high some low and some Jack (Frost) in it. Game (by which I choose to mean “evaluation”) is purposely left out.

88. ​­Earlier that summer RF tried to mediate a conflict among organizers of the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference. Ted Davison, the program director, held that the conference should concern only the writer’s craft and resisted conference director Walter M. Campbell’s efforts to address marketing strategies, too. With attendees lining up on ­either side of the controversy, RF met with University of Colorado president George Norlin hoping to ­settle the dispute. RF quietly sided with the Campbell faction, but at the closing dinner Davison announced to the group that RF was with him. Perhaps more troubling than the squabble among directors was a personal dispute between RF and Davison. RF had agreed to attend the conference only a­ fter Davison promised RF’s ­daughter Lesley a summer faculty position in con­temporary poetry. When Lesley announced she would not take the appointment, Davison felt betrayed. For an account of the affairs, see RFJB, 187–190. 89. ​RF enclosed with the letter a fair copy of an early version of his introduction to E. A. Robinson’s King Jasper (New York: Macmillan, 1935). (Robinson had died on April 6, so the book would appear posthumously.) For the textual history of this document, see CPRF, 282–284. The draft RF enclosed with the pre­sent letter ends h ­ ere: “The utmost of ambition is to lodge a few poems where they ­w ill be hard to get rid of, to lodge a few indelible bits, where Robinson lodged more than his share.” At the request of Robinson’s editors at Macmillan, RF added several pages to the introduction, doubling it in length—­ though never once touching on King Jasper itself. He stayed out of the “evaluation” game. His attitude ­toward Robinson’s ­later poetry was, anyway, at best equivocal. 90. ​RF received $200.

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Carol and I had a good visit. I came away still feeling full of ­t hings I had to say.91 Ever yours

[To Prescott Frost. ALS. UM.]

Franconia N.H. August 22 1935 Dear Prescott: Last night we had a good rain and a l­ittle lightening [sic] that sucked the electric lights low ­every time it flashed.92 That reminded me of your lesson in electricity on Monday. I hope it went off well. Write me about it ­w ill you? Electricity has come into use in my lifetime. When I came to New ­England in 1885, t­ here wasnt a telephone in the city I lived in, Lawrence, Mass., and ­there wasnt an electric light. At least I didnt know of any. The telegraph had been ­going for quite a while. The wires w ­ ere everywhere even in San Francisco. We used to loose [sic] our kites on them. But most electrical developements [sic] have taken place with me looking on. I have even worked in the mills on the electric lighting system and spent part of a year in the dynamo room.93 And still I ­haven’t paid enough attention to the biggest ­thing in the present-­day world to understand such a ­thing as a transformer or an electric metre [sic]. A radio sender is a complete mystery. You’ll have to educate me in all this some day. What do you suppose happens when a lightning flash draws down the ­house lights? Bears as usual up ­here. They have been killing lambs. Hodge has a man out hunting.94 I ­ought to bring a gun when I come. Affectionately Grampha

91. ​Carol’s descent into severe ­mental illness had begun; he would take his life by suicide five years ­later (in October 1940). See also RF to Tilley, December 6, 1936. 92. ​Prescott had accompanied his ­father on the visit. 93. ​In fall 1893 and early winter 1894, at the Arlington Woolen Mill in Lawrence. 94. ​Most likely (and coincidentally) William Prescott Hodge (1886–1948), man­ag­er of a dairy farm in Franconia.

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[To Charles R. Green. ALS. Jones.]

Franconia N.H. August 28 1935 Dear Mr Green ­There are some last minute t­ hings we seem disinclined to reach decisions on. The enclosed photo­g raph of me doesnt satisfy me at all. Throw it out please. I dont think I particularly like any of ­those Fisher pictures.95 I wish we w ­ ere down t­ here where our material is. The photo­g raph of the DuChene head should go in I think.96 You werent ­going to have more than one of me ­were you? And throw out the picture of the Lawrence High School for God’s sake. How did that turn up? The only ­houses that should occur are our ­house in Derry New Hampshire, our ­house in Franconia New Hampshire and possibly the stone ­house we used to live in in South Shaftsbury Vermont (now occupied by Carol.) I c­ an’t think of any other.97 I’m in ­favor of A Time to Talk. But wouldnt it look better with less of the blank paper showing? Is it necessary to have the ­whole sheet on view? You and Clymer know best about that. I must leave it to you.98 One of the most impor­tant ­things comes next. We have slowly reached the conclusion that we want none of the Lawrence High School Bulletin t­ hings noticed at all in the bibliography. That stuff goes back too far into the absolutely

95. ​Possibly photo­g raphs taken at the behest of Theodore Fisher, a lecture agent RF had briefly retained in 1931. See RF to Unyermeyer, July 28, 1931 (“I had a real run in with Fisher. I let him have me interviewed for his publicity twice on arrival once in the station and once in a newspaper office . . .”). 96. ​Aroldo du-­Chêne de Vére (1883–1961), an Italian-­born sculptor (often called simply Aroldo Du Chêne), had done a bust of RF that was reproduced as a frontispiece to the 1919 edition of MI; this is the image he refers to ­here. However, Clymer and Green chose a photo of RF done by photographer A. Allyn Bishop for their frontispiece. See Figure 7. 97. ​Photo­g raphs of none of RF’s ­houses appear in the bibliography (nor does a photo­ graph of Lawrence High School). 98. ​Clymer and Green included a facsimile of an autograph manuscript of “A Time to Talk” (with corrections); it follows page 79 of the bibliography (the sheet on which it is written is, indeed, reproduced so as to minimize the blank paper).

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childish. We both hate it. I hadnt realized how infantile it was or I should never have had it dug up.99 Do I understand you would like an entirely new and unpublished poem to print in script? I realize you are more or less in a hurry now. I’ll tend right to anything you say. I heard that you had been very kind to my Ohio friend Newdick. He must be a good fellow to be so good natured about Clymers having scooped him.100 He writes that he ­w ill come to see me soon. We had a first sniff of almost winterish cold a day or two ago. W ­ e’ll soon be climbing down from ­here. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Marshall Louis Mertins. A note on the envelope in Mertins’s hand says: part of the “original [is] in [the] hands of Mrs. P. Caspar Harvey % [i.e., president of] Wm Jewell College—­Liberty, Mo.” ALS. Berkeley.]

Franconia New Hampshire September 10 1935 Dear Mertins: Your poems r’c’d and contents noted with plea­sure and interest. Form also noted with the same. Interest at the old rates. That’s especially good about the pop and yellow bantam. In reply would enclose one called Name Unnamed.101 Now about t­ hese engagements. I wish you would lay off the colleges out ­there. By sensible degrees I am already in so deep with colleges back ­here that it looks as if my year, my winter, was wholly accounted for. I have practically

99. ​In fact, Clymer and Green did list RF’s high school poems (“La Noche Triste,” “Song of the Wave,” “A Dream of Julius Caesar,” and “Class Hymn” [the latter written for the commencement exercises of 1892]). The poems are reprinted in CPPP (485–492, 498). 100. ​Unaware that Clymer (and Green) ­were at work on a bibliography, Robert Newdick had prepared one of his own (as noted e­ arlier), and had presented it to Henry Holt for publication; to Newdick’s chagrin, his proj­ect came to naught. 101. ​Mertins identifies the poem as “Untried,” published first with a group called “Ten Mills” in Poetry and then retitled “Waspish” when RF brought it into AFR (CPPP, 282). See Mertins, Life and Talks-­Walking (212).

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Figure 7. Portrait of RF by Allyn Bishop. Bishop’s studio, as the watermark indicates, was in Newport, Vermont. Courtesy of Bennington College and The Friends of Robert Frost.

agreed to go to Wesleyan, Texas, Iowa, Yale, Wesleyan and Miami.102 Thats for the group ­thing I told you about, and with the scattered one night ­things is too much as it is for my health. Oh and I forgot my series at the New School 102. ​Repetition of “Wesleyan” as per the manuscript. Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, where RF often spoke (Wilbert Snow had lately invited him).

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of Social Research [sic] in New York and opening the new lit­er­a­t ure h ­ ouse at 103 the City College of New York. And you may have forgotten Amherst but I havent. You dont want to kill me. And you dont want to make me a plague and pest to the w ­ hole Pacific Coast by insisting on me to excess. You can have my friendship without getting me engagements. Always bear that in mind. I want less rather than more engagements. I have difficulty in persuading the agents of that fact. Get lectures for Hamlin. He asks for them and he likes ­people to ask for them for him.104 My best information is that his condescension t­ oward his rivals though kindly seems rather to hurt than help them. But never mind. Be magnanimous. Put your time in for him. I seem more than provided for. Lets think of ­these ­things no more. You ­w ill suspect me of high hatting you if you force me to keep on about my prosperity. Mind you it has been you forcing. And I could tell you of an affluence that doesnt ­matter to me ­either way anyway. My ambition lies far otherwhere than in lecturing. You are forbidden to be anything but bucolic with me henceforth. I dont want to hear about lectures or literary socie­ties any more. Keep pegging away at information about Californian farming and perhaps sooner or ­later you ­w ill hit on something that ­w ill fetch me out ­there to buy land. Be good now if you d­ on’t want to offend me. Ever yours Robert Frost

103. ​R F gave four lectures at the New School for Social Research in the fall of 1935 (October 3, 10, 17, and 24). The pamphlet published by the New School for its 1935 series describes the theme of RF’s lectures: “This course ­ w ill consist of readings from Mr. Frost’s poems, with informal discussions of their genesis and their meaning in the poet’s own scheme of life and philosophy. The object of the lectures and readings is to reanimate a sense of the indestructible world of poetic imagination as against the passing turmoil and confusion of so-­called ­actual life” (42). The City College of New York, like many institutions at the time, had implemented a “house” program, an approach to education that ­housed students by academic interest and promoted regular interaction with interested faculty. We’ve found no evidence to confirm or explain RF’s involvement. 104. ​Of Hamlin Garland, Mertins reports RF remarking, “Old Ham likes lecturing. It gives him a feeling of propping up” (Life and Talks-­Walking, 200).

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[To Norman Foerster. ALS. Stanford.]

Franconia NH September 10 1935 Dear Norman Foerster: I’m a hard one to catch up with in the summer. I won­der if some letter from you got hung up in Amherst or South Shaftsbury. We took to the woods in earnest a month or two ago and tried to lose ourselves without a trace. I’m always ashamed of myself when I act as if I was worth preserving this way. Could you would you tell me all over about your invitation to visit you this fall. You have wanted me before when I couldnt come. I have wanted to come when you couldnt have me. Lets hope for better luck this time.105 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To J. J. Lankes. The letter is undated, but a note at the top of the first page reads: “Postmarked Sep. 12, 1935 Franconia N.H.” ALS. HRC.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [September 12, 1935] Dear J. J. What all is this that’s g­ oing on about my new bookplate?106 (For which thanks: it’s a beauty—­better than the old one in the bookplatonic sense; that

105. ​See RF’s follow-up letter to Foerster (November 29, 1935) for context as to what kind of program Foerster had proposed. RF would eventually visit the University of Iowa on April 13, 1939. 106. ​Lankes had done a new bookplate for the bibliography in response to Charles Green’s request for the bookplate Lankes had ­earlier made for RF in 1923. Lankes regarded that bookplate as the personal property of the poet, as Welford Taylor points out in his definitive Robert Frost and J. J. Lankes: Riders on Pegasus (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Library, 1996): 58–59. Unwilling to send the 1923 plate to Green, Lankes designed a new one, and sent the block and proofs printed from it to Green, who proceeded to distribute copies to other ­people—­a ll unbeknownst to RF (it was from a letter from Lankes to Elinor that he [and she] found out about the ­matter). The prob­lem, as Taylor suggests, had been that Lankes had no good idea of where to contact RF in summer 1935, when the poet was shuttling between Amherst, South Shaftsbury, Franconia, and Bread

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is to say it is more of a design. The other was a design too but it was also a landscape.) But as I say what’s all this between you and Green? Why did you make the book plate? As a compliment to me? Or did Green aggravate you into ­doing it? I wish you had held on to it till I could have told you where to send it. What have you sent?—­the wood block? Word has got round that you have done it and already I am getting demands for it. Tell me about book plates. Are the prints you made for me and your d­ aughter107 more valuable to collectors in some way than any to follow ­w ill be? It seems as if I would sink in the sea of collectors around me and their letters of enquiry. I dont answer their letters and that gets me into such a habit of not answering letters that I dont even answer my friends letters. To Hell with all this.108 So the lady next door says you are moving out of Hilton. I’ll bet she knows better than you know. It’s good news. I’ve been rooting for you to come north. That’s no good to you down ­t here in the enervation all the year. Gee I dont for the life of me see why you dont move to somewhere near Wells College. You may think of your job as too insecure. But you only make it insecure by living with one leg in V ­ irginia. Fasten yourself on them out ­t here and they w ­ ill regard you as a fixture. From all I hear they take pride in you. ­They’re already a lot committed to you. Make them more completely by moving in on them. Hire a ­house that looks at the lake or down a ravine or down a good village street so your esthetics wont go hungry.109 Thats for the spring fall and winter. Then in the summer pack yourself to a camp north of hay fever in ­these mountains. That would be my prescription—­ only one of many pos­si­ble and all better than staying where you are. So I’ve long said. But to Hell with all this too. You are incorrigible. Your age accounts for it I suppose. I remember when I was your age nobody could do anything with me. Nobody can now beyond a certain point. Macmillans have been trying to get a decorous preface out of me to put in a book of E. A. Robinsons a one poem book (called King Jasper).110 ­They’ve about spoiled my Loaf. In any case, the new bookplate featured, as Taylor explains, “a variation of the apple tree and grindstone used as a tailpiece for New Hampshire” (58). 107. ​Elizabeth Bartlett Lankes (1924–1995). 108. ​­Here begins what ­w ill constitute the letter’s refrain. 109. ​H ilton Village is a planned, English-­village-­style neighborhood in Newport News, ­Virginia. Lankes had moved from Buffalo, New York, to V ­ irginia in 1925. Wells College is in Aurora, New York, on the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake. 110. ​For details, see RF to Untermeyer, August 21, 1935.

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summer and I trust their own. I’ve wanted to be good in this case. Robinson was my friend and I wouldnt mind linking my name with his in a book for once in a way. It seems as if what they ­were ­after wasnt the kind of ­thing I naturally think, but an appraisal of King Jasper. That is beyond me. They say now they are pleased to use what I give them. I doubt it though and it makes me cross. The latest is they want me to write my name in the special edition.111 I’m suggesting they have me write Robinson’s name. ­There would be some fun in that. It would startle p­ eople. I would make a statement: it was automatic. I was as much an instrument as my Waterman pen. (Adv.) To Hell with all this, three. Now I am g­ oing to bed. What do you say you decorate a poem about hens I have in pickle.112 Do you look down on hens? ­Because if you do my proposal might seem degrading. (I may as well write on and use up this sheet of paper.) My mind seems to run on lowlier subjects than ever. I sent one on Ants to the Yale Review and I’ve got another on the White-­tailed Hornet which liberal fellers call a grosser name.113 I believe my one on the Wasp is small enough to copy out for your consideration.114 To Hell with all this, four.115 Now I’m in earnest. I’ve had enough if you havent. Thanks for the book plate and to all a good night. Ever yours Robert Frost

111. ​He d­ idn’t; see the next letter. 112. ​“A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury,” collected in AFR (though it appeared first in the Atlantic in April  1936). Lankes did not illustrate it, though he did do a woodcut for “Waspish” (no illustrations appear in AFR, however). 113. ​The white-­tailed hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) is a yellowjacket wasp, not a true hornet. Other colloquial names include bald-­faced hornet, blackjacket, and bull wasp. But in speaking of a “grosser name” RF may have in mind the epithets that a sting from t­ hese famously aggressive wasps typically elicit. 114. ​A ll three poems w ­ ere collected in AFR in 1936: “Departmental” (the “Ant” poem), “The White-­Tailed Hornet,” and “Waspish.” The first two of the three appeared first in the Yale Review (Spring 1936). For details about “Waspish,” see RF to Mertins, September 10. 115. ​Having said “To Hell with this” four times (the second instance marked by “too” [in retrospect a pun on “two”]), and the third marked by “three,” the joke becomes clear: RF is looking at the clock, and it is 4 A.M.

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[To James Putnam (1893–1966), se­nior editor at Macmillan. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. DCL.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [mid-­September 1935] Dear Mr Putnam: If you and Blanton116 have memory and rec­ord of my having undertaken to autograph the special edition of King Jasper,117 that s­ ettles it. As a ­matter of fact I begin to have a hazy recollection of it myself. And ­after all my scruples in the m ­ atter seem somewhat foolish. I could put my name at the end of the preface as you say. That would be a modester place than on the title page. But you w ­ ill agree with me that I should have had the autographing in mind when I put in my bill. Less virtue goes out of me in the writing of ideas than in writing my own name over and over again. You have been reasonableness itself in this ­whole business. My complaint is chiefly against myself for having got into it beyond my depth. Any complaint I have against you would be for leaving me so severely alone in deciding on my fee. Ive named my price for the preface. But now I am ­going to ask you to tell me frankly how many copies of the special edition ­there are to be what you are ­going to get apiece and what share of the royalties on the special edition you are willing I should have.118 My name is not an inspiration to me as Alfred Tennesons [sic] is said to have been to him.119 You told me to charge and not to run. So of course it was like charging solitary across nomans land. R 116. ​Alexander J. Blanton (1898–1946), at the time sales man­ag­er for Macmillan. 117. ​Macmillan printed 250 copies of a special l­ imited edition of the book. 118. ​The special edition was sold without RF’s signature. 119. ​RF often punned on his surname, taking a kind of “inspiration from it”—at least in letters. W ­ hether the many “frosts” that appear in his poems derive from or somehow involve his name is another ­matter. His interest in the power a name might have in shaping a person’s life is, of course, the theme of his poem “Maple” (CPPP, 168–173). As for Tennyson: RF may have this in mind, from Arthur Turnbull’s Life and Writings of Tennyson (New York: Walter Scott, 1914): One of the most curious t­ hings about Tennyson was t­ hose “weird seizures” which he introduced into his poetry. About this time he wrote, “A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me through repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at once, as it ­were out of the intensity of the consciousness of

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[To Frederic Melcher. Date derives from internal evidence. ALS. UVA.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [circa mid-­September 1935] Dear Fred: I’ve got myself into a regular tangle with Macmillans. In the first place they ­were not specially pleased with the preface to King Jasper ­because it wasnt an appraisal, didnt mention King Jasper and didnt bring in enough Robinson. This is what they might have expected. I lengthened it a l­ ittle giving it a more Robinsonian twist ­toward the end.120 I want to be decent. Now the trou­ble is something ­else. I learn from another quarter that they have advertised me as autographing their 7.50 edition. I had forgotten if I ever knew I was in for that. Elinor says she knew it. But r­ eally now dont you think

individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it ­were) seeming no extinction but the only true life.” (100–101) Turnbull quotes from volume 1 of Hallam Tennyson’s Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son (London: Macmillan, 1897). 120. ​The introduction concludes: Robinson has gone to his place in American lit­er­a­t ure and left his h ­ uman place among us vacant. We mourn, but with the qualification that ­a fter all, his life was a revel in the felicities of language. And not just to no purpose. None could deplore, The inscrutable profusion of the Lord Who ­shaped as one of us a ­thing so sad and at the same time so happy in achievement. Not for me to search his sadness to its source. He knew how to forbid encroachment. And ­t here is solid satisfaction in a sadness that is not just a fishing for ministration and consolation. Give us immedicable woes—­woes that nothing can be done for—­woes flat and final. And then to play. The play’s the t­ hing. Play’s the ­t hing. All virtue in “as if.” As if the last of days ­Were fading and all wars ­were done. As if they w ­ ere. As if, as if! (CPPP, 747–748) RF quotes (seriatim) Robinson’s “The Rat,” As You Like It (“Your ‘if ’ is your only peacemaker; much virtue in If,” Touchstone speaking [5.iv]), and Robinson’s “Dark Hills.”

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they o ­ ught to have offered me some part in the swag from a special edition? The preface is settled for with two hundred dollars. The autographing is another ­thing it seems to me. Doubtless they w ­ ill be all right when I demand. But I hate to have to demand. I think it shouldnt have had to come to that. I’m afraid my own publishers have spoiled me by looking ­after me better than I could look ­after myself. You tell Daniel to correct the abuse.121 You can tell him when you give him my congratulations for coming into the Holts. Tell him I expect to see him show his hand in the advertising. I want results. He must double my sales. I s­ hall be in New York to make some rec­ords on October 2nd for Prof Hibbit at Columbia.122 Do you want to go with me to the Studio for moral support? I enclose one book plate for you.123 Ever yours Robert Frost What did you pay for that lovely Enoch Lincoln first?124 Was it five? Then find it enclosed.

[To Edward Morgan Lewis. ALS. Jones.]

Franconia N.H. September 18 1935 Dear Edward: The kindest ­thing you can do me as friend is to forget me for the pre­sent. My good nature is already too deeply involved for this fall. I have signed up for the twenty I can allow myself if I want to stay the way you seem to have heard I am, namely well. A winter of all sunshine and no engagements except on the tennis court is what made me well. I’m planning on another of 121. ​Daniel Melcher (1912–1985), Frederic’s son, had just taken a job in the sales and promotion department at Holt. 122. ​George  W. Hibbitt (1895–1965), lexicologist, scholar of American dialects, and professor of En­glish speech at Columbia University. RF had already made recordings for Hibbitt on May  5, 1933, and October  24, 1934; ­ t hese are available for listening at PennSound, a web archive produced and maintained at the University of Pennsylvania (by Chris Mustazza, among o ­ thers). See also RF’s November 28, 1935, letter to Hibbitt. 123. ​See RF to Lankes, September 12, 1935. 124. ​See RF’s December 30, 1934, letter to Melcher.

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the same. But you o ­ ught to see my schedule beforehand. I begin with four in 125 New York. But I promise I’ll be careful of myself if you’ll be careful of yours. I’ve just been reading some fine stuff of Shirley Barker’s in manuscript.126 She’s one unmistakably. Your institution has something to be proud of t­ here. Faithfully Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [September 21, 1935] Dear Louis: Could you and Esther come to see us at South Shaftsbury any time between the twenty seventh and thirtieth inclusive? We are getting out of ­here. The frosts come and the Frosts go. I’ve been both­ered a l­ittle by the preface to King Jasper. They wanted more and if I could manage a quotation or two from Robinson. They w ­ ere nice enough about it. I d­ on’t feel sure they ­weren’t ­a fter an appraisal of King Jasper. I’m no appraiser. But I want to be good where it is easy to be good: so I added an idea more that brought Robinson in a ­l ittle more. I had said he was content with the old way to be new (1) that his ­were griefs rather than grievances (2). I went on to say his lesson was that you could go with sorrow with philosophy with confidences in poetry as far as you could go playful—so far and no further. I’ll give you the rest of it when I see you. Of course I am ­going to your “adolescence” party.127 The equipment spoken of in the invitation I have ordered of Abercrombie and Gibson.128 I am coming

125. ​As noted ­earlier, at the New School for Social Research. Additional engagements took RF to Agnes Scott College in Atlanta (November 7), Wells College (November 21), and Rockford College (December 3). 126. ​For more on Barker, see RF to Lewis, August 2, 1934, and February 12, 1935. 127. ​Untermeyer had invited RF to attend his fiftieth birthday party on October 3. 128. ​The joke concerns the clothing com­pany Abercrombie and Fitch, established in 1892 (and RF’s old friends from his En­g lish sojourn, Lascelles Abercrombie and Wilfrid Gibson).

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in three changes of raiment one over the other which I w ­ ill start taking off and so continue till you are satisfied. I ­w ill stop at nothing anyway. In haste (never mind about what) Robertus Gelu

[To Otto Manthey-­Zorn. It is not clear ­whether the letter is complete; if it is complete, it is unsigned. Date derived from internal evidence. AL. Trinity.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [late September 1935] Dear Otto: Well what do you think now? I mean about every­thing. I know pretty well what you used to think. But ­you’ve had plenty of time to change your mind entirely since last you heard from me. I wont ask you to put yourself in writing; but be ready to give an accounting in politics baseball and prizefighting, the three major sports, when I get to Amherst next week. I tussled the summer away in g­ oing to Boulder Colo for my five day contract, to Bread Loaf, Vt for two one day visits and in making a mass129 of the several ­things you heard me say about Robinson last June. I’m afraid I have done a very unconventional preface. Anyway it has in it the spirit of a tribute, if not the overt praise that can be transferred to the jacket. I trust it w ­ on’t seem the least bit ungenerous. I may send a copy of it to Roy by way of tardy welcome home and ask him to pass it along to you. To you specially I believe I ­will send a poem or two in manuscript. You can let Bill have them for his collection when you have done them justice.130 We are as we ­were. ­There is more than the usual interest in farming h ­ ere with five or six hundred bushels of apples g­ oing into cold storage in fancy boxes.

129. ​As per manuscript. He “amassed” his remarks, ­etc. 130. ​Manthey-­Zorn’s son, William, who had an interest in book collecting and bookselling. See RF to Frederic Melcher, August 4, 1933.

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[To George Roy Elliott, who provided the date in a note. ALS. ACL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [September 27, 1935] Dear Roy: You may ask if the enclosed is what you have come home to. Well, it is. In it I have spent myself for the time being and it must serve all my literary purposes at once, letter of welcome to you and funeral oration over Robinson. I had a sonnet at the point of completion for you; but you have arrived just too soon for me to have finished it off. Never mind, it can be kept till you come back from another pilgrimage to the sacred places131 when it ­will again be appropriate. I may say the m ­ atter with it is the lack of a line, the third from the end. Other­w ise it is a fairly amusing piece, though a trifle impious.132 Dont try to imagine it. I promise to show it to you the minute it is presentable. You should be able to wait to see it if I can wait to show it. (I know very well you could wait forever to see it. Indulge me in the pretense that you can hardly wait at all.) We missed you both terribly. I for my part constantly found my mind turning ­toward you as of Orchard St where you ­weren’t.133 You’d think I might have taken it out in writing you a letter. The trou­ble was I didnt know where to have you in your foreign surroundings, w ­ hether in the number of the Facists [sic], the Communists, the Roman or the Anglican Catholics. I am a cautious person and like best when I can talk a mans ideas exactly to him. I have to have him where I can watch his expressions come and go. I’m like the intelligent Am. Indian I saw getting investigated by an ethnologist of the Dept. of the Interior (so called ­because it is concerned with our interiors white red and black.)134 The Indian (he was young) was telling us that two Sauváges came from the high mountains ­every Christmas to whip all the bad ­children of the year in the Pueblo. The investigator was surprised. “Why, my boy, you 131. ​Elliott adds a note: “in Eu­rope.” 132. ​See RF to Elliott January 20, 1936, for another reference to this sonnet. 133. ​The Elliotts resided at 3 Orchard Street in Amherst. 134. ​RF was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from August 3 to 6. He gave a talk before the Writers’ Editions Group (August 5), and also visited Santo Domingo Pueblo, some thirty miles to the southwest of Santa Fe, and now called Kewa Pueblo (the inhabitants are Keres Pueblo, and speak Keresan); this is where the meeting ­here described likely occurred.

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must be mistaken. Indian c­ hildren are never whipped.” “Yes Miss they are whipped when they are bad.” “Are you sure?” “Well they are not whipped very hard.” It made it much worse that this was coming out before me. “My dear boy I thought you said—­Dont you think the whipping of c­ hildren is something entirely recent, something the Indians must have picked up from the white ­people?” “Oh yes miss.” Thus are the facts got out of very adaptable witnesses. Which reminds me that while you ­were seeing God in the Cathedrals of Eu­rope I had a glimpse of him or rather of his m ­ other in New Mexico in a bower or shrine of palm leaves out doors in the plaza of the pueblo of the Santo Domingo tribe.135 The priests loan her for the barbaric rain dance of the painted barbarians and she seems not to mind the orgy. Religion am [sic] a funny t­ hing—­religio elegantiarum religio barbarorum. Yours ever Robert

[To Charles Jay Connick. Connick had sent RF a sketch of the design for a stained glass win­dow inspired by “Mending Wall” and commissioned for the Newtonville (Mas­sa­ chu­setts) Library. The proj­ect was completed in 1939. ALS. Private.]

New York October 1 1935 Dear Charles— If you w ­ ill permit me u ­ nder the circumstances to lead off in dropping our last names: The beauty of the plan cut me to the quick like broken glass. Am I to keep the plan or do you need it to work from? It’s not at all sure that my kind of

135. ​On August  4, the Pueblo holds a festival honoring Saint Dominic (not, as RF seems to imply, Mary). RF ­m istakes one point: the festival includes a Corn Dance (not a Rain Dance). It is one of the largest Native American dance festivals held in the southwest.

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poetry deserves such a dazzle of color.136 But what care we for deserts? You are commissioned to go ahead if it takes your last splinter of Sandwich.137 Im astray for a few days, but ­w ill be back in Amherst by Monday. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Howard George Schmitt. On stationery of the Webster ­Hotel, 40 West 45th Street, New York. ALS. Private.]

New York City Oct 1 1935 My dear Mr Schmitt: Such long-­sufferance would wring a letter out of an illiterate. So Mr Bliss Perry138 says I only write to friends. Well then before I can ­settle down to write this I w ­ ill have to declare you a friend. Consider yourself such. You must be a pretty good sort to forgive me my inattention of the last few months. I’ll sign any number of books for you. Send them along to Amherst. And what was it you asked in the letter before this last? I seem to have left the letter ­behind in my recent wanderings.139 And do come to see me when you are this way. I s­ hall be in and out of Amherst for the next two months. I have four Thursday lectures to give at the New School in New York during October. November ­w ill be a ­little worse. I may decide to do a lecture chain that ­w ill take a solid week or so out of the ­m iddle of November. I may speak once or twice in Buffalo if I am not too tardy in coming to the agreement. Perhaps

136. ​As for “color” in RF’s poetry (and his own color-­blindness), see RF to Untermeyer, February 13, 1936. 137. ​Glass produced by the Boston & Sandwich Glass Com­pany, which had been founded in 1825 and ceased operations in 1888. 138. ​American literary critic, editor, and educator (1860–1954). 139. ​R F and his wife had spent much of August and September in Franconia, New Hampshire. A December  16 letter from Elinor Frost to Schmitt suggests that he had asked RF to inscribe an e­ tching. RF did not fancy the likeness, and, through Elinor, promised to inscribe “a better portrait” to Schmitt on the c­ ouple’s return to Amherst (­a fter wintering in Florida).

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I could see you t­ here. If we arrange it, I s­ hall be staying prob­ably with Prof. Ten Eyks [sic] Perry.140 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Sydney Snow (1878–1944), president of the Meadville Theological School, Chicago. The text of the letter—­without a salutation and unsigned—is written on a typed letter from Snow to RF (dated October  2, 1935), inviting him to speak at the seminary. AL. ACL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa October 5, 1935] Would it be pos­si­ble for you and Miss Chase to have me Nov 24 & 25 or Dec 1 & 2? Very much want to arrange it with you. My trou­ble is that as ­things are in the f­ amily it is hard for me to plan far in advance.141

[To Carol Frost. ALS. UM.]

Amherst Mass Oct 7 1935 Dear Carol: We both liked the apple-­crating poem for the genuine satisfaction it takes in the life you are living. It has a g­ reat deal more of the feeling of real work and country business than anything of mine could ever pretend or hope to have. Your true way is straight ahead as you are g­ oing in farm work and as it affects you in thought and emotion. You are bound to achieve a difference from other writers if you can stick to both the farm work and the poetic art. 140. ​Henry TenEyck Perry (1890–1973), professor of En­glish at the State University of New York at Buffalo. As it happened, RF did not lecture in Buffalo in 1935. 141. ​On December 3, RF, accompanied by his wife, visited Lesley at Rockford College. RF took part in a roundtable discussion ­t here on December 3. Snow knew of this visit, it seems. The letter to which RF ­here replies reads: “What about your Chicago visit? Have you any idea as yet as to dates? I am writing to Leslie [sic] ­today and hope that we ­shall see her soon.” On this Midwestern junket, RF also spoke before the ­Woman’s History Club in Janesville, Wisconsin. We have been unable to determine w ­ hether or not RF spoke at Meadville.

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Anyway that is my opinion. The two ­things firmly kept should be good fun and should land you somewhere. All art is a dangerous life. It is apt to end in artiness in silliness and in folly. It generally does. All business is safer. I mean a life of business exclusively. But the best life of all I should think would be a life of business and the ­family expressing itself in one art or another. You are in a very strong position on your apple farm to make dashes out from into poems. I notice your syntax and grammar go all right in your sentences. Dont forget to speak to Mr Fineman about the Dane.142 Dont forget to give some apples to Mr Howard.143 I have just started in on the box you gave me. Affectionately Papa.

[To Lesley Frost. Date derived from postmark. ALS. UVA.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [October 8, 1935] Dear Lesley: Elinor and I saw Louis (at his fifty year birthday party Oct third), we saw Ellen and Alfred Harcourt at their h ­ ouse where we stayed overnight, we saw the Blumenthals who are g­ oing to make the book of Marjorie’s poems and I saw at the New School some girl who roomed with you and took a g­ reat notion to you on your way back from Eu­rope this last time, but I have gone and forgotten her name. All this was on our recent expedition. I might add that I saw Raymond Holden at Franconia on his way back from New Brunswick

142. ​Irving Fineman (1893–1976), a novelist then teaching at Bennington College and living in South Shaftsbury. (No other “Finemans” appear in the town directory for 1935.) We’ve not figured out what is meant by “The Dane”—­that is, ­whether RF refers to a person of Danish extraction, or to a G ­ reat Dane. A number of ads for G ­ reat Dane puppies appeared in the Bennington Banner in September and October 1935. 143. ​A lmost certainly ­either David  M. Howard or his ­brother Edward, who (as the town directory indicates) owned a cement business in South Shaftsbury, not far from where Carol and his f­ amily lived.

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where he had been fishing with Otto Mallory [sic].144 Raymond spoke as if his book had gotten away to a good start and he was surprised to hear I thought it very autobiographical.145 Prob­ably he has to assume that attitude to insure himself against suits for libel. He w ­ ill have a hard time convincing Grace she isnt in the book.146 All but the Blumenthals (who never met you) talked about you and wondered how you liked Rockford College. How do you like it this year? That is the ­g reat question. It ­d idn’t sound to me as if you ­were being treated right about that freshman class. I ­can’t stand any dirtiness from Gordon. You’ll have to tell me frankly that Gordon Roberta and the new teacher in your department are satisfying you or my ­family pride ­w ill drive me to action.147 Damn them. Let’s hear the facts. Then we can consider w ­ hether I w ­ ill visit the place this November.148 If I come it w ­ ill prob­ably be ­toward the last of the month. I thought we would call Marjorie’s book If I Should Live to Be a Doll, just for the strangeness of the t­ hing.149 We dont want it to savor the least bit of memorial lugubriousness. The poems are good enough for publication regularly, though I doubt if we would have the heart to submit them to public criticism.150 ­We’ll use her picture with them and I have a poem of my own for a foreword. I’ll write you out the poem.151 Remember me to anyone with whom it w ­ ill do any good. Affectionately Papa

144. ​The Frosts had known the poet and novelist Raymond Holden since the late 1910s, when they lived in Franconia, New Hampshire. Otto Tod Mallery (1881–1956) was a writer, philanthropist, and public works administrator, based in Philadelphia. 145. ​Charles Scribner’s Sons published Holden’s novel Chance Has a Whip in 1935. 146. ​Holden’s first wife, Grace Ansley Badger (1893–1990). She sued for divorce in 1924, ­a fter Holden abandoned her for his second wife, Louise Bogan (1897–1970). 147. ​For Gordon and Roberta Chal­mers, see RF to Lesley, March 23, 1935. 148. ​He went but, as noted above, in December. 149. ​Instead, RF and his wife settled on the title Franconia. (“If I Should Live to Be a Doll” is the first poem in the book.) 150. ​Actually, RF and Elinor had arranged for three of Marjorie’s poems to appear in the September 1935 issue of Poetry: “Amer­i­ca,” “No Common Hand,” and “Grief.” 151. ​When it appeared in 1936, Franconia included neither a photo­g raph nor a prefatory poem by RF. Blumenthal’s Spiral Press published the book in a l­imited edition not for sale.

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[To Clara Woolie Mayer (1895–1988), at the time secretary and assistant director of the New School for Social Research. ALS. Private.]

Amherst Mass October 12 1935 Dear Miss Mayer: ­There! ­Don’t you think I did better for not having been hospitably treated beforehand? I’ll bet you ­d idn’t listen; so you dont know. Never mind I like you both 152 and I admire your school. ­Really Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date supplied by Untermeyer in RFLU. ALS. LoC.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] [October 15, 1935] Dear Louis: Please make Henry Canby give you back that Lost in Heaven poem.153 I’ve got to have all the poems I can muster to meet the editorial demand ­there has been on me since you published A Leaf Treader.154 Tell Henry Canby I have promised Lost in Heaven somewhere e­ lse. Tell him I say he has already had too much of my next book and if he ­hasn’t he can say the word and I’ll write him some more at once. And another ­matter: I seem to have lost somewhere one w ­ hole note book with the poem in it about proposing to supply the sorrow felt if the storm ­w ill supply the tears: Dammit I won­der in whose 152. ​That is, Mayer and Alvin Saunders Johnson (1874–1971), president of the New School. 153. ​Henry Seidel Canby edited the Saturday Review of Lit­er­a­ture. He placed “Lost in Heaven” in its November 30, 1935, issue; RF l­ater made it the lead poem in the “Taken Singly” section of AFR. Canby had already published three poems that would go into AFR: “Two Tramps in Mud Time” on October  6, 1934, “Ungathered Apples” on December 22, 1934 (retitled “Unharvested” for AFR), and “Not Quite Social” on March 30, 1935. And he would publish “To a Thinker in Office” in the January 11, 1936, number (retitled “To a Thinker” for AFR). 154. ​Untermeyer had helped RF place “A Leaf Treader” in the American Mercury in October 1935.

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­ ouse I left that privacy lying round. But never mind that now. Can you let h me have a copy of the tears poem?155 The time draws near for g­ oing to press and I must get as many editors as pos­si­ble implicated in the book beforehand. Aint I wiley? You remember Amy Lowell the author and poet? Well they’s a life of her out and they tell me its a caution the wileyness she showed with editors and reviewers.156 We thought it was a ­g rand party.157 I got so excited that I came away with the money I cleaned up on my autoholograph lottery and it got mixed up in my pocket with my own: so that I dont know exactly how much it was; but I think it may have been five dollars. Now I am not a habitual gambler and I always like to square myself with God for any ill-­gotten gains by giving them to the church or charity. And I was wondering if Mr Rosenberg would accept the swag in this case and hold it as trustee for a fund to be known as the Louis Untermeyer Fifty-­fi fty Birthday Memorial Fund for Indigent Indigines. W ­ ill you tactfully ask him for me. If he refuses the responsibility I ­shall have no recourse but to administer the fund myself. I administered the interested on it158 to date to an itinerant bard (Oliver Waye) who blew in on us t­ oday from western Kansas. He is the author of The Forgotten Man lately in Moley’s New Deal Magazine. ­Doesn’t someone speak of Amaranthus Moley?159

155. ​A poem he never published: “The Offer,” for which see RF to Untermeyer, August 20, 1932. 156. ​S. Foster Damon, Amy Lowell: A Chronicle, With Extracts from her Correspondence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935). Lowell once famously quipped, “God made me a business ­woman, and I made myself a poet” (see, for example, Winfield T. Scott, Exiles and Fabrications [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961]: 122). 157. ​Untermeyer’s friend James  N. Rosenberg (1874–1970)—­a ­lawyer, painter, and writer—­hosted his fiftieth birthday party at his home in Mamaroneck, New York. 158. ​Unusual phrasing as per manuscript. 159. ​By the time vagabond poet Oliver Waye visited RF in 1935, he had crossed the continent thirty-­one times, working as a farmer, songwriter, and sailor. A self-­styled troubadour in the manner of Carl Sandburg and Vachel Lindsay, Waye published “The Forgotten Man” in ­Today on December 23, 1933. Unlike the noble American farmer depicted in FDR’s famous “Forgotten Man” radio address of April  7, 1932, Waye’s “forgotten” man is characterized as a “thug and a Red,” a threat to pastoral tranquility. Raymond Moley (1886–1975) not only helped FDR write the “Forgotten Man” speech, but as editor of ­Today (a New Deal Magazine) had accepted Waye’s poem for publication. Moley had been part of FDR’s celebrated “Brain Trust,” but he took a rightward turn in mid-1933 (and wound up l­ater in life a conservative Republican). RF’s ironic sobriquet, “Amaranthus Moley,” conflates Amaranthus (a genus of flowering plants) and Moly, the mythical herb endowed with magical powers in book 10 of Homer’s Odyssey.

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(Im about through with this letter.) You tell me if I did right. I stand ready to give an accounting of my trust. The tramp was worthy. I examined him for six hours, or rather he examined me and I judged him by his judging. He had a very convincing contempt for p­ eople who live in h ­ ouses and know where the next meal is coming from. Anger was his motive—­anger at imperfection. You might not suspect it from my impassive exterior, but I have always had the same anger. But I refuse to be driven to suicide or desertion by it. Ridgely Torrence160 was telling me how he sat with Robinson not so many years ago (thirty) and Robinson was weeping face in both hands for want of being read as a poet. My fury is for more impor­tant ­things and is moreover too tight. All the same no deserter comes near me without my sympathy. Everurn R. F.

[To Cyril Clemens (1902–1999), a third cousin twice removed of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and founder, in 1923, of the International Mark Twain Society (for more details see LRF-2, 631). TG-­C. BPL.]

Amherst, Mass October 16 1935 Cyril Clemens Mark Twain and Emerson have been the two greatest literary influences thus far exerted to make Americans what they are. The Jumping Frog of Calaveras is a g­ reat parable in education and a poem in cadence. Robert Frost

[To Marshall Louis Mertins. ALS. Berkeley.]

Amherst Mass October 16 1935 Dear Mertins: Dont you worry about losing my friendship. You cant lose it. But I wish you could understand how you make me look with your everlasting insistence 160. ​R idgely Torrence (1874–1950), a close confidante of E. A. Robinson, was poetry editor of the New Republic and (­later) editor of Robinson’s Selected Letters (1940).

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on their having me out t­ here to visit their colleges. Learn to let them seek us my boy. I have never asked for a chance to lecture in my life and I doubt if anyone but you has asked for a chance for me. You forget that you lay us both open to the charge of politics. Another t­ hing to consider: my friend and fellow academician does more to keep me away by one well planted word than you can do to bring me by all the words in the language.161 We must forget t­ hese ­things. You w ­ ill see me out t­ here sooner or l­ ater. Lectures d­ on’t determine my movements. Best wishes. Stay happy. Faithfully yours Robert Frost

[To Gorham Munson. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass October 21 1935 Dear Mr Munson: Honestly it’s hard to believe I can have overlooked a letter like that. Was it a letter or was it only a postcard? From not being able to write letters I have gone on to not being able to read them or see them in the mail. My incapacities are spreading. But such is the life of the natu­ral man where ­there is no conscience. Some day I ­shall be punished by having some honor pass me by that I c­ an’t live without. Let it not be the honor of having your book dedicated to me.162 Why dont we see each other some where some time and talk over the trou­bles you have had with me?163 Sincerely yours Robert Frost 161. ​Hamlin Garland, a fellow member of the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters. In his Robert Frost: Life and Talks-Walking, Mertins quotes RF (how accurately we can’t say): “You folks out h ­ ere have got Garland all wrong. He’s just an old snob, vain and egotistical. I know one t­ hing, and I have it on good authority: he kept me from being elected to membership in the American Acad­emy for years” (185). 162. ​It is not clear what RF is referring to: Munson published nothing of consequence in book form in the mid-1930s. 163. ​Munson’s Robert Frost: A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense (New York: George Doran, 1927) had caused trou­ble from the start (albeit through no fault of Munson’s). Ted

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[To Archibald L. Bouton (1872–1941), American scholar and university administrator. In 1935, Bouton was professor of En­glish and dean of the College of Arts and Pure Sciences at New York University. ALS. Harvard.]

Amherst Mass October 29 1935 Dear Mr Bouton: It is very kind of you to ask me to stay with you and Mrs Bouton.164 I ­shall be happy to. The plan as I understand it is for me to read on the eve­n ing of the 18th and to meet literary boys on the 19th. How would it be for you to pick me out half a dozen of the best to converse with a half an hour apiece in the forenoon of the 19th, and get me a good group of not over forty or fifty for a sort of round ­table in the after­noon? The six coming to me individually might bring their writing with them. The members of the group of forty or fifty might bring questions to bring up. I could get a ­little rest in the early after­noon (an hour say ­after any lunch party) so as to be fresh for the round t­ able. Mr Thomas Coward may call you up to beg me for the Mark Twain dinner on the eve­n ing of the 19th.165 If I have finished my d­ oings for you, I feel that I should attend that; but only if you say I am ­f ree, that is, if you have no further plans for me at the college a­ fter the round ­table in the after­noon. I look forward with plea­sure to the furtherance of the friendship begun on the piazza of my h ­ ouse in the mountains.166 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

Davison’s plans to write a biography of RF ­were shelved when Munson got his contract, leaving Davison with a grievance RF had to work hard to assuage. RF was then dissatisfied with Munson’s efforts, describing them (just a­ fter the book was published) as “off-­ hand.” (See YT, 320–327; LRF-2, 612.) 164. ​Bouton and his wife Caroline Jessup McNair Bouton (1870–1963) lived in Yonkers (Westchester County). 165. ​Some 1,000 p­ eople met at the Waldorf-­A storia in New York (on November 19) for a dinner celebrating Twain’s centennial (he was born on November 30, 1835). The event was broadcast, by radio, across the nation. Thomas Ridgway Coward (1896–1957) was cofounder of Coward-­McCann, a publishing ­house in New York. 166. ​Likely in August 1933, when Bouton and his ­family visited Vermont (mention of them turns up in the society pages of the Bennington Banner).

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[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [October 30, 1935] Dear Louis: Nothing you do in my f­avor could possibly be presumptuous (I see a pun pos­si­ble, but I forbear). I merely had a fear Henry Canby might be getting too much of me. If Palmer167 was with one, Henry Canby surely should be with half a dozen. He tells me not however. So stet. He and Miss Loveman seem good friends of my arts.168 Well well now you are prob­ably working too hard. I know I am. With all I stay out of I find I ­don’t stay out of enough. I didnt get as much good out of the summer as I should have if I hadnt got all messed up with Macmillans about the Robinson introduction.169 I went far far out of my way for worse than nothing. I’m not kicking, but I’m mad at Macmillans—­not at you nor anybody ­else. I’ve just come through my four lessons to all concerned at the New School. I like Alvin Johnson. Ever yours Robertus Gelu I see another pun pos­si­ble but I forbear.

[To Frederic Melcher. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] Nov 11 ’35 Dear Fred: Elinor and I thought it might be fun to do Departmental (the one about my ant Jerry) for Christmas. I’ll write you out a copy of it for your portfolio 167. ​Paul Palmer (1900–1983) edited the American Mercury from 1935 to 1939. “A Leaf Treader” appeared in the magazine in October  1935, and “The Strong Are Saying Nothing” in May 1936 (RF placed both in AFR). 168. ​Amy Loveman (1881–1955) was, with Henry Canby, one of founding editors of the Saturday Review of Lit­er­at­ ure. For the poems Canby took, see RF to Untermeyer, October 15, 1935. 169. ​See RF’s August 21 and September 21 letters to Untermeyer.

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in case you h ­ aven’t heard or d­ on’t remember it. What do you say? It comes out in The Yale Review for December, but I can no doubt get Helen McAfee’s permission to use it right away again in our booklet.170 Elinor says you are coming up this weekend, but I must have your judgement sooner. Ever yours Robert

[To Jay Broadus Hubbell (1885–1979), professor of En­glish at Duke University. ALS. Duke.]

Amherst Mass November 12 1935 Dear Mr Hubbell: A se­lection like that, so much your own, makes my poetry shine like new to me.171 Your letter went to my heart. Friendship, the friendship of men especially, I count among the best ­things I get out of the life I lead.172 I won­der if you mightnt like to use some one of the latest I have been having in the magazines ­toward another book next spring.173 You could have such a ­thing as the enclosed without expense. All you would have to do is get the permission of the editor of the magazine in which it first appeared. I’m not

170. ​See RF to McAfee, November 12. As it happened, RF’s Christmas card for 1935 featured “Neither Out Far Nor in Deep” (illustrated by J. J. Lankes), not “Departmental.” 171. ​Poems for Hubbell’s American Life in Lit­er­a­ture (New York: Harper and ­Brothers, 1936). 172. ​In a reminiscence published in Library Notes (December 1977), Hubbell says: I wrote to Frost for permission to reprint ten of his poems. I had chosen “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Mending Wall,” “Birches,” “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “The Need of being Versed in Country ­Things,” “A Brook in the City,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­ning,” “Our Singing Strength,” “Paul’s Wife,” and “The Bear.” He approved my se­lection, which I still think is a good one; and in a letter that I cherish he wrote me that in recent numbers of certain magazines t­ here ­were poems which had not yet appeared in book form. ­These, he said, I was ­free to use if I liked them; and, he added, ­there would be no fee if I did use them. The four that I chose still seem to me among his best. They are: “Desert Places,” “On the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind,” “They ­Were Welcome to Their Belief,” and “On a Bird Singing in Its Sleep.” 173. ​ A FR would be published by Holt on May 30, 1936.

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pressing this par­tic­u ­lar one on you or any for that m ­ atter. In any case, keep the manuscript between the leaves of the copy of the first edition (third or fourth binding) of North of Boston I ­shall be sending you for old sake’s sake.174 Sincerely yours Robert Frost Desert Places was in the Mercury.175 ­There have been ­others scattered around to choose from.

[To Helen Flora McAfee. ALS. BU.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] November 12 1935 Dear Helen: The enclosed seem to be all right. I mean typographically.176 Thanks for letting me have The Death of My Ant Jerry177 for Christmas. What do you say to our all having an advanced Christmas lunch together when we go south early in December? Between now and then I s­ hall be d­ oing every­thing in Gods world but write poetry. I have unsensibly and by insensible degrees become a worker by spells. Tomorrow night I conduct a gala round t­ able in politics economics and Carl [sic] Marx.178 Ever yours Robert Frost

174. ​R F enclosed a fair copy of “Desert Places” and the promised volume soon followed. 175. ​In its April 1934 number. 176. ​Proofs of “Departmental,” “Voice-­Ways,” “The Master Speed,” and “The ­Bearer of Evil Tidings,” all of which appeared in the winter 1936 issue of the Yale Review. 177. ​See RF’s November 11, 1935, letter to Melcher. 178. ​We have been unable to identify the event.

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[To Paul Dwight Moody (1879–1947), American cleric and educator, president of Middlebury College from 1921 u­ ntil 1942. ALS. Middlebury.]

Amherst Mass November 27 1935 Dear Mr Moody: Your friendship is always bringing me into your plans. I’m proud to be asked to give the Abernathy [sic] address again.179 I s­ hall try to do it better this time.180 ­You’re sure you can wait for me till I get back from the south in the ­m iddle of April? ­Will you name any date ­after April 15th except April 19th when I have promised to do something in Boston.181 Always faithfully yours Robert Frost

[To John Chipman Farrar (1896–1974), American writer, editor, and publisher, and founder of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. ALS. Yale.]

Amherst Mass November 27 1935 Dear John: Thou canst not say I had anything to do with a poetry ball. Thou dost not say that I had. Your protest to me against it, then, must merely be as to a ­father for sympathy. You w ­ ill always have my sympathy in e­ very worldly evil you have to look on at or take part in till you are grown up. Is this perchance the ball the rich are getting up to get money out of each other to endow the writers of poor poetry—­I mean the poor writers of poetry? I have read of some such ­thing. It reminded me of the Butterflies’ Ball and the Grasshoppers Feast ­there 179. ​The Abernethy Lecture is an annual event commemorating Julian W. Abernethy (1853–1923), who graduated from Middlebury College (class of 1876) and served as a trustee from 1901 ­u ntil 1923. He bequeathed a sizable collection of books to the college, including, most notably, a large amount of material relating to Henry David Thoreau.. 180. ​RF gave the inaugural Abernethy Lecture in January 1929 (a few months ­after construction of the new Abernethy wing of the Middlebury College library was completed). 181. ​It may be that RF had gotten word that he would soon be named Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard for 1935. For the official invitation, see RF to Lowes, circa December 18, 1935.

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used to be a rhyme about in the seventies.182 Well, son, I ­w ill join with you in damning all devices of promotion in lit­er­a­t ure. May they in the long run be brought by God to nothing. I can say I have used none for myself and have had relatively few used for me. I’m not perfect. I s­ houldn’t want to be for fear it would make me proud. You are the same moral John I have had glimpses of all down the years since you sat beside me at the Elizabethan (you and Steve)183 in 1916 (circa).184 I’m fond of you, you know, and I admire you. Your letter sets me to a terrible searching of conscience. I think we have a right to sell our poems for publication ­don’t you?—­and to let our publishers say nicer ­things about us than we deserve? I read my poems a few times a year where I am invited. Some think that a sin against the Holy Ghost. But I do it entirely without intervention of agents—­theres that to be said for me.185 And I have thus far refrained from radio broadcasting, both from fear I w ­ ouldn’t do it well and from fear of what advertising I might find myself sandwiched in between.186 ­A fter due coyness I have given in to having vocal rec­ords made of a few of my poems for the phonograph. T ­ here is to be an audition in a week or two at the laboratories of the Am. Tel & Tel.187 T ­ here I have made a pretty clean breast. I want you to hold me up to my fastidiousness. We old ones are in danger of coarsening. No kidding mon vieux. You be a good boy and I’ll try to be a good man. Is this what was called for? Forever yours Robert 182. ​“ The Butterfly’s Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast” (1802), by William Roscoe (1753–1831), a Liverpool poet, banker, ­lawyer, and politician, and a prominent early abolitionist. Why RF speaks of the “seventies” is unclear (and likely a slip in memory). 183. ​The Elizabethan Club at Yale; RF had met Farrar t­ here when the latter was still an undergraduate. “Steve” is Stephen Benét, another Yale alumnus. 184. ​In fact, 1917 (see LRF-1, 545). In the pre­sent letter RF originally wrote the date as 1926, then scratched it out. 185. ​The joke appears to turn on the Holy Ghost as the “agent” who impregnated Mary, but in any event RF generally scorned lecture agents. 186. ​On RF’s reluctance to take to the airwaves, see his March  15, 1933, letter to Cuthbert. 187. ​A slight error on RF’s part. The studio he was to visit was that of ERPI (Electrical Research Products Inc.), at 250 West 57th  Street in New York. ERPI was a subsidiary, within Western Electric, of American Telephone and Telegraph. By talking of “labs” RF seems to have in mind Bell Labs, owned jointly by Western Electric and AT&T; hence his apparent confusion. For more on the subject, see the next letter.

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[To George W. Hibbitt (1895–1965), professor of speech at Columbia University. ALS. Columbia.]

Amherst Mass Nov 28 1935 Dear Mr Hibbitt: The trou­ble with me is I cant seem to be sure of anything more than a few days ahead. I’m sorry I’m that way. You must make me allowances.188 If you and Mr Greet and Mr Devereux189 are satisfied I am—­though very likely and naturally your satisfaction is primarily with your part in the rec­ords—­I mean the mechanical. But you wouldnt let me think my part was good if you ­really thought it very bad. I still think I could make them better 188. ​This letter again relates to recordings RF had made, u ­ nder Hibbitt’s supervision, at ERPI on or around October 2, 1935 (we know from other correspondence that RF and Elinor ­were staying at that date in the Webster ­Hotel on West 45th Street in New York, some ten blocks away from ERPI). Hibbitt had previously recorded RF in his own sound laboratory at Columbia in May  1933 (and possibly also October  1934). The recordings made at ERPI astonished Hibbitt with their clarity (the equipment used a “hill and dale,” or up-­a nd-­down oscillation of the stylus, not a side-­to-­side oscillation). A further ERPI session was contemplated, at least by RF, on or around December 15, as the pre­sent letter suggests; but we cannot confirm that it took place. What we do know from the correspondence is that RF and his wife Elinor ­were in New York in mid-­December, and the number of recorded poems extant suggests that ­t here ­were two sessions. As for the “audition” soon spoken of: the term ­here refers not to another recording session by RF, but to the playing of recordings already made before a select audience; invitations, Hibbitt informed RF, ­were to be sent out by the Columbia University Library and Henry Holt (letter from Hibbitt to RF, November 2, 1935, DCL). That event took place on Thursday, December 12, with RF and Elinor in attendance. A December 16, 1935 (Monday), letter from Elinor to Frost ­family friend Howard Schmitt reads, in part: “We heard a public audition of the [ERPI] rec­ords last Thursday—­I should say an invited audience—­I thought the rec­ords extremely good, but I am afraid they are g­ oing to be rather expensive. They are recorded by a new very superior machine . . .” (held in private hands). The poems RF recorded during the ERPI sessions ­were released as rec­ords by Columbia University Press, ­u nder the aegis of the National Council of Teachers. For details of the poems, see Clymer and Green, Robert Frost, A Bibliography (Amherst, MA: The Jones Library, 1937): 103–104. 189. ​William  C. Greet (1901–1972), a colleague of Hibbitt’s at Columbia; Frederick Leonard Devereux (1882–1968), a recording engineer, electrician, and businessman. When this letter was written, Devereaux was vice president of ERPI Picture Con­sul­ tants, Inc.

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if I was taken in the morning before I had been to lunch with ­people. I have only two good times of day—­from ten to twelve in the morning and from ten to two at night. Never since I had any choice in the ­matter have I had a class or audience in the after­noon. But never mind my idiosyncrasies. What is been has.190 Am I giving you time to arrange an audition for some morning or after­ noon in the second week of December? the first week I expect to be with my ­daughter at Rockford Illinois. We hope to leave for the south December 16. Faithfully yours Robert Frost

[To Emma May Laney (1886–1969), professor of En­glish at Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia. ALS. Agnes Scott.]

Amherst Mass Nov 29 1935 Dear Miss Laney: That was all a ­m istake and, as you perhaps noticed, I felt pretty sheepish about it when I saw what the situation ­really was. I assumed that Nov 7th was a par­tic­u ­lar occasion with you for which you had set aside five hundred dollars. I never would have let you try to get a five hundred dollar audience together for me. When I have all that money, it is for a program of one public lecture, half a dozen to a dozen individual conferences and one or two round ­tables, so called. The arrangement is my own invention and has grown to be rather my specialty. You didnt know about it or you would have left ­things more to me. Hand-­shaking receptions almost never happen to me. I usually sit somewhere and talk a while to or with any who ­w ill sit on the floor at my feet ­after the platform is over. We ­were dealing at cross purposes. I didnt know what you wanted and you ­didn’t know what I could best do. It makes me laugh to think your five hundred dollars was no more than an expression of your notion of how hard I was to get. It came from my badness about answering letters. You figured that a tele­g ram naming money enough was the way to fetch me. The joke is on you as much as on me. You should have tried the tele­g ram alone first. Scientists w ­ ill tell you never try to prove two t­ hings with

190. ​The manuscript is clear, even if RF’s precise meaning ­isn’t (likely he idiosyncratically inverts “What has been is”).

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one experiment. Well I ­shall make it right with you if you ­w ill let me—­that is to say if you bear me no ill ­w ill for having cheated you unintentionally. We ­shall be g­ oing South just a­ fter December 18th. Could we have the 19 & 20th at Agnes Scott? Or would that be too close to the holidays. Perhaps we had better wait till late March or early April. You say.191 I have done the sort of ­thing I describe at three places since I saw you. I am off for round ­table and public reading at Rockford on Tuesday. ­Will you address me ­there?—­Rockford College Rockford Illinois. I told you my ­daughter was teaching ­there. I’m sending you and Frosty Brown books.192 I thought you might like some of my first editions, my two En­g lish and a ­couple of very small recent American. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Norman Foerster. ALS. Stanford.]

Amherst Mass November 29 1935 Dear Norman Foerster: I have been trying to think when I could get in such a long stay away from home as you propose. I have never been ten days at any college but Amherst; and at Amherst I have my wife with me and I have a home.193 My visits at Yale are for a day or two. I am r­ eally not as available as I am advertised. You ­w ill understand I am sure. I take some pride in the arrangement of my time ­because I have to plan it all myself without help of bell or whistle. I am three months at Amherst with the rank and pay of a full professor. (I want ­people to know my ­g reat obligation to Amherst; she never insists on it herself.) I do 191. ​R F did not speak again at Agnes Scott ­u ntil May  17, 1940. Eigh­teen subsequent visits to the college followed, between 1945 and 1962. 192. ​Not a joke: Frosty Brown was—as the school newspaper, the Agonistic, indicates—­ then a student at Agnes Scott (and a member of the tennis club). She was born in Charleston, West ­Virginia. 193. ​RF neglects to mention the University of Michigan where he spent three years in the 1920s, though his general point is that he avoids spending too much time away from what­ever college he’s attached to when required to be on its campus.

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my specialty of one public lecture, half a dozen conferences and a round ­table or two at five or ten colleges a year (mostly in the months of November and April). That leaves me more than seven months absolutely to myself and nothingness. I never go on the road as the saying is. No agent acts for me. I tell you all this so you can see where I might come in if you could use me. But it would be chiefly to talk religion with you that I would be drawn to Iowa City.194 You ­needn’t strain to make it a paying engagement. We are destined to meet for a talk some day somewhere. Meanwhile you arent looking for a bright boy to work for his degrees u ­ nder you in the ­actual writing of poetry and literary essay are you? I have one I could recommend. He would expect to meet his expenses. His name is Charles Foster.195 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Mark Van Doren (1894–1972), poet, critic, and professor of En­glish at Columbia University. ALS. Columbia.]

Amherst December 1 1935 Dear Mark Van Doren: I liked being where you ­were in your Winter Diary, and could wish I never had to be or go anywhere ­else.196 I believe I saw how you got ­every turn of phrase and word-­shift in it. I delighted in the way you took your rhymes. Such a poem o ­ ught to be made of in a book by itself.—­This without prejudice to the plenty of other good t­ hings h ­ ere printed with it. I must throw you back some snow for your snow. Be on your guard. Always of your persuasion Robert Frost

194. ​Foerster directed the School of Letters at the University of Iowa from 1930 to 1944. 195. ​Success came of this recommendation: Charles Foster graduated from Amherst in 1936 and would go on to complete both an MA (1937) and a PhD (1939) at the University of Iowa. See also RF’s December 18, 1935, letter to Foster. 196. ​Van Doren’s A Winter Diary and Other Poems had been published by Macmillan ­earlier in 1935. As becomes clear, RF is writing of the long title poem, not the volume as a w ­ hole.

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[To Marie Gallagher (1903–1986), American author and painter. ALS. BU.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [December 1935] Dear Miss Gallagher: Tell Helene Mullins to get well soon and have a happy new year.197 Tell her, too, I have kept track of her poetry with plea­sure ever since that one day we met. She is one of our truest poets. The enclosed198 is from our hearts—­Mrs Frost’s and mine. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To John Stuart Groves. ALS. UVA.]

Amherst Mass December 1935199 Dear Mr Groves: Im not the authority I should be on my own editions. But you seem to have the correct information. The rough brown Boys W ­ ill came first. The parchment with the red stripe came second. Mr Charles Green of the Jones Library at Amherst Mass ­w ill presently be publishing an absolutely perfect bibliography of my works.200 I believe he would tell you this order.—­I’m sending you another book.201 Sincerely yours Robert Frost 197. ​Helene (née Gallagher) Mullins (1899–1991), American poet and novelist. In 1929, Harper and B ­ rothers published two books by her—­Convent Girl (a novel), and Earthbound & Other Poems. She had published regularly in magazines since the mid-1920s. Marie Gallagher was her ­sister. 198. ​RF may have enclosed a Christmas card or (as the sentiment suggests) quite possibly a check. On September 14, 1935, Mullins was struck by a car in New York City and critically injured; her convalescence (for which she traveled, with her ­sister, to Los Angeles) took several years, and was costly. 199. ​RF leaves a large space between month and year as though intending to add the specific day. 200. ​RF correctly states the sequence of covers for ABW. 201. ​No doubt ­either SP 1934 (likeliest) or the 1934 edition of ABW.

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[To Robert Spangler Newdick. ALS. LoC.]

Amherst [Massachusetts] Dec 2 1935 Dear Mr Newdick: It was bad about our not being able to arrange it with you for a visit this fall; but it is not beyond remedy.202 Let’s both try to survive the winter and see each other in the spring. In haste before setting out on my travels tomorrow I am packing and mailing to you all the letters of E.T.203 I can seem to find. T ­ here should be more. I must have lost some. You w ­ ere g­ oing to have one of your P.W.A. research boys make copies of them in type so it would be easier for us to read them. 204 This is getting a good deal out of the New Deal. But nonsense aside I s­ hall be very grateful to you for the ­favor. I have shrunk from h ­ andling the original letters themselves. Perhaps I can face them better in copies. I know you w ­ ill take care of the l­ ittle parcel. You keep them in a safe place till I come out. Keep the interval pamphlet till then too.205 It looks as though we might be in Coconut Grove Florida for a few months. My best mailing address ­w ill remain Amherst for a while. This week Elinor and I w ­ ill be with Lesley in Rockford Illinois. We w ­ ere particularly sorry not to be in on your new paper and paint.206 Try to keep them fresh for us. Dont let the lamps smoke. Ever yours Robert Frost

202. ​Newdick had attempted to arrange a reading for RF at Ohio State University (where he taught). 203. ​Edward Thomas. 204. ​A joking reference to the Public Works Administration. 205. ​In Newdick’s Season of Frost (1976), William A. Sutton notes that in November 1935 RF had sent to Newdick a reprint of a 1901 article by Albert Matthews entitled “The Topographical Terms Interval and Intervale.” RF had sparred with his friend George Browne about the proper use of the word “interval” when his third book, Mountain Interval, appeared in 1916. See LRF-1, 477–483. 206. ​The Newdicks had refurbished their ­house.

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[To Charles H. Foster. ALS. DCL.]

New York December 18 1935 Dear Charles: ­Unless your other advisers are against it, I think we have h ­ ere (in the enclosed) the solution of your life prob­lem. Thank Roy Elliot for suggesting Norman Foerster.207 I described you as a poet who would like to get his last two degrees in making poetry.208 It ­w ill be very in­ter­est­i ng to me to see you through this experiment.209 You may prefer to shade the undertaking into something in prose related to poetry. Tell Foerster your hopes. But dont mix them with your fears. You have suffered enough indecision around Amherst without carry­ing them to your new field. You might well venture to candidate in poetry outright. You ­w ill surely in the natu­ral course of your mind write quantity enough. Out of quantity quality. Your final collection or rather se­lection would be your bid for passage I suppose. It would be very novel. Perhaps you would be the first person in the world to take a doctor’s degree in actually writing verse. But you do as you please or as you and Foerster agree on. Isnt it fine to have the worries over? One word of advice in parting: you must try to go deeper and deeper in the thought part. The g­ reat t­ hing is to have something happen, an event, an action in a poem. (See George Herbert’s The Pulley.)210 But ­there must be a thought stiffening in it too. Y ­ ou’ve got to refrain from saying the common-

207. ​The enclosure is a letter from Norman Foerster to RF (dated December 8, 1935) stating that Foster seemed like one of “our sort” and that “Writers with ability are allowed to substitute creative or critical ­t hings for the conventional dissertation,” in both the MA and PhD programs. 208. ​See RF’s November 29, 1935, letter to Foerster. 209. ​The Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa—­t he first program of its kind in the United States—­opened in the fall of 1936, so Foster was one of the inaugural students. Paul Engle, whom Foster had previously discussed with RF (see RF’s September 12, 1934, letter to Foster), was in the same class. 210. ​Herbert’s 1633 poem plays with ideas about what it is for a person to be “at rest.” On the one hand, it is a blessing, and properly valued as such; on the other, it is a danger, ­because complacency leads the mind away from God, and restlessness and fatigue can be paths t­oward him. Good advice for a young man about to enter gradu­ate school, and, sans God, a mirror of the strenuosities in RF’s own outlook.

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places of wisdom and reason and damn 211 yourself back till you break out in ­little bits all your own—­little get-­ups. Make a business for a while of having ideas. You might well have ten or a dozen this winter. Send them to me and I ­will tell you how relatively good they are. Emerson built his essays out of note-­ book ideas like that.212 I didnt get south scathless.213 I’m in bed with a cold ­here in the Webster ­Hotel in New York. I hope to be well enough to take the Orange Blossom Special214 for Coconut Grove Fla. on Friday. My address ­there ­w ill be 3670 Avacado [sic] Ave. Always yours Robert Frost

[To John Livingston Lowes (1867–1945). Dated from internal evidence. ALS. Harvard.]

[en route to Coconut Grove, Florida] [circa December 18, 1935] Dear Mr. Lowes: As you may imagine, I should be most happy to be your Charles Eliot Norton Professor next spring; and that not alone for the honor of the appointment. I should value also the compulsion the lectures would put me ­under to assem­ble my thinking right and left of the last few years and see what it comes to.215 I have reached a point where it would do me good. 211. ​This is prob­ably a pun on damn / dam, not an error. 212. ​Emerson kept extensive journals and meticulously indexed and cross-­referenced the entries in them. This allowed him to draw together at any time all of his thoughts on a par­tic­u ­lar subject—­which thoughts might span years—­for the writing of an essay; hence their peculiar density. Indeed, he referred to the journals as his “savings bank.” See Joel Porte, Emerson in His Journals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982): vi, 119. 213. ​That is, “unharmed.” The standard spelling is now “scatheless.” RF’s “scathless” has the look of something obsolete but was a common enough spelling in the nineteenth ­century. Both words have now largely been supplanted by “unscathed.” 214. ​A deluxe passenger train, operating in the winter months, that ran between New York and Miami. 215. ​R F gave six lectures, one per week, starting on March 4, 1936. As w ­ e’ve noted: pace what he h ­ ere implies, and contrary to an agreement subsequently made with Harvard University Press, RF never prepared the Norton lectures for publication.

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But let me tell you my situation. Your letter overtakes me on my way to Florida, where, a­ fter my last bad influenza I promised the doctor I would spend a ­couple of winters sunning on the tennis courts. I might as well be in Florida as in bed. (No reflection on Florida intended. Even Florida is no doubt somebody’s home. And nothing but good of any of t­ hese States ever out of me.) I have already served one of my half terms down t­ here. I am superstitiously afraid I ­ought to serve the other. If I served it clear out, I could hardly be back before the m ­ iddle of March. I might risk the first of March. But even that is too late for your purposes. Or is it? I ­don’t suppose I should ask that a Harvard ­thing so impor­tant should be reshaped somewhat to fit a mere person. Nevertheless I am tempted to ask. I am ­going to be greatly disappointed to see this opportunity pass from me. Sincerely yours Robert Frost I ­shall be at 3670 Avacado [sic] Ave­nue Coconut Grove Florida by Saturday night—­should you have anything further to write. R. F.

[To Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe (1864–1960), American editor and author. ALS. Harvard.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Florida Jan 6 1936 Dear Mark (If I may assume it has advanced to the point of first names between us. You began more than thirty years ago by singning [sic] yourself very distantly with me The Editors.216) ­There has been some carelessness in the announcement of my coming. By special indulgence I am permitted to prolong my stay in the Tropics for my health till March 1st. My first lecture comes on March 4th. So I cant be with you at the meeting you name. Perhaps you ­w ill invite me for another ­later if ­there is one. 216. ​When, as editor of the Youth’s Companion, Howe accepted for publication three of RF’s poems: “Ghost House” (March 15, 1906), “October” (October 3, 1912), and “Reluctance” (November 7, 1912).

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I have never said anything but in telegraphic about the Phi Beta Kappa poem for September 17th. You knew very well what I would suffer from what you ­were letting me in for. I may not forgive you. All depends on how I come out with such a poem. It wont be absolutely the first I ever wrote. But it ­w ill only be the second. I wrote one for my class when I graduated from the high school.217 You know how it would be: I should want to refuse, but couldnt refuse. All right then. No further fuss and throes. As you say one of the best t­ hings about the lecture appointment is that it ­w ill bring us together. Ever yours Robert

[To Harold Rugg. ALS. DCL.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Fla Jan 8 1936 Dear Rugg I forgot ­there might be o ­ thers up ­there who had got started collecting me 218 with the Three Poems. I still have quite a number of ­these Christmas ­things. We printed plenty of them. I am resolved never again to have any edition of mine scarce.219 It brings too many on my neck. I heard that you had found a copy of the silver bound Christmas Trees.220 —­I h ­ aven’t forgotten my promise 221 to let you have some MS. Ever yours Robert Frost 217. ​R F authored the words of the “Class Hymn” sung at his graduation from Lawrence, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, High School in 1892 (CPPP, 498). He had also read “The Bonfire” as Phi Beta Kappa Poet at Harvard on June 19, 1916. The Phi Beta Kappa reading in the fall of 1936 was ultimately cancelled due to illness (RF suffered a severe bout of shingles). See YT, 462–463. 218. ​See RF to Rugg, February 8, 1935. 219. ​The 1935 Christmas card (“Neither Out Far Nor In Deep”), of which Joseph Blumenthal printed 1,235 copies. For the first, 1929, Christmas card (“Christmas Trees”), Blumenthal had only printed 275, and then had to do more at RF’s behest. 220. ​The 1929 Christmas card had a wraparound cover of silver-­coated paper imported from China. 221. ​See RF to Rugg, March 23, 1935.

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[To Joseph Blumenthal. TG. ACL.]

MIAMI FLORIDA 1936 JAN 8 IF NOT TOO LATE PLEASE CHANGE NAME OF MARJORIES BOOK TO FRANCONIA 222 IF TOO LATE NEVER MIND SHANT BE TOO SORRY KEEP SAME ORDER OF POEMS ROBERT FROST

[To Charles Lowell Young. Date derived from postmark. ALS. Wellesley.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Florida [January 14, 1936] Dear Charles Lowell Young: I’ve been thinking about you lately. I believe I got mad at you for liking a line of mine better as misprinted than as I wrote it.223 Ridicu­lous of me when I make worse blunders than that myself e­ very day. And who can be sure it was a blunder? The misprint may have been an act of God like the w ­ hole Bible. Prob­ ably I was put out with you for making me see that Gods accidents ­were better than my intentions. And a­ fter all I ­ought instantly to have caught myself from getting angry with the thought of how close you had proved yourself to me and all my works by putting your fin­ger so exactly on the very two lines in My Butterfly where all that is I began.224 Forgive me for being cross even as I forgave you for getting cross ­because I wouldnt accept rides in automobiles when we w ­ ere walking across northern New Hampshire,225 and believe me Quite as ever yours Robert Frost 222. ​RF’s original idea had been to call the book “If I Should Live to Be a Doll,” the first line (and title) of the first poem in it. For further details, see RF to Lesley, October 8, 1935. 223. ​See RF to Young, December 11, 1932. 224. ​More than once RF singled out the second verse paragraph of the poem as the place where he first struck his note. See RF to Rugg, October 15, 1915: “I still like as well as anything I ever wrote the eight lines in [‘My Butterfly’] beginning ‘The grey grass is scarce dappled with the snow’ ” (LRF-1, 366; see also LRF-1, 201). The poem appeared first in the In­de­pen­dent on November 8, 1894. 225. ​In September 1921, RF and Young hiked some one hundred miles from Upton, Maine, across northern New Hampshire and into Vermont. See RF to Young, December 22, 1921, for an account of the trip (LRF-1, 217–218). The two men first met in 1915.

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Now dont get mad at me for having such a shameless address. I was invalided down ­here.

[To Paul Dwight Moody. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Middlebury.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Fla* [circa January 15, 1936] Dear Mr Moody: I did promise to come up to Middlebury for the Abernethy Library this spring, d­ idn’t I?226 Such is my unsystem that I have no way of checking up on my intentions to see w ­ hether they w ­ ere fulfilled or not. My days are one ­jumble of intentions carried out and not carried out and it ­w ill soon be that I can say with honesty I cant tell one from another. Never mind. We w ­ on’t cry. At least we arent such a success that we have to go and live in E ­ ngland. Your letter confirms me in the suspicion that I havent written to Gay227 about Bread Loaf next summer.† Best wishes to you and Mrs Moody.228 Sincerely yours Robert Frost * For my sins. † I shan’t fail him

226. ​On May 27, 1936, RF spoke at the Abernethy birthday cele­bration at Middlebury College. See RF to Moody, November 27, 1935. 227. ​Robert Malcolm Gay (1879–1961) was a professor of En­glish at Simmons College in Boston and the director of the Bread Loaf School of En­glish. 228. ​Charlotte May Hull Moody (1878–1981).

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[To Otto Manthey-­Zorn. ALS. ACL.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Florida January 19 1936 Dear Otto: I have been in bed with the cold I got in New York and Elinor has been no better than she should have been. Thats one reason why you havent been deluged with letters from us. I think Elinor ­w ill get stronger. I cant help hoping so. She looks fine for an hour now and then and she always shows animation when the Supreme Court hands down another against the new deal 229 (called in Scotland the Old Deil.)230 She has enough interest in life to be casting about for a country to go to for a refuge if [the] next election gives us a revolution in our form of government. She ­really cares. And I take it it’s a good sign. I hope she doesnt have to cross any wide ocean. But the voyage might not do her any harm with her spunk up. Wouldnt history be exciting? Stanley231 may have told you of my invitation to give the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard this spring. I had his approval in accepting. He seemed satisfied in his wire. You may not realize (I d­ idn’t) the importance of this l­ ittle honor. As far as I know no one but foreigners have hitherto had it.232 Only some considerable change in policy would think of American me. It fits in with my politics. I hope Stanley is ­really pleased. I am to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem, you know, at the three hundredth anniversary on September 17th.233 It w ­ ill be a Harvard year for me and a sort of rapprochement with the old place (my f­ ather’s more than mine).234 ­There ­w ill be six lectures 229. ​For discussion of Supreme Court challenges to the constitutionality of New Deal mea­sures, see RF to Manthey-­Zorn, January 10, 1935. 230. ​“Old Dev­i l.” 231. ​Stanley King, president of Amherst. 232. ​The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures had been established in 1925. RF is technically correct in saying that he was the first “American” to be asked to give them, but he is also mischievous. T. S. Eliot was the lecturer in 1932–1933 and he, of course, was American born and reared, albeit by 1927 a British subject, not an American citizen. 233. ​R F did not in fact deliver this. See the notes to RF’s January  6, 1936, letter to Howe. 234. ​William Prescott Frost Jr. had been a Phi Beta Kappa gradu­ate of Harvard. RF attended Harvard from 1897 to 1899. He did well enough to be awarded (in 1898) a Seward Scholarship for academic excellence, but f­amily necessities (he now had a two-­year old

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to give and I thought I would bring them u ­ nder the general title of The Renewal of Words. The theme ­w ill be: the world is old and many complain that words are hopelessly stale, but no, poetry constantly renews them. That w ­ ill gather to it by gravity a lot of t­ hings I want to say. It ­w ill be my esthetics. One bad t­ hing about it is it ­w ill keep us from seeing much of you folks this spring. W ­ e’ll just have to make up for it in the summer. And w ­ e’ll be up a few times for the salons in the Babbott Room 235 and any other events that require us. I feel plenty of regret mixed with my pleas­ur­able pride. As always I am scared. Next week I do a few t­ hings ­here, one lecture on the Uses of Ambiguity236 and three lessons on Learning How to Have Something to Say.237 It’s a strange land. The climate isnt right for Elinor I can see. Having to come north early (I forgot to say it must be in March—by rights it should have been in February) w ­ ill be no special disappointment. I s­ hall irradiate all I can in the next five or six weeks and then advance northward by stages. We nearly smothered with heat and humidity last night. A cold snap is predicted for tomorrow—­a temperature of forty perhaps. We had another when we got ­here. I am shaping up my next book, but havent just the name for it yet. Tell me if you think I do very wrong to take the Harvard lectures. Our love to you both Ever yours Robert

son, Elliot, to support) and poor health compelled him to leave; he never took a degree at Harvard or anywhere ­else. 235. ​A large galleried meeting space at Amherst, named for Frank Lusk Babbott (1854– 1933), a jute merchant and gradu­ate of the college. It is h ­ oused in Amherst’s Octagon, an unusual structure built in 1847–1848 as a natu­ral history museum and observatory. 236. ​A title possibly inspired by William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, published in 1930, although Empson was not a critic RF talked of in this period. 237. ​R F gave five lectures at the Winter Institute (University of Miami) over the coming fortnight: three on “Learning How to Have Something to Say” (January 27–29), one on “The Uses of Ambiguity” (January 30), and one on “An After­noon’s Anthology” (January 31).

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[To George Whicher. ALS. ACL.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Fla Jan 20 1936 Dear George: Not so many poems to report and submit as last year. The publishers are too much on me about the next book. My seven years of writing are up and I must once again face print. Lucky I got the publishers to accept the seven-­ year formula early. I should go crazy or barren or something if I had them at me all the time. ­They’ve got to have a name for the next book soon. That alone ­w ill take an inspiration of the value of ten or twenty poems. The question is is it worth it.238 Another ­thing I have to have a name for brings me to my news of the moment. I have promised to give the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard this spring and I have de­cided to call them The Renewal of Words. I mean that’s what poetry ­whether in prose verse or speech forever is. Words stale with habit and are renewed in poetry. Stanley seems to be willing I should have the honor. The Charles Eliot Norton lectures you may have noticed have hitherto only been given by British subjects.239 So being asked to give them flatters me a l­ittle. Of course it scares me too. And it trou­bles me ­because of the conflict with Amherst obligations. But I can be in Amherst for my Babbott-­ Room salons. And I know you’ll all want me not to miss the po­liti­cal advantage ­there obviously is in the appointment. Speak and say if I am wrong. Stephens picture came fine as life, but not the Stephen we expected dripping from the baths of Fort Lauderdale.240 I should have gone to look for him 238. ​In his “Lying on the Sands” column for February  2, 1936 (in the Miami News), Truman Felt wrote: “Robert Frost was saying the other night that he intends to make the title of his next volume of poems ‘Mountain Range’ and to have the word ‘Range’ printed in italics, to achieve the desired ambiguity.” A Further Range, as the new book was called, bears the following dedication: “To E. F. for what it may mean to her that beyond the White Mountains w ­ ere the Green; beyond both w ­ ere the Rockies, the Sierras, and, in thought, the Andes and the Himalayas—­range beyond range even into the realm of government and religion.” 239. ​Again, not quite true. In 1931–1932, Icelandic scholar Sigurður Nordal held the post. 240. ​Stephen Emerson Whicher (1915–1961), George Whicher’s son. He graduated Amherst College with the class of 1936. He subsequently earned an MA at Columbia (1937)

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in the w ­ ater if I hadnt been more or less sick in bed with the cold I got from lingering beyond my time in New York. You know the kind of consolation I should have carried him for his failure to get a Rhodes. He couldnt have helped seeing me try to conceal my satisfaction. I ­don’t view a competition like that as you do. It is not a bit bigger than a competition at Amherst. At any rate it is not a big enough bit bigger to count. Time at the age of twenty to appeal from the judgement of teachers and committees of teachers to the judgement of the world. The question becomes what ideas we can have and express of general worth. We must turn from relative appraisal to absolute. You tell him I may have hurt his chances by the style of my testimonial. I dont think I overdid my praise. I ­don’t mean that. But I have no skill in talking a person up in such a market. I havent the adjectives. I feel my inadequacy ­every year to the Guggenheim cases I am called in on. Well and let’s never mind anything. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To George Roy Elliott. ALS. ACL.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Florida January 20 1936 Dear Roy: That sonnet to you on your having been abroad still lacks one half line of completion. So I am asking you to be patient another year.241 Meanwhile a letter from the tropics—­just this side of Hell. I can tell you about Harvard’s having asked me to give the Charles Eliot Norton lectures in poetry this spring b­ ecause though you are not a Harvard man nor a Unitarian nor even an American by birth, you have lived in Amer­ i­ca a long time, know your way round the Harvard Yard, and think any reliand a doctorate at Harvard (1942) and had a distinguished ­career as a professor of En­ glish, chiefly at Cornell University. Apparently he’d fled the New E ­ ngland winter for Florida. 241. ​For another reference to this sonnet, see RF to Elliott, September 27, 1935. If the poem was more than merely a joke, it has not (to the best of our knowledge) survived. No sonnet collected in any of RF’s subsequent books answers to the description.

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gion is better than none—­Im sure.242 Let’s see—­where did I intend to come out with that sentence when I started? I can tell you, I mean to say, ­because you w ­ ill understand and sympathise. I am g­ oing to talk about such ­things as Vocal Imagination Does Wisdom Signify (­because if it does ­etc) and Poetry as the Renewal of Words. Maybe I wont use the title Vocal Imagination: it seems to me I must have used it before.243 Instead why not make it Where Form and Content Merge. I s­ hall be in comparison with the British subjects who alone have hitherto given ­these lectures. Of course I dread it. But you ­w ill appreciate the fact that I could hardly refuse the trial. I shant hope too much of myself. But suppose I merely get by indifferently. T ­ here is still the name of having been the first American asked. It seems as if it must strengthen my position. Anyway it excites me a l­ ittle. The University is one most p­ eople have heard of. It was mine ­after a fashion and my ­father’s more than mine. We pine for home and friends. This spongey climate is a doubtful good. I drift on t­ oward the publication of my next. How goes the stream of consciousness at your worlds far end? (I heard Molly Colum defend the method of her friend James Joyce in Ulysses by reading from The Times the last broken sentences of Dutch Schultz.244 Evidently, says she, ­there is such a ­thing as insane maundering. Then why not base lit­er­a­t ure on it?) With our best to you both, Ever yours Robert I245 242. ​Elliott was born in London, Ontario, in 1883; he became a United States citizen in 1914. 243. ​A document titled “The Last Refinement of Subject ­Matter: Vocal Imagination,” held at Dartmouth College, gives us some idea of what RF likely said in the lecture. See CPRF, 136–139; 299–304. 244. ​Mary (“Molly”) Gunning Maguire Colum, wife of Padraic Colum; the Colums ­were staying in Coral Gables, Florida, at the time. The New York City mobster Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Simon Flegenheimer) died of gunshot wounds on October 24, 1935. His last words, recorded by a Newark, New Jersey, police stenographer as Schultz lay in a hospital bed, w ­ ere a fevered monologue that quickly attained notoriety (and l­ ater inspired William S. Burroughs’s closet screenplay The Last Words of Dutch Schultz [1970]). The remarks conclude: “Hey, Jimmie! The Chimney sweeps. Talk to the Sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please come help me up, Henny. Max come over ­here. French Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone.” The cryptic words ­were widely reported in the press, and pored over by investigators for clues as to who ordered the murder. 245. ​To emphasize, yet again, that he (not T. S. Eliot) was the “first” American to give the Norton lectures.

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[To Georges Schreiber (1904–1977), Belgian-­born American painter and cartoonist. Schrei­ ber’s portrait of RF, accompanied by the text of “The Lost Follower,” would be included in Schreiber’s Portraits and Self-­Portraits (1936). ALS. HRC.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Florida Jan 21 1936 Dear Mr Schreiber: You see where I am—­a long way from New York. I s­ hall have to be h ­ ere till March 1st when I must go directly to Cambridge Mass. to give some lectures. Would you think of coming to Boston to make your portrait? I should of course be pleased to give you a sitting. You dont ask many minutes. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Grace Davis Vanamee (1876–1946), secretary to the president of the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters. ALS. American Acad­emy.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Florida January 21 1936 Dear Mrs Vanamee: I have been sick in bed most of the time for a month or so, and no secretary to answer my letters for me. ­Will you be so kind as to tell Mr Charles Dana Gibson246 that I have already said my say about Robinson in my preface to his King Jasper.247 I am not a practical prose writer and prose costs me a ­g reat deal. I went far far out of my way to do honor to Robinson ­there. What I wrote may not seem enough to his friends, but it was my best and I am sure any attempt on my part to add to it would only take away from it. You must see the beauty of my having learned to let well enough alone. I am told it is one of an artist’s most valu-

246. ​Gibson (1867–1944), American illustrator, painter, author, and editor (and member of the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters). 247. ​For an account of the composition of RF’s preface, see CPRF, 282–284. See also RF to Lankes, September  12, 1935, RF to Melcher, mid-­September  1935, and RF to Untermeyer, September 21, 1935.

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able acquirements. Thank Mr Gibson for thinking of me and take thanks to yourself for your trou­ble in all this. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Coconut Grove, Florida] [January 22, 1936] Dear Louis: I have been sick some more and only communicating by telegraph. But I must write a small letter to put you out of any anxiety you may have given yourself by finding fault with “frightfully.”248 To tell you the truth I thought that word was part of the joke—­just like “mortician” and “out of ­there”—­Yes and mixing up Janizary with commissary. But get this: anybody who follows me with the close attention you displayed in noticing the loss of effect from the introduction of a good figure in my Wrong Twice story,249 can do anything he pleases with my works up to ten corrections and suggestions in the rest of my life. This counts one if you stick to it. I ­will change it for you without reasons. But remember it counts one. You have only nine left. Nothing having been said about the size of the criticisms, you are ­f ree to make them as large as you please even to the suppression of ­whole poems or even ­whole books. 248. ​Untermeyer had suggested that RF change the word “frightfully” in the last line of “Departmental”—­advice he took. As published in AFR, its closing couplet reads: “It ­couldn’t be called ungentle / But how thoroughly departmental” (our emphasis; CPPP, 263). 249. ​The “story” appears in RF’s introduction to E. A. Robinson’s King Jasper (1935): “I had it from one of the youn­gest lately: ‘Whereas we once thought lit­er­a­t ure should be without content, we now know it should be charged full of propaganda.’ Wrong twice, I told him. Wrong twice and of theory prepense. But he returned to his position a­ fter a moment out for reassembly: ‘Surely art can be considered good only as it prompts to action.’ How soon, I asked him. But t­ here is danger of undue levity in teasing the young. The experiment is evidently started. Grievances are certainly a power and are g­ oing to be turned on. We must be very tender of our dreamers. They may seem like picketers or members of the committee on rules for the moment. We shan’t mind what they seem, if only they produce real poems” (CPRF, 117). The “figure” Untermeyer objected to in the draft RF sent him (on August 21, 1935) is this: “Whereas we once thought lit­er­a­ture should be without content, we now know it should be charged full of propaganda as a child’s stocking is with coal when he boasts of having lost faith in Santa Claus” (RFLU, 263).

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You would get the biggest feeling of importance by vetoing my next nine books. Nothing would be lost. I would only gain in compression. No poem I give up but appears l­ ater as one line or one epithet. It would be the same with a lost book. It would not be truly lost. It would go to build soil as in my Phi Beta Kappa poem at Columbia in 1932 before the New Deal had come out for soil building or much of anything e­ lse. And speaking of lost books, what a loss you suffered in the one Whats-­h is-­ name had stolen from him.250 A ­thing like that would down me for good. It hurts me somewhere I cant tell you how much. The only ­thing worth learning is to be brave, and I suspect the best way to learn it is not to let our m ­ others keep us out of danger when we are young. I was brought up to think self-­ preservation was not an instinct but a virtue. Thats why I cant get used to the way ­these fine bold ­people run round killing each other in their splendid cars. T ­ here was never such an outburst of individual initiative, responsibility and courage since the world began.251 And we talk about this being an age of no individual life. Ever yours Robert

[To Willard Fraser. Date derived from postmark. ALS. Private.]

[3670 Avocado Ave­nue] [Coconut Grove, Florida] [January 22, 1936] Dear Willard: Opinions ­don’t take rank with ideas. Opinions are poor rubbish most of the time, but it entertains us to entertain them. It has helped Elinor over a lot in the last year to be very positive in opinions of the New Deal and I suppose

250. ​In RFLU, Untermeyer supplies a gloss: “A collection of my manuscript poems borrowed by a friend” (268)—­f rom whom it was subsequently stolen. 251. ​A enduring fascination of RF’s. He writes, in his notebooks: “Who would have predicted in 1895 . . . ​a nything so universally individual as . . . ​m illions driving tons of steel apiece on trackless roads and responsibly taking each o ­ thers lives in the name of dangerous plea­sure?” (NBRF, 43). In 1935, 34,494 Americans died in automobile accidents; in 1936 the figure would be 36,126.

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it has you.252 She thinks she would go to war for hers or leave the country like Col. Lindberg [sic].253 It is necessary to be serious about them and though you may have to back down, never admit as much. But ­after all arent they shallow ­things? Its a won­der they are so preoccupying. I have them like anybody e­ lse but I despise them and always warn any disciples I may have at Amherst or elsewhere, u ­ nder no circumstances to m ­ istake having them for having real thought. The question is if Townsend or Norman Thomas or Rex Tugwell prevailed to drive us out of Amer­i­ca, where would we go.254 To New Zealand? Law is nothing but sentiment ­there I am told.*255 So is it in Australia Norway Sweden Denmark and Switzerland. Jealousy of them as rivals of the United States

252. ​A joke. Elinor was as “positively” against FDR as Fraser (a Demo­crat) was generally for him. 253. ​On December  22, 1935, the aviator Charles Lindbergh quietly left the United States for ­England, together with his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh and their three-­ year-­old son Jon. Fears for the safety of the boy motivated the departure. Bruno Hauptmann—­convicted of abducting and murdering their first son, Charles  Jr.—­was then in the pro­cess of filing appeals. Governor Harold C. Hoffman of New Jersey had publicly aired his doubts about the case against Hauptmann and was considering a reprieve of the death sentence. All appeals and requests for clemency having failed, Hauptmann was executed by the state of New Jersey on April 3, 1936. The Lindberghs would not return to the United States ­u ntil April 1939. 254. ​In September  1933, Francis Everett Townsend (1867–1960), a physician, businessman, and po­liti­cal activist, published what came to be called the Townsend Plan. It called for publicly funded pensions of $200 a month for all Americans over the age of sixty. Townsend and his supporters lobbied hard to bring about legislation that might implement the plan, but FDR opposed them; the desire to find a more moderate path—­one that would stymie the Townsend movement—­led to the introduction and passage of the Social Security Act in 1935. Townsend and his allies continued, without success, to lobby for their more radical plan well into the 1950s. Norman Thomas (1884– 1968) ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket in 1928; he would do the same in the next five presidential election cycles. As we noted above, Tugwell was one of the chief architects of the New Deal (and a member of FDR’s “Brain Trust,” to which RF refers ­later in the letter). He was director of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (though he would resign ­later in 1936). 255. ​Presumably told by his cousin John Moodie, who lived in Christchurch. Moodie had visited RF—­who had been unaware that he had any surviving cousins on his ­mother’s side—in the spring of 1928. A number of letters from New Zealand followed. The general idea—as RF’s asterisked footnote suggests—is that social demo­cratic policies, w ­ hether in New Zealand or Scandinavia, are “sentimental.”

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would keep us from being happy in any of the big countries. I guess we are stuck where we are. Canada is ruled out by the fact that as this country goes so she goes. She is even one jump ahead of us in some of the new foolishness. And she’s a pretty cold country. Well we have apparently still the Supreme Court between Elinor and desperation. I won­der what kind of man Franklin D. r­ eally is. Of the three judges that took his radical side in the AAA case, one, Cardoza [sic], was appointed by Hoover, another, Stone, by Coo­l idge.256 ­T hose two Presidents certainly showed a lofty disinterestedness far above packing the court with a view to having their own way. Would Franklin D. be as good? He o ­ ught to set judicial ability above every­t hing ­else in making his appointments. Hoover appointed one conservative, Roberts, and one radical, Cardoza.257 To keep our re­spect, Franklin D., if he had say three vacancies to fill, would have to choose at least one radical.258 He h ­ asn’t seemed that unpartizan in his attitude. But we only see him through the papers and the papers may not be fair to him—­ especially the eastern papers. This is where I’ll watch him if he gets reelected to see [if] he w ­ ill show a disposition to have both sides represented in this court of arbitration or in his appointments to it. Thats what we do in an international court of arbitration, three from Peru three from Chile and one from neither side say the King of ­England or the President of France.259 I ­shouldn’t think a President of our country would want to go down in history 256. ​O n January  6, 1936, in United States v. Butler (a 6–3 decision), the Supreme Court declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933—­a cornerstone of the New Deal, and the legislative foundation for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration—­ unconstitutional. The dissenting opinion was written by Justice Harlan F. Stone, Justices Benjamin N. Cardozo and Louis Brandeis concurring. Defeat in the Butler case—­together with other setbacks in the courts—­eventually led FDR to propose the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 (commonly known as the “court packing” scheme), which would have reor­ga­n ized the federal judiciary, allowing for the appointment of up to six additional Supreme Court justices. This mea­sure failed, to Elinor’s relief. 257. ​President Herbert Hoover nominated Owen Josephus Roberts (1875–1955) to the court in May 1930; he sided with the majority in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration case. 258. ​As per the manuscript, though one expects “conservative”; perhaps this is a slip of the pen. 259. ​RF may refer to the cession of territory by Peru to Chile during negotiations to end the Chaco War (1932–1935), or to the fact that boundary disputes between Peru and Chile had been among the first to be settled by international arbitration rather than by war. The Treaty of Lima (1929), negotiated in Washington, DC, settled one long-­standing territorial dispute

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as having loaded the Supreme Court with his own party. W ­ e’ll have a chance to see prob­ably. I speak as if FDR. ­were g­ oing to get reelected. My internal betting now makes the odds 10 to 9 in his f­ avor. He’s losing by all t­ hese m ­ istakes of his ­lawyers, but not fast enough to drop ­behind before November.260 We have just passed through our second cold spell of two days duration.261 The first time the thermometer dropped to thirty-­two. ­There was no frost except in the lowest ground. This time the lowest reading has been forty degrees. ­People that tell you Florida can compare with New E ­ ngland and Montana for cold are working their minds too hard like the brain trust.262 You have to ask them how they make that out. Their answer would be that Oh its their business to make t­ hings out. Interpretation does it. No the trou­ble with this tropical end of Florida is humid heat waves. Sometimes they ­will be twenty four hours wide sometimes no more than an hour. They are like passing clouds, only they are on the earth, and they are invisible. Every­thing is perfectly clear. You see the blue sky and the stars. But you almost smother and you pour sweat. One goes over in the night and you wake up smothering. Most of the days and nights are about like summer at home though. ­Don’t let

between the two nations dating to the War of the Pacific (1879–1883). The Hague Convention of 1899 had created the Permanent Court of Arbitration of international disputes. 260. ​In January 1936, ­there was considerable turmoil in the White House. Some po­ liti­cal advisers—­a mong them James Farley, chairman, at the time, of the Demo­c ratic National Committee—­were urging FDR to oust Tugwell, Harry Hopkins, and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes; conventional wisdom had it that the three men would be liabilities in the upcoming campaign (they w ­ ere among the chief targets of FDR’s right-­ wing opponents). Tugwell, in an effort to quell the controversy, tendered a letter of resignation, which the president peremptorily refused to accept. All three men remained in the administration. 261. ​A week ­earlier, the Miami News had lamented the killing off, by frost, of Miami’s last surviving breadfruit trees. Record-­breaking cold weather, from the ­Great Plains through the Midwest, was making headlines across the country. The News reported on January 22 that the temperature had fallen to −55°F in International Falls, Minnesota. RF is replying, ­here, to a January 6, 1936, letter from Fraser (written from Billings, Montana), in part of which he noted: “Robin [his d­ aughter] and I met a w ­ oman up at the Airport Wednesday. She was g­ oing through from Florida to Seattle, and told us that it was no colder ­here than it was in Florida when she left” (UNH, Lesley Lee Francis Papers). 262. ​Since 1932, the term “Brain Trust” had been applied to the advisers upon whom FDR chiefly relied.

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any obliterator of distinctions tell you they aint. The waves of mugginess on certain days are what make it doubtful w ­ hether we o ­ ught to live h ­ ere.263 Business calls us north ­earlier than we meant to go. I ­shall be at Harvard from March 1 to May 15th lecturing six times in all. So I’ll hope to see something of Derrick [sic] for you.264 Elinor and I w ­ ill take an appartment [sic] just as if it was home. We are forlorn wanderers in a way. She particularly would enjoy settling down. Still she would hate to give up our c­ areer. She has two g­ reat interests to keep her ­going, ­children and grandchildren, and our ­career in lit­er­a­t ure and one minor interest defeating Franklin D. ­You’re a wanderer too. We think of you hurring [sic] from village to village between blizzards in what­ever the cause exactly is that you have taken up.265 We hope the prospects are good. Be sure to tell us any news thats ripe enough to tell. Remember me to that practical man BR.266 Affectionately R. F. *Law is too sentimental when the ele­ment of mercy in it is more than the ele­ment of justice.

263. ​The climate was harder on Elinor than on RF. A ­ fter she died in 1938, he bought (in 1940) five acres of land in South Miami (a place he would ­later dub “Pencil Pines”). 264. ​In his January 6 letter, Fraser made this request: “I just had a letter from Deric. He has just won an appointment to Cambridge [sic] as a Rhodes Scholar. ­Isn’t that a break. I do not know when he goes, as his letter is not very long. When you go back north you must see him” (UNH, Lesley Lee Francis Papers). Deric Nusbaum O’Bryan (1913–1987), a lifelong friend of Fraser and his ­family, was then (as Fraser indicates) studying at Harvard. While on his Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University, O’Bryan met Pamela Milligan (1918–1999), whom he’d marry in 1940 (she lived with Lesley Frost while her husband served as a second lieutenant during World War II). 265. ​In 1935 and 1936, Fraser was active in Montana politics, lobbying against a bill that would ease the expansion of chain stores in the state, and also in ­favor of a ballot initiative to repeal the state’s extant liquor law and bring the sale of alcoholic beverages more firmly u ­ nder state control. 266. ​Berthold Richard Albin (1878–1953), founder, with Raymond McMillan Hart (1873–1938), of the largest department store in Billings: the Hart-­A lbin Com­pany. Willard Fraser’s b­ rother, Marvin John Fraser, married Mary Louise Albin (B. R. Albin’s d­ aughter) in May 1932. Willard had himself worked at Hart-­A lbin.

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[To “Miss Kay,” whom we have been unable to identify. ALS. BU.]

[3670 Avocado Ave­nue] [Coconut Grove, Florida] January 31 1936 My dear Miss Kay: Of course I for my part would be glad to have you promote the use of my poem The Death of The Hired Man; but it ­w ill be necessary for you to get the permission of my publishers.267 The biographical material is to be found in Who’s Who, a book by Gorham B. Munson, and in Untermeyers Anthologies.268 My publishers might be willing to help you a l­ ittle h ­ ere. Thank you for your interest. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

267. ​Quite likely RF had been asked permission to stage, as a play, “The Death of the Hired Man” (it had been staged several times before, the first per­for­mance dating to 1915). On November 17, 1936, the Friday Morning Club—­t he largest ­women’s club in California, and the first to be or­ga­n ized in Los Angeles (in 1891)—­d ramatized the poem in Los Angeles (with Richard Garner, Leroy Zehren, and ­Virginia McFarland performing the roles of its three characters). The club was headquartered at 940 South Figueroa Street. We have found no other dramatizations of the poem dating to 1936. But by that date the poem had become a standard recitation piece in high schools and colleges. And we have been unable to associate this “Miss Kay” with the Friday Morning Club. 268. ​Munson’s Robert Frost: A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense (New York: George H. Doran, 1927). Louis Untermeyer had written about RF’s life and poetry in a number of books. H ­ ere RF likely alludes to his Modern American Poetry: An Introduction, published first in 1919, and, in the intervening years, subsequently revised and enlarged.

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[To James Patrick J. Murphy (1910–1984), an aspiring poet and collector. ALS. Bauman.]

3670 Avocado Ave­nue Coconut Grove Florida February 1 1936 Dear Mr Murphy: If you hurry and send your King Jasper to me it should easily reach me at the above address before I leave for Cambridge Mass on February 15th.269 I ­shall be glad to write my name in it for you. And ­here enclosed is an item of mine you may care to have.270 Any help I can give you in collecting mine271 please let me know. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To J. J. Lankes. Date derived from postmark. ALS. ACL.]

[3670 Avocado Ave­nue] [Coconut Grove, Florida] [February 6, 1936] Dear J. J.: I am offended as you are offended that the publicity person at Wells should have failed to make me chiefly your guest when I was in Aurora.272 Such is

269. ​Robinson’s King Jasper, for which RF had supplied an introduction. He signed the book: “For my friend James Patric  J. Murphy / Coconut Grove Florida / February  12 1936.” In addressing the envelope, RF also spells the second name “Patric,” though apparently in error. RF addresses him as “James Patrick Murphy” in the last letter (April 13, 1960) he ever sent him. 270. ​The enclosure was separated from the letter. However, in a February 14 letter to Murphy, RF says, in a postscript: “The A Way Out is considered a first. It was copyright first for the magazine Seven Arts. You might put this book mark in A Way Out.” 271. ​­Here, the manuscript is unclear; “mine” seems the likeliest word. 272. ​RF gave a reading at Wells College in Aurora, New York, on November 21, 1935. Lankes had arranged for the reading and had even designed a woodcut announcing it; he was naturally irritated when the college publicist failed to mention him in a press release. See Welford Taylor, Robert Frost and J. J. Lankes: Riders on Pegasus (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Library, 1996): 61–63. For the poster, see Figure 8.

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justice and truth in the newspapers and magazines. I thrive by not knowing what goes on in the newspapers and magazines and even when I do know (when you make me know for instance), by pretending to myself and every­ body e­ lse that I dont know. I’m a very artful dodger of unnecessary pains. I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you: I’ll promise never to bring you word of anything unpleasant about you if you’ll do the same by me. W ­ e’ll conspire to make each other fool’s paradises to live in. Why not? ­T here’s no sense in helping our enemies reach us: The New Republic might blaze away till its guns jammed and I would never know it except through you who are apparently one of its last remaining die-­hard readers.273 Its subscription list has almost touched the vanis­h ing place. You prob­ably havent observed, so I am ­going to confess to you I crave w ­ hole days weeks months unruffled by thoughts of ­either praise or blame. I manage to protect myself pretty well. You may ask if freedom from criticism is good for me. It may not be good for my art but it is good for my nature. I know from experience. I believe you need to know less about what the critics think of you than you have known. To Hell with all their unconsidered comment. It is unconsidered and it is not disinterested. I have seen enough of it to be sure their reasons for likes and dislikes are al-

273. ​Newton Arvin had published a review of E. A. Robinson’s King Jasper (New York: Macmillan, 1935) in the January 8, 1936, issue of the New Republic. Arvin, a leftist, assailed not only the book-­length poem as reactionary but also RF’s introduction to it. The editors at Macmillan generally took Arvin’s line, as did Robinson’s literary executor, Louis Ledoux, who wrote to George P. Brett, president of Macmillan, on September 30, 1935: “I must say that Frost’s introduction to King Jasper seems to me about as bad as it could be . . . ​Nearly ninety ­percent of what Frost has written seems to me an expression of his own personal ‘grievances’ against the pre­sent economic, social and financial regime of the Government, and his irritability with modernistic trends in con­temporary verse” (CPRF, 283). (Ledoux ­here brings RF’s argument in the introduction to bear against RF himself: “But for me,” he had written, “I d­ on’t like grievances. I find I g­ ently let them alone wherever published. What I like is griefs and I like them Robinsonianly profound. I suppose t­ here is no use in asking, but I should think we might be indulged to the extent of having grievances restricted to prose if prose ­w ill accept the imposition, and leaving poetry ­f ree to go its way in tears” [CPPP, 743].) Indeed, Macmillan prevailed upon RF to alter the following remarks (which quote a line from Robinson’s “The Mill”): “ ‘­There are no millers any more.’ It might be an edict of the New Deal against pro­cessors (as we now dignify them). But no, it is of wider application. It is a sinister jest at the expense of all investors of life or capital” (as per RF’s typescript [see CPRF, 120, 284]). The published text reads: “ ‘­There are no millers any more.’ It might be an edict of some power against industrialism. But no, it is of wider application,” e­ tc. (King Jasper, xiii).

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ways other than what are given. I have de­cided to spend no more time fathoming their motives. Dont let them in on me if you want me to grow old gracefully. I was pretty cross with you for that bad letter about The New Republic. You felt it would be good for my ego to know I wasnt thought as well of by every­body as I was by my friends. You didnt want it to escape me. You w ­ ere bent on punishing me for having left ­behind in Aurora when I came away the best of the woodcuts you gave me. Well I shouldnt have left it b­ ehind. But you have to remember I was tired with what I had been through and I was thinking more of your health than of your pictures. You should have made allowances and sent the picture along ­after me. I’m not much good in a lot of ways, but I’m a good friend. I know, I know. Y ­ ou’re merely irratable [sic] at times. And I dont mind your being ­toward other ­people. But please go easy on me. ­Heres a Two Tramps as a clincher. If it is worth ten dollars, you are getting money as well as sentiment.274 This place seethes with rivalry for publicity. ­Music gets all the space in the papers that isnt devoted to night clubs and bathing beauty. Lit­er­a­t ure makes itself very unhappy b­ ecause it gets left out. Poetry in par­t ic­u ­lar never gets mentioned except as something no longer read by anybody but the p­ eople who wrote it. Hervey Allen is the big shot.275 Du Bose Haward [sic] comes next.276 Du Bose Haywood 277 summoned the Associated Press photog­raphers to take his picture where we ­were all having lunch at the Pan American Airways the other day. We all felt miffed.278 Silly world! I take it a ­l ittle seriously however

274. ​RF’s Christmas greeting card for 1934 (“Two Tramps in Mud Time”), inscribed as follows: “To J. J. Lankes as a poem not as an item of collection.” 275. ​Hervey Allen, whose historical novel Anthony Adverse was adapted for the screen in 1936. 276. ​DuBose Heyward (1885–1940), author of Porgy (1925); George Gersh­w in’s Porgy and Bess, on which Heyward and his wife collaborated, had opened in 1933. 277. ​RF seems genuinely confused as to how to spell DuBose Heyward’s name; both instances of it ­here bear uncertain corrections in his hand. 278. ​On January 28, the Miami News printed a photo of RF, Heyward, and Allen at the Pan American Airways Airport restaurant, where t­hey’d met for lunch (with Padraic Colum, Colum’s wife, novelist Francis Hackett and his wife, and Indian American author Dhan Gopal Mukerji). See Figure  9. Two weeks l­ater, on February  14, the Miami News ran a second item, this time with a photo of Elinor Frost (certainly looking “miffed”), novelist Francis Hackett, and Ann Andrews (wife of Hervey Allen), noting

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that Amherst doesnt get public credit for supporting me where I am mentioned in print. I hear feelings are hurt at Amherst. That is ­really serious I suppose. But whats the use trying to get any ­thing right in the papers. Ever yours Robert

[To Hamilton Holt (1872–1951), American journalist, editor, politician, and educator. ALS. Rollins.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Florida February 6 1936 Dear Mr Holt: You are always associated in my mind with the Wards as my first patrons (editorial).279 I have a debt to pay you some day. But it c­ an’t be this year. I am turning north in a few days now to give the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. And let me tell you some t­ hing ­else in all kindness. I can never be drawn into a show like your living magazine.280 My talents, such as they are, ­don’t lend themselves to crowded programs. It is the rarest ­thing for anyone to ask me to speak or read in chorus. ­People have learned that my modest kind of entertainment is better when it has the occasion all to itself. I’m ashamed to have characteristics that have to be considered. I deny that I am the least bit temperamental. Dont think I dont remember. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

that “­Little talk for food but much food for thought was the rule when t­ hese noted p­ eople lunched at the International Pan American Restaurant.” 279. ​In 1897, Holt became managing editor of the In­de­pen­dent, and he was owner and editor from 1913 ­u ntil 1921. William Hayes Ward was editor in chief of the magazine from 1896 to 1913; Susan Hayes Ward was unofficially its poetry editor. The magazine was the first to publish RF’s poetry. 280. ​The Rollins Animated Magazine was an annual event at which contributors read their works, rather than having them printed.

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[To Henry Seidel Canby. ALS. Yale.]

3670 Avocado Ave­nue Coconut Grove Florida February 6 1936 Dear Canby It would gratify my sense of justice if you saw fit to circulate somehow sometime soon a small story of what my position at Amherst has been for the last ten years. I venture to say you dont know. Most ­people dont know. It still keeps appearing in print that I am an idlefellow [sic] of the University of Michigan.281 Amherst is a modest college that seems not to have much to say for itself. But I can see feelings are hurt ­t here that in the recent publicity about my ­going to Harvard for the Charles Eliot Norton lectures ­t here has been not one word of my being on leave of absence from Amherst. I cant in delicacy say much ­because the honorableness of the situation to Amherst is complicated with honorableness to me. I might seem to be boasting. Still I cant help thinking the w ­ hole ­t hing impor­tant enough if only as an idea in education to deserve s­imple public statement. Let me tell you more than you can use. I am a full professor (Simpson Chair of Lit­er­a­t ure) at Amherst with a salary of five thousand and no duties nor obligations save of being in residence not less than three months a year. You cant bring in the salary. But you can make the most of the rank, the freedom and term of office thus far—­ten years. A lot of fuss is made over this attempt and that to get patronage of the arts g­ oing in this country as in E ­ ngland. Well h ­ ere we have one case of it. You ­w ill spare me making it sound as if I prompted you. I am not d­ oing this very much for myself and it o ­ ught not to sound as if I w ­ ere. And please ­don’t let it sound like a correction of any-­body or anything. You ­will know how to be nice about it.—­A funny letter to be writing and I believe unique in my ink. Ever yours Robert Frost

281. ​The error would persist. In a July 13, 1936, article in The Boston Globe (no less), RF is still spoken of as on the faculty at Michigan.

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Figure 8. Poster, designed by J. J. Lankes, advertising an appearance by RF. © Estate of J. J. Lankes. Used by permission.

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Coconut Grove, Florida] [February 9, 1936] Dear Louis: An unselfish letter. Dont you like the enclosed kind of poetry?282 Have you ever considered the enclosed fellow? 282. ​RF enclosed a typed copy of “Blue Winter” by Robert Francis (1901–1987) (dated December 19, 1935, when, we assume, Francis mailed it to RF). Macmillan published his

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Figure 9. Left to right: RF, Hervey Allen, and DuBose Heyward. International News Syndicate, Inc. From the collection of Pat Alger.

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And what are we ­going to do for Merrill Root? His time draws near for his next book I gather. Are you g­ oing to have it at Harcourts or must I urge him on the Holts.283 Dont let this drop out of our minds. I told you about the Charles Eliot Norton lectures d­ idn’t I? Well if I didnt, I cant in this letter b­ ecause it is by announcement an unselfish letter. I cant talk about myself in it. I cant talk about you in it—or I would ask you how you are. Ever every­bodys R.

[To Gretchen Graf (1915–2001), a gradu­ate student and secretary in the Ohio State University Department of En­glish. ALS. Ohio State.]

3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Fla Feb 12 1936 My dear Miss Graf: ­Will you make it as late as pos­si­ble in April for me? ­These six Harvard lectures ­w ill hold me pretty close to Cambridge Mass for the six weeks beginning March 4th. I am r­ eally supposed to be in Cambridge unbrokenly till May 15th and if you could have me ­there a­ fter that date it would be better. But the students are all out of doors by then I suppose and unattractable by lecturers. ­Will you ask Mr Newdick how he feels about it?284 He wont want to embarrass me at the Harvard job, but I suppose he hopes I’ll stay around with you two or three days. I believe I can do that ­after April 15th. But not as easily as ­after May 15th.

first book, Stand With Me ­Here, in 1936. Francis saved “Blue Winter” for his second volume, Valhalla And Other Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1938); it first appeared in the Christian Science Monitor (September 15, 1936). The spartan Francis built his own 20 ft × 22 ft ­house on 170 Market Hill Road in Amherst and made a meager living primarily by teaching violin lessons. 283. ​Merrill Root’s Dawn is Forever, his third collection of poetry, was published neither by Henry Holt and Com­pany nor Harcourt. Packard and Com­pany (Chicago) brought it out in January 1938. 284. ​Newdick had tried to arrange a reading for RF the previous fall, which RF declined b­ ecause of a busy schedule. See RF’s December 2, 1935, letter to him.

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Remember me to him and accept thanks for your kind letter. D ­ on’t let it trou­ble you if I seem busier than you would expect one of my kind to be. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Coconut Grove, Florida] [February 13, 1936] Dear Louis: All right Merrill Root is mine.285 I have had him on my soul for many years and it is time I put on a front with some publishing h ­ ouse and got him ­really published. I dont know what makes me so lame an advocate ­unless it is the look in the courts eys [sic] that goes over the head of my arguments and simply says Friend of yours? It is always more than friendship in me but it takes the strength and plausibility all out of me to have it thought merely friendship. I could tell you a tale of how I fail. Take the pre­sent case of Robert Francis and the majority and minority opinions on it you and the judge286 have handed down. I feel myself to blame for not having presented it with assurance enough. I faint at the critical moment as the ­lawyer for the AAA did before the Nine.287 I should have said his poem had resemblances to mine though I dont suppose that appears as plainly to me as to outsiders.288 But it has something mine never have. I’m never concerned with color that much. From childhood I was a black-­

285. ​In RFLU, Untermeyer explains: “I liked E. Merrill Root’s stubbornly plain manner, but the downrightness, pleasing enough in single poems, suffered from awkwardness when stretched through a w ­ hole volume” (269). 286. ​Esther Antin Untermeyer served as a Toledo (Ohio) municipal court judge from 1925 to 1933. 287. ​As he stepped up to the lectern to deliver his first oral argument in United States v. Butler, the case brought before the Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, Solicitor General Stanley Reed fainted. The case fared no better. In a 6–3 decision, the Court ruled the law unconstitutional. 288. ​In RFLU, Untermeyer confesses that he thought the poem RF enclosed in his letter of February 6—­“Blue Winter”—­was not composed by Francis, but by RF himself, ­u nder an alias.

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and-­white boy.289 Robert Francis was always more the aesthete than I would have wanted to be. I timidly put him forward for a rather remarkable person. He went to Harvard, graduated, taught high school one year, failed (he says) with the c­ hildren and went out to live alone on the l­ ittle he can earn teaching younger c­ hildren the violin. He looks like a puritanical priest. Neither I nor anybody ­else owns him or very much influences his thinking. His opinions are no push-­overs. He never starts a subject one way and then at the first sign or look of dissent from you steers it another way. I get a lot of the pushovers. I just wish he might prevail. His address is Amherst Mass. I guess that w ­ ill reach him all right. I d­ on’t know his street and number. I see him perhaps once a year. I’ll write you the name of my next book before tomorrow.290 Of course I must have a poem for Palmer291 if he cares enough to ask for it. I thought he was afraid of having too much of me. I’m all in a whirl with thoughts of the book and standing up to them at my old school. But I have poems around I can deliver. Wasnt it rotten I lost that notebook with so many in it. I’m no rewrite man. If any are saved from that loss it ­w ill be thanks to the copies you have of them in the Adirondacks. They wont get into the next book.292 Ever your Robert 3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Fla for about a week longer.

289. ​K athleen Morrison writes, in her Robert Frost: A Pictorial Chronicle (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974): “To this observer, at least, [RF’s] architectural sense, his ability to come into a room and at once suggest how the furniture could be better arranged, his strong liking for such black-­a nd-­white drawings and woodcuts as ­t hose of his friend J. J. Lankes, seemed related in some way to his noticeable color-­blindness. Some readers have even felt in his poetry a quality of black-­a nd-­white, of line rather than of color” (34). 290. ​Actually, sooner—as the next letter indicates. 291. ​Paul Palmer was general editor of the American Mercury, Untermeyer its poetry editor. 292. ​ A FR appeared in May 1936.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark.293 ALS. LoC.]

[Coconut Grove, Florida] [February 13, 1936] Dear Louis David 294 writes he saw a picture of me in the N.Y. Times looking worried beside Hervé [sic] Allen and DuBose Hayward [sic] at the Pan American Airport Dinner Key Miami Florida.295 He thinks it was ­because of all I was in for at Harvard and let him as a Harvard man think so. In real­ity what was worrying me if anything was having to be with too many literary p­ eople for too long a time at the risk of losing their re­spect by being found out; or if it wasnt that it was not yet having hit on a name for my sixth book. The latter defect has been remedied in the last twelve hours and I hasten to share the satisfaction with you. I have it as Archy the Mede is said to have said.296 A Further R ange You and Merrill Moore put it into my head and perhaps it may seem immodest of me to say it for myself and let it for the moment it w ­ ill take the reader to discover by turning a page or two that all I mean by a further range is the Green Mountains a­ fter the White.297 I have a good mind to make you a skeleton plan of the book as I now suddenly see it.298

293. ​Time stamped “6-­PM,” whereas the envelope for the foregoing letter is stamped “330PM.” RF apparently dropped by the post office twice in his excitement at having lit on a title for his sixth book. 294. ​David McCord, poet, essayist, and chair of the Harvard Fund. 295. ​See RF’s February 6, 1936, letter to Lankes. 296. ​That is, Archimedes of “Eureka!” fame. 297. ​A reference to the dedication, for which see the notes to RF’s January 20, 1936, letter to Whicher. 298. ​RF enclosed a fair copy of the front ­matter and ­table of contents for AFR, as they then stood. The enclosure closely matches the corresponding part of the book as published, with ­t hese exceptions: in the dedication to Elinor (again, for which see the January 20 letter to Whicher), RF had “politics” where “government” appears; “A Sinister White” was retitled “Design” (the title the poem carried when first published in American Poetry 1922: A Miscellany); and “A Scent of Ripeness” was retitled “Unharvested.” Most in­ ter­est­ing perhaps is that RF chose to omit “Our Darkest Concern,” an essay which is listed in the enclosure as a kind of afterword to the book (“Our Darkest Concern / Very much as delivered at Amherst College June 1935”). “To a Thinker,” instead, concludes the volume as published—­yet another indication as to how reluctant RF remained to commit

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The six Harvard lectures have yet to take shape in my head. They should make a small book. ­Shall I write them before or ­after I deliver them? Its a tight place to be in ­because too novel. The name of the book and series might well be The Old Way to Be New. Some of the lecture headings may be, The Renewal of Words, Vocal Imagination, Does Wisdom ­Matter Etc.299 Oh dear, I feel a l­ ittle over­burdened I must admit. I have never worked you know. The Devil is ­after me. But watch me! Ever yours Robert

[To James Patrick Murphy. Date derived from postmark. ALS. Bauman.]

[3670 Avocado Ave­nue] [Coconut Grove, Florida] [February 14, 1936] Dear Mr. Murphy: ­There isnt very much anyone can help you to in poetry.300 You learn to make metrical lines from reading metrical lines. Then from good models you learn to make poetic phrases. Anybody who has been successful in giving nicknames has made a beginning in poetic wording. Most of all you have to be a person of ideas—­because each poem has to have at least one idea in it—­and if you ­aren’t yet a person of ideas you have to become one—­you have to acquire the ability to get up ideas. Striking ideas right out of life are the most impor­tant part of it. Have them fresh and striking enough and no editor can keep you out of his magazine. This is a hard gospel. Ideas, Ideas. Practice your eye on them in other p­ eoples work. Ruthlessly demand them of yourself in your own work. The danger with most rhymesters is they w ­ ill think they are accomplishing something by merely rhyming. They ­don’t find out their ­m istake till too late. Attack the editors with real poetic ideas and I’ll bet you anything you w ­ ill get published in ten years. T ­ here is no other road to go. himself to print in prose. The first prose ever included in an edition of his poetry would be “The Figure a Poem Makes,” which prefaces CP 1939 and CP 1949. 299. ​Again, as ­we’ve noted, RF never published his Norton lectures, though by contract he was obliged to. 300. ​Murphy had asked RF to read some of his poems. RF declined and instead sent this letter of general advice.

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Larrup your mind and sock the editors with it. Maybe you are already a writer and all this is wasted on you. Well in that case try yourself on the editors. I might just say something friendly and polite about your poems. The editors are the constituted authorities. They are on their guard against poor and weak stuff. Their approval and disapproval counts. My good-­natured thank you gets you nowhere. I know the editors are a ­human lot and make terrible ­m istakes (as so should we in their places) nevertheless they are what we have to break through. We are fooling ourselves if we think t­ here is any way around them. Of course I include publishers with editors. ­There is no special kind of manuscript that appeals to them. Make it plain—­that’s all. Disinterestedly enclose a stamp for them to return it w ­ hether it deserves to be returned or not. You have a rough job ahead of you. Be prepared to rough it. Sincerely yours Robert Frost The A Way Out is considered a first. It was copyright first for the magazine Seven Arts.301 You might put this book mark in A Way Out. [To Joseph E. Blumenthal. TG. ACL.]

MIAMI FLORIDA 1936 FEB 15 FULL NAME MARJORIE FROST FRASER SHOULD BE ON TITLE PAGE302 WE LIKE THE FIRST TITLE PAGE WITH DIVISIONS AND RED & BLACK COLOR COMBINATION PREFER THE SPIRAL PRESS INSTEAD OF PRIVATELY PRINTED ALSO COPYRIGHT BY SPIRAL PRESS IF YOU ARE WILLING BOTH LIKE TITLE & CONTENTS PAGES GREATLY AND ­ADMIRE NEW TYPE FOR MY BOOK 303 BEST WISHES FOR THE JOBS ROBERT FROST 301. ​The two postscripts appear vertically in the left-­hand margins of the first and third sheets of the letter. RF had, it appears, enclosed a copy of the 1929 Harbor Press edition of A Way Out with his February 3 letter to Murphy. 302. ​See RF to Blumenthal, January 8, 1936. Franconia (the book u ­ nder discussion) indeed bears the Spiral Press imprint. However, as we noted above, the book was not for sale. 303. ​ A FR, to be published by Holt in May 1936. The type was Monotype Emerson, designed by Blumenthal in 1930, and recut by Stanley Morison (the designer of Times New Roman) in 1935. The Spiral Press printed the l­imited edition of the book (803 copies bound in linen, and with a leather label on the spine).

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[To Lambert Davis. ALS. UVA.]

[3670 Avocado Ave­nue] [Coconut Grove, Florida] February 16 1936 Dear Mr Davis You said “lines” from me could make you an honest ­woman.304 The sexes are so mixed that no new idea on the subject surprises me any more. I won­der if it doesnt all come from mixing figures. We have been warned against it in lit­er­a­t ure but not in physique. Well lets not follow anything clear to its logical conclusion. You wouldnt want to be pushed into having some lines from me in your April number? I have thought you might be willing to use something from my book to be.* It has a name already A Further Range and should be out ­toward the last of April. Very likely you have rules or prejudices against being so close to book publication. But this is only poetry which butters no parsnips. Old Tarkington says no one reads it but the author of it.305 You say. I just thought I’d put in a word. No penalty attaches to your not acceding. T ­ here’ll be other poems l­ ater. I always keep something back for the book ­after the next. I leave ­here for Cambridge next Saturday. 3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Florida is my address till then. Sincerely yours and Wilsons306 Robert Frost * You can see what it would do for the book. Not that you would mention the book at all! I dont mean that.

304. ​RF may pun (as he elsewhere does) on the sexual meaning of “line” (as a verb: “to copulate with”; for which see his October 26, 1930, letter to Conrad). Following on the miscommunication and missed communications noted in RF’s November 14, 1934, letter to Davis, Davis had written again to RF in December 1935: “You may have forgotten it, but it is still on my mind that you h ­ aven’t made an honest w ­ oman of the Quarterly by letting us have a poem. I thought we ­were near that consummation late last fall, when you almost ­stopped over at the University; but that fell through. I should like very much to see the Quarterly’s honor redeemed.” See “Robert Frost and VQR,” by Jon Schneider and Julia Kudravetz (Web). See also RF to Davis, March 3, 1936. 305. ​Newton Booth Tarkington (1869–1946), American novelist and dramatist. 306. ​James Southall Wilson (1880–1963), American author, University of ­Virginia professor, and founder of the ­Virginia Quarterly Review.

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[To Harriet Monroe (1860–1936), American poet, editor, publisher, and critic. ALS. Chicago.]

[Coconut Grove, Florida] February 16 1936 Dear Harriet Monroe, ­Here I go missing my chances again from indolence. I have wanted the group of Minims I spoke of to be in Poetry before it came out in my new book.307 My publisher has got me where the new book (A Further Range by name) has got to come out t­ oward the last of April. He says I have had seven years since my last one and what more can I ask. I suppose you couldnt squeeze me in in a not too unprominent place for your April number. When is your April number out? If late in March it might easily be a month ahead of the book. Never mind if you dont like the idea. ­There are already poems in being for the book ­after this. I can show you some of t­ hose before long. My address is 3670 Avocado Ave Coconut Grove Florida till Saturday next when I set out for Cambridge Mass. Elinor joins me in sending better t­ hings than poems. Sincerely Robert Frost

[To Ellery Sedgwick (1872–1960), American journalist and editor. ALS. Mass. Hist.]

Coconut Grove Fla February 20 1936 My dear Sedgwick: Now I hardly know which to send t­ hese to, you or Weeks.308 I had the letter from him but the tele­g ram from you. Let’s assume that a tele­g ram takes pre­ ce­dence over a letter. Besides I knew you first and you are the editor-­i n-­chief. And anyway in addressing you I can be thinking of you both.

307. ​RF had sent Monroe the poems that would comprise the “Ten Mills” section of AFR. They appeared in Poetry in April 1936. 308. ​Edward  A. Weeks (1898–1989) was assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He would succeed Sedgwick as editor of the magazine in 1938.

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The poem I want most to see in The Atlantic is the one I put foremost, A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury.309 It is prob­ably my most bucolic of all.310 If it is too bucolic for you I am g­ oing to be very sorry and thats all I am g­ oing to be. I shan’t be cross. We have the two ­others to fall back on for an agreement. With all my thanks for your kind response to my suggestion I’m Yours faithfully Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Baltimore, Mary­land] [February 24, 1936] Dear Louis: I’m overcome by your editor’s request for a poem from my book.311 I realize this [is] a g­ reat indulgence on the editorial part. You may remember how The Atlantic years ago objected to my having The Ax-­helve in a book for six months a­ fter it was in The Atlantic.312 Rules have changed maybe. I prefer to think Palmer is being particularly good to your favorite poet. I wish I had more short ones left. Perhaps his liberality of the moment ­w ill stretch to using a rather long piece for once in a way. The Woodward’s Gardens one is a good

309. ​Sedgwick did accept the poem, which appeared in April. When he brought the poem into AFR, RF added (in the t­ able of contents) a subtitle: “or, Small Plans Gratefully Heard Of.” 310. ​The poem is about a chicken farmer / breeder. 311. ​RF enclosed with the letter fair copies of “The Strong are Saying Nothing,” “The Drumlin Woodchuck,” “A Roadside Stand,” and “At Woodward’s Gardens”—­a ll collected in AFR. 312. ​When he learned that Holt planned to publish MI in the fall of 1916, Ellery Sedgwick wrote a testy letter to RF’s editor at the time ­t here, Alfred Harcourt: “Nobody told me that I must hurry with the publication of Frost’s poems, and I deliberately kept them for announcement in our Almanac. I have two—­‘An Encounter’ and ‘The Axe Helve’ both of which are rendered worthless by the publication of your book on November 4 [actually, the 27th]. Would it not be pos­si­ble to omit ‘The Ax-­Helve’ from the book? The other I might, at a pinch, print in November [he did]. Of course, I should not have accepted the longer poem [“The Axe-­Helve”] had ­t here been a time limit on it” (letter held at DCL). See LRF-1, 492, for RF’s answer to Sedgwick, agreeing to give him “The Ax-­ Helve,” and to omit it from MI. Sedgwick published the poem in September  1917. RF collected it six years l­ater in NH.

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one, ­don’t you think. Prob­ably the Roadside Stand is too long. He might like its po­l iti­cal implications. The Woodwards Gardens is a better poem as a per­for­mance. And it has philosophical implications and ­t hose are better than po­l iti­cal. However I leave all to you.313 Oh I forgot that Kerker Quinn Peoria has a copy of A Roadside Stand which he is holding for his Direction magazine.314 It was one of two I sent him to select from. I told him to send it back. I dont know why he hangs on to it. I’ll wire him if you should choose it. I am moving northward on Harvard University Cambridge Mass U.S.A. My address t­ here beginning March 1st ­w ill [be] 56 Fayerweather St. Did I didnt I tell you the titles of any of the lectures: The Old Way to be New, Does Wisdom Signify, Vocal Imagination, Before the Beginning of a Poem, ­A fter the End of a Poem. The third is my never ending consideration. I’ll try to throw more light on it. Should you want to reach me before March 1st write or wire Henry Holt. David 315 has prob­ably told you: he has got me in for more than prose up ­there. D ­ on’t scold me. Scold him. I need kindness at this hour of my fortunes. I go to press with a book in real unhappiness. I wish I could see you for a talk. I try to forget the politics of poetry. But I am no child any more and I cant help a sense of the machinations of the gangs up t­ here in N.Y. You have a book before certain judges at this moment. You must know that your ser­vices to the art as they may be called are not ­going to help your case. Better that you had never made anthologies.316 Ever yours Robert

313. ​Of the four poems RF enclosed, Palmer and Untermeyer chose “The Strong are Saying Nothing,” which appeared (as noted ­earlier) in the May edition of the American Mercury, even as AFR hit the bookshops. 314. ​John Kerker Quinn (1911–1969) was assistant professor of En­glish at the University of Illinois (Peoria) and editor of the short-­lived magazine Direction (1934–1935). None of the poems RF mentions was printed ­t here. “A Roadside Stand” first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in June. 315. ​David McCord, who helped or­ga­n ize RF’s Norton lectures. 316. ​Untermeyer’s Selected Poems and Parodies was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, but he ­d idn’t win it; instead the prize went to R. P. T. Coffin for his Strange Holiness.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. TG. LoC.]

[New York, New York] [February 28, 1936] LOUIS UNTERMEYER BIRKHEAD PL TOLEDO OHIO WOULD YOU WIRE BACK TONIGHT BY WESTERN UNION CARE WEBSTER ­HOTEL NEW YORK WHICH ONE YOU TOOK FOR MERCURY COULD USE THE LEAVINGS317 CAMBRIDGE AND PROSE TOMORROW I COULD DO WITH SOME BEST WISHES ROBERT FROST.

[To Ellery Sedgwick. ALS. Mass. Hist.]

Address for the next few months 56 Fayerweather St Cambridge [New York, New York]318 Feb 29 1936 Dear Sedgwick: Simply lovely of you to take the one I like best of all in the book to be.319 I  wont hide from you the plea­sure I feel in being back in The Atlantic, my home-­states magazine. You spoke of having helped get me in for the Phi Beta Kappa poem.320 Thanks for that, but not too many thanks till we see how I come out. Support me with your very best wishes. You always have mine— Sincerely Robert Frost

317.  Among the “leavings” were “A Drumlin Woodchuck” and “A Roadside Stand.” The former appeared in the April number of the Atlantic Monthly (the latter there in June, as noted already). Poetry published “At Woodward’s Gardens” in April 1936 (see the March 7, 1936, letter to Monroe). 318. ​A s best we can determine, this and the subsequent letter ­were sent from New York, while RF was en route to Cambridge, which he would reach the following day. 319. ​“A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury.” See RF to Sedgwick, February 20, 1936. 320. To be read on September 17 during Harvard’s tercentenary celebration. RF agreed also to write an ode for the occasion. Illness forced him out of both.

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[To Lambert Davis. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. UVA.]

Address for the next few months 56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass [New York, New York] [circa February 29, 1936] Dear Mr Davis: I am sorry to be so late with t­ hese. I hope I am not too late and the poems are not too bad a set to choose from.321 I came north before my time and caught it from my old familiar, the flubug. He is letting me off easy though. So no tears. I ­ought to say again perhaps that the book the poems ­w ill be in is due about April 20—­not e­ arlier anyway. Name of the book A Further Range. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Charles H. Foster. ALS. DCL.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass March 1 1936 Dear Charles: The poem gets better as you get it squeezed down.322 It looks like you might prove a genuine case of natu­ral fa­cil­i­t y and acquired difficulty. I dont know that I ever met a sure one before. ­You’ve got to make it harder and harder for yourself in speech and writing. You see that and you have gone about it. The pensees you sent are for you to judge as you look back at them in six months,

321. ​The spring 1936 issue of the ­Virginia Quarterly Review published three poems that would appear in AFR: “Iris by Night,” “The Figure in the Doorway,” and “In Time of Cloudburst.” See also RF to Davis, November, 14, 1934, and February16, 1936. 322. ​Foster had (on February 19) sent RF a sonnet titled “In the Time of Early Dew,” but h ­ ere RF likely refers to “Not for the World,” which Foster mailed him on January 23, noting in his cover letter: “I am sending you a ‘damned’ poem. I hope it is not god-­ damned but dammed the way you meant when you told me to damn [sic] back to break out in something of my own” (DCL). For all the damning, see the December 18, 1935, letter to Foster.

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a year, two years. You w ­ ill decide some are empty, ­others not original, a few substantial and all your own.323 We must see each other this spring. I s­ hall prob­ably be in Amherst two or three times. Perhaps when I have got acclimated ­here at Cambridge you and Doris324 ­w ill drive down to see us. I am not feeling very fit for the job. I wasted a lot of time in Florida getting over a cold and I got an intestinal grippe bug the minute I got back to N.Y. What the Hell is the ­matter with me do you as a Christian suppose? You may have noticed I have a book coming out and it is already named, ­whether it prove a boy or a girl, A Further Range. Dont buy a copy and you may get one given you. Im glad it is all right with Foerster.325 He ­w ill be a salutary friend. But persuade him to let you write your short poems for him. The epic ­w ill come in ­later.326 I understand one of the publishers is starting an epic department. We may be in for an epic age. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Wilbert Snow. Text derived from Codline’s Child (368).]

[Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [March 1, 1936] Dear Bill: You see where your letter has been—­everywhere but to where we w ­ ere in Coconut Grove, Florida hanging on till the last moment for a l­ ittle brownth327 against all we are in for this spring. I know who my true friends are, which come first in time and importance, and if I h ­ aven’t paid any attention to your letters of invitation it was b­ ecause I ­d idn’t want to say no. I’m awfully slow about saying no. I ­ought to say no now. But I d­ idn’t say it to Harvard when perhaps for reasons of strength and 323. ​To his January 23, 1936, letter to RF, Foster appended a page of aphorisms. 324. ​Foster’s wife, née van Denbergh. 325. ​See RF to Foster, December 18, 1935. 326. ​In his February 19, 1936, letter to RF, Foster writes: “[Foerster] seems to want a long poem, but says that a se­lection is permissible [for a thesis]. D ­ on’t you think my better bet is with a se­lection?” (DCL). 327. ​That is, a ­l ittle tanning.

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health I should have said it; so I simply ­won’t say it to you. I’ll come to see you, Woodbridge and McConaughy if you’ll wait till late April or early May.328 I can get the visit in when I go to Yale for my fellowship duty.329 I c­ an’t do a ­whole lot of hard work though. Suppose I give you two nights and one day. You’ll have to take care of me. I’ve had lots on me lately, and obligations to the public multiply. If I had thought beforehand that writing a few poems would lead to all this—­The proof that I ­d idn’t expect much lies in the fact that I ­d idn’t begin with an epic. We’d both love to see you and Jeanette,330 but I ­don’t promise you Elinor can come. She is sick to­n ight and has been terribly down all the last year. Forever yours Robert (arrived last night) first lecture (The Old Way to Be New) begins at 8 Wednesday night331

[To Earle Bernheimer. ALS. UVA.]

[56 Fayerweather Street] [Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] March 2 1936 Dear Mr Bernheimer: The Gold Hesperidee you have is a first.332 You may always send me anything you please for my autograph. My address for the next three months ­w ill be 56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass. 328. ​Homer Edwards Woodbridge, professor of En­glish at Wesleyan, and James Lukens McConaughy, president of Wesleyan. RF gave a talk ­t here on April 28, u ­ nder the title “On Not Getting Stuck in the Golden Mean.” 329. ​At Pierson College. 330. ​Snow’s wife. 331. ​March 4. 332. ​The first edition, first issue of RF’s “The Gold Hesperidee” was published by the Bibliophile Press (Cortland, New York) in 1935. In Bernheimer’s copy, RF inscribed the first stanza of the poem. U ­ nder the introduction, which contains the sentence, “This poem, one of Mr. Frost’s most amusing and whimsical, and one of his favorite pieces, was first printed, 1921, in the magazine Farm and Fireside,” RF inscribed the following note: “Said without authority: I never tell anyone which are my favorites.”

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­ fter that it ­w ill be Amherst Mass again—­and South Shaftsbury Vermont. I A have as many addresses as some rascals have aliases. That bibliography is being done by the Jones Library of Amherst Mass. Charles Green and Shubrick Clymer are at work on it. Carefulness makes them slow.333 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Lambert Davis. ALS. UVA.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass March 3 1936 Dear Mr. Lambert [sic]: Im glad of the outcome, sorry it cost you so much trou­ble. Look at all the typing I put you to. The manuscript seems letter-­perfect. Thanks for the correction “mote” for “moat.”334 If it is not too late, please make the third line of the last stanza in In Time of Cloudburst read with an “and” instead of “or.” I prob­ably wrote it wrong. My very best to Wilson.335 He knows my regard. The remuneration is as ­g rand as if it ­were in the Hemmingway [sic] sense of the word.336 See that you stay honest. Sincerely yours though in haste Robert Frost

333. ​As noted above, the book would not appear ­u ntil 1937. See also RF’s May 22, 1936, letter to Bernheimer. 334. ​Davis corrected line 27 of “Iris by Night”: “Its two mote-­swimming, many-­colored ends.” 335. ​James Southall Wilson. 336. ​Hemingway often used the word in its colloquial sense: $1,000—as in his short story “Fifty ­Grand” (1927).

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[To Harriet Monroe. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Chicago.]

[Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [early March, 1936] Dear Harriet Monroe: This is my set of minims.337 One of them, The Span of Life has already been published in a book.338 But I think I need it ­here to complete the autobiography. I am yours to do what you please with— Sincerely though in haste Robert Frost

[To Harriet Monroe. TG. Chicago.]

[Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [March 7, 1936] STOP PRESS SENDING SOMETHING LONGER TOO339 ALWAYS YOURS ROBERT FROST

337. ​Again, “Ten Mills,” a collection of very short, epigrammatical poems. The texts printed in Poetry differ in no substantial way from “Ten Mills” as collected in AFR (281–283), with ­these exceptions: in AFR, RF omitted “Assertive” and the couplet titled “Ring Around” (­later retitled “The Secret Sits” and collected in AWT [CPPP, 329]), and added “The Wright’s Biplane” and “One Guess.” RF also modified three titles: “Evil Tendencies Cancel” in AFR is merely “Tendencies Cancel” in Poetry, “Waspish” in AFR is “Untried,” and “The Hardship of Accounting,” simply “Money.” 338. ​The “Span of Life” first appeared in Untermeyer’s anthology, Rainbow in the Sky (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935). RF fails to note that another of the poems, “Assertive,” had also appeared in that volume ­u nder the title “By Myself.” 339. ​“At Woodward’s Gardens” (which led off the April issue of Poetry, with “Ten Mills” in its train).

Further Ranges and a Harvard Year: 1935– 1936   633

[To Harriet Monroe. The letter is written at the bottom of the second sheet of a fair copy of “At Woodward’s Gardens.” Dated from internal evidence (and in association with the foregoing tele­g ram). ALS. Chicago.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass [March 7, 1936] Dear H. M. I shouldnt think you would need to let me see the proof of this. I’ll trust your eye. It is supposed to have some bearing on such t­ hings as brain trusts and intellectuality.340 Its ulteriorities are not impor­tant however. It is a boyhood memory of San Francisco.341 Ever yours R—ff

[To Carol Frost. Date derived from postmark. ALS. UM.]

[56 Fayerweather Street] [Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [March 9, 1936] Dear Carol: Well h ­ ere we are in the m ­ iddle of the ­g reat world again and it is greater than ever and scared me more than ever as we came back to it. The flu we dreaded for me I hardly got at all (I had it a l­ ittle): but Elinor has had it hard. She has been in bed a week and ­w ill prob­ably have to stay t­ here most of the time for several days more. She had a temperature of more than a hundred for three days: and she looks pretty well exhausted. I wish to goodness we could see her ­really strong and happy. Every­body h ­ ere is thinking of her. She has had flowers and flowers sent to her.

340. ​Another slap at FDR’s famed “Brain Trust.” “At Woodward’s Gardens” is a poem about a child, two monkeys, and a magnifying glass (one of the monkeys is said to be “as if perhaps / Within a million years of an idea” [CPPP, 266–67]). 341. ​As noted above, Woodward’s Gardens was established by Robert B. Woodward (1824–1879) as a combination amusement park, museum, art gallery, zoo, and aquar­ium. Located in the Mission District of San Francisco, it operated from 1866 to 1891.

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Volume 3: 1929–1936

­ fter the unfriendliness of Florida I might say the coldness of Florida the A warmth of New ­England t­oward us has almost taken our breath away. I’ve never been welcomed anywhere with the noise and enthusiasm I met with at my opening lecture. You’d think I was some musical hero. I suppose the audience wanted to show their approval of having an American give the lectures ­after so many years of foreigners in the chair. I’ve usually been treated well, but never like this anywhere. P ­ eople usually keep such excitement for athletics and, as I say, for ­music. It was hard to understand. I wasnt at my best. I was too scared. They d­ idn’t care how I did. They w ­ ere out to make me glad I had come back to the college I ran away from thirty seven years ago.342 Of course I have been in and out around the place quite a lot in the years between, but not so anyone would notice it. It was very dramatic for a quiet life like mine. I thought you’d like to know. My books seem to spread wider all the time. When Elinor gets up I expect we ­w ill be a good deal out being entertained. I hope she can stand it. I finished the manuscript of my book, A Further Range, and left it with Henry Holt & Co the last day of February. It should be out April 20th.343 That means further excitement for the agèd adventurers. You’ll be back on the farm by then getting ready for the dormant spray.344 ­We’ll be thinking of you coming up the coast pretty soon now.345 How many days does it take? Three to New York? I suppose you might have bought your ticket clear to Boston and landed in our front yard. Tell Prescott not to rock the boat. Maybe the March winds ­w ill rock it for you. I hope Lillian doesnt get too sea sick. 342. ​See the notes to RF’s January 1, 1936, letter to Manthey-­Zorn. 343. ​In fact, the book would appear ­later; the Book of the Month Club soon chose it for special distribution in June, delaying the publication date by several weeks. AFR was the first book of poems so published by the club. Its intervention ensured that AFR would be issued in the largest printing any of RF’s book had yet been given: 50,000 copies (which, added to the l­imited and trade editions, brought the total number of copies issued in spring 1936 to 70,000). 344. ​A spray applied to fruit-­bearing trees during their dormant phase (­here, just prior to spring), so as to forestall or reduce damage done by pests. 345. ​By ship, not by train—­a means of transport Carol seems to have avoided for long-­ distance travel, as when, against his ­father’s advice, and to his ­father’s amazement, he drove from California to New E ­ ngland and back in 1933. In any case, Carol, his wife Lillian, and their son Prescott had spent the Christmas holidays, and much of the winter, with RF and Elinor in South Miami (Lesley, with her ­daughters Elinor and Lesley Lee, also joined them). They sailed north on March 21.

Further Ranges and a Harvard Year: 1935– 1936   635

We are having fine sunny weather, though fairly cold. It freezes hard at night and stays hard in the shade still. But in the sun the ­water runs everywhere from the big snow banks in the city streets. Winter got the better of them this year. The snow was never properly cleared away. Remember me to Orton Lowe, poor man. I ­can’t help contrasting the wretched university he is struggling in with the real universities I know up north. I’ll never forget the night you and I and he and President Ashe sat in the dark car and talked about what made a good college president. I pitied Ashe too.346 Affectionately Papa

[To Leonidas W. Payne. ALS. HRC.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass March 12 1936 Dear Payne: Dont be a damned fool. I burned both your checks. You ­can’t buy books from me. And the reason is, not ­because I hate you, but b­ ecause I like you. When I forget you let my right hand forget to throw stones.347 By the way I thought a year ago, a year and a half ago, when I got up from my second bad influenza, I had lost the use of my pitching arm. When I complained to the doctor all the encouragement I got was Well I must remember I would never be as young again as I once was. But I fooled him. I have come back. I dont expect ever to pitch in ­either of the big leagues again. But I feel pretty sure I ­w ill have a contract to sign from Terry Hut before the season opens.348 I am taking a cut in salary of course. Have you signed up yet?

346. ​Bowman Foster Ashe (1885–1952), president of the University of Miami, where Orton Lowe was professor of En­g lish. (The Frost ­family rented the h ­ ouse at 3670 Avocado Ave­nue, Coconut Grove, from Lowe.) 347. ​A conflation of Psalms 137:5 and John 8:7. 348. ​From 1903 to 1934, Terre Haute (Indiana) hosted a number of minor league professional teams for the Central League. During the ­Great Depression, however, professional baseball in the city collapsed and would not resume again ­u ntil 1948.

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You notice I am coming out with a new book for you to add to your collection. A Further Range is its name. You ­will have seen a good deal of it in magazines by the time it gets to you. Mercury ­w ill have one short poem, The Atlantic one long one, The V ­ irginia Quarterly three half-­lengths and Poetry a group of Ten Mills and a Dollar in their April issues just a month ahead of the book. The Yale Review too. I forgot that. It w ­ ill have one of the best—­The White-­tailed Hornet. This ­ought to prepare you for the shock of novelty. I am overdoing [it] h ­ ere at Harvard. But d­ on’t pity me. I come into t­ hese ­things for what I think them worth in friendship and reputation. Oh I mustnt forget I wanted to correct you in a m ­ atter. Somewhere I found you saying lately that my formula of twenty-­five years ago Common in experience and uncommon in writing meant that the subject should be common in experience but that it should be written up in an uncommon style. I believe that may be Munson’s m ­ istake.349 ­You’re not to blame for it. The subject should be common in experience and uncommon in books is a better way to put it. It should have happened to every­one but it should have occurred to no one before as material. That’s quite dif­fer­ent. I was ­silent as to the need of giving old themes a new setting of words. I am s­ ilent still. My lectures ­here have been t­ hese titles The Old Way to Be New, Vocal Imagination the Merger of Form and Content, Does Wisdom Signify, Poetry as Prowess and Feat of Words, Before the Beginning of a Poem, ­A fter the End of a Poem. In giving the second I’ve just found out what makes a piece of writing good (my latest opinion of anything): it is making the sentences talk to each other as two or more speakers do in drama. The dullness of writing is due to its being, much of it, too much like the too long monologues and soliloquies in drama. I tell you all this just to be sociable. You know by this time what a bad letter writer I am. That furnishes the background for the surprise of a spontaneous letter like this when you have about given up ever hearing from me again. Be good and set me a good example. Ever yours Robert Frost 349. ​In Robert Frost: A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense (New York: Gerorge Doran, 1927), Munson, on testimony from John Bartlett about his experience with RF at Pinkerton Acad­emy, asserts that “He [Frost] had formulated his central article for his private ars poetica—to give an uncommon expression to what was common in experience—­a nd he was not to deviate from that in his ­f uture course” (57).

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[To Henry Goddard Leach (1880–1970), American author, editor, and educator. ALS. Trinity.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass March 15 1936 Dear Mr Leach ­Here is the offending poem. It is already in book form and about to be published. It first appeared in The Saturday Review. I am sorry you are too late. I should have liked you to have it in The Forum.350 You w ­ ill see that it was only by restriction of meaning that it was narrowed down to fit the President. Changing the title from “To a Thinker” to “To a Thinker in Office” helped to do the business.351 As a ­matter of fact it was written three years ago and was aimed at the heads of our easy despairers of the republic and of parliamentary forms of government. I encounter too many such and my indignation mounts till it overflows in rhyme. I doubt if my native delicacy would have permitted me to use the figure of walking and rocking in connection with a person of the President’s personal infirmities.352 But I am willing to let it go as aimed at him. He must deserve it or ­people wouldnt be so quick to see him in it.—­Sometime soon I’ll hope to have something for you—­political or unpo­l iti­cal. Thank you for the kindness of both your letters. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

350. ​Leach edited the Forum from 1923 ­u ntil 1940. 351. ​The poem appeared as “To a Thinker in Office” in the Saturday Review for January 11, 1936. For AFR, RF returned to the ­earlier title: “To a Thinker.” 352. ​In 1921, at the age of thirty-­n ine, FDR suffered what at the time was thought to be an attack of polio, though some now speculate that it was Guillain-­Barré syndrome. What­ever the case, he was permanently para­lyzed from the waist down.

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[To Edward Merrill Root (1895–1973), American poet and educator. Date derived from postmark. ALS. ACL.]

[56 Fayerweather Street] [Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [March 16, 1936] Dear Merrill Root: ­Will you just hold on till we see how I stand with my publishers a­ fter my Further Range comes out? Then what can be done about you. You must be brought on to a good list. Think of Dresbach’s being with the Holts and you nowhere in par­tic­u ­lar.353 We c­ an’t stand it much longer and we w ­ on’t. One has to be careful in t­ hese ­matters and not go in for them too often in a lifetime. A l­ ittle awkwardness and I could hurt you with my help. But I have been very conservative. My publishers cant say I have been all over them with my friends and favorites. They must appreciate my dignity. I think I have some authority from my authorship. Anyway w ­ e’ll see. But give me plenty of time. If my book does fairly well my position ­w ill be stronger of course. What memories we share! Remember the class you first attracted my attention in354 and the night you came to me from Amy Lowell.355 And my visit to you at Earlham and yours to me at Ann Arbor.356 We’ve been friends twenty years. Stick to me twenty more and I’ll be eighty. Twenty more and I’ll be a hundred. That ­w ill be 1975. My God what a queer date to write. You see my queer address at pre­sent. I am giving lectures at the college I ran away from. My college, but more my f­ ather’s than mine. He was a good boy.357

353. ​Glenn Ward Dresbach (1889–1968) had been on the Holt list for over a de­cade (In Colors of the West had been published in 1922, The Enchanted Mesa in 1924); Holt brought out his Selected Poems in 1931. 354. ​Root had studied u ­ nder RF as a se­n ior at Amherst in 1917, RF’s first year ­t here. 355. ​Amy Lowell (1874–1925), American poet; an impor­tant friend and champion of RF in the late 1910s and early 1920s. 356. ​From 1920 ­u ntil his retirement in 1960, Root taught at Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana. 357. ​­There is likely some irony intended h ­ ere, but how much is difficult to gauge. RF’s ­father, William Prescott Frost Jr., had a well-­deserved reputation as a scapegrace—­but was also Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard.

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Where do you go in the summer? Perhaps I could have a look at you then. Write me your patience.358 Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Lawrance Roger Thompson (1906–1973), American scholar, librarian, and editor. Thompson would be named RF’s official biographer in 1939. ALS. UVA.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass March 26 36 Dear Mr Thompson: Can I do anything to help you? You are so very kind. I’d like to contribute the enclosed remnant of manuscript if I knew who would act as repository. ­Theres prob­ably no place for such a t­ hing at the university. Any way you may care to exibit [sic] it.359 It is a sample of what most of my note books get reduced to in the pro­cess of revision.360 You say you lack the first En­glish edition of A Boys ­Will. I won­der if Frederick Melcher of The Publishers Weekly wouldnt loan you his copy.361 Mine is not where I can get hold of it. Dont think I dont appreciate. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

358. ​In other words: “Write me confirming you ­w ill wait ­u ntil ­a fter AFR before I talk to Holt about you.” 359. ​In April of 1936, Thompson curated an exhibit of the poet’s work at the Olin Memorial Library at Wesleyan University. His accompanying descriptive cata­log, Robert Frost: A Chronological Survey, was published by the library. 360. ​RF provided six pages of drafts for “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” three still bound in a notebook and three loose sheets torn from it. 361. ​A copy of the edition was included in the exhibit, but it was apparently from another source since Melcher is not mentioned in the acknowl­edgments.

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[To Ethel Cooperman Karno (1909–1998), a teacher living in Chicago. ALS. UNH.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass March 28 1936 Dear Miss Karno: Your letter has been following me up and down the country. When you addressed it to me ­here at Harvard I was in Florida for the winter. The facts of my connection with Amherst and Michigan are as stated in Who’s Who. I havent the book by me, or I should copy them out for you. My memory is not very exact in m ­ atters of the kind. I have been a fellow of Pierson College at Yale University for the last two years 1934 to 1936. I am at Harvard as Charles Elliot [sic] Norton Lecturer in Poetry this year. I still keep my position as Professor of En­glish Lit­er­a­t ure at Amherst College. I had the Pulitzer prize for my New Hampshire in 1923 and for my Collected Poems in 1930. ­Will you look up the Amherst and Michigan dates for me? I should think p­ eople ­ought to know, I mean be told, that t­ here is a biography of me by Gorham B. Munson and t­ here is about to be a very thorough bibliography by Charles R. Green and Shubrick Clymer published by the Jones Library of Amherst Mass. The biography is not very much of a book. The bibliography is a masterly job. I appreciate your interest Sincerely yours Robert Frost My home addresses are South Shaftsbury Vt Amherst Mass.

[To Sidney Cox. Dated from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

[56 Fayerweather Street] [Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [March 29, 1936] Dear Sidney: It’s getting near my next book, book six, and I havent sent you the advance poems from it that I promised you. All sorts of ­things got through the line on

Further Ranges and a Harvard Year: 1935– 1936   641

me and s­ topped me in my tracks. You have to remember Im a f­ amily man, a professor, a farmer, a lecturer, a contributor to magazines, a publisher, author and a diner-­out when I am where they have dinners. I am also as I forgot to say a resorter northward for hayfever and southward for influenza. I think I keep my head pretty well in all this for such an old slow coach, but I dont always keep my promises, especially when it is more to my advantage to keep them than not to keep them. But I dont need to go into my analy­sis with you who know me better than you used to anyway. And now if I want to send you a poem in manuscript to make it mean anything it ­w ill have to be from my book ­after the next or from book seven. I always have something back when I go to press so I wont feel too cleaned out or drawn down. I once saw a spider like Robert the Bruce.362 Only my spider came half way down from the roof of a church and ­there he had to stop and secrete some more web before he could let him self down the rest of the way to the floor and the lesson he taught was dif­fer­ent from the lesson the spider taught Robert the Bruce. Dont attempt anymore than you have secretions for! And some to spare. I have ­really been on the point several times of setting down to write you out Departmental and The White-­tailed Hornet and Woodwards Gardens and A Rec­ord Stride but just then came a letter from an editor demanding manuscript and what was the use of sending you what you would so soon see in print? But on the other side of this I am ­going to copy out for you one it ­w ill give me some satisfaction to share with you b­ ecause it is fairly new and I want a friend in on it.363 It is not too new for that and it is not too old for that. It is in a betwixt-­and-­between state—­where I possibly enjoy a poem most.

362. ​Legend has it that Robert the Bruce (1274–1329), Scottish king and patriot, once observed a spider attempting (and initially failing) to spin a web from one side of a cave to another; this brought Bruce to the realization that only by perseverance would Scotland be freed from the stain of En­glish rule. 363. ​On the other side of the page is a reasonably fair manuscript copy of “Happiness Makes Up in Height for What it Lacks in Length,” ­later collected in AWT. The text differs in three re­spects from the published version. Line 16 in the manuscript here reads “The hours went clearly on,” while in AWT it is “The day swept clearly on”; h ­ ere, line twenty reads “Be all from one fair day,” which in AWT is “Be all from that one day”; and the order of lines 23 and 24, the last in the poem (“For change of solitude / We went from ­house to wood”) would be reversed in AWT.

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Volume 3: 1929–1936

I am working hard for me. I am spurting. For once in a way it can do me no harm. T ­ here seems always some new situation for the adventurer. My health seems to stand it. Elinor is my chief anxiety. She has to stay out of much that goes on—­not out of all. Have you any news? You must have seen a lot of ­water go by. Ever yours R. F.

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. Prince­ton.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass March 29 36 Dear Mr Thornton: ­Will you tend to the enclosed or explain it to me and tell me what to do about it?364 How about the poems that have gone into the other magazines? I am so vague about ­these formalities. ­Don’t forget I am to have a hundred copies of the special edition—­unless that carries the edition beyond the thousand mark. Let me know what the ­orders fi­nally come to.365 I returned the proof t­ oday. Ever yours Robert Frost

364. ​A letter from the Atlantic Monthly, apparently with a query about copyright acknowl­edgment for poems originally published in that journal and soon to appear in AFR. This was not the first time this journal had raised such concerns; see the February 24, 1936, letter to Untermeyer. 365. ​A total of 803 copies of the special edition of AFR w ­ ere sold (see Joseph Blumenthal, Robert Frost and His Printers [Austin, TX: W. Thomas Taylor, 1985]: 20).

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[To Richard Thornton. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Prince­ton.]

[56 Fayerweather Street] [Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [early April 1936] Dear Mr Thornton: Dont you think it might be good policy to let the enclosed Oysterman have a poem or at most two. We d­ on’t want to seem snooty and scornful of the day of small t­ hings.366 We w ­ ere once small t­ hings ourselves. I leave it to you to act on as you decide. Very impor­tant: I have been so well treated by the big magazines of late that I should look ungrateful if I made them no acknowledgement in the book. On some last page please say, Many of ­these poems have had the advantage of previous publication in The Yale Review, The Saturday Review, Poetry, Scribners Magazine, The Southern Quarterly, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Mercury, Books, Direction, and The New Frontier. The author wishes to make grateful acknowledgement.367 Be sure to get them all in. If you dont like the wording of my acknowledgement change it. Such formalities bother me a ­little. But they should be observed this time. Well we are pretty near ready to climb in over the ropes. Ever yours Robert Frost I am ­really in earnest about this young John Holmes.368 He is a good poet and he is a splendid person in literary society. You must have his first book and buckle him to you.369 He is a favorite young teacher at Tufts and something

366. ​Zechariah 4:10: “For who hath despised the day of small ­t hings?” We have been unable to identify “the Oysterman.” 367. ​The acknowl­edgments to AFR follow RF’s instructions to the letter, except they appear at the front of the volume, not the end, and Southern Quarterly is corrected to ­Virginia Quarterly Review. 368. ​John Holmes (1904–1962), American poet and teacher at Tufts University. Holmes had published an account of RF’s Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in the Boston Eve­ning Transcript. It was subsequently reprinted in The Recognition of Robert Frost, ed. Richard Thornton (New York: Holt, 1937), as “Harvard: Robert Frost and the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures” (114–119). 369. ​Holmes’s second volume of poetry, Address to the Living, would be published by Henry Holt in 1937. The book jacket included one of the few “blurbs” RF ever gave: “­Here are poems again, and it is gratifying to find that they hold their own, even gain, thus assembled from the magazines. They certainly put together into a new and attractive poet.”

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on The Transcript among other ­things. I should inveigle a man like that to make himself at home in my office. [To Arnold Oscar Wolfers (1892–1968), a Swiss-­American po­liti­cal scientist. In 1936, he was Master of Pierson College and professor of international politics at Yale. Draft of a tele­g ram, composed at the foot of a letter from Wolfers. TG-­unsigned. DCL.] [56 Fayerweather Street] [Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [April 13, 1936] Tele­g ram April 13 ’36 Could leave ­here at noon Thursday the 23rd and have Thursday eve­n ing Friday and Saturday ­there if entirely agreeable to you.370 Suggested subject number one: Could college be made as good for the literary as for the scholarly? No2: How much is in books? No3: Poetry and Propaganda. No4: anything ­else you think of. [To Joseph Blumenthal. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. ACL.]

[56 Fayerweather Street] [Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [mid-­April, 1936] Space between stanzas—­ page 16 Semicolon   "  20 Commas page 25 Change word page 35 Comma page 36 Type or spacing of letters page 40 Word page 81371 370. ​In his April 9 letter of invitation, typed on Yale University / Pierson College letterhead, Wolfers writes: “I do hope that you received my letter from Florida in which I suggested that the most con­ve­n ient days for us would be from April 22 ­u ntil such time as you go to Wesleyan” (held at DCL). In late 1933, RF had been named Associate Fellow of Pierson College, for a term of five years. RF was in residence at Wesleyan University from April  26 to April  28 (on the latter date he spoke “On Not Getting Stuck in the Golden Mean”). His visit to Wesleyan coincided with an exhibition, ­t here, of his books. 371. ​Corrections for the proofs of AFR.

Further Ranges and a Harvard Year: 1935– 1936   645

Dear Mr Blumenthal ­These are some t­ hings I have noticed besides what you have marked for correction. My but I admire the two title pages.372 I seem to be in luck and in ­favor. All set for the autographing. Ever yours R. F. Did you know Howard Jones is coming to a chair at Harvard.373

[To Joseph Blumenthal. ALS. ACL.]

April 21 1936 Dear Mr Blumenthal: The sheets have just gone back to you by Railway Express—­a ll but fifty or so autographed. The fifty or so I want bound in for my own special use—­that is if it is all right with you. My ink was Higgins India Ink as ordered. I became a stranger to myself with the repetition of my name: and now feel like the president of a bank none too solvent. Never mind. I observe the customs of my country. Do you want to hear my last wishes before undergoing the said transformation? The chief one is that I may have No 1 of the special edition for Elinor. Then if it is not too selfish I should like Nos 6, 8, 10, 12, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40 and 42 of the first hundred for my ­children and near friends.374 ­A fter that about fifteen anywhere from each hundred till I total a hundred. I should like as many as pos­si­ble of mine left for me to autograph when I pre­sent

372. ​The title pages for the ­limited and trade editions of AFR differed slightly. The former featured “Book Six” beneath the title and RF’s name in the dark red color that matched the cloth binding; the latter simply placed “Book Six” in black, regular roman type, not italics, at the top. 373. ​On April  15, 1936, Harvard formally announced the appointment of Howard Mumford Jones as professor of En­glish. 374. ​We cannot be sure, but presumably number 6 went to RF’s grand­daughter Elinor Francis (Lesley’s first ­daughter; born on May 11, 1929); number 8 to his grand­son John “Jack” Cone Jr. (­Irma’s son; born on October 15, 1927); number 12 to William Prescott Frost (Carol’s son; born on October 15, 1924); number 30 to Lillian Labatt (Carol’s wife; born on November 13, 1906, and soon to be thirty); number 34 to Carol (born on May 27, 1902); and number 36 (perhaps) to Lesley (born on April 28, 1899 [though she would be thirty-­seven by the time the book reached the stores]). The rest we cannot account for.

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them, so I can get in a word extra. Hope this is all clear. Now, for publication! Be good and we ­w ill be lucky. Ever yours R. Frost

[To W. Phillips Palmer (1915–2000), in 1936 a student at Middlebury College. Unsigned drafts of a TG. DCL.]

[56 Fayerweather Street] [Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa April 21, 1936] Dear Phelps [sic]:375 I must be misquoted. I should be entering an entirely new field of judgment for me if I made a statement like that. It sounds not the least like me in form or content. When am I supposed to have got interested in the gains and losses of ­g reat universities. 375. ​RF responds to a tele­g ram from Palmer: “ARE YOU MISQUOTED AS HAVING SAID THAT BERNARD DEVOTO IS ONE OF THE GREATEST LOSSES TO HARVARD THAT THAT INSTITUTION HAS EVER SUSTAINED REPLY VIA WESTERN UNION COLLECT” (tele­gram held at DCL). The tele­gram and RF’s reply to it—­ presumably ­these are drafts for the requested wire—­are curious documents: a) the reader may won­der why an undergraduate at Middlebury would wire RF regarding the ­matter ­under discussion, and ask for a reply by wire collect—as if the business w ­ ere uncommonly urgent; b) although RF’s spelling is sometimes vagrant, he does not typically make mistakes with names so badly as he does ­here, particularly when he has a tele­g ram in hand (this appears to be a slip of the pen, perhaps made with William Lyon Phelps in mind); and c) the fragments start out as RF’s letters typically do but end with such clipped sentence fragments as are typical of tele­g rams. But the exchange makes sense. Palmer was, it seems, an ambitious and cocksure young man: he was a star student, the winner of scholarships and essay contests, and active in the theatrical and debating clubs at Middlebury (Palmer’s hometown newspaper, the Brattleboro Reformer, ran more than thirty items about him during his time at Middlebury). Bernard DeVoto lectured at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference throughout the 1930s and would be awarded an honorary degree by Middlebury College in June 1937 (in part through RF’s friendly intervention with its president, Paul Dwight Moody). Of course, Palmer may well have met RF when he lectured at Bread Loaf in 1935. In any case, the fate of DeVoto at Harvard (his alma mater) was the subject of considerable gossip in literary and academic circles: he hoped to land a tenured appointment ­t here but was denied one on the grounds that he lacked a PhD.

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I must be misquoted. Sounds not the least like me in form or content. Some one must be trying to set me up in a new pretentiousness. No universitys [sic] gains or losses mean anything to me. Aware of saying I hoped to see the day Harvard would call DeVoto back he is376 such a ­g reat writer and is so fond of the place.

[To James Hayford. ALS. ACL.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass May 6 1936 Dear Hayford: Your good news reached me in a formal announcement from Lyndonville.377 I’m happy for you both. I wish I could see you some time pretty soon. ­There’s nothing in your fellowship to keep us apart in­def­initely.378 I merely set my mind on having you left very much to yourself for a year anyway, and I particularly ­d idn’t want your first visit to be at Amherst where it might seem like coming in to answer for yourself. Remember the point is that the onus of answerability i­sn’t on you at all, but is entirely on the fellowship. I shouldnt object to your telling me now what you think of the fellowship—­that is if you can treat it briefly and without being personal. Where are you g­ oing to start your married life? I s­ hall want to send you my latest book if you w ­ ill take it to your heart and ­house­hold. This ­w ill be my sixth and I find it a more exciting event than you would perhaps think. It

376. ​To preserve the rough-­d raft character of the document, we make an exception to our rule not to produce type facsimiles of letters ­here. 377. ​Of Hayford’s marriage to Helen J. Emerson, a teacher and resident of Lyndonville, Vermont. 378. ​See also RF to Hayford, June 29, 1935. RF had made it a condition of the fellowship (the “desert fellowship,” as he called it) that the awardee seclude himself in a small town and do nothing but write poetry. None of this poetry was to be published, and the recipient was enjoined ­u nder no circumstances to attend gradu­ate school. ­Needless to say, RF did not intend any of this seriously, but the fellowship was remunerative ($1,000), and Hayford young, so anxiety on the latter’s part was perhaps understandable. See YT, 700.

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c­ an’t compare with the publication of my first book of course any more than the publication of all my books together can compare with getting married. Faithfully your friend Robert Frost

[To Loring Holmes Dodd. ALS. BU.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass May 8 1936 Dear Loring Dodd If you are old and tottery, what must I be? Beyond good and evil. So dont try to appeal for sympathy to anything lofty left in my nature. Stow your sob-­stuff. Your dog must be getting older accordingly than you are anyway. Why not rest your case on the dog, of whose charming ways I can claim to have an extensive book knowledge. He is a very personal dog and [I] ­shall want to see him again before he gets too much older than he was when I saw him last.379 ­Will you say about when you would like me to visit you in November?380 I’m all confusion now. Write again in September when I have composed myself and a few poems. Yours ever Robert Frost

379. ​Possibly in March 1931, during an ­earlier visit to Clark University, where Dodd taught. See RF to Dodd, March 2, 1931. 380. ​We’ve found no evidence of a visit to Clark in 1936; likely RF cancelled (as he cancelled a number of events in the late summer and fall of the year) owing to poor health.

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[To Chester Noyes Greenough (1874–1938), American scholar and administrator. ALS. Vassar.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass May 8 1936 Dear Mr Greenough: We both want to thank both of you for your thoughtfulness and kindness.381 You warm the prospect for us. We are promised to you then to bother with—­ yours for the Tercentenary.382 I hope to have a glimpse of your spring garden before we go back to the farm. Yours for more than the Tercentenary Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass May 8 1936 Dear Louis: Just a word about the outcome. I know you w ­ ere prepared not to mind it.383 So that if you do mind it you dont mind it so much. I hate this being automatically entered for prizes by the mere act of publication. I have suffered ner­ vous collapse in my time from the strain of conscious competition and learned from it how to pretend at least that I am below or above it for the rest of my life. And I’m a good stout pretender when I set out to be. Nobody can catch me setting my heart on any rewards in this world. I’d as soon be caught breaking and entering. My days among the dead are passed. The only comparison I suffer gladly would be with them by them. Conflicting claims and the clamor that goes with t­ hese among our contempories [sic] are next to 381. ​Greenough was married to Ruth Hornblower Greenough Churchill (1887–1970). 382. ​At Harvard. 383. ​Failure to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. See also RF to Untermeyer, February 24, 1936.

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nothing to me. Next to nothing. I know too well the personal politics. So do you. We have our farms and our poems to cultivate. I dont feel I made too big a hit with the dignitaries and authorities. ­There was a moment in March when I thought perhaps they ­were giving me back my ­father’s Harvard. But prob­ably I was fooling myself. I’m imperfectly academic and no amount of association with the academic w ­ ill make me perfect. It’s too bad for I like the academic in my way, and up to a certain point the academic likes me. Its patronage proves as much. I may be wrong in my suspicion that I havent pleased Harvard as much as I have the encompassing barbarians. My w ­ hole impression may have come from the Pound-­Elliot-[sic] Richards gang in Elliot [sic] House ­here.384 I had a ­really dreadful letter of abuse from Pound in which he complains of my cheap witticisms at his expense.385 I may have to take him across my page like this: It is good to be back in communication with you on the old terms. My contribution was the witticisms: yours the shitticisms. Remember how you always used to carry toilet paper in your pocket instead of handkerchief or napkin to wipe your mouth with when you got through? Etcetera.—­I suspect the same dirty sycophant of having reported me to him as reported me to Wallace Stevens.386 I think its Mattison [sic].387 Never mind. Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.388 Funny I should have been on the same program (my first ­here) with Coffin and Matthuson [sic]. Coffin is a peculiar case.389 He has poetry in him but too profuse so far. We might take some comfort in his having got the prize. He

384. ​Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and I. A. Richards.. 385. ​Writing from Rapallo, Italy, Pound’s brief, undated ­later speaks to the two poets’ long-­standing aesthetic differences: “What you dont know, kepp [sic] your trap shut, and when you do know, dont lie to the young. You w ­ ere always dominated by envy, but you shdn’t [sic] let it get the better of you on the edge of the grave. I recognized your limitations [as] a writer, but had hitherto considered you a man, not a shit” (letter now held at DCL). Word of something he’d said of Pound in the Norton Lectures had reached Rapallo. 386. ​See RF to Stevens, July 28, 1935. 387. ​Harvard literary critic Francis Otto Matthiessen, an early supporter of T. S. Eliot and high modernism, was the first se­n ior tutor at Eliot House, an undergraduate residential ­house named a­ fter Charles William Eliot (president of Harvard from 1869 to 1909, and a distant relative of T. S. Eliot). 388. ​See John Milton’s sonnet, “To Oliver ­Cromwell”: “peace hath her victories / No less than ­t hose of war.” 389. ​Robert P. Tristram Coffin.

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gets it I must think, for promise as Joseph Auslander’s wife got it.390 It is a policy decision. He ­w ill go further than Joseph Auslander’s wife. Which brings me round to your Anthology. Do you want to do something to please me and make me happier on your account? Good p­ eople fail to understand your reason for that sheet of rejected poets in the book.391 Could you leave it out of the next edition or printing or binding? Would you if you could? In my opinion it is bad all round. Honestly. I’m no fool about t­ hese ­things. You must be back at the farm. Me for Vermont soon. Ever yours Robert

[To Cornelius Weygandt. The letter concerns the logistics and accommodations for RF’s visit to the University of Pennsylvania to receive an honorary LHD on June 10. Date derived from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

56 Fayerweather St Cambridge Mass [May 8, 1936] Dear Weygandt I suppose I have only myself to blame for the difficulty that puts me into. Every­thing would have been all right if I had written promptly to accept your invitation to stay with you. Then you could have told Gates392 and that would have been all ­there was to it. Why in the world didnt you say it was settled I was coming to you? Now I dont know what to do. A Presidents wish is a command, I take it. Couldnt I be divided between you? I s­ hall barely get t­ here for the 10th from another degree I ­shall be getting at Elinor’s old college, St Lawrence, on the

390. ​Audrey Wurdemann (1911–1960) was, at 24, the youn­gest person to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (in 1925) for Bright Ambush. She was married to poet, novelist, and anthologist Joseph Auslander (1897–1965), who taught at Columbia and, in 1937, became the first poetry con­sul­tant to the Library of Congress. 391. ​In the sixth edition of Modern American Poetry, Untermeyer appended a list of poets who appeared in previous editions but had been omitted to make room for poets he deemed more significant. He heeded RF’s advice. 392. ​Thomas Sovereign Gates (1873–1948) was president of the University of Pennsylvania from 1930 to 1944.

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8th. I might go to Gates on the eve­n ing of the 9th when I get to town and when the exercises are over have a night with you if you are not setting right off for New Hampshire. Prob­ably if I stay with Gates he would have you in for any dinner t­ here might be. I dont ­really know how to decide. We want to wring as much honor out of the degree as t­ here is in it—­dont we? My experience is that Presidents dont always have the poet much on their minds on such occasions. Gates must be a ­little poetical. What? We have to consider him in the ­matter—­and ­whether we ­shall encourage him so ­there is my honor and his encouragement. ­Those are not all impor­tant but they ­ought to count a trifle in the summing up. Cant you and Mrs Weygandt think of some compromise that ­w ill ease me out of the quandary? I have been through my six lectures h ­ ere. I dont feel sure they have been a success with the authorities. I had too big a popu­lar success to please the dignitaries I’m afraid. I ­shall be able to judge better ­later when I have said goodbye to it all. T ­ here is a strong Pound-­Elliot [sic] gang in what is called Eliot House. I. A. Richards has left a strong impression. The t­ hing I am sure they found to say in deprecation of my audiences was that I had every­body in them old ­women, c­ hildren, soldiers in kaki [sic] and professors from the wrong h ­ ouses and the wrong departments. Many ­were turned away from all the lectures (so to call them) most of all the last night when they thronged the fire-­escapes. You might have thought poetry was having its honor. But ­there was much to be said against me I know. I was too damned informal. And the crowd amounted to a mob.393 I’m suffering all the misgivings of afterthought. Let me know what I ­ought to do about Gates. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton. Draft of a tele­g ram, penciled in on the back of a tele­g ram from Thornton to RF. Date derived from internal evidence. TG-­unsigned. DCL.]

[56 Fayerweather Street] [Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [May 13, 1936] Richard Thornton Stafford H ­ otel London 393. ​Harvard administrators greatly underestimated RF’s popu­lar appeal as a speaker, as more than 1,000 p­ eople attended each Norton lecture.

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Would Gollancz print or take sheets. Must be convinced he very much wants book. ­Doesn’t Cape want it. Inclined to withdraw both books.394

[To Louis Untermeyer. ALS. LoC.]

Amherst [Mas­sa­chu­setts] May 31 1936 Dear Louis To me that seems the best ­thing you ever wrote about anybody.395 I had figured that you could go no further in my description. But I was wrong. I must say I indulged myself to the full in your words. And it ­wasn’t just the praise I enjoyed: it was even more the revelation and the beauty of the prose. I may not deserve it; nevertheless I can take it. You are back where you longed to be.396 I have got as far back as Amherst and my single Amherst acre. It w ­ ill be about a month before I get to the freedom of my one hundred and fifty Vermont acres. I am homesick and sick in bed ­today. A temperature bug got me in the nose. I’m not ­going to write you much. 394. ​In the tele­g ram to which RF replies (and on the back of which he writes), Thornton says: “GOLLANCZ OFFERS YOU TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS ADVANCE FURTHER RANGE PLEASE CABLE CONFIRMATION IF AGREEABLE” (DCL). But at issue, as RF indicates, is the fate of two books, not one: the British editions of AFR and of RF’s new Selected Poems (1936). Both went not to Victor Gollancz but—as RF seems to have preferred— to Jonathan Cape, AFR in 1937 and Selected Poems in 1936 (with introductory essays by W. H. Auden, C. Day Lewis, Paul Engle, and Edwin Muir; see RF to DeVoto, November 20, 1936). 395. ​RF apparently refers to a draft of Untermeyer’s review of AFR, which would not appear ­until September 1936—­under the title “Robert Frost: Revisionist”—in the American Mercury. In RFLU, Untermeyer mistakenly writes (in a footnote): “A review of A Further Range, which had just been published in The Saturday Review of Lit­er­a­ture” (278)—­either from a failure in memory, or to conceal the fact that he’d sent a poet he reviewed a draft of that review. In any case, the review begins: “With each new book, Robert Frost continues to establish himself as the most rewarding and likewise the most richly integrated poet of his generation. He has no con­temporary rival in Amer­i­ca, and only William Butler Yeats can challenge his pre-­eminence as the most distinguished poet writing in En­glish ­today” (American Mercury [September 1936]): 123–124. L ­ ater, Untermeyer borrows text used in his headnote to the poems by RF printed in the sixth edition of Modern American Poetry: “I would call him a revisionist. It is the power not only to restate but to revise too easily accepted statements which is one of his g­ reat abilities, and it has been overlooked to a surprising degree” (124). See also RF’s July 28, 1936, letter to Untermeyer. 396. ​Stony W ­ ater, Untermeyer’s farm in the Adirondacks.

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The anthology books are at South Shaftsbury, thanks. Y ­ ou’re to have one of the Spiral Press specials from me and one of the regular firsts if it would mean anything to you. My copies have been held up at Holts till I should ­settle down at an address. I choose to be called a Revisionist. Thanks for a new nickname. Im a l­ittle keyed up with fever and publication. Remember me rather excitedly to Esther Larry and Joseph. And have some for yourself. R.

[To Wilbur Chapman Goodson (1909–1988), a poultryman then living in Tamworth, New Hampshire. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass June 5 1936 Dear Mr Goodson: Any one who can honestly say he went to school to Bill Snow,397 lives in New Hampshire, has thirty thousand chickens to take care of, and likes my Blue Ribbon at Amesbury,398 can have more than my autograph; he can have a book and autograph. I am sending you a fresh copy.399 Give the one you have to someone ­else. Good luck with your broods. Sincerely yours Robert Frost 397. ​Wilbert “Bill” Snow, professor of En­glish at Wesleyan University. Goodson majored in En­glish ­t here (class of 1933) and was a member of the “Scrawlers Club.” In 1940, Goodson published a volume of poetry titled Dark ­Music (Portland, ME: Falmouth), with a preface by Snow. 398. ​Collected in AFR; the poem is based on RF’s friend from his own days as a chicken farmer: John Hall. Goodson writes, in the letter to which this is a reply: “keeping thirty-­ thousand chickens gives me just about time enough to write a seasonal letter. And speaking of chickens, may I say that A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury is almost too good to be true” (letter held at DCL). 399. ​Of AFR. Goodson writes, in the letter to which RF replies: “It was while I was a freshman that Bill Snow first got me interested in collecting a library. . . . ​I am proud of my books, and especially proud of my signed copies. I have your West ­Running Brook, and Collected Poems signed by you at Wesleyan, and I have before me an unsigned copy of A Further Range” (DCL). Goodson and RF exchanged a number of letters over the ensuing de­cades.

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[To Cyril Clemens. ALS. BPL.]

Amherst Mass June 19 1936 Dear Mr Clemens: Strangely enough I had just been reciting Stephen Dowling Botts [sic] when you spoke of him in your letter.400 Your picture of Housman deep in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes might help if I was d­ oing Housmans life.401 (I won­der who started that scandal.402) But I’m not d­ oing anybodys life. I’m largely living my own. I only wish the summers w ­ ere longer and I would set them an example of laziness that would stand as a rec­ord till the next Olympics.403 You ask about the first publishers of A Boys W ­ ill.404 Does that mean you are looking for anything of mine for your library. Name anything you want and I send it, though I have to brace up and make the effort. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

400. ​A letter soliciting a tribute to A. E. Housman, who died on April 20, 1936. Mark Twain’s “Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec’d” is a mawkish poem attributed to (the deceased) Emmeline Grangerford in chapter 17 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; and as Huck himself says of it: “If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, ­t here ­a in’t no telling what she could a done by and by.” One suspects a joke h ­ ere at Housman’s expense: his poetry, like Emmeline Grangerford’s, had a decidedly mortuary cast. 401. ​Published by Boni and Liverwright in 1925, Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady became a best seller. One of several novels to chronicle the Jazz Age, the book was loosely based on the life of H. L. Mencken. It was ­later adapted for the stage and for the screen. 402. ​R F half-­suspected Louis Untermeyer: see RF to Untermeyer, July  3, 1936; and RFLU, 279, where Untermeyer explains how he had put Clemens on to badgering RF for a tribute to Housman. 403. ​Not very far distant: the 1936 Summer Olympics (held in Berlin) would open on August 1. 404. ​David Nutt and Com­pany, from which it had cost RF considerable time and effort to extricate himself.

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[To Curtis Hidden Page (1870–1946), American educator, translator, and poet. Page was a professor of En­glish lit­er­a­ture at Dartmouth from 1911 u­ ntil 1946. ALS. Berkeley.]

Amherst [Mas­sa­chu­setts] June 25 1936 My dear Page: Absolutely no charge for autographing for you. You are of course welcome to anything DeLacey sells you.405 Sorry but I have no more book plates at the moment. I must have some more printed.406 I was glad you liked Book Six. Long may we both live to write further. In haste in the m ­ iddle of packing to go to South Shaftsbury in a few days. Yours always Robert Frost

[To Shirley Spencer (1892–1971?), American columnist and graphologist. ALS. BU.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont July 1 1936 My dear Miss Spencer:407 I must thank you for giving me such a good character. I dont know what I should have done at my time of life if you had given me a bad one: possibly bought a new pen, changed from a right to a left hand writer, or ­stopped writing. The nicest detail was what you got out of my T-­bar. ­There’s reason in all ­t hings. You make me realize how much reason ­t here can be in the analy­sis of handwriting.408 Sincerely yours Robert Frost 405. ​James A. DeLacey (1887–1959), a former librarian at Yale, had purchased the Dunster House Bookshop in Cambridge in 1930. 406. ​See RF to Lankes, September 12, 1935. 407. ​“Shirley Spencer” is almost certainly a nom de plume; see the entry for her in the biographical glossary. 408. ​The following item ran in the Fort Lauderdale News on February 21, 1936: “Miss Shirley Spencer, graphologist and feature writer on a New York newspaper, left t­oday. Enroute to the north she w ­ ill visit many southern newspapers. Miss Spencer has been the guest of friends ­here for the last three weeks. While h ­ ere she interviewed a number

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[To Alice Corbin Henderson (1881–1949), American poet and editor. ALS. Texas.]

Amherst Mass July 1 1936 Dear Alice Corbin: For what you found to say to us losers about our lost poet I want you to have the two books I am sending.409 But ­there is more in it than that. I have always liked your poetry and enjoyed being poets with you in our times. Always yours Robert Frost

[To Wade Van Dore. Date derived from postmark. ALS. BU.]

Next address South Shaftsbury Vt [Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [July 1, 1936] Dear Wade: Send along the poems or the poem and I ­w ill read it with hope and sympathy.410 But I must caution you in advance as I have cautioned you at other times against putting your dependence on poetry to get you out of your hole and on your feet. If ­there is no living at ­Grand Marais by farming fishing and care-­

of famous visitors in the Miami area, among them Robert Frost, Hervey Allen, Padraic Colum, Sophie Tucker, John Golden and Donald Macmillan.” Spencer wrote a column on handwriting analy­sis for the New York Daily News. In her column for May 31, 1936, she published a small sample of RF’s handwriting and her analy­sis of it: “In the angular, square-­cut letter formations one can see the evidence of his keen mind, his rich, earthy humor and g­ reat simplicity. The strokes are forceful, blunt, undecorated and without artificiality. The general style of the writing is rugged, like the countryside where his ­family has lived for eight generations. New E ­ ngland humor is not always appreciated by the sophisticated, but the more solemn the face, the more wary one should be. ­There is warning enough of this traditional sly wit in Mr. Frost’s t-­bars.” 409. ​“Our lost poet”: Marjorie Frost Fraser, who died on May 2, 1934. Joseph Blumenthal’s Spiral Press had just printed a se­lection of her poems (chosen by RF and Elinor, and titled Franconia) for private distribution. 410. ​Van Dore was at work on a long narrative poem, “Peter Goes to Work.”

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taking, you cant stay t­here.411 Your wife and child have to be considered. When I heard that they w ­ ere left alone away off up t­ here with no friends and neighbors while you ­were in Detroit for money, I about despaired of your judgement. That is no arrangement to build poems on. I lose interest in poems out of such misery. I thought you ­were ­going to have enough cash for care-­ taking to make it reasonably safe for you in the kind of surroundings you could both enjoy. It begins to look definitely as if your only honorable way was in Detroit ­doing the only t­ hing you can call your trade namely setting out gardens.412 That always seemed to me a fine trade and it has the double advantage for you of being seasonal and paying well in season. It ­ought to be picking up again now that Detroit is coming out of its slump.413 Anyway it affords you a toe hold for a new start where Edrie might get a start again too and where she can have the social support of a few friends. I c­ an’t bear to think of your making a wife too miserable for any poetry you may write. Poetry has to be horribly good to justify the author in much of any cruelty to ­women. You know what I think in t­ hese ­matters. I’m terribly disappointed in the ­Grand Marais you described so romantically. I guess you w ­ ill have to get down to common sense if you want to give me any plea­sure in my old age. I’ve been your indulgent friend through a good deal. Now indulge me a ­little in the display of some be­hav­ior I can approve of with a ­whole heart. The ­t hing to do with the poem is to send it to Coward McCann with just enough of a letter to let them know you have been seriously at work on it

411. ​Van Dore, his wife Edrie, and their eighteen-­month-­old son Peter had been living near ­Grand Marais, a fishing village on the north shore of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (along Lake Superior). An acquaintance of Van Dore’s, Rupert Bell (a successful l­ awyer in Detroit), had purchased a large tract of land at G ­ rand Marais, and, in the fall of 1935, Van Dore agreed to be hired man and caretaker. The site was isolated, and lay two miles outside the main village, which was itself quite small. 412. ​Concerns about money led Van Dore to venture down to Detroit in the spring to work as a gardener, while leaving Edrie and their son ­behind in tiny G ­ rand Marais, with no friends nearby. In letters to RF and Elinor, Edrie had spoken of her loneliness. See Van Dore, The Life of the Hired Man (224–227). 413. ​Michigan had fared worse than the nation as a w ­ hole during the early years of the ­Great Depression, with an unemployment rate of 34% from 1930 to 1933. Reor­ga­n i­za­t ion of state relief efforts in the mid-1930s ameliorated the distress. Mayor Frank Couzens was especially effective in reviving Detroit in his second term (1934–1938), during which he obtained federal funds for local public works proj­ects.

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ever since your first book—­Far Lake.414 Then, if they d­ on’t want it, try it on Macmillan with an even briefer note to the same effect and perhaps the request that they might show it to Genevieve Taggart [sic] who you understand is one of their readers. I can think of no pressure I have to put on in your behalf anywhere. Thats why I hate to have you depend on poetry for your life. I never let myself get caught in that fix. Affectionately R. F.

[To Haniel Clark Long (1888–1956), American poet, novelist, educator, and publisher. ALS. UCLA.]

Amherst Mass July 2 1936 Dear Haniel Long: The book I send isnt offered as payment for what I got out of your Pittsburg [sic].415 I liked that way of ­handling a city. I’ve been meaning to do San Francisco in some kind of verse some day. I may never try it now, for fear of seeming to steal from you. You made a remarkably in­ter­est­ing ­thing of it. I should have written sooner to say so. Quite apart from any obligation you may have put me u ­ nder ­there, I wanted you to have my latest book in memory of the day we inhabited a Cliff Dwelling together.416 Ever yours Robert Frost

414. ​Published by Coward-­McCann in 1930. 415. ​Long’s Pittsburgh Memoranda (1935) is a narrative prose poem that integrates an objective history of the city with fictional accounts of representative inhabitants. 416. ​Long may have accompanied RF to a Pueblo cliff dwelling site during RF’s 1935 visit to the Santa Fe home of their mutual friend Witter Bynner. See the notes to RF’s September 27, 1935, letter to Elliott.

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[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 3, 1936] Dear Louis I have been getting all sorts of wangle from this source.417 Clemens says he heard I was ­doing House­mans [sic] biography. I’ll bet you gave him a fill. He says one of House­man’s favorite poems was Stephen Dowling Botts [sic], which he knew by heart. He says House­man doted on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. He says House­man rated my poetry with t­ hese two t­ hings. So I am f­ree to bring in a ­l ittle advertising, if I am ­doing the biography. A funny ­t hing Lesley has just run into. An En­g lish portrait woodcarver named Miller418 whom she has been seeing goes round spreading the suspicion House­man never wrote a word of his poetry. He says he cant see how Lawrence [sic] House­man can keep the secret much longer. He positively knows Lawrence House­man knows. I must say the identicalness of the Last Poems and A Shropshire Lad of thirty years before made me suspicious.419 Nobody can stay in exactly the same spot even in handwriting for a lifetime. All t­ hose poems ­were out of one young person utterly unlike the House­man we knew as scholar and autor420 of the shallow essay on poetry.421 Prob­ably

417. ​Cyril Clemens. As we noted above, he had solicited from Untermeyer and RF statements (or lines of verse) in tribute to En­glish poet and classicist A. E. Housman (see RF to Clemens, June 19, 1936). Untermeyer had sent the letter he received from Clemens to RF, who returned it herewith with the note: “If I ­d idn’t return this at once it was just to tease you. I see its invaluability.” 418. ​Likely the Scottish woodcarver Alec Miller (1879–1961) who’d carved a bust of Housman’s younger ­brother Laurence Housman (1865–1959), an En­glish playwright and illustrator. Miller had relocated to the United States in 1929. 419. ​ Last Poems was published si­mul­ta­neously in 1922 in ­England and the United States by Grant Richards and Henry Holt and Com­pany, respectively. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad was first published by Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co. in London in 1896. 420. ​Perhaps a slip of the pen, but “autor” is also the Anglo-­Norman spelling of the word (used, as it happens, in Piers Plowman, a book RF often said inspired him merely by its title). ­Here, RF may fetch it in in a mock scholarly way. 421. ​ T he Name and Nature of Poetry, which Housman first delivered as Cambridge University Leslie Stephen Lecturer on May 9, 1933. In it, Housman says: “I think that to transfuse emotion—­not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader’s sense a vibration

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you have heard this doubt. Why not rhyme it and offer it to Clemens as your tribute and mine? R.

[To Susan Priscilla Holmes (1885–1972). Dated from postmark. ALS. DCL.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 6, 1936] My dear Miss Holmes: You a­ ren’t the l­ittle Susie Holmes who lived by the river dam422in South Lawrence fifty years ago?423 Why we are old friends if you are the girl I think you are. And do you mean to say I have been failing to return you poems you submitted with a stamped self-­addressed envelope? That’s b­ ecause I am not a constituted editor with machinery and assistants for taking care of manuscript. I ­ought to be ashamed of myself. But r­ eally I havent been able to afford so much as a single or married secretary as yet. I just have to manage with my mail as best I can alone. Let me tell you what my way is however mistaken. I read all letters at once when they contain no stamped self-­addressed corresponding to what was felt by the writer—is the peculiar function of poetry” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933): 8. 422. ​The ­Great Stone Dam on the Merrimack River at Lawrence. 423. ​Susan Holmes was indeed the “­l ittle Susie . . . ​who lived by the river dam.” In her reply to this letter (dated August 29, 1933, DCL), Holmes retailed the ­family history: her parents (Thomas Savery Holmes and Ella M. Smith) ­were dead, her elder ­brother William was engaged to a grade school principal, and her younger ­brother Frank was married with four ­c hildren. Holmes herself had not married, had suffered from ill health as a younger ­woman, and does not appear to have taken up long-­term employment. As to her motives in writing to RF, she explained that she enjoyed “scribbling” and indeed had sold “quite a number of verses to Christmas Card concerns,” and was “taking the liberty of sending you a few of my efforts.” She continued: “I should be so pleased if you would criticize them for me and let me know if you think they have any merit.” As to RF’s own poetry, her praise was slightly double edged: “I have read all of your poems that I could get hold of, and enjoy some of them very much. I think I like ­t hose in rhyme full as well as the blank verse, but perhaps that is being old-­fashioned.” ­There is no rec­ord of any response on RF’s part (which is not to say that he d­ idn’t respond). Susan Holmes reopened the correspondence fifteen years ­later, with a long letter of reminiscence dated July 7, 1949. A still ­later letter reveals that RF had not responded to that one.

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envelopes. Stamped and self-­addressed envelopes usually mean business; and I am not in lit­er­a­t ure for business but for friendship. I put what letters look suspiciously businesslike in a pile and t­here they have to wait their turn. My pile is now more than five years deep. T ­ here are four years of letters ahead of yours. And I have to admit the pile gets terribly confused in my travels from one end of the country to another in pursuit of health (my own or my ­family’s.) I’m afraid some t­hings get lost before ever I get to them. So you see what a hopeless gulf you confided your poetry to. I should be exposed for my bad management. It’s a pity you didnt write me a preliminary letter and get my attention in the name of the old days by the dam.424 Our hired man on the farm sometimes helps me in scrapes like this.425 I’ll have him institute a search for your letter in the storage room. But perhaps it would be better for you to send me some more poetry if you think I can help you with it. What was it you expected of me? It was manuscript you sent? You didnt send a book by any chance? We must straighten this out for old sakes’ sake. Your name brings back old old memories. We are not c­ hildren any more. I judge from the tone of your letter you are a teacher.426 I trust your work and the years ­haven’t made you too unhappy.

424. ​In the 1949 letter Holmes described in considerable detail her memories of RF as a young man. Some of ­t hese ­were, again, slightly double edged (her ­mother’s memory of RF’s valedictory address at Lawrence High School being “very flowery and idealistic”); most are charming (RF telling Susan and her b­ rothers stories about “knights and dragons and prancing steeds”; William Holmes wanting to go rowing with RF and Elinor White, and having to be dissuaded; RF making a terrible mess of baking molasses candy). References to RF’s “unruly tress” suggest that the young Susie was smitten. One story, however, about RF’s return from the Dismal Swamp, might have struck—­even a­ fter the passage of fifty-­five years—­a raw nerve. He had gone ­there with the vague intention of committing suicide (­a fter what he took to be a rebuff from his then fiancé Elinor). See EY, 173–189. 425. ​For mention of a number of local “hired men,” see the notes to RF’s 1932–1933 letters to his son Carol. 426. ​This seems not to have been the case. The 1920 census rec­ords her as working in a stationery store, and the 1930 census lists her as having no job.

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The last t­ hing in the world I aim to do is to add to anyone’s unhappiness. Please make me some fresh copies of your poems.427 Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 6, 1936] Dear Louis On that poem it tells you please to return. But if I dont return it to you, but keep it as incriminating evidence, you cant return it to Clemens, and then Coffin ­w ill have to write it over for him or write him another as good, which would be a feat.428 I go where the wind blows Cloe [sic] and am not sorry at all.429 Dowson is often in my mind ­these days of Tugwell and the New Diel.430 (I told you Tugwell reads him to Mrs Roo­se­velt. Elinor says dont believe a word of scandal I utter.) Now coöperatives are up for consideration. I have long known them. T ­ here was a British one that long since came to grief in Lawrence Mass. ­There ­were two orange cooperatives I studied in California. ­There w ­ ere the Irish Cooperátives of my friend A.E. and t­ here was the Coop (Coup) (Coupé) I dealt with in

427. ​Holmes sent RF five poems in typescript, and one longer poem (“Thou S­ hall Not”) in manuscript. 428. ​Presumably a copy of “The Shropshire Lad,” R.  P.  T. Coffin’s elegy for A.  E. Housman, which Clemens published in a special edition of the Mark Twain Quarterly (1.2 [Winter 1936]) devoted to Housman. Neither RF nor Untermeyer contributed to the issue. 429. ​The last line of Ernest Dowson’s “To a Lady Asking Foolish Questions,” the lady being Chloe, with an “h.” 430. ​RF again puns on the Scots word for “dev­i l.”

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Cambridge.431 You ask what I think of them. They are one t­ hing. But this is not telling you how to vote in November. I hope we clean up at the Olympics.432 Ever yours RF. Some day I must tell you the story of the taxi driver who thanked us for cooperation in finding the ­house we ­were bound for.

[To Charles R. Green. ALS. Jones.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 6, 1936] Dear Mr Green: We just happened to recall that AE (George Russell) the Irish poet dedicated to me a ­limited American edition of what must have been his last or next to last book of poems.433 We cant find any copy of it up h ­ ere and I’m afraid 431. ​Seriatim: the Lawrence (Mas­sa­chu­setts) Cooperative Association, one of the earliest agricultural cooperatives in the nation (founded by Thomas Sellers), a­ dopted the princi­ples of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, which served as the prototype for the modern cooperative movement in Britain. Although financially successful for de­ cades, the cooperative strug­gled during the G ­ reat Depression and welcomed federal aid when commodity prices plummeted. The California Fruit Growers’ Association (renamed Sunkist Growers, Incorporated in 1952) and Mutual Orange Distributors, two California agricultural cooperatives, ­were by 1933 pro­cessing, marketing, and shipping 95% of the California citrus crop. In 1897, William Butler Yeats helped Irish poet and mystic George Russell (AE) procure a position with Horace Plunkett’s Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), founded to establish cooperatives in dairy farming and credit banking. As editor of the Irish Homestead, the official publication of the IAOS, AE wrote many articles promoting modern agricultural methods and advocating cooperation between rural communities and agricultural collectives. He also wrote several pamphlets promoting the revival of Irish agrarianism, among them The Building Up of a Rural Civilization (1910) and The Rural Community: An Address to the American Commission of Agricultural Inquiry (1913). Fi­nally, the Harvard COOP, established in 1882, distributed profits to members in the form of discounts for all merchandise and books. Located in Harvard Square since 1906, the COOP t­ oday is one of the largest campus stores in the nation. 432. ​Held that year in Berlin (August 1–16). The star of the games, to the Nazis’ dismay, was African American track-­a nd-­field athlete Jesse Owens (1913–1980), who won four gold medals for the United States (the most won by any single athlete that year). 433. ​ Enchantment and Other Poems (New York: Fountain Press, 1930). Macmillan published the En­glish edition (in London). Green had sent RF a postcard on July 3 naming

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you couldnt down t­ here. You might look, however, with John Cone my son-­ in-­law when he gets settled in the ­house this week.434 The only pos­si­ble book cases for it are the glass-­covered one in my study and the two in the two upstairs bedrooms. It is a very slim book. I should remember the name of it but I dont. James Wells printed it at his Fountain Press. (Not his Slide Mountain Press.) That might help if you ­were advertising for it. Sincerely yours Robert Frost [To “Miss Lewis,” whom we have been unable to identify. ALS. NYPL.] South Shaftsbury Vt July 8 1936 My dear Miss Lewis: That’s a pleasant poem to have had written about my Collected Poems. Be assured it ­wasn’t lost on me and I shant lose it. I wish you would let me show my appreciation by sending you a further book of mine to read. Sincerely yours Robert Frost [To Leonidas Warren Payne Jr. At the top of the first page, Payne writes: “In response to a list of misprints and omissions in Collected Poems (1930)”—­and he identifies the letter as being written from South Shaftsbury, Vermont, “about” July 10, 1930. He is certainly wrong about the year (though perhaps not about the month and day): the poems referred to in this letter appear in RF’s 1936 volume AFR. Payne did indeed compile two separate errata lists for CP 1930 and forwarded t­ hose lists to RF on October 19, 1930, and November 14, 1930. ALS. HRC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 10, 1936] Dear Payne: I’m sorry about all ­those commas and hyphens. But you know I indulge a sort of indifference to punctuation. I dont mean I despise it. I value it. But I seem rather willing to let other p­ eople look a­ fter it for me. One of my prides is that I can write a fifty word tele­g ram without having to use a single “Stop” the book; RF added a note, initialed it, and ­later returned the card (“I think that is the book. It surely is if you find the dedication to me in it. / R.F.”). 434. ​The ­house RF owned at 15 Sunset Ave­nue in Amherst.

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for the sense. I’ll have t­ hose commas and hyphens tended to though, if only for your peace of mind. I must say you scared me with your formidable-­looking list. Fortunately it turned out you ­were wrong in all your findings of error except the punctuational. It would have been terrible if I had been off verbally grammatically or metrically. I have to be a pretty exact person when it comes to such a delicate poem as Moon Compasses. Your suggestions ­there would spoil my meaning. Was mea­sured doesnt mean the same ­thing as mea­sured.435 My passive is perfectly idiomatic. You must remember I am not writing school-­g irl En­glish. Codlin should be in your dictionary. It is a form still in use among apple men. Codling is getting the better of it as language goes more and more to school.436 Codlin is to codling as leggin is to legging, as interval is to intervale.437 Codlin’ would look funny in any book of mine. I havent dropped a g that way in a lifetime of writing. Substituting but that for but in “Waspish” would show school girl timidity and spoil my metrics.438 But alone ­w ill be found all the way down our lit­er­a­ ture. I noticed it to­n ight in Robinson Crusoe. Leaves and bark, leaves and bark To lean against and hear in the dark439

435. ​The lines in question are: “And as it mea­sured in her [i.e., the moon-­beams’] calipers, / The mountain stood exalted in its place. / So love ­w ill take between the hands a face . . .” (the poem ends with an ellipsis; CPPP, 273). RF’s point seems to be that “mea­ sured,” as he uses it h ­ ere, is parallel to, say, “and as it weighed in judgment’s scale,” ­etc. 436. ​Both forms remain in use. To “coddle” is to cook ­gently; a codlin or codling is a culinary apple that needs very ­l ittle cooking. The Keswick Codlin is a traditional En­glish variety. The word occurs in RF’s “The Gold Hesperidee.” 437. ​As for “interval / intervale,” see LRF-1, 477–483. RF’s friend George Browne—of the Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts—­questioned his use of the word “interval” in the title of his third book, MI. It occasioned a remarkable exchange of letters, in which RF was vindicated by the etymologist Charles P. G. Scott. 438. ​See the closing couplet (about a self-­important “wasp”): “Poor egotist, he has no way of knowing / But he’s as good as anybody ­going” (CPPP, 282). The OED bears RF out as to “but” used alone (with no “that”) for a conjunction in such cases as this. As for Robinson Crusoe, ­here are but two examples: “We had not, however, rid h ­ ere so long but we should have tided it up the river . . .” (11) and “so he turned himself about, and swam for the shore, and I make no doubt but he reached it with ease, for he was an excellent swimmer” (28) (New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1920). 439. ​The first two lines in the closing quatrain of “Leaves Compared with Flowers” (CPPP, 270).

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The reversing of the order should remind you of a very ancient figure of speech.440 Your friends of the Classical Department w ­ ill tell you about it. I dont want to seem pedantic. Inserting its ­after doubt on page 87 would be school girl En­glish to my ear.441 I give you credit for being able to supply words plainly understood. Dialogue would be unendurable if all words had to be said outright for complete construction. No not a word has been dropped out or printed wrong I believe. ­There was one terrible m ­ istake in the first edition of West-­r unning Brook: roams for 442 romps. One of my friends liked the printer’s accident better than my intention. Anyway he resented the correction when it was made in the Collected. He was duly embarrassed when he learned how it was.443 He neednt have been. I didnt mind the criticism implied. Well h ­ ere’s thinking of you gratefully for all your trou­ble with proof-­reading the book and for reviewing it so finely.444 I won­der what form of it you lack and would like me to send you. You know Im Always yours faithfully Robert Frost

440.  RF draws a large X across the couplet to signify a chiasmus (the “ancient figure of speech”): it links the first “leaves” to “hear,” the first “bark” to “lean.” 441. ​The line occurs in “Build Soil” and is best understood in context:    For socialism is An ele­ment in any government. ­T here’s no such t­ hing as socialism pure Except as an abstraction of the mind. ­T here’s only demo­c ratic socialism, Monarchic socialism—­oligarchic, The last being what they seem to have in Rus­sia. You often get it most in monarchy, Least in democracy. In practice, pure, I ­don’t know what it would be. No one knows. I have no doubt [it’s] like all the loves when Philosophized together into one— One sickness of the body and the soul. (CPPP, 290–291) The bracketed addition and emphasis are ours, for clarity. 442. ​In “Canis Major” (CPPP, 239). 443. ​The friend is Charles Lowell Young. See RF to Young, December 11, 1932. 444. ​Payne reviewed AFR in the March 31, 1936, number of the Dallas News (section 3, page 10).

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[To Ernest Silver (1878–1949), American educator, president of Plymouth Normal School (where RF had taught from 1911 to 1912). ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury VT July 12 1936 Dear Mr Silver: How late in August does your school keep? I am wondering if I couldnt take in Plymouth when I drive north for my hay fever. It is very hard for me to get away in the summer. Elinor is not well and we are ­here alone on a back-­road farm. I cant take her with me on expeditions and I cant leave her ­behind except by very special arrangements with one of our busy ­children. As close to August 15th as you could manage would be my suggestion.445 I’m sorry to be all this bother. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Richard Thornton. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vermont July 12 1936 Dear Mr Thornton: You see where we have arrived ­after all the excitement—­external excitement.446 Now for a ­little internal—­enough at least to write all the poems and essays I have contracted for.447 My best policy with myself is to act as if I had nothing on my mind but mowing and tree trimming. I trust it isnt too hot for Southerners in Scarsdale.448 It has been too hot for most Northerners in Vermont. The papers remark that the weather makes all politics look unim-

445. ​RF had given a talk at the Plymouth Normal School on June 29, 1936, but we find no rec­ord of him returning ­t here ­later in the summer. 446. ​Occasioned by his term as Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard in the spring. 447. ​As noted ­earlier, RF’s contract with Harvard required that he prepare his Norton lectures for publication as a book; he never did. 448.  Thornton was born in Virginia, his wife Nina in North Carolina.

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portant.449 But whoever said they ­were impor­tant? You cant say I did. Even if this should become another country with the same name, I should prob­ably not let it bother me. Anyway by the time it gets too bad, Rus­sia ­w ill have got better and we can go ­there for a refuge. Rus­sia is almost over it now.450 This is all meant to lead up to the request that you should have sent to me about a dozen Further Ranges some of them first trade edition if you have any. The address must be South Shaftsbury Vt. Best wishes from us both to you all. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Charles Foster. ALS. DCL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 19 1936 Dear Charles: I’m glad you are taking your job and your medicine like a married man. Take them as seriously as you please, but learn never to take me seriously ­either for or against. I ­d idn’t of course mean it if I said I depended on you to represent me at the Plympton [sic] Press.451 I dont depend on you for anything but friendship and dont you ever anymore depend on me for anything but reading your verse. You can always count on me to be interested in that as long as you write it. But I’m not now and I never r­ eally was interested in your way of life. ­You’ve got to brace up and take your life in your own hands. I dont care a hang w ­ hether you get two three or a dozen more degrees to satisfy your

449. ​Throughout the United States, but particularly in the Midwest, the summer of 1936 was and remains one of the hottest and driest on rec­ord. 450. ​Prob­ably referring to the easing of famine conditions in the southern USSR following the disaster of 1932–1933; also the impending fruition of the Second Five-­Year Plan (1933–1937), which had received admiring reports from many Western news outlets. However, almost exactly as RF was writing, Stalin was initiating the G ­ reat Purge that would, from 1936 to 1938, kill up to 600,000 ­people, most of them apparatchiks of the Soviet State. The soon-­to-­be-­i nfamous show t­ rials convened in Moscow on August 19, 1936. 451. ​The Plimpton Press, established in Boston in 1882, and relocated to Norwood, Mas­sa­chu­setts, in 1897.

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f­ ather.452 The more I see into your relations with him the more I see you are none of my business. You ­mustn’t play my ideas off against his. I dont like to be used that way. As I think I must have said more than once before the fact that you have had to reason about ­r unning wild shows that you should stick to the life of reason. Dont feel condemned in the verdict of my words which are no more than the verdict of your own nature. ­There are poets of reason no less renowned than of unreason. It may well be the only poetry you could write would be out of the staid and academic. Why fuss and hesitate? You cant more than lose your life anyway as I used to tell myself. Most lives are meant to be lost. At least any that are found have to be lost first.453 You must try to get my position clear in your head. You can be anything you please for all of me. I dont want to be made at all responsible for you. You ­wouldn’t want to make me now would you, come to think it over. And you mustnt tell me of your ­fathers bids against me again. He seems to be a threatener. I’m not. You lose nothing by not consulting me further about your ­f uture. You keep my friendship and my interest in your verse ­whether you go to college or go into business.454 So cheer up and dont continue to think me hard to please. Ever yours R. F.

[To Charles R. Green. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 23 1936 Mr Chas R. Green Jones Library Amherst Mass Dear Sir: I understand you specialize as much in the ­doings ­goings comings and whereabouts as in the books of the versiferator Robert (L.) Frost. I’ll bet you 452. ​Foster was currently pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Iowa (for further details see RF to Foster, December 18, 1935). Foster’s f­ ather was Raymond Foster (1873–1941), a se­n ior executive at Bayer, the German phar­ma­ceu­t i­cal com­pany. 453. ​Matthew 16:25. 454. ​Foster went into education, teaching first at the University of Colorado, then at Grinnell College, and, fi­nally, at the University of Minnesota.

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d­ on’t know where he is now. But what I wanted to ask was can you tell me, and w ­ ill you please if you can, who his fellow recipients of degrees ­were at the Bates College Commencement of last June.455 I need their full names. ­There are one or two of them with whom I should like to make it right. D ­ on’t be deceived by my name address or hand writing. I am not the person I seem to be. Who is? Respectfully yours Robert Frost

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 28, 1936] Dear Louis: ­Going on from where we left off: The En­glish wood-­carver’s story wasnt that Lawrence House­man456 [sic] wrote the Shropshire Lad but that he knew only too well the lad who did write it. He said he was a pupil who entrusted his manuscript to A. E. House­man [sic] before he went away to the East to die young.457 It seems to me a damned plausible yarn. ­There are a lot of ­things about the poems that dont seem to go with what I know about A. E. House­man. I have always been both­ered by the exactness with which the Last Poems coincide in ­every way with the Shropshire Lad.458 Thirty years hadnt done a 455. ​Likely said in jest (given that the entire letter is written so). Only a month e­ arlier, on June 16, Bates College awarded RF an honorary LHD; the only other recipient of an honorary degree was the historian and magazine editor—­and friend of RF—­Mark ­Sullivan (1874–1952). 456. ​See RF’s July 3, 1936, letter to Untermeyer. 457. ​The woodcarver (Alec Miller) may have heard (and confused) a tale about Moses Jackson, Housman’s Oxford roommate, who did not requite Housman’s declarations of love. Jackson moved to India in 1887 but returned to E ­ ngland to marry in 1889. Housman was not invited to the wedding and did not hear of it u ­ ntil Jackson had again left the country. 458. ​Housman published A Shropshire Lad in 1896. When Housman learned that Moses Jackson was d­ ying of anemia in Vancouver, British Columbia (in the spring of 1922), he composed many of the forty-­t wo lyr­ics that comprise Last Poems (London: Grant Richards). Housman sent the book to Jackson shortly a­ fter its publication in October 1922. A number of the poems in the collection w ­ ere, however, written as far back as the 1890s,

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t­ hing to the author apparently. No living person can succeed in not changing so perfectly. However I merely pass this along for what it is worth as a trou­ble and fun maker. I dont necessarily believe a word of it. I want to see someone get all stirred up over something besides national politics. Dont dare to ask me what luck I am having with the eclogues I am writing to order.459 My method is this. As I work mowing and chopping I entertain myself thinking of good titles such as Where is the place of the ideal and who is its custodian? When I come in with a load of hay or wood I bring my titles with me and write them down before filling up with ­water at the kitchen sink. I must have stored more than two hundred already. Put together with just the right flash of inspiration I dont see why they shouldnt make one poem themselves without more than a word of glue added ­here and ­there to hold them together. It sounds crazy. Dont pity me as Words­worth would say—­pity my grief.460 We wish you and Esther would come over pretty soon. I expect the Thorntons (Henry Holt & Co) ­w ill be ­going by on Sunday or Monday. How about your coming on Wednesday or Thursday? Have some explanation ready of why Palmer didnt publish your review of my own, my dative book.461 Its a fairly good book and your review was one of the best I ever had. I hate to be done out of it by [a] hard-­boiled inhumanitarian. What did he think? That the Republican party would repudiate in its toryism every­thing from old-­age pensions and unemployment insurance to rural ­f ree delivery, ­f ree public schools

which explains RF’s suggestion that Housman had not matured. In any case, Housman says in his brief preface (dated September 1922): “I publish t­ hese poems, few though they are, b­ ecause it is not likely that I ­shall ever be impelled to write much more. I can no longer expect to be revisited by the continuous excitement ­u nder which in the early months of 1895 I wrote the greater part of my first book, nor indeed could I well sustain it if it came; and it is best that what I have written should be printed while I am ­here to see it through the press and control its spelling and punctuation. About a quarter of this ­matter belongs to the April of the pre­sent year, but most of it to dates between 1895 and 1910” (5). 459.  One to wind up the tercentenary celebration at Harvard (September 18), the other for its Phi Beta Kappa event (September 17). RF would complete neither. 460.  See Wordsworth, “The Affliction of Margaret”: “Beyond participation lie / My troubles, and beyond relief: / If any chance to heave a sigh / They pity me, and not my grief.” RF also quotes the poem in his February 23, 1932, letter to Untermeyer. 461. ​Paul Palmer would publish Untermeyer’s review of AFR in the American Mercury in September. RF had already read a draft of it. See RF to Untermeyer, May 31, 1936.

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and the graduated income tax. Nock462 is a wonderful idealist of the old school. No least taint of socialism and paternalism for him. Absolutely all enterprise private. Herbert Spencer I remember was in ­favor of private armies that should contract with the government to carry on its wars.463 No such purity of merely presiding government has ever existed. What do you say to next week, Wednesday or Thursday? I’m not serious about the review. But t­ here are a ­whole lot of t­ hings I can be serious about. I wont submit a list of them. Ever yours R. F.

[To Wade Van Dore. Date derived from postmark. ALS. BU.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [July 28,464 1936] Dear Wade: I surely owe you a quick answer to such a fine and dignified letter. Your life is your own. I have never had any wish to interfere in it.465 The advantage is as much mine as yours that you have never thrown the responsibility of it into my lap. It ­couldn’t be the kind of life it is by design if it d­ idn’t assume its own responsibility. You are not an unthinking case, what­ever ­else you are. The long poem gives a pretty good story of what ­else you are.466 I read it straight through from interest in you and your art. Let me tell you how I see it. It is the life story of a casual worker: a person who never gets up high enough not to be despised by his employer. If you are despised by your employer you

462. ​Albert J. Nock (1870–1945), libertarian writer and editor, fiercely criticized FDR’s New Deal, and derived much of his thinking from Herbert Spencer. For more on Palmer, Nock, and Spencer see RF’s August 8 letter to Nuhn. 463. ​Spencer—­a dogmatic laissez-­faire thinker—­was a pacifist and an opponent of conscription and standing armies. 464. ​For reasons unclear to us, Van Dore dates this letter July 25 in his The Life of the Hired Man (1986). 465. ​Van Dore’s marriage had hit a rough patch, and his wife Edrie—­t hough he was unaware of it, and angered once he found out—­had written of the prob­lems to RF and Elinor. See RF’s July 1, 1936, letter to Van Dore. The ­couple divorced in 1946. 466. ​Again, “Peter Goes to Work.” Van Dore never published the poem.

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are never admitted to a share in his ideas and ideals and so you dont see them. The business looks meaningless and unideal to you. You ­can’t approve of it and are in honor bound to get out of it. You despise your employer more intensely than he does you. He despises you for a nobody while you despise him for not having any ideas you could see. It is sad on both sides. It makes masters b­ itter about servants and servants b­ itter about masters; and it makes any age any one lives in seem bad. But that is no reason you shouldnt write your poem in good faith from the unseemly seamy under­neath where you have seen it. I mustnt mind and I dont mind your being a partizan of the underdog. Partizanship flourishes all around me. I suppose in some re­spects I may be partizan myself. We are not discussing me this time but you. I think you have written a very readable document. To make it absolutely a unit you o ­ ught to be a l­ ittle more explicit about the lumber camp. The farmer was unideal, the book-­store-­keeper was unideal. The gardener was unideal. The two editors ­were unideal in their dif­fer­ent ways. Now ­either the lumber camp boss or owner must have been unideal or he must have been the only honest person in a terrible world. You could have him e­ ither way, but for artistic reasons he should have been the last experience in order in the book if he was ideal. Then your summary generalizing about who was fat and who was hard and lean could have sprung right from the ­g rand forest fire episode to wind up the book. That is impor­tant for the form and for the charm of the idea. I mean it would make the book nearer ideal. If other p­ eople c­ an’t be ideal, at least we can try to be ideal ourselves. Try, I say. I’ll try if you’ll try. And something more. I believe if you w ­ ill put the poem in just a l­ ittle better order in that way—­I mean bring it out at the end of the lumber camp and forest-­fi re episode that ­there ­were the men and ­there was the real­ity for you and have that come as the last narrative part just before the reflections in conclusion, I ­w ill undertake to write you a small prose preface for it. I wish you would tell some publishers so in submitting the poem. You might begin with Coward McCann. Then if Thomas Coward does[n’]t take it ­we’ll think of someone e­ lse. But first do as I say about the order of episodes. I c­ an’t write a preface u ­ nless I see some w ­ hole idea the book would seem to be about. Of course I offer to write the preface for practical reasons. Im not g­ oing to write prefaces for every­body that asks me. But I am g­ oing to write a few where any influence of mine may be expected to help with publishers or public. Do you want your manuscript back to work on? It ­wouldn’t hurt if you made a few of the rhymes a ­little more plausible. Sometimes a second rhyme word doesnt

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come in very naturally. You must be aware of the places. Not that I want you to work over them very much longer. The total effect is so good however that I cant help wishing the details ­were as right and vivid as in your shorter poems. I ­don’t suppose you can expect the richness of a short poem in a long poem. Of course let the details alone if you fear to make them worse by fussing. But the lumber camp must be moved.467 Mind you I am not forcing any preface on you. Accept it only if you think it w ­ ill help. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Charles R. Green. ALS. Jones.]

South Shaftsbury Vt July 29 ’36 Dear Mr Green: I wish you would show Mr Newdick the books in my tin box. He is my friend and you are my friend; so I hope no rivalry t­ here may be between you ­will keep you from being kind to each other. I shouldnt think the rivalry need be very serious; your aims are so very dif­fer­ent.468 I never heard of the article in Yiddish you ask about.469 Best wishes Ever yours Robert Frost

467. ​Van Dore writes, in Life of the Hired Man: “Unfortunately, [this] letter arrived at a most inopportune time, and I was not to revise my poem properly. August was only a few days away, and it was the most active time of the year at the [vacation] camp” where he and his wife then worked, on the north shore of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (229). 468. ​See the notes to RF’s April 19, 1935, letter to Gohdes. 469. ​Green had, in a postcard, queried RF about an August 1927 article on his poetry in Der Oyf kum: Hodesh-­zshurnal far Literatur un Kultur-­inyonim (The Rise: a Monthly Journal of Lit­er­a­ture and Culture). Green had unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a copy of the magazine from G. E. Stechert & Com­pany, 31 East 10th Street, New York; he did not list the article in his bibliography of RF.

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[To Charles R. Green. ALS. Jones.]

August 6 1936 South Shaftsbury Dear Mr Green: Thanks for all the kind assurances. Im afraid t­ here may not be any poem ripe for your book. We should have thought of that before I went to press with A Further Range. If I have anything I can bring myself to risk, I w ­ ill let you know. T ­ heres time yet, isnt ­there? We like the side view of the ­house: it is so much more inclusive. I wish it ­d idn’t cut the roof off the way it does. Prob­ably the front view is the better picture. You and Clymer can decide.470 Best wishes R. F.

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[South Shaftsbury, Vermont] [August 7, 1936] Dear Louis: ­We’ll expect yous (double plural for emphasis as in Shakespeare471) next Saturday which according to you is the fifteenth (I have no this-­year’s calendar to see w ­ hether you are right or not—­I am dating my next year’s lectures with a last years calendar—­and I have nothing ­else to go by but the newspapers which as the Presidential election draws on I find less and less trustworthy.) Lets see: what was I saying? Oh about lectures. I told you you could get all you wanted without benefit of bureau. And g­ oing off at another tangent at the point bureau (sp.): t­ here’s nothing the m ­ atter with the age, if you ask me, but too many officials, and the fact

470. ​No photo­g raph of any of RF’s ­houses appears in Robert Frost: A Bibliography. 471. ​Shakespeare twice employs double plurals: “gallowses” (Cymbeline, 5.iv.107) and “teeths” ( Julius Caesar, 5.i.41). Some fifteen times he pluralizes nouns that have since become singular. Other plural forms now obsolete turn up, too: “­These news would cause him once more yield the ghost” (Henry VI, Part 1, 1.i.67). See David Crystal and Ben Crystal, Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion (London: Penguin Books, 2004).

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that every­body who isnt riding round in a car during what used to be working hours is out spreading fresh dirt like courtiers spreading cloaks or roses in the road for Roo­se­velt’s royalty of wealth to r­ ide over. How is Esther ­going to vote? And another ­thing to complain of is that ode to oder (sp.) for Harvard and please dont you add to my misery by asking e­ very once in so often how about it. Lets not talk about it. Let’s not look as if we ­were thinking about it. Dave should worry; ­because he cares for me and he cares for Harvard.472 What a position that puts him in if I should fail as Macbeth said.473 To Hell with the baubles gewgaws kickshaws. I’ll write ‘em a poem the last night before I face the Mike I ­w ill and be damned to all the uncontrolled rivers in the country. (I’ve got a new slogan for one party or the other. I hadnt broken it to you had I? It is the name and theme of an eclogue I have written. This is it. No Rivers to the Sea! No ­water ­shall go back!) Meanwhile I am mowing some, chopping some and digging a ­little. How could man die better? But ­there is nothing in farming e­ ither special or general. T ­ here is no class lowly enough in this country to accept the wages of it in comparison with the wages of industriality in the city. We have gone so far with industrialism that t­ here is no turning back. Our farming ­w ill have to be done outside of this country by humbler ­people than ours ­w ill submit to be. You mark my words. And the pity of it! Signed RF.

[To Ferner Nuhn. ALS. Iowa.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 8 1936 Dear Ferner: That was a frank and noble letter.474 I knew ­there was something on your mind and I think I partly get it. As you say the rest can be done in conversation. 472. ​David McCord. 473. ​See Macbeth (1.vii), where Macbeth says to his wife of their plot to murder Duncan: “If we should fail?” 474. ​RF had known Nuhn (and his wife, Ruth Suckow) for several years. In the letter to which RF alludes, Nuhn—­through a painstaking analy­sis of “Build Soil: A Po­liti­cal Pastoral”—­had offered reflections on the difficulty RF must be experiencing in recon-

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­ here’s no hurry ­there any more than ­there is anywhere ­else. Time is long T and theories are fleeting. By the time we came to an understanding on the pre­sent state of affairs we would be in the ­m iddle of another state of affairs. Fortunately. I love change and I love personal prejudice. From ­those two ­things I do my reasoning. In one I seek the thread of what persists, in the other any common substance ­there may be of pure justice. The thread should be silk and the substance radium. I dont mind being called a survivor or any t­ hing ­else that doesnt reflect on my ­mother.475 I must have been called survivor by e­ very member of the department of social and economic sciences I ever spent the eve­n ing with. But excuse me if I dont think the name quite covers me. A better epithet would be survivalist. I believe in survival. That is my fundamental doctrine. I argued in a monologue lately that the fact of our race’s having survived should be enough for o ­ thers as it is for me. It proves t­ hose for us must be more than ­those against us—in nature and h ­ uman nature.476 The blood stream is the one unbroken logic. My own personal survival I d­ on’t say much about. It is my own private fortune or misfortune that I refuse to be confidential about with the census-­taker or the social statistician. Budda [sic] in one incarnation fed himself to a starving ­mother tigress out of kindness to suffering animality.477 He knew what he could do. It was disagreeable but he was sure of his own survival; which was all that mattered. I set all store by survival.

ciling his po­liti­cal philosophy to the imperatives of the New Deal (see, for details, YT, 455–461). 475. ​The relevant passage in Nuhn’s letter reads: “You ­w ill, I think, not feel misused in being labeled a ‘survivor.’ . . . ​Survival is something ­else again, and badly needed. To wait for the return wave, suffer eclipse for a while, lodged though not dead . . .” (YT, 456). ­Here, Nuhn echoes RF’s poem “Lodged” (collected in WRB). 476. ​RF would ­later rework ­t hese ideas into a poem, “Our Hold on the Planet,” collected in AWT: Take nature altogether since time began, Including h­ uman nature, in peace and war, And it must be a ­little more in ­favor of man, Say a fraction of one p­ ercent at the very least, Or our number living ­wouldn’t be steadily more, Our hold on the planet ­wouldn’t have so increased. (CPPP, 317) 477. ​The legend appears in any number of nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century books about the Buddha, Buddhism, and reincarnation.

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Albert J Knock [sic], Editor Palmer of Mercury and H. L. Menken [sic] are survivors in your invidious sense of the word. They survive from the individualistic unsocialistic days of Herbert Spencer. Strict justice their minds run on. And of course strict justice is basic. It is primarily for government to preside with the strictest justice over the free-­for-­a ll strug­gle to win. It must pick the winners with no half-­rewards. But the very next ­thing ­after it has rewarded the winners it must do something for the losers. It must show them mercy. Justice first and mercy second. The trou­ble with some of your crowd is that they would have mercy first. The strug­gle to win is still the best tonic. We like it. Many are game enough to say nothing against it when they lose. But never mind all that. The point is that mercy which is another word for socialism, wouldnt mean anything till t­ here had been a distinction made between winners and losers. All that is said in my Po­liti­cal Pastoral—if you ­w ill be careful not to read it in the light of this campaign. It was written before the New Deal was heard of. All I had heard of was the Old Deil (sp). Albert Nock would leave the per­for­mance of mercy to the winners. Not so I, if you ­w ill look again at my Pastoral. Mercy is a function of government. I believe in taking from the rich to keep the poor at school. My grand­father didnt. Herbert Spencer didnt. Herbert Spencer believed in private armies.478 I believe in parole and even p­ ardon, but not u ­ ntil ­after trial conviction and sentence. As long as you use socialism and mercy as interchangeable I am with you into the ­f uture. The question of the moment in politics ­w ill always be one of proportion between mercy and justice. You have to remember the p­ eople who accept mercy have to pay for it. Mercy means protection. And t­ here is no protection without direction. A person completely protected would have to be completely directed. And he would be a slave. Thats where socialism pure brings you out. But you dont want it pure. You merely want a l­ ittle more of it than I do. You may take my poetic play seriously but please not grimly. Both ­those p­ eople in the dialogue are me. I enjoyed having one part of me impose on the other. The fun of the imposition was what kept me writing. I like to know I am imposing on someone now and then. I distrust myself so (my prejudice in ­favor of myself so) I like to come right out into the open with my faults where I cant fail to see them with my own eyes. You take the greed to indoctrinate. I like to catch myself in it. Or the greed to benefact. All the forms of self-­assertion are so hidden from the self. Show yourself up to yourself now and then for health say I. T ­ here is an inclusive thought in my pastoral, but 478. ​See RF to Untermeyer, July 28, 1936.

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neither speaker owns it. Remember I am a survivalist. Perhaps thats the clue. I dont want to know too well myself. Somebody says I am a revisionist.479 I put that into his head with “­Won’t almost any theory bear revision.”480 This campaign amuses me.481 E ­ very day or so I stand in the corner of the big room and make Elinor a campaign speech as by an unauthorized Demo­ crat. My latest is that we have gone so far with industriality u ­ nder the protection of her party that ­there can be no turning back more ­here than in ­England. We are the champeen copy-­cat of the nations. We wanted to be like the English—­a powerhouse—­and we are though our nature indicated something e­ lse. Down to twenty five million farmers are we? I knew we ­were at the vanis­ hing point. I could give you figures of my own to show that diversified farming is as impossible in this country as special farming. The fact is We have nobody lowly enough left in this country to live on the comparative wages of agriculture.482 No one can stay out of industry if he wants to. Humbler ­people than any of ours have got to supply our raw materials. Our lands have got to be treated as summer resort winter resort, play grounds. The anglomaniacs have had their way and we [are] a grotesque likeness of ­England—­a ­g reat big cartoon of a parody. We used to have an expression when I was young. Aw go hire a hall.483 You might say that to me and you might say go buy a typewriter. Ive said about every­thing, but have I said, I won­der, (I dont want to look back) that your crowd had better treat me with re­spect ­because my poetry (while it lives) ­will keep alive the sentiments from which their theories spring. I describe a more classless society than they w ­ ill bring to the world again in

479. ​Louis Untermeyer, in his Modern American Poetry (fifth edition, 1936): “If I ­were called upon to add to the categories [into which critics had placed RF], I’d drop the classicist, the bucolic realist, and the localist. I would call him a revisionist. It is the power not only to restate but to revise too easily accepted statements which is one of his g­ reat qualities, and it has been overlooked to a surprising degree.” The essay is reprinted in The Recognition of Robert Frost, ed. Richard Thornton (New York: Henry Holt, 1937): 173–184. 480. ​Line 51 of “The White-­Tailed Hornet” (collected in AFR) (CPPP, 252). 481. ​The 1936 presidential election campaign, which FDR won by one of the largest margins in US history. 482. ​This sentence deploys markedly larger letters, plus the underlining; it is an argument—placing RF foursquare in a tradition of conservative, Romantic agrarianism—­t hat he clearly felt needed strong emphasis. For the same argument, see RF to Untermeyer, August 7, 1936. 483. ​An American idiom (“shut your trap,” “go tell it to someone ­else,” ­etc.).

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a thousand years of trying. Maybe it cant be gone back to. Maybe the only way to it is forward the thousand years. All right. Better hang on to my verse as a thousand-­year plan. I’m descended from the Puritan who had both his ears cut off twice for equalitarianism.484 They grew again I suppose like tonsils. Ever yours R. F.

[To Keyes Dewitt Metcalf (1889–1983), American librarian, in 1936 chief of the Reference Department at New York Public Library. ALS. NYPL.]

South Shaftsbury Vt August 12 1936 Dear Mr Metcalf: I appreciate the opportunity you give me to put Lankes’ proof of my bookplate into your collection. I think it one of his best wood cuts. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

[To Edward Davison. ALS. DCL.]

Franconia N.H. August 27 1936 Dear Ted: That was a pleasanter bulletin than the one you sent last year. I assume you sent the one last year too. It was postmarked Boulder. It was in the form of a letter to the editor of The Saturday Review.485 And I assume your Miss Foley 484. ​William Prynne (1600–1669, London), En­glish Puritan and pamphleteer, and author, in 1632, of Histriomastix: The Player’s Scourge, or Actor’s Tragedy, a condemnation of the theater and of folk cele­brations—of Christmas and other holy days—he deemed pagan. He was convicted in 1634 for seditious libel, twice pilloried, sentenced to life in prison, and had his ears cut off and his cheeks branded with the legend “S. L.” (to indicate the crime for which he had been condemned). 485. ​See the Saturday Review, September 7, 1935: 9. Printed t­ here is a letter about the 1935 Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference, of which Davison was program director. RF gave a number of talks at the conference over the years.

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wrote it.486 You prob­ably didnt notice the harm. But it made me very unsuccessful with you to be called venerable and told I had entertained a large audience of midwestern ­women teachers with my gentle witticisms in a New ­England voice.487 I doubt if I am yet ready to be taken that way. It generally gets remarked that I have more than the usual number of men proportionally in an audience. Well ­here is Jones making it all right with me.488 I am consoled if I am still man enough to bother Gold and Calverton.489 Ezra Pound and I had it out years ago about my witticisms. He called them cheap when they caught him in the ego. I told him not to mind: I took entire responsibility for them. ‘Twas ever thus between us. The witticisms ­were all mine, the shitticisms all his (alluding to the fact that he was l­ imited to a vocabulary of one word to daub ­people with when he wanted to be abusive).490 The contrast between my rewards for this year and last would seem to show that I had every­thing to gain by not appearing in public places. I have often wondered if it didnt behove [sic] me to stay out of sight ­behind my books. I am obliged to Jones for his tribute and to you for passing it along. I may need friends in what by conscience is before me. Think me over. The same old yours R. F.

486. ​Martha Foley (1897–1977), founder of Story Magazine, an attendee of the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference, but no longer a “Miss”: she had married RF’s friend Whit Burnett in 1930. 487. ​The Saturday Review letter had reported: “Venerable poet Frost’s gentle witticisms in a New ­E ngland voice won the hearts of his principally Mid-­Western hearers” (9). 488. ​Likely Howard Mumford Jones (though we have been unable to pin down the article or document RF refers to). 489. ​Mike Gold was the pen name of the communist writer and agitator Itzok Isaac Granich (1894–1967); Victor Francis Calverton was the pen name of the, also left-­w ing, writer and critic George Goetz (1900–1940). As RF anticipated, AFR met with considerable criticism from the left. 490. ​RF evidently thought this captured something essential about Pound (and their relationship), although Pound’s scatological abuse of him personally seems to have been of a recent date: see RF to Louis Untermeyer, May 9, 1936.

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[To J. J. Lankes. Date derived from internal evidence and from a date penciled in at the top of the first page in another hand. ­After the letter, RF has inscribed a fair copy of “Neither Out Far Nor in Deep.” ALS. Texas.]

[Franconia, New Hampshire] [circa September 14, 1936] Dear J. J.: Calm yourself, or I w ­ ill have to calm you. The only way to stop war is to stop it. That’s the only way to stop swearing. I was only fooling. I dont remember what I said and unlike Gamaliel Bradford491 I keep no copy of a letter: but rest assured I was only fooling. I’m never anything ­else but fooling any more. I have served notice on what­ever gods t­ here be. Which are more attractive to me the Constitution or the Amendments to the Constitution? Thats the choice that w ­ ill be put up to us at the next national election. Nobody has stated the alternative as yet. Now that I have, my interest starts to wane. It ­will be as much as ever I can do to drag myself to the polls when the time comes. I have a wild nature in most re­spects, tame in only a few. I hold mockery sacred. You straighten out this business about the second book plate any way you please and I s­ hall be satisfied. Green means perfectly well.492 He is apt to be over punctilious about my t­ hings. He even keeps them miserly. Or so some p­ eople think. I think we can trust him not to scatter copies of the book plate promiscuously. So thats all right. I only wish you had made me a few prints from the block before it went out of your hands. But never mind. I’m no collector. I won­der if ­they’ll want me at Wells this year. You speak as if they might. I’ll be ­going by ­there in November sometime to read in Buffalo and points west as far as Iowa City. I was thinking you and I might combine on my next Christmas booklet. I’ll send you a copy of the Hen poem to consider.493 Ever yours RF. Did I send you the small wasp poem?494 491. ​RF’s friend Gamaliel Bradford, the eminent biographer, saved all his correspondence. Van Wyck Brooks edited The Letters of Gamaliel Bradford: 1918–1931 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935). 492. ​See RF’s September 12, 1935, letter to Lankes. 493. ​“A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury.” See also RF to Lankes, September 12, 1935, and RF to Blumenthal, December 4, 1936. Lankes never illustrated the poem. 494. ​See RF to Lankes, September 12, 1935.

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Volume 3: 1929–1936

[To Charles R. Green. ALS. Jones.]

Franconia NH September 14 1936 Dear Mr Green: I can think of nothing to add to the bibliography now.495 I am sick with shingles and a ner­vous exhaustion. I am not supposed to be writing any letters. I had to be let off the ode and the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard.496 Faithfully yours Robert Frost 495.  Indeed, setting aside the short tele­g ram dated October  3, RF would not write Green again u ­ ntil January 6, 1937, and then chiefly to remind him that RF had issued no Christmas card for 1936 (and so none need be recorded in the bibliography). Only one further letter would concern the bibliography: a letter written from San Antonio on February 11, 1937, asking that the publication date of the book be set for March 26, 1937, RF’s birthday, a wish with which Green complied (he also put together an exhibition of RF’s books at the Jones Library for the occasion). 496.  As late as August 7, RF planned to deliver both the Phi Beta Kappa poem and the tercentenary ode at Harvard (the first on September 17, the second on September 18). In mid-August, he bowed out of the latter obligation, and, by the time he spoke at Bread Loaf on August 27, had developed a case of shingles, which worsened as the weeks rolled on. The day before RF spoke at Bread Loaf, the first announcement was made (in the Boston Globe) that John Masefield (Poet Laureate of England) would read an ode “at formal ceremonies, Friday morning, September 18, in the College Yard, in the presence of 15,000 guests,” among them FDR. On September 7, the Globe again announced Masefield’s appearance in an article that still had RF slated to deliver a poem on September 17 “at the tercentenary meeting of the Associated Harvard Clubs,” Phi Beta Kappa presumably among them. The day after RF wrote Green, the Globe announced that Robert Hillyer, professor of English at Harvard (and a friend of RF), would read a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society on September 17. No mention is made of RF; he was allowed to go out quietly. On September 19, the Globe published a spread about the events of the previous day: alongside a photo of Masefield were photos of a top-hatted FDR and retinue. The same day the Globe printed Masefield’s “Lines on the Tercentenary of Harvard College in America.” On September 23 the Globe announced Masefield’s departure for England aboard the SS Queen Mary, accompanied by Harvard President James Bryant Conant. The headline reads: “MASEFIELD CAN TALK AMERICAN,” a facility explained by the following: when asked whether he thought “the United States would produce poets of classical calibre,” Masefield replied, in demotic American, “You bet it will.” The evidence is that Masefield made the trip entirely for the purpose of delivering the ode. Both RF and his wife Elinor reported, in letters, that anxiety about the tercentenary engagements had, according to RF’s physician, caused the onset of shingles that made it impossible for him to fulfill them.

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[To Charles R. Green. TG. Jones.]

[Boston, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [October 3, 1936] CHARLES R. GREEN JONES LIBRARY VERY DISAPPOINTED ABOUT BOOKS NEED THEM THIS WEEK.497 SUPPOSE IT WAS TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR PACKING. ROBERT FROST

[To Joan Hopkinson (1913–2007). Draft of a tele­g ram, penciled in in RF’s hand on the back of the tele­g ram (from Hopkinson) to which he responds. Hopkinson had—­along with poet and translator Babette Deutsch—­invited RF to chair the Sponsoring Committee of the American Committee for the Commemoration of Alexander Pushkin’s Centenary (the Rus­sian poet died in 1837). Date derived from internal evidence. TG-­draft, unsigned. DCL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [November 6, 1936] If I accept it is with diffidence as knowing so l­ ittle of Rus­sian poetry and that only in translation chiefly yours and Max Eastman’s.498 Feel that one of you should do the presiding. But willing to do anything you think I can.499 497. ​It is not clear what books RF asked for, or what purpose they w ­ ere meant to fulfill. (The Green / Clymer bibliography did not appear u ­ ntil 1937.) 498. ​RF is apparently mistaken. At that date, Hopkinson had yet to publish any translations of Rus­sian poetry. Eastman (1883–1969), however, had translated Pushkin and other Rus­sian poets, and also the writings of Leon Trotsky. 499. ​In her tele­g ram, Hopkinson had quoted another tele­g ram, signed by Babette Deutsch, a translator of Rus­sian poetry and a Frost f­ amily friend: “You as dean of American poets ­w ill [by acting as chairman of the Sponsoring Committee] honor one of the greatest poets of Eu­rope. ­There w ­ ill be no call upon your time but we s­ hall greatly appreciate the use of your name.” RF agreed and, on letterhead of the American Pushkin Committee, his name appears as “chairman” of the “sponsors” in the top left margin, below which follows a roll call of American luminaries (including Sherwood Anderson, Henry Seidel Canby, John Dewey, Theodore Dreiser, W. E. B. Du Bois, Albert Einstein, Waldo Frank, James Weldon Johnson, Alfred A. Knopf, and Genevieve Taggard, among ­others). The Pushkin Committee convened a number of events in January and February of 1937 to honor the Rus­sian poet. In 1944, RF’s association with it would, incidentally, bring his name into documents assembled by the House Un-­A merican Activities Com-

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[To Bernard DeVoto (1897–1955), American historian, literary critic, and conservationist. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. Stanford.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa November 20, 1936] Dear Benny: Not just the two or three essays I had seen before—­I liked the w ­ hole damn 500 book. I have read most of it more than once and most of it to Elinor aloud as if telling her something out of my own head. You and I without collusion have arrived at so nearly the same conclusions about life and Amer­i­ca that I cant seem to figure out how we came to vote dif­fer­ent tickets at the last election. I suspect what settled it for you was your province’s having been plundered by Wall Street.501 I dont know so much about that of course. And it strikes me that if the West has been exploited on the economic plane by the East in times past it is now being exploited by the East on the plane of sentiment—in the persons of Roo­se­velt and Farley.502 I guess the West is a sucker. Dont think I care very much. So far from minding Farley in par­tic­u ­lar, I find him my chief assurance that the w ­ hole outfit isnt Utopian in your worst sense of the word.503 No communism or even collectivism can result from any election he wins. I mittee, in its Investigation of Un-­A merican Propaganda Activities (the Pushkin Committee was deemed, at the time, a Communist Front). Joan Hopkinson (­later Joan Hopkinson Shurcliff) had, in 1935, at the age of twenty-­t wo, traveled to the Soviet Union; she returned an ardent supporter of Rus­sian communism. Her enthusiasm chilled, as did that of many American leftists, a­ fter the gross abuses of Stalin’s regime w ­ ere revealed. 500. ​DeVoto’s Forays and Rebuttals, a collection of essays and reviews (Boston: L ­ ittle, Brown, and Com­pany, 1936). It is a book bound to appeal to a man of RF’s sensibilities and beliefs, packed, as it is, with contrarian essays about education, the “intellectual” classes, literary criticism; and closing with two sparkling essays on Twain. 501. ​DeVoto, who was born and raised in Utah, was a passionate conservationist and defender of the American West. Utah had been hit especially hard by the ­Great Depression, and, during the 1930s, l­ abor ­u nion enrollment skyrocketed ­t here, and control of the state went over to the Demo­cratic Party (where it would stay u ­ ntil the late 1940s). The essay on the West in Forays and Rebuttals is thoroughly ironic and ­bitter in tone, and is titled “The Plundered Province.” 502. ​James Farley (1888–1976) managed FDR’s gubernatorial campaigns in 1928 and 1930, and his 1932 and 1936 presidential campaigns (which Farley, an innovative pollster, accurately predicted would be landslides). 503. ​DeVoto writes: “The West exists only by rigorous adaptation to a realistic climate. It has no vision of perfection and has been unable to sprout belief in planned econ-

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am not the least uneasy in the hands of such hands as his and his Pals from New York Groton and Harvard. The Pope would have something to say if Farley helped this country to go ­People’s Front. The nearest Farley comes to being a collectivist is in encouraging stamp-­collectors. Lesley says not to grieve: at worst we are in for a benevolent despotism. I should find it harder to bear the benevolence than the despotism. Someone said all my writing was about the poor. Was it ­because I had no sympathy with them? I am tempted to answer: I never would have written about the poor, if I had thought it would lead to anything’s being done about them. Or better: I wrote about the poor as the most permanent subject to hitch onto. I took Christ’s word for it that poverty wouldnt be abolished.504 But now w ­ e’re asked to join the W.C.T.U.505 and do away with poverty prostitution drink and death. The g­ reat politicians are having their fun with us. Theyve picked up just enough of the New Republic and Nation jargon to seem original to the s­ imple. Something good may come of it. Simon de Montfort couldnt have meant to give us all what he did in the Big Chart. Look at what he turned and did right afterward to the Albigenses.506 I know what is good, but Im not sure who is good. Thats why I havent been called to rule. That rules me out. As a m ­ atter of fact I write about the poor b­ ecause at the receptive and impressionable age I was poor myself and knew none but the poor. To go back to your essays. I cant get over my not having realized you ­were on earth. You dont know your power. No one e­ lse has your natu­ral sensible and at the same time embracing thoughts about life and Amer­i­ca. And the way you lay into the writing with your ­whole body like an archer rather than a pistolman. Neither perverse precious nor international. I w ­ asn’t marked off from the other c­ hildren as a literary sissy like Yates [sic] and Masters. Maybe omies. Millennial visions of Amer­i­ca are native to areas of forty inches of rainfall [per year] or above” (Forays and Rebuttals, 57). 504. ​Matthew 26:11: “For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.” 505. ​The ­Women’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874. During the ­Great Depression, the group devoted itself primarily to humanitarian aid. 506. ​Simon de Montfort (1208–1265), the sixth Earl of Leicester, was a French En­glish nobleman who, having stripped King Henry III of most of his powers and become, effectively, the ruler of the country, legitimized the promises of the Magna Carta (the “Big Chart”) by promising parliamentary repre­sen­ta­tion to both nobles and ordinary subjects. RF appears to be confused, however, as it was Simon de Montfort’s ­father, the fifth Earl of Leicester, who purged the Cathars (Albigensians), a group of Christians deemed heretical by Pope Innocent III, during the Albigensian Crusade of 1209–1229.

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thats whats the ­matter with me. T ­ heres consolation in the thought that you werent marked off e­ ither. ­You’ve been through worse t­hings than we have lately.507 But ­you’re younger. And I can stand your miseries better than my own. If I seem to speak lightly of your trou­bles, ­don’t cry. Your hired girl must seem funny even to you in retrospect. Do you suppose all hired girls are like that. I believe in ­doing your own ­house­work. Do as you think best about Holmes’ article.508 A situation has been created it might take too much delicacy to get out of. My chief fear is that he ­will make too much of my having been noticed by the En­glish. I’m glad of anybodys approval. But in this case my special plea­sure was in any embarrassment the En­glish radicals might be causing the American radicals. I sort of counted on you to get this to a nicety without saying it too flat and outright. I havent seen the four essays the generous boys over t­ here have poured over my poetry.509 But it w ­ ill be strange if they dont prove to be a ­little condescending. You would know how to meet condescention with condescension.510 I won­der if we couldnt help Holmes’ article into some other magazine. The Yale Review or the V ­ irginia Quarterly say. But any way you manage ­w ill suit me. Holmes may have done well. And now comes the hardest of all. I have to admit I havent a t­ hing in verse ready to publish. Too much has happened to me this year. I am ­stopped in my track as if every­body in the opposing eleven had concentrated on me. No, not as bad as that. But I havent dared to look at paper. This is the first letter

507. ​Reference a bit unclear. The Saturday Review—­which DeVoto edited—­was in financial peril. And in the last few months of 1936, DeVoto was taking a lot of heat for his work at the magazine, and for his very public denunciation of the Nobel Committee’s decision to award the prize in lit­er­a­ture to Eugene O’Neill, whom DeVoto called a “Model T Euripedes.” 508. ​Poet John Holmes sent DeVoto a review of the En­glish edition of RF’s Selected Poems (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936) titled “Robert Frost Conquers the Poetic Realm.” DeVoto declined to publish it in the Saturday Review; it appeared instead in the Boston Eve­ning Transcript on February 13, 1937. 509. ​Poets W. H. Auden, Cecil Day Lewis, Paul Engle, and Edwin Muir wrote introductory essays for the En­glish edition of Selected Poems. They ­were, respectively, an En­glishman (for the time being), an Anglo-­Irishman, an American, and a Scot. The British w ­ ere all left wing to varying degrees; Engle is best described as a rugged American individualist. From 1933 to 1937, Engle, a Rhodes Scholar, was studying at Merton College, Oxford. 510. ​A pun on condescension by British aristocrats too proud of their “descent.”

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I have written in four months—­absolutely the first.511 I prescribed loafing for myself. I may have been wrong. At any rate herewith I start again (though in bed again) and quit whining and shirking; and it may soon come to my tackling the Harvard talks as I choose to remember them. You s­ hall have anything you want. But give me time. Look the other way. Look unexpectant. Gee I wish I had a fine long Christmas outbreak in blank verse for you or for myself. What chances I miss. I used to be made unhappy when rejected by editors: now I am unhappy when solicited by editors. What are you g­ oing to do about a world like that? I see Yale is pulling a convention to discuss happiness as a ­human possibility.512 One ­thing is sure I never enjoyed happiness till it was over: in which re­spect it is like pain. I enjoy pain only when it is over. Well, ­you’re coming to see us. We can talk the rest then. What time of day ­w ill you come? You’ll stay over night of course. ­Shall we have a small party? It should be part of my duty ­here to have my fellows meet the editor of The Review. I’m not a very resourceful host. But I’d honestly like my friends h ­ ere to get some of the good of you. Ever yours Robert

[To Louis Untermeyer. Date derived from postmark. ALS. LoC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [November 25, 1936] Dear Louis Away back [in] early September I swore off on letter-­writing till I should get well entirely. But I begin to think if I wait till then I ­shall wait forever. So ­here I am writing again though from bed. 511. ​An exaggeration, of course, though not much of one; the last substantial letter RF wrote (which survives) dates to September. 512.  Reference not entirely clear. But on November 8, 1936, Yale University professor Roland Blanton addressed the Fifth Annual Community Peace Meeting in Hartford, Connecticut, on “The Road to Peace,” declaring to thunderous applause (as the Hartford Courant reported) that “We should become centers of radiating peace.” A few weeks ­earlier, on October 18, 1936, Yale had hosted James G. McDonald, former high commissioner of the League of Nations, for an address. That speech kicked off a series of twelve ­f ree public events at Yale devoted to the topic of international relations.

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Dont imagine I h ­ aven’t been up all this time. I have been up and down. At one stroke I cut out all duties away from Amherst. I left Harvard to the En­g lish and I left the American Acad­emy to Billy Phelps.513 I dropped all the pay engagements. From that moment I was a dif­fer­ent man. It dawned on me that all this I had been imperceptibly getting deeper and deeper into wasnt the life of my choice and liking. What a relief to have the spell broken by Herpes Zoster Agonistes!514 None of my friends would back me to backing down. They prob­ably couldnt bear to see me with my bravery off. It would disillusion them. They left it to God and God saved me with a charge of bird shot in my right bump of ideality where all could see my incapacitation.515 I was in g­ reat agony of countenance when I was with you at Bread Loaf, but my stigmata hadnt yet shown on the surface. When it did come out I thought it smallpox and as such something I had better keep still about if I didnt want to start a panic. It was quite a malady. I had hardly noticed it before. That was ­because it was ­others misfortune and none of my own, I suppose. I dont mean it is humanity not to feel the suffering of ­others. The last election would confute me if I did.516 I judged that half the ­people that voted for his Rosiness ­were ­t hose glad to be on the receiving end of his benevolence and half ­were t­ hose over glad to be on the giving end. The national mood is humanitarian. Nobly so. I ­wouldn’t take it away from them. I am content to let it go at one philosophical observation: isnt it a poetical strangeness that while the world was ­going full blast on the Darwinian meta­phors of evolution, survival values and the Devil take the hindmost, a polemical Jew in exile was working up the meta­phor of the state’s being like a ­family to displace them from mind and give us a new 513. ​En­glish poet laureate John Masefield had replaced RF as Tercentenary Poet at Harvard in September. And while the reference to Phelps is less clear, William Lyon Phelps—­author and Lampson Professor of En­glish at Yale—­delivered a lecture before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences at the Acad­emy of M ­ usic on October 18, 1936; ­whether he replaced RF t­ here (or at a meeting of the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters) we cannot determine, but RF had read at the site before. 514. ​A joke about RF’s ongoing agon with shingles (scientific name: herpes zoster). See his December 5, 1936, letter to Foster. 515. ​Evidently blisters had formed on RF’s right t­emple (where, in the nineteenth ­century, phrenologists had located the faculty of ideality). 516. ​In the presidential election of 1936, FDR trounced the Republican candidate, Alf Landon, by an electoral college vote of 523–8.

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figure to live by! Marx had the strength not to be overawed by the meta­ phor in vogue. Life is like ­battle. But so is it also like shelter. Apparently we are now g­ oing to die fighting to make it a secure shelter. The model is the ­family at its best. At the height of the Darwinian meta­phor, writers like Shaw and Butler517 ­were found to go the length of saying even the ­family within was strife and perhaps the worst strife of all. We are all toadies to the fash­ion­able meta­phor of the hour. G ­ reat is he who imposes the meta­ phor. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. Except ye become as l­ ittle ­c hildren, ­u nder a good f­ ather and ­mother!518 I’m not ­going to let the shift from one meta­phor to another worry me. You’ll notice the shift has to be made rather abruptly. T ­ here are no logical steps from one to the other. ­T here is no logical connection. Which makes me think of Larry and Joseph.519 I hope you and Esther and they are all together for Thanksgiving wherever you are and that you ­w ill temper the wind of experience to them 520 for a long time and not let them hear too much see too much do too much or have too much done to them. What we dont know wont hurt us. I know too much for my age, if I may take myself for an example. I can tell you off-­hand the difference between a Communist and a Fascist and even between a Nazi and a Fascist. Much discrimination has made me mad at p­ eople I dont side with. ­Theres more to write but it must wait till I am stronger. Ever yours Rob’t

517. ​Irish novelist and dramatist George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) and En­glish novelist Samuel Butler (1835–1902). 518. ​Matthew 18:3. 519. ​Untermeyer’s ­adopted sons. 520. ​RF’s phrasing is proverbial. See Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1905): “But God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb” (213). Sterne is supposed by some to have gotten the phrase from George Herbert’s Jacula Prudentum: “To a close shorne sheep, God gives wind by mea­sure” (The En­glish Poems of George Herbert Together with His Collection of Proverbs Entitled Jacula Prudentum [London: Longmans Green, 1891]: 249). But the origins are obscure.

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[To Diarmuid Russell (1902–1973), Irish American publisher, son of the poet George Russell. Date derived from internal evidence. AL (unsigned, and likely incomplete). DCL.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa December 3, 1936] Dear Mr Russell: Henry Wallace o ­ ught to be ashamed of himself to have had a farm magazine in his f­ amily for three generations and not developed or discovered just such a writing farm character.521 You can tell him so from me. It almost makes me distrust of his po­liti­cal leadership. The first person I thought of was a poetic friend of his and mine on a big farm in Iowa.522 But prob­ably Henry Wallace would have thought of him too if he had been the right kind. I can see now his farm is too big and he is not without the big farmers pre­sent day grievance—­big turnover and no profit. I have just been hearing that he turns over 32000 a year in vain. He reminds me of the way I turn over fifteen tons of coal a winter and have nothing to show for it but ashes. What you want on earth and what I want is someone the middleman and the law maker may maltreat but he still clings to the land. Thats in general. I have described him in a recent poem.523 In par­tic­u­lar for the purposes of your autobiography he has three requisites: He must be a farmer a character and a writer. I can think of a few who combine the farmer and character.

521. ​Russell, who had moved to the United States in 1929 and was currently working for G. P. Putnam’s Sons, had written RF: “What I want to do is to find some farmer who would write the autobiography of his life. This account should also contain some rural philosophy pointing out the place that agriculture occupies in a national economy. It is a very difficult ­matter to find some farmer who writes reasonably and who has possession of a philosophical turn of mind, which such a book requires. I wrote to Henry Wallace who gave me several names, but none of ­t hese proved to be of any use” (letter held at DCL). Wallace was Secretary of Agriculture in FDR’s administration. The Wallace ­family had published Wallaces’ Farmer since 1895. The paper merged with the rival trade journal, the Iowa Homestead, and was subsequently published as Wallaces’ Farmer & Iowa Homestead ­u ntil it was sold to Dante Pierce in 1935. 522. ​James Hearst (1900–1983), often referred to as the “Robert Frost of the Midwest,” was a farmer, poet, and professor of En­g lish at the University of Northern Iowa. He was the author of ten volumes of poetry and published his verse frequently in Wallaces’ Farmer. 523. ​Meliboeus, in “Build Soil.”

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[To J. J. Lankes. Date derived from internal evidence and from a penciled in date at the top of the first page in another hand. ALS. HRC.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa December 3, 1936] Dear J.J.: Blame me for your position all you like, but give me a chance to succeed with you in it. That is to say make the position so you can be yourself in it and continue to be the artist you are.524 I’ve done my part; now you do yours. I take my hat off to ­those ­people out ­there for admitting of such an unacademic as you on your own terms. You h ­ aven’t had to compromise and you wont have to compromise. You neednt talk your conventional arty not to me. For God’s sake take a ­little comfort in the realities. ­You’re all fixed up to go. Put your own production first where it belongs and where the college ­w ill always be proud to see it. Remember what the college gets most from you is your reputation for wood cuts out in the world. Dont let the petty teachers false sense of duty fool you out of that. What you perform in real art and what comes to the college notice round about from the public field ­w ill do more to teach ­those girls than anything you say to them in a class.525 Not that what you say to them in a class wont count too. It w ­ ill count considerably and considerably more than what most teachers say ­because you are art at first hand. ­There is nothing second hand about you. They must feel that even when they dont know it. They come back from vacation and from having been made to realize it by meeting you in art-­store win­dows or in a magazine or in a book or in some disinterested non-­a lumna’s talk. Dont underestimate your value in the system. Not many schools get such benefits as you confer without directly trying. The only marvel is (you are such a cuss) that they can see their advantage in you. I ­shall end by admiring them almost as much as I admire you. No rest for me, but it is something if I can be the means bringing ­others to anything like rest. We can think of you as having a h ­ ouse you can eat in 526 without ner­vous constrictions of the stomach. It w ­ ill be like a Robinson Crusoe story for us. ­We’ll come and see you and warm your ­house. You dis524. ​His position at Wells College. 525. ​Wells was, ­u ntil 2005, a ­women’s college. 526. ​For several years, RF had tried to convince Lankes to relocate north from his (very small) residence in Hilton Village, ­Virginia.

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gusted me last year with your forlornness. Gee let me have a ­little plea­sure in the last go down. Let’s help each other get something more done. The time comes for us to migrate for our vari­ous healths. I’m in ­favor of our wintering at Corpus Christi and not just b­ ecause it sounds like a swear word, but partly b­ ecause it is the most unaccountable ­thing to do. It’s on the map in Texas. Lesley set out yesterday for Tasco [sic] in Mexico—­she and her two ­daughters.527 I dont know why she went ­there ­unless it was for something more to think about. It was an act of extraversion. We used to sing a song in school in San Francisco when I was exactly seven years old. I next arrived in Mexico Where silver is so thick528 Nowhere says I I guess I know I’ll fill my bag right quick This story is as true as true as the gun Go on and go on till the tale is done529 He was tall slim quick as a flash And twenty-­two years old He had jet black eye [sic] and a ­g rand moustache And a buckskin bag of gold. I believe I’ve got two songs mixed up ­there.530 One seems to be about silver and the other about gold. To hell with folksongs anyway. The meter isnt the same in both pieces ­either. 527. ​Lesley resided that winter in Taxco, Mexico, a town just southwest of Mexico City, with her ­daughters Elinor and Lesley Lee—­but not before spending the holidays with RF and Elinor in San Antonio (not Corpus Christi). RF’s tenses seem a bit confused. 528. ​Taxco was celebrated for its silver jewelry. 529. ​The first stanza of the song derives loosely from the fifth stanza of “The Journey,” an anonymous song in Bradbury’s Young Shawm: A Collection of School ­Music (New York: Mason B ­ rothers, 1855): I next tried California, Where gold, they say’s so thick; ‘Now ­here,’ says I, ‘I guess I know, I’ll fill my bag right quick.’ ” Chorus: His story is as true as the gun, And more he could tell, but now he is done. 530.  The last four lines indeed derive from a different song: “The Buckskin Bag of Gold” (1869) by Henry Clay Work (1832–1884).

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You may have heard and then again you may not u ­ nless Walter Winchell531 told you I have been dastardly sick with shingles in the upper right hand bump of ideality. Most p­ eople have it round the waist where they wear their money ­belt. It is said to be due to anxiety ­mental or physical. I had been anxious to find some excuse for not ­doing the odes (two) at Harvard. It worked to visable [sic] effect. You should have seen me. It looked like poison ivy, smallpox and in the last phase, a charge of birdshot. The doctor swore me to a rest cure that included refraining from writing letters. I am just starting again, or I should have acknowledged the woodblock of the ­house by the blasted buttonwood tree (plane tree sycamore tree.) Thats what I wrote chiefly for. It makes my most beautiful room ornament. Why didnt you send it sooner? Why didnt you sign it? It signs itself. I’ve had no m ­ ental strength to do anything about a Christmas card for this year. Let’s start soon for next year. Wait till I go to Corpus Christi. I’m no good. But then I never was any good. I can remember one ­after another having pronounced on me and given me up from the earliest times. I’m like the siege of Madrid from ­either point of view.532 Last year the only ­thing I thought I was up to was being a U.S. Senator. Now I would be satisfied if I could be a farm man­ag­er. I’d like to run a big farm—­about as big as Rhode Island with ten or fifteen villages of workmen (Chinese by preference) scattered over it and a narrow gage533 railroad all my own. I bet I could run that what­ever e­ lse I cant do. I’m getting ready to bust loose in some new direction. The sun is very spotted and I feel it in my pituitary. As I say I wrote this letter to tell you what I think of your art in general and about you in par­tic­u ­lar. RF.

531. ​Walter Winchell (1897–1972), a gossip columnist for the New York Daily Mirror. 532. ​Republican loyalists had successfully repelled a fierce attack of Francisco Franco’s nationalists in November. Madrid was a central battleground during the Spanish Civil War; the nationalists fi­nally seized the city in February 1939. 533. ​An accepted spelling in the nineteenth-­and early-­t wentieth centuries.

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Volume 3: 1929–1936

[To Joseph Blumenthal. ALS. ACL.]

Amherst Mass Dec 4 1936 Dear Blumenthal: My Christmas greeting to you for 1936 has to be Lets begin soon to get ready for Christmas 1937. I havent had the faculties to write or revise poetry for the last few months. ­There’s a Christmas poem in my bag, but it’s not just the way I want to see it in print. I’m g­ oing down to Corpus Christi (Texas) to try if that w ­ on’t do something for my dormant Christmas spirit.534 We chose the place by name on purpose. You know what I’d like to do rather than get out a Christmas booklet?535 I’d rather join J. J. (Lankes) in a booklet of A Blue 534.  The poem in the bag is “To a Young Wretch,” which Blumenthal would print, in an edition of 820 copies u ­ nder seven dif­fer­ent imprints, as RF’s Christmas-­card poem in 1937. Lankes—­one of the seven imprintees—­g raced it with a woodcut of evergreens in a snowy landscape. RF packs a good deal of his philosophy into the poem, as we know that philosophy from letters in the pre­sent volume. “To A Young Wretch” concerns the theft, from its speaker’s property, of a Yuletide tree: “It is your Christmases against my woods. / But even where the opposing interests kill, / They are to be thought of as opposing goods / Oftener than as conflicting good and ill” (CPPP, 318). As for the placename “Corpus Christi,” and RF’s suggestion ­here and elsewhere that a city so hallowed in name might “do something” to awaken his “dormant Christmas spirit”: his readings in the history of the conquistadors may have sparked his interest in the place. In June 1519, shortly before Cortes moved upon Tenochtitlán and did ­battle with the Aztecs (the subject, as w ­ e’ve noted, of the first poem RF ever wrote), Alvarez de Pineda, on an errand to find the Pacific, sailed into the bay that forms at the mouth of the Nueces River (in what is now Texas) on the Catholic feast day of Corpus Christi, which typically falls some sixty days ­a fter Easter; to mark the occasion, de Pineda gave the bay the name it still bears (and became the first white man to map the Gulf coast). All his talk of wintering in the city notwithstanding, RF and ­family wound up instead in a town named for a saint, not a savior—­San Antonio, “just short of the Promised Land of Corpus Christi,” as RF puts it in his December 28 letter to Thornton. 535.  Blumenthal’s Spiral Press had printed RF’s Christmas cards in 1929 (“Christmas Trees”), 1934 (“Two Tramps in Mud Time”), and 1935 (“Neither Out Far Nor in Deep”). RF issued no Christmas card in 1936, owing to the aftereffects of Harvard stage-­fright and the shingles it brought on. He did, however, permit the California book designer and printer Grant Dahlstrom to reprint (as his own greeting card) the text of RF’s March 1935 “Letter to The Amherst Student.” RF would work with Blumenthal to produce Christmas cards from 1937–1962 (1940–1943 excepted). The cards are described in g­ reat detail in Crane (108-144) and have become, as noted ­earlier, highly sought-­a fter collectibles.

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Ribbon at Amesbury to be sent to all the poultry ­people advertising in all the poultry magazines in the country or a booklet of The Mountain to be sent to all the members of the Appalachian Club.536 Such are my notions. But before we do anything we’d better wait till we see what jinn comes out of the gin ­bottle. I’m awfully sorry but at the same time I cant deny I’m feeling rather light-­hearted not to say light-­headed from my last few months of complete irresoponsibility [sic]. Let’s have a good Christmas. Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Harold Rugg. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass Dec 4 1936 Dear Rugg: ­A fter long long consideration (you should say so—­and one long more), I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that I dont see how I can ever again promise you or anyone e­ lse a poem for an occasion. Look at the way I failed them with not only one poem but two at Harvard. And look at the sad way Masefield ­d idn’t fail them. I’m modest. I often say Who am I that I should hold myself above d­ oing ­things badly. That’s why I rather good-­naturedly consent to teach and lecture badly. But poetry isnt teaching and lecturing. I have kept poetry ­free thus far, and I have been punished for the mere thought of making it a duty or a business. You’ll understand. The one or two exceptions to rule [sic] have only been seeming exceptions. Three poems I believe I have read for public occasions—­four come to think of it, but they werent written for the occasions and very imperfectly fitted them.537 I made myself wretched and

536. Neither proj­ect came to fruition. The Appalachian Mountain Club is one of the oldest outdoor groups in the United States. Founded in 1876, the club first sought to preserve New Hampshire’s White Mountains (among which RF and his ­family lived from 1915 to 1920, in Franconia, and where they had summered for many years since); it soon expanded across the northeast. The Appalachian Mountain Club mapped the White Mountains in the late nineteenth c­ entury, and, in 1888, erected the first of a series of huts along trails frequented by hikers. 537. ​Two versions of “Build Soil” delivered at Columbia, the first on May 31, 1921, the second on May 31, 1932 (as Phi Beta Kapp poet); “The Bonfire,” delivered at Harvard on

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even sick last summer with the dread of what I had let myself in for at Harvard. I now think I was very foolish to try anything at my age so against my lifelong habits. Poetry has been a self indulgence with me and t­ heres no use trying to put a better face on it. I have some times wished I was a ready writer in prose, but never in verse. I have never rhymed for parlor games or for exercise or from a sense of duty to keep the wolf from the door. Aint I useless? Just the same Im your friend you have to make the best of, Robert Frost

[To Charles H. Foster. ALS. DCL.]

Amherst Mass Dec 5 1936 Dear Charles: You’ll begin to won­der what in the world of art and education has become of me. I’ve been neglecting every­thing and every­body with ­great impartiality. Doctor’s o ­ rders. I had bad shingles which, I’m told, you cant have except from worry. I must have worried about you without knowing it. I can think of nothing ­else I had to worry about. Maybe ­there’s some ­m istake. I always say ­there are five ­things to do about life, laugh cry swear pray and worry; and I should have claimed that the one I did least of was worry. I d­ on’t concede that I have worried about you even. So set your conscience at rest. I’m sure that if you are ­going to be a poet you ­w ill be a poet. You w ­ ill draw up into an attitude of your own ­toward ­things, and from ­there strike and strike again. ­There must be some truth you want to have so in spite of the crowd. Someday you’ll find that prejudice speaking out of your verse and then it ­will be poetry. Meanwhile be as impor­tant in your ideas as original as you can concentrate force to be. And dont worry. I wont if you wont. No one ever yet worried himself into art. I’ll bet you have a fine time with Norman Foerster.538 He has the large spirit. I ­couldn’t wish you in better com­pany. Remember me to him.

June 16, 1916 (as Phi Beta Kappa Poet); and “Birches,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “The Sound of Trees,” delivered at Tufts on May 5, 1915 (also as Phi Beta Kappa poet). 538. ​See RF to Foster, December 18, 1935.

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A.E.’s son acting for a publisher, is on the hunt for a man who is at once a farmer a character and a writer.539 I know ­people who combine the first two. I hope to find him someone who combines all three. Henry Wallace has tried and failed. I think Henry Wallace should be ashamed—to have had a farm magazine in his ­family three generations and not developed or discovered the right kind of man—­not one case of him in sixty years.540 By a character we mean a phi­los­o­pher moralist poet. I suppose what we are a­ fter is a rare bird. Only once in a thousand years do you get a criminal a character and a writer in one. Villon—­Verlaine—­Poe.541 Still, ­we’ve got to find a farmer character-­ writer or bust. Iowa is a hopeless field of research. The farmers out t­ here all have the grievance of huge turnover and no profit. A young friend of Henry Wallace’s and mine out t­ here has a farm turnover of 32,000 and nothing to show for it.542 Lets see what we can do in New E ­ ngland. Now I wish you ­were a farmer. You are a character already. Yes and a writer. Im sure of it. Our best to you and Doris Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Morris Tilley. Date derived from internal evidence. ALS. UM.]

[Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts] [circa December 6, 1936] Dear Morris You should have had this ages ago. But my strength gave out last June before I got more than started with my mailing list. I was at Harvard last spring

539. ​AE’s (that is, George Russell’s) son Diarmuid Russell. See RF’s December 3 letter to Russell. 540. ​R F had met Wallace in Washington in December  1934, introduced by Ferner Nuhn, who was working ­u nder Wallace in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (see YT, 458). 541. ​François Villon (ca. 1431–ca. 1463), French poet, famous for rowdiness and thievery; Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), also French on a similar pattern, imprisoned for (among other ­t hings) shooting Arthur Rimbaud in the wrist; Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), reputed by his first biographer, Rufus Griswold (for the most part falsely), to have been a dissolute menace. 542. ​See, again, RF to Russell, December 3.

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and it took it out of me. I havent been so on the go since my first year at Ann Arbor. Let’s see, what year was that?543 Time is getting away. But never mind. It is mere time—­not eternity. Of the five t­ hings indicated to do about life namely laugh, cry, swear, pray and worry, the one I do least is the last. I dont claim I do none of it. The old cares stay on. Carol has never been r­ eally well and strong. His unhappiness is mine—­and this more mine that my own personal affairs prosper almost too much. I wish government would do something to remove ­t hese contrasts. But just when our government receives a mandate to remove them, the Rus­sian government seems on the point of giving up the attempt to remove them.544 Our best to you both Ever yours Robert Frost

[To Donald Gordon Mostrom (1922–2008), then a thirteen-­year-­old schoolboy living, as did Annette St. Hilaire (1923–2007), his con­temporary, in Danvers, Mas­sa­chu­setts. The two youngsters had apparently collaborated on a handmade book sent as a gift to RF. Dated from internal evidence. By mid-­December, the Frosts had departed for Texas. ALS. BU.]

Amherst Mass December [circa 6,] 1936 My dear Donald: One letter to you and one to Annette St Hilaire. I have tried in vain to decide which of you made the pictures and which made the rest of the book. I ­ought to be permitted two guesses. In this letter I guess you made the pictures. But what­ever your share in the book, I can thank you for it and take the book to my heart as a Christmas pre­sent. Always henceforth Your friend Robert Frost 543. ​1921–1922. 544. ​The “mandate” came with FDR’s landslide victory in November. As for “the Rus­ sian government”: RF likely has in mind its adoption, on December  6, 1936, of a new constitution, written ­u nder Stalin’s direction, and with the pretense of liberalizing the government; and also the first series of “show ­t rials,” through which Stalin had undertaken to purge the party of supposed Trotskyites.

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[To Richard Thornton. ALS. DCL.]

113 Norwood Court San Antonio Texas December 28 1936 Dear Mr Thornton: ­Here we are located for three months at 113 Norwood Court, San Antonia [sic], Texas. This ­w ill be our south-­most for the year I begin to suspect—­just short of the Promised Land of Corpus Christi Harlingen McAllen and Brownsville. We may have a look into t­ hose citrous [sic] places to spy them out for next year545—­and we may not u ­ nless we recover a lot from what we have already done. San Antonio is good enough for all practical purposes. It shows a good climate thus far. We overtook Lesley; so that we had three sets of grandchildren for Christmas in the St Anthony ­Hotel San Antonio instead of the two sets we had expected. Willard Fraser got in by automobile from Montana with our grandaughter Robin from Montana one hour ahead of our train. Lesley telephoned from L. W. Payne’s at Austin546 that same eve­n ing and came along the next day with her two l­ ittle girls. Carol arrived with his wife and boy the day ­a fter Lesley. Ten of us had Christmas dinner at a big ­table at the St Anthony.547 Now Elinor and I have the ­house at 113 Norwood Court and Carol has a ­house within a mile and a half of us. Lesley set out for Mexico this noon. Willard leaves for Montana Dec 31 to work for the New Deal Governor of the state.548 ­There is nothing much ahead of us but the enjoyment of more peace than we have had for a year or two. Almost nobody knows we are ­here. One newspaper man did find me in the h ­ otel—­I ­don’t know how. But I shook him off with a vague promise of an interview when I should be settled.

545. ​The Rio Grande Valley, where Harlingen, McAllen, and Brownsville are located, is the southernmost part of Texas, and was the center of Texas citrus fruit production (notably of grapefruit). 546. ​Leonidas Payne, who had hosted RF during his visit to Austin in November 1922 and again in 1933. 547. ​A storied and luxurious San Antonio h ­ otel. 548. ​Roy E. Ayers (1882–1955), who would take office on January 4, 1937.

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Your Christmas Tree Christmas card reached us pleasantly—­a pretty piece of printing. You’d think all we had been through since we left New York might have blotted out all memory of our visit with you. But it h ­ asn’t. Remember us to Mrs Thornton and to the office549 with best wishes for a happy New Year. Sincerely yours Robert Frost

549. ​At Henry Holt.

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents Chronology: January 1929–­December 1936 Acknowl­edgments Index

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents Adams, Frederick Baldwin, Jr. (1910–2001), was an American bibliophile and director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. A first cousin once removed of President Franklin Delano Roo­se­velt, Adams graduated from Yale and served on the governing boards of Yale University Press and the Yale University Council. He also served as president of the New York Historical Society and the Grolier Club. During his life, Adams amassed one of the largest personal collections of works by Thomas Hardy and RF and was an avid collector of radical leftist lit­er­a­t ure, including works by Karl Marx. In 1936, he became editor of the book-­collecting journal, Colophon: A Book Collector’s Quarterly, for which he wrote a regular column called “The Crow’s Nest.” Adams, Helen (1879–1967), was born in Toledo, Ohio. She was the ­sister of Frederick Baldwin Adams and aunt of Frederick Baldwin Adams Jr. Adler, Elmer (1884–1962), was an American book designer. In 1922, he cofounded the New York firm Pynson Printers, named a­ fter Richard Pynson, one of ­England’s first bookbinders—­a man whose books helped standardize the En­ glish language. In 1930, Adler founded and edited the Colophon. He ceased publication of the Colophon in 1940 when he was invited by Prince­ton University to create its first Department of Graphic Arts. A ­ fter retiring from Prince­ton in 1952, he moved to Puerto Rico and established in 1956 La Casa del Libro, a foundation dedicated to the preservation and display of finely printed books. He received the American Institute of Graphic Arts medal in 1947. He died in Puerto Rico in 1962. Alberts, Sydney Seymour (1906–1982), was an American book collector. He published A Bibliography of the Works of Robinson Jeffers (New York: Franklin Press) in 1961. US copyright rec­ords show that he also registered several plays, including Protection for Sparrows, a Play in 1 Act (1930) and Seventeen Seventy Seven or Thereabouts (1932). In 1964, he obtained a patent for a “body support” device, used to control varicose veins in ­women during pregnancy. Allen, William Hervey (1889–1949), was an American novelist, poet, and educator whom RF first met at Bread Loaf in 1926. A World War I veteran wounded at Fismes, Allen was educated at the United States Naval Acad­emy, the University

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of Pittsburgh, and Harvard. Although Allen had self-­published an early book of poetry titled Ballads of the Border (1916), he received acclaim for Wampum and Old Gold (1921), which was selected as the winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Allen subsequently taught at Columbia and Vassar and published Israfel (1925), a popu­lar biography of Edgar Allan Poe. In 1933, Allen published his sweeping historical novel, Anthony Adverse, which, having sold nearly 400,000 copies, was a popu­lar and financial success. Though he continued to dabble in historical fiction and publish poetry for the rest of his life, Allen was never to duplicate the acclaim of his early work. He died of a heart attack in 1949 at his home in Coconut Grove, Florida. Armstrong, Andrew Joseph (1873–1954), was an American educator and bibliophile. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and attended public schools, where he developed a love of the classics. A ­ fter his ­father’s death in 1887, Armstrong supported his ­family by working in a bank while completing high school. ­A fter his m ­ other died in 1894, he attended Wabash College, where he earned a BA and MA in En­glish, and then the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a PhD in En­glish in 1908. A ­ fter graduating from Penn, he taught at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky, and then accepted a position at Baylor University, where he taught for the rest of his ­career, chairing the En­glish department from 1912–1942. A lover of the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barret Browning, by 1925 he and his wife, Mary Maxwell Armstrong, had assembled the largest Browning archive in the world. Seeking to preserve his collection intact, in 1943 Armstrong persuaded Baylor president Pat N. Neff to donate $100,000 ­toward the construction of a new library, with the stipulation that Armstrong would personally raise the remaining funds to see the proj­ect through to completion. Armstrong made good on his promise. The Armstrong Browning Library was dedicated in December 1951. Baily, Harold J. (1887–1964), was an attorney who served as secretary and trustee of the Brooklyn Public Library. A gradu­ate of Amherst College (1908), Baily received his law degree from Harvard in 1912 and briefly worked for the Department of Justice during World War I. An avid bibliophile, Baily recorded more than 2,000 volumes in his personal library and had assembled the nation’s largest collection of the art of Edmund Blampied (1886–1966). Baird, Theodore (1901–1996), was an American scholar and educator. Born in Warren, Ohio, Baird attended Hobart College and received his MA and PhD from Harvard University. He was a professor of En­glish at Amherst College from 1927 to 1969 and established Amherst’s famous two-­semester composition course, En­glish 1–2, in which students would apply themselves to a single

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   707

question—­such as “Where are you?”—­during the duration of each semester. In 1940, he and his wife, Smith professor Frances Titchener Baird, commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build their home on Shays Street in Amherst, the only Wright ­house built in Mas­sa­chu­setts. Bartlett, John (1892–1941), was an American journalist and editor. A student of RF’s at Pinkerton Acad­emy, from which he graduated in 1910, Bartlett married another Pinkerton gradu­ate, Margaret Abbott, and pursued a journalism c­ areer in Vancouver, Canada, and then in Boulder, Colorado, where he and his wife established a newspaper syndicate ser­vice. RF and his wife Elinor maintained a lifelong friendship with the Bartletts. Bartlett, Margaret Abbot (1892–1949): see Bartlett, John. Benét, William Rose (1886–1950), was an American poet, editor, critic, and columnist. A ­ fter graduating from Yale in 1907, he worked at the Literary Review, New York Eve­ning Post, and ­Century Magazine. In 1924, Benét cofounded (with Henry Seidel Canby and ­others) the Saturday Review of Lit­er­at­ ure, where he worked as an editor and wrote a column, “The Phoenix Nest,” for the remainder of his life. A prolific writer, he published his first volume of poetry, Merchants of Cathay, in 1913; he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1942 for his verse autobiography, The Dust Which Is God (1941). Bennett, Helen Champion (1859–1939), was a schoolteacher in Newmarket, New Hampshire, and in 1930 a member of the nominating committee of the New Hampshire Historical Society. Bernheimer, Earle Jerome (1897–1986), was an American socialite, financier, department store heir, and bibliophile. He had assembled, by 1940, the most extensive collection of RF manuscripts and memorabilia then extant. A gradu­ate of the University of Michigan, Bernheimer began his c­ areer with the Kansas City, Missouri, investment firm Stern ­Brothers. In 1928, Bernheimer left Stern B ­ rothers to form Baum, Bernheimer Co., a municipal bond investment firm in Kansas City. Bernheimer sold his shares of the com­pany to George Baum in 1946 and moved to Beverly Hills. In 1940, Bernheimer purchased the last remaining copy (only two w ­ ere printed) of Twilight, which RF privately printed in an attempt to persuade Elinor White not to break off their engagement. In subsequent years, Bernheimer struck a deal with RF guaranteeing that, in exchange for a monthly stipend of $150, the poet would supply Bernheimer with manuscripts, signed books, and other collectibles. In December 1950, despite RF’s protests, Bernheimer auctioned off his collection at Parke-­Bernet Galleries.

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Bird, Remsen DuBois (1888–1971), was an American educator and minister. He grew up in New York City in an impoverished ­house­hold ­because of his ­father’s untimely death and was raised by an aunt and ­uncle. He enrolled in Lafayette College, earning a BA in 1909. He continued his education at Prince­ton Theological Seminary, where he earned a BDiv in 1912 and was ordained as a minister. He did further gradu­ate work at the University of Berlin and taught church history at Prince­ton and at the San Francisco Theological Seminary. During World War I, he served in France as a chaplin for the YMCA and, ­after returning to the United States, served from 1921 to 1945 as president of Occidental College. He resigned his position in 1945 and moved to Carmel, California, where he and his wife Helen founded the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies. Blair, Francis G. (1864–1942), was an educator and public school administrator. He was born in Nashville, Illinois, where he attended school in a one-­room school­house. He graduated from Illinois State University and in 1906 and was elected as superintendent of Illinois Public Instruction, a post he held for twenty-­eight years. He also served on the boards of the Lincoln Monument and Lincoln Homestead and served as commissioner for the Illinois State Library. Blumenthal, Joseph (1897–1990), was an American printer, book designer, typographer, and central figure of the twentieth-­century fine press movement. As the founder and proprietor of the Spiral Press (1926–1971), Blumenthal, in addition to designing special editions of Frost’s books and annual Christmas cards, designed and printed special editions for W. H. Auden, Pablo Neruda, William Carlos Williams, Robinson Jeffers, Franklin Delano Roo­se­velt, and John F. Kennedy. A ­ fter closing the press in 1971, Blumenthal dedicated the remainder of his life to writing about fine press publishing. The author of the Art of the Printed Book, 1455–1955 (1978) and Bruce Rogers: A Life in Letters, 1870– 1957 (1989), Blumenthal also published an account of Frost’s lifelong fascination with printing and book design—­Robert Frost and His Printers (1985). In 1952, the American Association of Graphic Arts awarded Blumenthal its Lifetime Achievement Award. Bobrowsky, Albert S. (1914–2000), was an American businessman. A gradu­ate of New York University, Bobrowsky worked as a ­wholesale grocer in New York City. As a high school student, he was interested in poetry and was selected by the Brooklyn Daily Ea­gle as one of the winners of its story and poetry contest, featured as part of the newspaper’s “Ju­n ior Ea­gle” feature.

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Bogan, Louise (1897–1970), was an American poet and literary critic who became the first ­woman to hold the title of Con­sul­tant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1945. She was born in Livermore Falls, Maine, in 1897 and attended Boston Girls Latin School and, for one year, Boston University. In 1917, she married Kurt Sanders, who died of pneumonia in 1920. In 1925, she married Frost’s friend, the poet Raymond Holden, whom she divorced in 1937. Known for her precision in traditional forms, Bogan published Body of this Death (1923), Dark Summer (1929), and The Sleeping Fury (1937) to critical acclaim. In 1931, she became the poetry critic for the New Yorker, a post she held for 38 years. Shortly before her death, she collected her work in The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923–1968. She won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1955 and was awarded two Guggenheim fellowships. Famously reclusive, she died alone in Manhattan in 1970. Bouton, Archibald (1872–1941), was an American educator. He was born in Cortland, New York, in 1872. He earned a BA in En­glish from Amherst College in 1896 and an MA in En­glish from Columbia in 1900. An editor of the poems of Matthew Arnold and John Greenleaf Whittier, Bouton was professor of rhe­ toric and dean of the College of Arts and Pure Sciences at New York University. He is best known for his scholarly editions and commentary on the Lincoln–­Douglas debates. Bower, Warren (1899–1976), was born in Elkhart, Indiana, and graduated from Hillsdale College in 1920. He earned an MA in En­glish from the University of Michigan in 1923, when RF was on the faculty as a fellow in letters. In addition to editing The College Writer (1935) and New Directions (1941), he wrote How to Write for Plea­sure and for Profit (1951). From 1938 to 1967, Bower hosted the popu­lar WNYC radio program “The Reader’s Almanac,” which broadcast interviews with well-­k nown authors. He served as professor of En­glish at New York University and assistant dean for its School of Continuing Education. Bragdon, Clifford Richardson (1906–1973), grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended St. Albans preparatory school and graduated from Amherst College in 1928. While teaching in the Cleveland public school system, he received an MEd and eventually served on the faculty of Smith College, where he was professor of education and child study. Braithwaite, William Stanley (1878–1962), was an African American poet, literary critic, editor, and anthologist. In addition to authoring numerous books of poetry and criticism, he served as literary editor of the Boston Eve­ ning Transcript, editor of the Poetry Journal (Boston), and editor of the annual

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Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry, published from 1913 to 1939. Branch, Anna Hempstead (1875–1937), was an American poet. Branch was born in New London, Connecticut, and grew up in New York City, where she attended Froebel and Adelphi Academies. She graduated from Smith College in 1897 and in 1898 won a poetry contest sponsored by ­Century Magazine. She began publishing regularly in literary magazines and went on to produce several volumes of poetry, including The Heart of the Road and Other Poems (1901), The Shoes that Danced and Other Poems (1905), and The Rose of the Wind and Other Poems (1910). In 1918, she became vice president of the National League of ­Women’s Ser­vice and founded and directed the Poets’ Guild, which attracted many literary luminaries to New York’s Lower East Side (­a fter 1928 at the Christodora House). Brickell, Henry Herschel (1889–1952), was an American journalist and editor. Born in Mississippi, Brickell edited the University of Mississippi Magazine but did not complete a degree before beginning a c­ areer in journalism. In 1919, he joined the New York Post and in 1923 became book editor. From 1928 to 1933, he was general editor at Henry Holt and edited the O. Henry Memorial Prize Short Stories series. As a contributor to the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, the Saturday Review, and other publications, he was a prominent figure in literary culture in the 1930s. He worked for the State Department in Colombia during World War II and ­later lectured and wrote in Spanish about American lit­er­a­t ure. Brooks, Van Wyck (1886–1963), was an American literary critic, cultural critic, biographer, and historian. He was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, and as a young man travelled extensively in Eu­rope. ­A fter graduating from the Plainfield public school system, Brooks followed his friend Maxwell Perkins to Harvard University, graduating in three years with a BA in En­glish in 1907. At Harvard, he befriended John Hall Wheelock, with whom he published his first book, a collection of poetry, Verses from Two Undergraduates. ­A fter graduating from Harvard, Brooks moved to E ­ ngland, where he worked for the Curtis Brown Publishing Com­pany and wrote his first book of criticism, The Wine of the Puritans. An extremely prolific writer, ­after returning to Amer­i­ca, for the next fifty years Brooks composed thirty books, many of which would become classics in the field of nineteenth-­century American lit­er­a­t ure. Among his best known works ­were studies of Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving, Walt Whitman, Herman Mel-

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ville, William Dean Howells, and Helen Keller. In 1937, he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Flowering of New ­England, the first in a series of five books entitled Makers and Finders that chronicled the history of American lit­er­a­ture from the early nineteenth c­ entury to 1915. While working on this series, Brooks dabbled in socialist politics and served on the managing boards of the leftist magazines, the Freeman and the Seven Arts. In his ­later years, Brooks moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and published several autobiographies, completing the last one, From the Shadow on the Mountain, just a year before his death from a stroke in 1963. Broomell, Margaret (1911–1994), was an American educator. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, where she attended public schools. ­A fter graduating, she enrolled at Wellesley College, where she played lacrosse and tennis. A ­ fter graduating from Wellesley in 1933, she served as the chairwoman of the Reunion Committee. In 1935 she married Richard Cameron Bleloch, with whom she had two ­children, Donald and Eleanor. For years she taught kindergarten at the North Country Day School in Winnetka, Ilinois. Brown, Warren R. (1873–1957), was born on a farm in Bridgewater, New Hampshire, and, as an adult, moved to Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts, where he became a realtor. In 1931, he helped the Frosts purchase their home on 15 Sunset Ave­nue in Amherst. A regular columnist for the Springfield Republican, Brown also wrote a pamphlet for the Amherst Historical Commission titled “Amazing Amherst.” Builter, Raymond D. (1914–2011), was an American businessman. A gradu­ate of Dartmouth College in 1936, Builter was a member of Dartmouth’s Daniel Oliver Associates, a fine-­press club that printed Frost’s Three Poems in 1935. ­A fter graduating from Dartmouth, Builter served as an officer in the Philippines during World War II. He served as an accountant for vari­ous companies, including the Connecticut Railway and Lighting Com­pany, Remington Arms, Columbia Rec­ords, and Schaefer Beer; he also served as comptroller for Bridgeport University in Connecticut, where Builter and his ­family lived. His obituary indicates that he and his wife Genevieve ­were benefactors of the local library. Active in a variety of charities and civic organ­izations, Builter was named Dartmouth’s Alumnus of the Year in 2008. Bullock, Marie Leontine (1911–1986), was the founder of the Acad­emy of American Poets in 1934 and, for fifty years, served as its president. Born in Paris to American parents, she was educated at the Sorbonne and moved back to the United States to do gradu­ate work at Columbia University. She married Hugh

712  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

Bullock, an investment banker. With the help of her husband and poets Edwin Arlington Robinson and Joseph Auslander, she founded the Acad­emy during the G ­ reat Depression to provide financial support to poets at all stages of their ­careers and to foster a greater national appreciation for poetry. She won many awards for her civic contributions, including the New York City Mayor’s Award of Honor for Arts and Culture, a Gold Medal from the National Institute of Social Sciences, and the Award for Distinguished Ser­vice to the Arts from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She was also an amateur astronomer who regularly taught classes at the Hayden Planetarium. Bynner, Harold Witter (1881–1968), was an American poet, writer, and scholar. Educated at Harvard (1902)—­where he was invited to join the literary magazine, the Harvard Advocate, by its editor, Wallace Stevens—he published the first of many volumes of poetry, Young Harvard, in 1907. A ­ fter a four-­year stint at McClure’s Magazine, he taught for a year at the University of California, Berkeley but spent the rest of his c­ areer as an in­de­pen­dent writer and lecturer. In 1920–1921, he traveled to China and his interest in its lit­er­a­t ure led to a collaboration with Kiang Kang-hu, Berkeley professor of Chinese, on the translation of T’ang Dynasty poems. He settled eventually in Santa Fe, where he hosted many visiting writers over the years. His Selected Poems was published in 1936 and a late volume, New Poems 1960, capped a prolific ­career. Canby, Henry Seidel (1878–1961), was an American critic, editor, and educator. ­A fter graduating from Yale in 1899 and completing his PhD ­t here in 1905, Canby joined the Yale En­glish faculty. He edited the Yale Review (1911–1922) and championed American lit­er­a­t ure as a field of study. In 1920, he founded the Literary Review, a supplement of the New York Eve­ning Post. In 1924, Canby and his coeditors, Christopher Morley and William Rose Benét, resigned and founded the Saturday Review of Lit­er­a­ture, where he was editor u ­ ntil 1936 and chairman of the Board of Editors ­until 1958. Beginning in 1926, Canby also chaired the editorial board of the newly launched Book of the Month Club. Notable among his many published works are Classic Americans (1931), Thoreau (1939), Whitman (1943), and Turn West, Turn East: Mark Twain and Henry James (1951). Caplan, Albert (1908–1994), was an American book designer. He graduated from ­Temple University in 1929 and received a Bachelor of Laws from ­Temple in 1933. The founder of a publishing ­house, the Scriptorium Press, Caplan was also a stockbroker and served as dean of the Charles Morris Price School of Advertising and Journalism. A collector of rare editions, Caplan was active in

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   713

many cultural institutions, including the Library Com­pany, the International Graphic Arts Association, and the Union League. Carrick, Lynn (1899–1965), was an American publisher. He began his c­ areer as an editorial assistant at Henry Holt and Com­pany (RF’s publisher). In 1937 he founded and served as president of the publishing ­house Carrick and Evans, and in 1941 he became a vice president and board member of J. B. Lippincott in Philadelphia, the publishing ­house. Carrick is known for having discovered the novelist Harper Lee. Carroll, Nicholas (1859–1949), was born in Moscow in 1860 and emigrated to the United States in 1875. A naval veteran with thirty-­four years of ser­vice, Carroll served in the Spanish–­A merican War and World War I. ­A fter the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Carroll sought unsuccessfully to return to active duty. Christman, William Weaver (1865–1937), was an American farmer, poet, and conservationist. Though uneducated, he was a tireless advocate of rural education reform. His books include Songs of the Helderhills (1926), Songs of the Western Gateway (1930), and Wild Pasture Pine (1933)—­which won the 1934 John Burroughs Memorial Prize for the best nature writing of the year. Christman eventually turned his Delanson, New York, farm into a game preserve, which the Nature Conservancy bought in 1971. Clemens, Cyril (1902–1999), was an American editor, writer, and publicist. Educated at Georgetown and Washington Universities, he was a distant cousin of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), founder in 1930 of the International Mark Twain Society, and first editor, from 1936, of the Mark Twain Quarterly. In addition to works on Twain—­i ncluding Mark Twain and Mussolini (1934), which inaugurated a series of studies of Twain in relation to world leaders—­Clemens wrote about G. K. Chesterton, Josh Billings, Harry S. Truman, Clement Attlee, A. E. Housman, and ­others. Clymer, William Branford Shubrick, Jr. (1906–1972), was born in Boston and attended the Country Day School. He earned undergraduate (1928) and gradu­ate degrees (1930) in business from Harvard University. For years he served as the personnel director of the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Com­pany in Hartford, and, from 1964 to 1968, was a representative in the New Hampshire state legislature. In 1937, he published, with Charles R. Green, head of the Jones Library in Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts, Robert Frost: A Bibliography. The book was a special edition ­l imited to 650 copies and included an introduction by Dartmouth professor David Lambuth.

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Coffin, George Martin (1912–1982), was an amateur printmaker and theater producer. He was the son of Saturday Eve­ning Post illustrator William Haskell Coffin (1878–1941) and began a theater troupe in Lake George Village (New York) in 1932. Though short-­lived, the troupe attracted several Broadway stars to the region. Coffin, Robert Peter Tristram (1892–1955), was an American poet, novelist, scholar, and educator. Born on a farm near Brunswick, Maine, Coffin earned his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College in 1915 and an MA from Prince­ton in 1916. As a Rhodes scholar, he was awarded a DLitt from Oxford in 1921. The author of nearly thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Strange Holiness in 1936. While serving as poetry editor for Yankee Magazine, Coffin taught En­glish at Wells College before finishing his c­ areer as the Pierce Professor of En­g lish at Bowdoin. Colum, Padraic (1881–1972), an Irish poet, novelist, and playwright, was a central figure in the Celtic Twilight literary movement. Though Colum did not attend university, a generous grant from American benefactor Thomas Hughes Kelley allowed him to study Irish folklore and Gaelic for five years. As a young man, he joined the Gaelic League and served as a board member for the Abbey Theatre, where he met, among other literary luminaries, W. B. Yeats, AE, and James Joyce (who would become a lifelong friend). The author of more than sixty books of poetry, short stories, ­children’s stories, plays, and collections of folklore, Colum moved to the United States in 1914 and resided ­there, with his wife Mary, for most of the rest of his life. In 1961, he was awarded the Regina Medal of the Catholic Library Association. He also won three Newbery Medals for his c­ hildren’s stories. Combes, Gladys Ewing (1893–1974), was an American poet and clubwoman. Born in Houston in 1893, she was the ­daughter of Texas Supreme Court justice Presley Kittredge Ewing and, with her ­sister Josie Vesta, attended Houston High School and the Finch School in New York City. The author of Homespun (a volume of verse) and A Poetry Pilgrimage Through Eu­rope (a diary), Ewing served as president of the Sorosis Club and the New York Browning Society. A member of the Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca, in 1931 she sponsored and launched an annual poetry contest for students at Newtown High School in Elmhurst, New York. Conklin, Edward Groff (1904–1968), was an American editor, writer, and science fiction anthologist. He edited forty anthologies of science fiction and an

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   715

anthology of mystery stories (co-­edited with physician Noah Fabricant), and wrote books and articles on home improvement and scientific subjects. He was also a published poet. Conklin was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersery, attended Dartmouth and Harvard, and eventually graduated from Columbia University in 1927. At the age of twenty-­six, while employed as an assistant man­ag­er at New York’s Doubleday Bookstore, he arranged for the hardcover publication of a story first published in the Smart Set (November 1913), reprinting “A Flood” by the Irish writer George Moore in a ­limited edition of 185 signed copies. In 1934, Conklin and Burton Rascoe published The Smart Set Anthology. From 1934 to 1936, Conklin served as assistant editor of the University of Chicago Press. For the remainder of his life, he worked as a freelance editor, an information specialist, and a writer and researcher for a variety of private and governmental organ­i zations. Connick, Charles Jay (1875–1945), was an American artist, painter, and stained glass win­dow designer, prominent in the Gothic Revival movement. Born in Springboro, Pennsylvania, Connick moved to Pittsburgh, where he apprenticed in stained glass making at the Rudy ­Brothers Com­pany. A ­ fter working for several glass studios in New York and Pittsburgh, Connick traveled to ­England and France to study medieval stained glass. Upon his return to the United States in 1913, Connick opened his own studio on Harcourt Street in Boston. From then u ­ ntil his death, Connick and his studio designed and produced more than 15,000 stained glass win­dows, among them the ­rose win­dows of St. Patrick and St. John the Divine in New York City, and the Heinz Memorial Chapel at the University of Pittsburgh. He was also the author of Adventures in Light and Color: An Introduction to the Stained Glass Craft (1937). He included in that book an eleven-­line poem RF composed as a tribute to Connick (­after the latter gave the poet a stained glass medallion inspired by “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­n ing”). Conrad, Lawrence Henry (1898–1982), was an American author and teacher. Educated at the University of Michigan (BA 1923, MA 1927), he taught rhe­toric at Michigan from 1923 to 1928, before joining, in 1930, the En­glish faculty at the Montclair State Teachers College (now Montclair State University), where he focused on American lit­er­a­t ure and creative writing. From 1967 to 1970, he worked at the University of San Diego’s Educational Development Center. Conrad published one novel, Temper (1924), and several textbooks: The Author’s Mind (1925), Descriptive and Narrative Writing (1927), and Teaching Creative Writing (1937).

716  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

Cox, Sidney (1889–1951), was an American scholar and critic. ­A fter studying at Bates College (AB 1911) and the University of Illinois (AM 1913), he entered the PhD program at Columbia, though his studies t­ here ­were interrupted by his ser­v ice in World War  I. Cox met RF in 1911 when he was teaching high school En­glish in Plymouth, New Hampshire. He went on to teach En­glish and creative writing at the University of Montana before joining the faculty at Dartmouth in 1926. He had a distinguished forty-­year teaching ­career at Dartmouth, during which he wrote two books about RF—­Robert Frost: Original “Ordinary Man” (1929) and A Swinger of Birches (1957). His other works include The Teaching of En­glish: Avowals and Ventures (1928), Indirections for ­T hose Who Want to Write (1947), and a popu­lar anthology / textbook, Prose Preferences (1926; second edition, 1934). Cross, Wilbur Lucius (1862–1948), was an American literary scholar, editor, professor, and politician. ­A fter earning a BA (1885) and PhD (1889) from Yale, Cross taught in the Yale En­glish department from 1894 u ­ ntil 1916, when he became dean of the Yale Gradu­ate School. ­A fter retiring from Yale in 1930, Cross was elected the fifty-­sixth governor of Connecticut and held the office from 1931 u ­ ntil 1939. In 1911, Cross had become the editor of the Yale Review and he continued in that role, despite changes in position and responsibility, ­until 1941. As a scholar, his focus was primarily on eighteenth-­century British lit­er­a­t ure; noteworthy among his books are The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne (1909) and The History of Henry Fielding (1918). Cushwa, Elizabeth Washburn Tucker (1890–1976), was an American homemaker and wife of Frank William Cushwa (Odlin Professor of En­glish at Phillips Exeter Acad­emy). The d­ aughter of Dartmouth president W. J. Tucker, she completed a BA at Smith College in 1912. Cuthbert, Margaret (1887–1968), was a radio personality and broadcasting executive for NBC. She was born in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, Canada, and earned a certificate in fine arts from Cornell University. At the behest of her ­father, she studied culinary arts for one year and then worked as a chef for the British embassy in Canada. She emigrated to New York, where, in 1924, she began her broadcasting c­ areer as a receptionist and programmer. She eventually became the director of ­c hildren and ­women’s programming at NBC, a position she held ­until 1952. A pioneer in ­women’s broadcasting, Cuthbert won awards from the New York League of Business and Professional ­Women and the General Federation of W ­ omen’s Clubs. In 1946, the W ­ omen’s National Press Club named her one of ten w ­ omen whose contributions had “promoted pro­g ress.”

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   717

Cutler, Nathan Abalino (1868–1941), was an American educator. He graduated from Phillips Acad­emy, Andover (1887) and Amherst College (1891) and had a successful c­ areer as a teacher and then principal at Norwood (Mas­sa­chu­setts) High School and Athol (Mas­sa­chu­setts) High School. Darrow, Whitney, Sr. (1881–1970), was an American publisher. He graduated from Prince­ton in 1903 and in 1905, with the help of Charles Scribner, established the Prince­ton University Press. Darrow also served as the secretary of the Friends of the Prince­ton University Library, which hosted an annual award ceremony for winners of the Pulitzer Prize during the 1930s. ­A fter leaving Prince­ton University Press in 1917, Darrow became trade editor for Charles Scribner’s Sons, eventually becoming executive vice president of the firm. Darrow was also the ­father of celebrated cartoonist Whitney Darrow Jr. Dashiell, Alfred Sheppard (1901–1970), was an American journalist and editor. He graduated from Prince­ton in 1923, where he succeeded Adlai E. Stevenson as managing editor of the Daily Prince­tonian. As an undergraduate, Dashiell worked during the summer as a reporter for the Baltimore Eve­ning Sun and, upon graduating, accepted a position as an assistant editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons, acquiring books from Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. In 1936, he became an editorial assistant for Reader’s Digest, and was ­later named managing editor. Davis, Lambert (1905–1993), was an American editor and publisher. He grad­ uated from the University of V ­ irginia and began his c­ areer as an editor at the ­Virginia Quarterly Review. From 1938 to 1949, Davis worked as an editor at Bobbs-­Merrill before moving to Harcourt Brace & Com­pany, where he acquired books from Robert Penn Warren, Katherine Anne Porter, Jean Stafford, and Randall Jarrell. ­A fter leaving New York, he became director of the University of North Carolina Press, where he sought books that examined racial prob­lems in the South. From 1955 to 1956, Davis served as president of the Association of American University Presses. Davison, Edward “Ted” (1898–1970), was a Scottish-­born American poet, lecturer, critic, and educator. A ­ fter serving in the British navy in World War I, he studied at Cambridge University and published the first of his eight volumes of poetry in 1920. He emigrated to the United States in 1925, joined the faculty at Vassar College, and wrote for the Saturday Review. ­A fter a Guggenheim and a brief stint teaching at the University of Miami, he joined the faculty at the University of Colorado, where he established the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference. A ­ fter military ser­vice in World War II as a lieutenant

718  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

col­o­nel in charge of the reeducation of German prisoners of war, he served as dean at Washington & Jefferson College and at Hunter College. DeVoto, Bernard (1897–1955), was a Pulitzer Prize–­w inning American historian, essayist, teacher, editor, and reviewer. He was born in Ogden, Utah, and educated at Harvard (class of 1920). For a number of years he wrote the “Easy Chair” column in Harper’s Magazine (the column made famous by William Dean Howells). DeVoto was an influential scholar of Mark Twain, and the most widely read historian of the American West. He was also an advocate of public lands and conservation in the American West. His wife, Avis MacVicar DeVoto (1904–1989), authored a number of popu­lar cookbooks and edited Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Late in life, DeVoto worked as a speech writer for Adlai Stevenson. Dierkes, William Henry (1908–1989), was an American poet and anthologist. He was born in Syracuse, New York, and received a BA from Wayne State University in 1929. A ­ fter graduating, he worked on the staff of the Detroit Public Library. He was author of The Man from Vermont and Other Poems (1935), the title poem of which is about RF, to whom the book is also dedicated. During World War II, Dierkes worked in a munitions factory and, with his wife Margaret, established the Dierkes Press, which published the Living Poetry Quarterly (1943–1946). ­Toward the end of his life, Dierkes published a short memoir, Robert Frost: A Friend to a Younger Poet (1984). Dodd, Loring Holmes (1879–1968), was an American scholar, art critic, and poet. Educated at Dartmouth (AB 1900), Columbia (AM 1901), and Yale (PhD 1907), he joined the En­glish faculty at Clark University in 1910 and retired in 1949 as professor of both En­glish and art—­and as chair of both departments. Trained as a medievalist, he published A Glossary of Wulfstan’s Homilies in 1908, but much of his l­ater published work focused on American art, notably The Golden Age of American Sculpture (1936), With an Eye on the Gallery: American Paint­ers in Oil (1956), and A Generation of Illustrators and Etchers (1960). Dodd, Marion Elza (1883–1961), was an American bibliophile, businesswoman, and writer. Grand­daughter of the founder of Dodd, Mead Publishing Co., she graduated from Smith College (1906) and attended Columbia University Library School (1908–1909). In 1916, with Mary Byers, she cofounded the Hampshire Bookshop in Northampton, Mas­sa­chu­setts. Dodd was a member of the executive board of the American Booksellers’ Association for twenty-­five years and its first w ­ oman officer. A contributor to such publications as Yankee Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and Atlantic Monthly, she also taught courses about

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   719

the history of the book and bookselling at the Columbia Library School and at Smith. Eaton, Walter Prichard (1878–1957), was an American author and drama critic. He grew up in Mas­sa­chu­setts and, a­ fter graduating from Harvard (1900), worked as a reporter for the Boston Journal and as drama critic for the New York Tribune, the New York Sun, and American Magazine. He was the author of several well-­received books on modern drama. As a devout conservationist, amateur botanist, and ornithologist, he published numerous illustrated popu­lar books on outdoor life. From 1933 to 1947, he was professor of playwriting at Yale. Eckert, Robert Paul (1903–1966), was a British scholar and biographer. An expert in twentieth-­century poets, he was particularly interested in the poetry of Edward Thomas. He published “Edward Thomas: Soldier Poet of his Race” in The American Book Collector, and Edward Thomas: A Biography and a Bibliography. Effinger, John Robert (1869–1933), was professor of French and dean of the College of Lit­er­a­t ure, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. He grew up in Iowa and Illinois, where he attended public schools, and graduated from the University of Michigan (BPhil) in 1891. A ­ fter graduating, he served as assistant principal for Manistee High School (Michigan) and then returned to the University of Michigan, where he earned an MPhil in 1894 and a PhD in 1898. He spent several years traveling before taking his appointment as professor of French. He was appointed dean of the Summer Session in 1908 and assumed the role of dean of Lit­er­a­t ure in 1912. The coauthor of A French Grammar (1908), Effinger also translated and edited several works by Charles Augustin Sainte-­Beuve, Victor Hugo, and Molière. Elliott, George Roy (1883–1963), was a Canadian American scholar and educator. ­A fter earning an AB at the University of Toronto (1904) and a PhD at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (1908), he taught at the University of Wisconsin (1909–1913), Bowdoin College (1913–1925), and Amherst (1925–1950). Notable among his many published works are The Cycle of Modern Poetry (1929), Humanism and Imagination (1938), and Church, College, and Nation (1945). Farrar, John Chipman (1896–1974), was an American editor, publisher, and poet. He served in World War I as an aviation inspector and, a­ fter the war, graduated from Yale University in 1919. His first collection of poems, Forgotten Shrines, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize the same year, and his second collection, Songs for Parents, was published by Yale in 1921. In 1926, he founded the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the oldest and most prestigious writers’

720  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

conference in the United States. In 1927, he became acquisitions editor for Doubleday, Doran & Com­pany and, in 1929, he founded the publishing h ­ ouse Farrar and Rinehart. During World War II, he served as an overseas correspondent and headed the American psychological warfare unit in Algeria. ­A fter the war, he returned to the United States and, in 1946, founded, with Roger Williams Straus, the publishing ­house Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, whose list includes writers who have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­t ure. Field, William Lusk (1876–1963), was an American educator. He attended Harvard University and, ­after graduation (1898), founded the Alstead School of Natu­ral History, a summer program for high school boys in Alstead, New Hampshire. In 1900, he joined the faculty of Milton Acad­emy, where he taught biology and geography. In 1917, he became headmaster at Milton, a position he held u ­ ntil he retired in 1942. A ­ fter his retirement, Field founded the National Council of In­de­pen­dent Schools. Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879–1958), was an American author, educator, and social activist. Educated at Ohio State University (AB 1899), the University of Paris, and Columbia University (PhD 1904), she trained for an academic c­ areer in modern languages but, ­after marrying in 1907, turned to writing. When her husband John Fisher volunteered for ambulance duty in France, the entire f­amily relocated to the country, where Dorothy spent the war years in relief work; she remained committed to such work throughout her life. While in Rome in 1912, she met Maria Montessori and developed an interest in educational theory that led to the publication of several books on education and child-­rearing. She published numerous novels and short-­story collections, and over twenty works of nonfiction. She served as a member of the Book of the Month se­lection committee from 1925 to 1951. Throughout her life she was a tireless advocate of ­women’s rights, racial equality, and other progressive ­causes. Fisher, Theodore M. (1882–1971), was an American businessman and lecture agent. He grew up in Chicago and, a­ fter attending the University of Colorado, began booking artists and celebrities for speaking engagements in Colorado Springs. He subsequently moved to Denver, and, in 1932, began the Theodore Fisher Intimate Series for Adults, a salon that hosted, among other writers, RF, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Carl Sandburg. In 1940, Fisher established several “knife and fork” clubs in the West and Midwest and managed a series of “travelogues,” which brought world travelers to the Denver area to speak of their adventures.

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   721

Flaccus, William Kimball (1911–1972), was an American poet and professor. As an undergraduate at Dartmouth (BA 1933), he, along with Nelson Rocke­fel­ler and Walter P. Chrysler Jr., founded the literary magazine The Five Arts. He then went on to earn an MA at Columbia in 1934 and a PhD from New York University in 1952. He served in Army intelligence during World War II and the Korean conflict. Over the course of his life, Flaccus published three collections of poems, Avalanche of April (1934), White Stranger (1940), and 70 New Poems (1968). A reviewer for prominent literary journals, Flaccus held teaching positions at the Pratt Institute, City and Hunter Colleges in New York, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Foerster, Norman (1887–1972), was an American author and scholar. He was born in Pittsburgh, where he attended public schools and was a student of Willa Cather during his se­n ior year. He studied En­glish at Harvard (BA 1910) and the University of Wisconsin (MA 1912), and he received honorary doctorates from the University of the South, Grinnell College, and the University of North Carolina. A central figure in the New Humanist movement in American literary criticism, he taught En­glish at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), Duke University, and the University of Iowa. From 1930 to 1944, he served as director of the School of Letters at the University of Iowa, which would eventually evolve into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He was the author of several books on American lit­er­a­t ure and culture, including Nature in American Lit­er­a­ture (1923), Humanism in Amer­ic­ a (1930), and the three-­volume American Poetry and Prose (1934). Forenbach, Rita (1912–2001), was an American editor. She was born in Queens, New York, and worked as an editorial secretary for the publishing ­house William Sloane Associates. In 1952, she moved with Sloane to Funk and Wagnalls, where she directed the publishing ­house and assumed the role of editorial director of ­c hildren’s books. In 1959, she married Prince­ton alumnus George Wright, who worked at Funk and Wagnalls as director of its education department. She died in Florida in 2001. Foster, Charles Howell (1913–1995), was an American educator and bibliophile. He graduated from Amherst College in 1936 and earned an MA (1937) and PhD (1939) in En­glish from the University of Iowa. An expert in nineteenth-­century American lit­er­a­t ure, he taught variously throughout his c­ areer at the University of Iowa, the University of Colorado, Grinnell, and the University of Minnesota. Foster was also a collector of rare nineteenth-­century books and pamphlets, which he donated before his death to the Minneapolis Public Library.

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Among his scholarly works are Emerson’s Theory of Poetry (1939), Robert Frost and the New ­England Tradition (1945), and The Rungless Ladder: Harriet Beecher Stowe and New ­England Puritanism (1954). Fraser, Marjorie Frost (1905–1934), was Robert and Elinor Frost’s youn­gest ­daughter. Frequently ill in her youth, she was homeschooled and, with her ­sister Lesley, managed the Open Book, a bookstore in Pittsfield, Mas­sa­chu­ setts. From 1929 to 1930, she studied nursing at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, though a diagnosis of incipient tuberculosis cut her studies short. While recovering at a sanitarium in Boulder, Colorado, she met Willard Fraser; the two married in 1933. Marjorie gave birth to a d­ aughter, Robin, on March 16, 1934, and contracted a severe case of puerperal fever, from which she died on May 2, 1934. Her parents l­ater commissioned the Spiral Press to publish Franconia (1936), a collection of Marjorie’s poetry. Fraser, Willard (1907–1972), was an American politician and husband of Marjorie Frost. He was born in Kansas and grew up in Billings, Montana, where he attended public schools. He attended the University of Colorado, where he majored in history and archaeology and met Marjorie through Dwight Morrow Jr., a fraternity friend. ­A fter graduation, he married Marjorie on June 3, 1933, and worked as an archaeologist in the American Southwest and in Mexico. A ­ fter Marjorie’s death, he served in the Army during World War II and ran unsuccessfully as a Demo­crat for the state ­house and for governor. He served three full terms as mayor of Billings from 1963 to 1969. He was serving a fourth term when he died unexpectedly of a heart attack in Yellowstone National Park while accompanying first lady Patricia Nixon during her tour of the region. Freeman, Marilla Waite (1870–1961), was an American librarian. She earned a degree in lit­er­a­t ure from the University of Chicago (1897) and a law degree from the University of Memphis (1921). As a member of the Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca, she devoted much of her life to promoting the appreciation of poetry and worked for libraries in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, New Jersey, Tennessee, Mas­sa­chu­setts, New York, and Ohio (where she was librarian of the Cleveland Public Library, the second largest public library in the country). She was a frequent contributor to the Library Journal and wrote about censorship, the role of libraries during war, hospital libraries, adult education, the film industry, and the relationship between libraries and their communities. In 1923 to1924, she was named first vice president of the American Library Association, and in 1941 the University of Chicago awarded her a Distinguished Ser­vice Medal for her stewardship and advocacy of libraries.

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   723

Frost, Carol (1902–1940), was Robert and Elinor Frost’s third child. He was born in Derry, New Hampshire, and was homeschooled. Though not formally educated, he became a skilled farmer and mechanic. Carol married Marjorie Frost’s friend Lillian Labatt (1905–1995) in 1923 and moved into the Stone House (and farm) in South Shaftsbury, Vermont, which RF had given to the young ­couple as a wedding pre­sent. Their only child, William Prescott Frost (1924– 1989), was born at the Stone House in 1924. At the farm, Carol planted a grove of red pines and an apple orchard; he cultivated highbush blueberries, peas, and flowers; and he also began writing poetry. ­A fter Lillian developed a severe case of tuberculosis, Carol moved his f­ amily to Monrovia, California, in 1932, so his wife could undergo treatment. The ­family returned to the Stone House in 1934, where Carol resumed farming. Beset throughout his life by depression and bouts of paranoia, Carol burned all of his poetry manuscripts and took his own life in the Stone House in October 1940. Frost, Lesley (1899–1983), was Robert and Elinor Frost’s second child (their first, Elliot, died at the age of three in 1900). She was born in Lawrence, Mas­sa­chu­ setts, in 1899, and moved with the f­ amily to a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, in the fall of 1900. She attended Wellesley College in 1917, leaving a­ fter one year to work (during World War I) in an airplane factory. She also attended Barnard College and the University of Michigan but did not complete a degree. In the spring of 1924 she launched (with her s­ ister Marjorie) the Open Book, a bookstore in Pittsfield, Mas­sa­chu­setts. ­There she met, and in 1928 married, James Dwight Francis. The ­couple had two ­daughters, Elinor, born in 1929, and Lesley Lee, born in 1931. In the 1930s, she taught at Rockford College in Illinois and at the King-­Smith Studio for Girls in Washington, DC. From 1945 to 1947 she was director of the United States Information Library in Madrid (called Casa Americana), operated by the Office of War Information. She was the first w ­ oman sent to Latin Amer­i­ca by the State Department to lecture on American lit­er­a­t ure (1948). In 1967 she founded La Escuela de la Tahona, a summer language school, in La Granja, near Madrid, where she had a home. In 1952 she married Dr. Joseph W. Ballantine, head of the State Department’s Far Eastern Division ­under Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In addition to lecturing on her f­ ather’s life and work, she published her girlhood writings in New Hampshire’s Child: The Derry Journals of Lesley Frost (1969) and wrote several ­children’s books (including ­Really Not ­Really and Digging Down to China, the latter in collaboration with her niece Robin Fraser Hudnut); a novel, Murder At Large (1932); and a book of poems (illustrated by Robin Hudnut), ­Going on Two (1973). She served as the first chairperson of the Robert

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Frost Foundation and oversaw the restoration of the Frost farm in Derry, New Hampshire. Frost, William Prescott (1924–1989), was Robert and Elinor Frost’s grand­son. The son of Carol and Lillian LaBatt Frost, Prescott, as the ­family called him, was pre­sent in the ­house when his f­ ather committed suicide in October 1940. He earned a BS in engineering sciences from the University of Miami in 1947, and, ­after graduating, worked for the Department of the Navy as a naval architect. An expert in industrial plastics, he moved to Eugene, Oregon, in 1962, where he cared for his m ­ other, worked as a con­sul­tant in a variety of industries, and developed irrigation pipelines. He died in Ashland, Oregon, at the age of sixty-­four. Gallagher, Marie (1903–1986), was an American author and painter. She was born in New York City and, with her ­sister—­poet and novelist Helene Gallagher Mullins—­collaborated on the novel Paulus Fy (1924). In 1949, she published The Eve­ning Wolves (1949), a novel about the Salem Witch T ­ rials. Goetz, Ruth Goodman (1908–2001), was an American playwright and screenwriter. She was born in Philadelphia and, ­after moving to New York, attended P.S. 93 and Miss Marshall’s Acad­emy for Young Gentlewomen. At the age of fifteen, she studied abroad in Paris and, ­later, studied theater design with Norman “Bel” Geddes. In 1930, with the help of H. L. Mencken, she acquired a job as a reader at Alfred Knopf. While traveling abroad, she met stockbroker Augustus Otto Goetz, whom she married in 1932. With Augustus, she collaborated on a number of plays, among them Franklin Street (1940), One Man Show (1946), and The Heiress (1947). The ­couple also collaborated on several screenplays, including the scripts for The Heiress (1949), ­Sister Carrie (1952), Rhapsody (1954), and Stage Struck (1958). During her ­later years, Goetz was well known as a mentor for young writers and was active in a variety of professional organ­izations, including the Authors League of Amer­i­ca, the Dramatists Guild, and the New York Institute for the Humanities. Gohdes, Clarence Louis (1901–1997), was an American literary scholar and editor. With an AB from Capital University (1921), an AM from Ohio State (1922), and an MA from Harvard (1928), Gohdes taught at Southern Methodist University and New York University before joining the faculty at Duke in 1930 and completing a PhD at Columbia in 1931. Gohdes was managing editor of American Lit­er­a­ture from 1932 to 1954 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1962. He wrote American Lit­e r­a­ture in Nineteenth ­Century ­England (1944) and Scuppernong: North Carolina’s Grape and Its Wine (1983); he edited Walt

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   725

Whitman’s f­ amily letters; and compiled several biblio­g raphies of American lit­er­a­t ure. Goodman, Ruth: see Goetz, Ruth Goodman. Goodson, Wilbur Chapman (1909–1988), was an American poultryman and bibliophile. He attended Wesleyan University, where he developed a love of poetry. During the G ­ reat Depression, he established a poultry farm on 200 acres near Tamworth, New Hampshire, earning national recognition for his “Pine Top Farm” birds. In 1940, he published Dark ­Music, a collection of poems that included a preface by Frost’s friend Wilbert Snow. Graf, Gretchen (1915–2001), was, during the mid-1930s, a secretary in the Department of En­glish at Ohio State. She grew up in Tiffin, Ohio, and received her BA and MA (1937, 1938) from Ohio State. While working on her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, she taught briefly at the University of California, Los Angeles. She married Charles Pahl in 1939 and thereafter taught at Pomona College. Green, Charles Robert (1876–1968), was an American librarian. Born in New York City, he attended the University of Connecticut and worked as a reporter for the Hartford Courant. He served as assistant librarian at the University of Connecticut State Library and the Mas­sa­chu­setts Agricultural College (now the University of Mas­sa­chu­setts) in Amherst. In 1918, he joined the staff of the Camp Johnston Library in Florida as a special technical reference librarian. Soon a­ fter returning to Amherst in 1921, he became the first director of the Samuel Minot Jones Library. An avid collector, he assembled one of the nation’s largest collections of Frost’s manuscripts and memorabilia. In 1937, with W. B. Shubrick Clymer, he published Robert Frost: A Bibliography, the first comprehensive bibliography of Frost’s works. In October 1959, Green established the Robert Frost Room at the Jones Library. Greenough, Chester Noyes (1874–1938), was an American scholar and administrator. He earned his BA (1898), MA (1899), and PhD (1904) at Harvard and began his academic c­ areer at the University of Illinois, where he became head of the En­glish department. He returned to Harvard in 1910 as assistant professor of En­glish, becoming professor of En­glish in 1915. From 1921 to 1927, he served as dean of Dunster House and then as master (1930–1934). He was the author, with Barrett Wendell, of a popu­lar textbook, A History of Lit­er­a­ture in Amer­i­ca (1904). Greenslet, Ferris Lowell (1875–1959), was an American author and editor. Educated at Wesleyan University (AB 1897) and Columbia (MS and PhD 1900), he

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worked briefly at the Boston Public Library before becoming an associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly. In 1910, he took a position as literary advisor and director of the Houghton Mifflin publishing firm, where he remained for the rest of his ­career. Notable among his books are James Russell Lowell: His Life and Work (1905), Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1908), and The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds (1946). Griffith, William (1876–1936), was an American poet and anthologist. Educated in public schools, he served as a staff writer for several New York newspapers and became an editor of McCall’s Magazine, National Sunday Magazine, and Current Opinion. Among his books of verse are City Views and Visions (1911), Loves and Losses of Pierrot (1916), City Pastorals (1918), The House of Sphinx and Other Poems (1918), and Candles in the Sun (1921). Griffith also served as president of the Poetry Society Forum Press. Groves, John Stuart (1881–1958), was an American book collector. A gradu­ate of the University of Delaware (1904), he worked as a manufacturing chemist for DuPont. A ­ fter his death in 1958, friends and f­amily members donated a substantial portion of his rare first editions to the University of Delaware library. Grubbs, Verna Elizabeth (1894–1974), was an American educator and editor who conducted her professional life ­under the name Ann Winslow. She attended Grinnell College and the University of California, Berkeley, where she founded the College Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca and launched College Verse. From 1936 to 1940 she taught En­glish at the University of Wyoming, where she helped establish the Robert Frost Poetry Library in Hoyt Hall. Hammond, Idea Louise Strong (1859–1938), was an American painter and homemaker. Born in Gambier, Ohio, she graduated from the Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford University) and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. She married Chicago banker William Andrew Hammond in 1883. ­A fter he committed suicide in 1897, she moved her c­ hildren to Eu­rope and established herself as a painter. In 1909, she returned to Evanston, Illinois, with her four c­hildren, the eldest of whom was poet Eunice Strong Hammond Tietjens. Harris, Raymond Baker (1907–1963), was an American writer and Freemason. Born in the Philippines in 1907 during the American occupation of the islands, Harris grew up and was educated in Washington, DC. He published a number of books, including several about the Freemasons (he worked at the [Masonic] House of the ­Temple in Washington, DC); a book about the 1920 Republican

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   727

National Convention at which Harding was nominated; and a book about Harding’s youth in Ohio. Haselden, Reginald Berti (1881–1952), was curator of manuscripts at the Huntington Library. He was born in Hackney, London, and attended Oxford University, where he became an expert herpetologist. He served as a captain in the Lancashire Fusiliers during World War I and emigrated to Amer­i­ca in 1924. A specialist in medieval lit­er­a­t ure, Haselden was one of the first curators to apply scientific methods, particularly the use of ultraviolet light imaging technology, to the study of old manuscripts. In 1935 he published Scientific Aids for the Study of Manuscripts. Hayford, James (1913–1993), was a Vermont-­born poet, musician, and educator. Hayford graduated from Amherst in 1935, where he was awarded the first (and, as it turned out, only) Robert Frost Fellowship for poetry. He attended Columbia University, where he received an MA in education and subsequently worked as a secondary schoolteacher and farmer. Along with Royce Pitkin, in 1938 he helped found Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. Among his poetry books are Pro­cessional with Wheelbarrow (1970), The Furniture of Earth (1976), Star in the Shed Win­dow: Collected Poems (1989), and Uphill Home (1992). Hazlitt, Henry Stuart (1894–1993), was an American journalist and editor. Largely self-­educated, he began his ­career at the Wall Street Journal, where he served as assistant to the managing editor and by age twenty-­one published his first book, Thinking as a Science (1915). During World War I, he served in the Army Air Ser­vice. ­A fter the war, Hazlitt wrote articles on business and economics for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Nation, and Newsweek. A staunch proponent of classical liberalism, he is credited with bringing the economic ideas of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek to the American public, largely through his best-­selling book, Economics in One Lesson (1946). He served as the founding vice president of the Foundation for Economic Education and was one of the original members of the Mont Pelerin Society. An accomplished literary critic, in 1933 Hazlett moved from the Nation, where he had served as literary editor, to the American Mercury, where he worked as H. L. Mencken’s chosen successor. Henderson, Alice Corbin (1881–1949), was an American poet and editor. She attended the University of Chicago and in 1898 published her first collection, The Linnet Songs. In 1905, she married William Penhallow Henderson and thereafter published prose works as Alice Corbin Henderson. She continued to publish her poetry, however, as Alice Corbin, and her second collection,

728  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

The Spinning ­Woman of the Sky, was published in 1912. ­A fter contracting tuberculosis in 1916, she and her husband moved to New Mexico, where they became advocates of Native American civil rights and culture. Henderson’s subsequent poetry collections, Red Earth: Poems of New Mexico (1920) and The Sun Turns West (1933), borrowed Native American forms and imagery. From 1912 to 1922, she assisted Harriet Monroe in editing Poetry, and she coedited with Monroe an anthology, The New Poetry (1923; second edition, 1932). In 1937, she and her husband helped found the House of Navajo Religion, which would eventually become the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. Hibbitt, George W. (1895–1965), was a lexicologist, scholar of American dialects, and professor of En­glish speech at Columbia University. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, he received a BS (1920) and an MA in education (1922) from Ohio State University, and a PhD from Columbia. During World War II, he worked for the Department of the Navy, where he helped develop procedures for submarine crews to follow during emergencies. As a professor of speech at Columbia University, he recorded famous poets reciting their works and traveled around the country recording and studying folk songs. He served for three years as Dean of the Faculty at Columbia and was the author of How to Speak Effectively on All Occasions (1947) and Dipthongs in American Speech (1948). Hillyer, Robert Silliman (1895–1961), was an American poet. He was born in East Orange, New Jersey, and attended the Kent School in Kent, Connecticut. ­A fter graduating from Harvard (1917), where he edited the Harvard Advocate, he served, alongside classmate John Dos Passos, in the Allied forces as an ambulance driver during World War I. He was the author of several volumes of poetry, including Sonnets and Other Lyr­ics (1917), The Five Books of Youth (1920), Alchemy: A Symphonic Poem (1920), The Halt in the Garden (1925), and Collected Verse (1934), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He was professor of En­glish at Harvard, where he eventually became the Boylston Professor of Rhe­toric and Oratory. A ­ fter leaving Harvard in 1945, he taught at Kenyon College and the University of Delaware. Holden, Raymond Peckham (1894–1972), was an American poet, novelist, essayist, and editor. ­After graduating from Prince­ton in 1915, he served two years in the National Guard and the Office of Naval Information, before beginning a c­ areer in publishing that included stints at the New Yorker, Fortune, Newsweek, and Reader’s Digest. His first collection of poems, Granite and Alabaster, was published by Macmillan in 1922. His other poetry collections include Natu­ral History (1938), The Arrow at the Heel (1940), and The Reminding Salt (1964). His

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   729

seven-­year marriage to Grace Ansley Badger ended in 1924. Holden married poet Louise Bogan the next year; they divorced in 1937. Holmes, Susan Priscilla (1885–1972), grew up in Lawrence, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, where, as a child, she and her b­ rothers befriended RF. Beset by a series of illnesses as a young w ­ oman, she never married and held odd jobs in and around Lawrence, including one stint as a clerk in a stationery store. She was confirmed (as was RF’s ­mother, Isabelle) in the General Church of the New Jerusalem (Swedenborgian) in 1906. Susan Holmes spent her final days in the Dolly Madison Rest Home in Holliston, Mas­sa­chu­setts, where she died at the age of 86. Holt, Hamilton (1872–1951), was an American educator and po­liti­cal activist. He was a founding member of the NAACP (1909). He earned a BA from Yale in 1894 and completed his gradu­ate studies in economics and sociology at Columbia in 1897. From 1897 to 1921 he was editor and publisher of the progressive magazine, The In­de­pen­dent, and was an out­spoken advocate for immigration reform. He served as executive director of the Woodrow Wilson Fund, an organ­ization devoted to securing international peace and, in 1924, launched an unsuccessful campaign (as a Demo­crat) for one of Connecticut’s seats in the US Senate. An advocate of education reform, from 1925 to 1949 Holt served as president of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Hopkinson, Joan (­later Joan Hopkinson Shurcliff) (1913–2007), was an American actress, singer, and activist. Born in Manchester-­by-­the-­Sea, Mas­sa­chu­ setts, she attended the Buckingham School, the Winsor School, and Bryn Mawr. In the mid-1930s, she worked for the American Rus­sian Institute in New York City; she subsequently worked for the Mas­sa­c hu­setts Civil Liberties Committee, where she met William A. Shurcliff. (The two married in 1941; Shurcliff, a physicist, subsequently worked for the Manhattan Proj­ect.) ­Later, during the Cold War, Hopkinson worked for the Harvard-­Yenching Institute and the Rus­sian Research Center in Cambridge, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, where she helped pro­cess information obtained from Soviet defectors. Howe, Mark Antony DeWolfe (1864–1960), was an American editor and author. ­After graduating from Lehigh University (1886) and completing an AM at Harvard (1888), he served as associate editor of the Youth’s Companion (1888–1893; 1899–1913), assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly (1893–1895), and vice president of the Atlantic Monthly Com­pany (1911–1929). Prolific as both editor and author, Howe edited The Beacon Biographies (31 vols., 1899–1910), The Memory of Lincoln (1889), and Home Letters of General Sherman (1909), among other works.

730  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

He authored volumes of Boston and regional history and biographies of Phillips Brooks, George Bancroft, Bishop Hare, and o ­ thers, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1925 for Wendell Barrett and His Letters. He also published one volume of poetry, Harmonics, in 1909. Hubbell, Jay Broadus (1885–1979), was an American scholar and editor. Educated at Richmond College (BA 1905), Harvard (MA 1908), and Columbia (PhD 1922), he was a professor of En­glish at Southern Methodist University from 1915 to 1927 and served as an artillery lieutenant in World War I. He joined the faculty at Duke University in 1928 and the next year founded the journal American Lit­er­a­ture, whose editorial board he chaired ­until his retirement in 1954. A major figure in the establishment of American lit­er­a­ture as an academic discipline, Hubbell published The Enjoyment of Lit­er­a­ture (1929) and Southern Life in Fiction (1960); his anthology, American Life in Lit­er­a­ture (1936), was frequently reprinted. Jay, Martin: see Leippert, James George. Jennings, Alice (1881–1963), the ­daughter of Charles and Myra Jennings, was an American educator. She taught elementary En­glish at the Robert Bartlett School in New London, Connecticut, and was the author of “Incidental Dramatics”—­published in the the Elementary En­glish Review 2.9 [1925])—­which argued that the best way to engage young ­children in lit­er­a­t ure was to have them dramatize stories and poems. Jennings never married; she died in New London. Johnson, Burges (1877–1963), was an American journalist, poet, and educator. A gradu­ate of Amherst College (1899; LittD, honorary, 1924), he was a reporter for the New York Eve­ning Post. In 1915, he joined the En­glish faculty at Vassar College, teaching journalism and directing the college’s public relations. He left Vassar in 1926 to teach at Syracuse University; he also taught at Union College (1935–1944). He taught at both the Bread Loaf and the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conferences. In addition to multiple volumes of light verse and frequent contributions to Harpers, The C ­ entury, and other magazines, he published Essaying the Essay (1927) and Campus Versus Classroom: A Candid Appraisal of the American College (1946). Jones, Bessie Zaban (1898–1997), was an American author, editor, and philanthropist. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and attended the University of Chicago, where she earned a BA in En­glish in 1923. ­A fter graduating, she wrote advertising copy for Marshall Field’s department store and became active in the Chicago arts community, where she met, among other literary luminaries,

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   731

Carl Sandburg and RF. In 1927, she married Howard Mumford Jones, distinguished professor of En­glish at the University of Chicago, and moved with him to Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts, when he accepted a position at Harvard. Once established in Cambridge, Bessie Jones founded a committee to secure homes for Jews who had fled Germany prior to World War II. She worked for Harvard University Press and Atlantic Monthly Press and contributed to and edited several of her husband’s books. An amateur astronomer, she supported the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge. Among her books are Light­house of the Skies (1965) and The Golden Age of Science: Thirty Portraits of the ­Giants of 19th-­Century Science (1966). ­ fter graduKarno, Ethel Cooperman (1909–1998), was an American educator. A ating from the University of Chicago (1928), she taught French in the Chicago public schools. She married fellow Chicagoan David Karno—­a journalist at the Chicago Sun-­Times—­and, ­after his death in 1969, continued to live in the city with her ­daughter and ­sister. King, Stanley (1883–1951), was an American attorney, businessman, and eleventh president of Amherst College. He attended public school in Springfield, Mas­sa­chu­setts, and graduated summa cum laude from Amherst in 1903. He attended Harvard Law School, and upon graduation in 1905 began working as an executive for W. H. McElwain, a shoe manufacturing firm in Boston, of which he eventually became vice president. During World War I, King served first as a member of the Council of National Defense, and, in October 1917, as the appointed Confidential Clerk to the Secretary of War, functioning as an advisor to Secretary of War Newton Baker. From 1932 to 1946, he served as president of Amherst College, leading it effectively through the ­Great Depression and World War II. His most enduring legacy was his enthusiastic support for the Folger Shakespeare Library, which opened u ­ nder the aegis of Amherst College in 1932. Laney, Emma May (1886–1969), was an American educator. She was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and attended Columbia University and the University of Chicago, where she earned an MA in En­glish. ­A fter graduating, she accepted a faculty position at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, where she taught courses in lit­er­a­ture and poetry and ran the college lecture series. During her tenure at Agnes Scott, she brought many distinguished writers to the campus, including RF, who visited the college nearly twenty times between 1937 and 1962. Lankes, Julius John “J. J.” (1884–1960), was an American illustrator, woodcut artist, author, and educator. A ­ fter graduating from the Buffalo (New York)

732  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

Commercial and Electro-­Mechanical Institute in 1902, he worked as a draftsman specializing in patent drawings before continuing his studies at the Art Students’ League of Buffalo and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He produced the first of his more than 1,300 woodcuts in 1917; his most significant early illustrations ­were done for the Liberator, where he was contributing editor (1918–1920), and for the ­Century Magazine (1921–1922). In 1923, he illustrated Frost’s New Hampshire and the two began a lifelong friendship; he would enjoy a similar professional and personal relationship with Sherwood Anderson. Relocating to ­Virginia in 1925, he published ­Virginia Woodcuts in 1930 and A Woodcut Manual in 1932. Encouraged by RF to accept a visiting professorship at Wells College in 1933, he remained on the faculty u ­ ntil 1939. During World War II, he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics as head of technical illustrating at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Leach, Henry Goddard (1880–1970), was an American author, editor, and educator. He was born in Philadelphia and attended Prince­ton. ­A fter graduating in 1903, he taught at the Groton School for two years and then traveled extensively in Scandinavia, an experience that fostered a lifelong interest in the region. He returned to the United States and earned his MA and PhD at Harvard. Thereafter he served as an instructor of Scandinavian history at Harvard and, from 1923–1950, edited Forum magazine. In 1926, he became president of the Scandinavian-­American Foundation, a position he held for the next twenty-­one years. He also served as president of the Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca (1934–1937) and was active in the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society. He published several volumes of poetry, including The Fire’s Center (1950) and Echoes of Childhood (1966), and a memoir: My Last Seventy Years (1956). He also edited a collection of myths and folk tales, A Pageant of Old Scandinavia (1946). Leigh, William Colston (1901–1992), was an American businessman. He was born in New York City and grew up in Portsmith, V ­ irginia. He was offered a baseball scholarship to the University of Georgia but turned it down to become an opera singer. When that venture failed, he worked at a number of low-­paying odd jobs ­until he eventually founded the W. Colston Leigh Lecture Bureau, an agency that at its peak captured 80 ­percent of the lecture market and boasted more than $1 million a year in commissions. Leippert, James George (1909–1964), was an American editor, publisher, and poet, and (benign) imposter. Educated at Columbia (BA 1933), he had for years

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   733

previously written u ­ nder assumed names (e.g., Edwin Robinson Leippert, Alfred Housman Leippert) to prominent authors requesting autographs. He won the Philolexian Award for Poetry at Columbia in 1931 and was editor of the university literary magazine Lion and Crown (1932–1933). He founded the Alcestis Press and Alcestis: A Poetry Quarterly in 1934 and began to correspond with Wallace Stevens u ­ nder the name Ronald Lane Latimer, which became his l­egal name in 1935. Alcestis published seven poems by Stevens, including “The Idea of Order at Key West” in its first issue. The Alcestis Press would publish works by both Stevens and William Carlos Williams. Professor Alan Filreis of the University of Pennsylvania has described the vari­ous phases of Leippert / Latimer’s life: “Columbia student, publisher-­communist, then Buddhist in flowing robes in New Mexico, then expatriate in Japan, fi­nally Episcopal priest in Florida” (“A Soul Collected,” Jacket 2, June 1, 2009 [Web]). Lesser, Joseph C. (1901–1989), was an American businessman. Born in Poland, Lesser immigrated to the United States with his ­family in 1906. He became a naturalized American citizen and for years served as trea­surer at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Lewis, Edward Morgan (1872–1936), was a Welsh-­born American professional baseball player, educator, and academic administrator. ­A fter graduating from Williams College (AB 1896), he pitched four seasons for the Boston Beaneaters (National League) and one for the Boston Americans (American League) while completing an MA at Williams (1899). He taught for two years at Columbia (1901–1903) before returning to Williams as assistant professor of public speaking (1903–1911). He ­later joined the En­glish faculty at Mas­sa­chu­setts State Agricultural College (now University of Mas­sa­chu­setts, Amherst), where he served also as Dean of Languages and Lit­er­a­t ure, acting president (1913–1914, 1918–1919, 1924–1926), and president (1926–1927). He served as president of the University of New Hampshire from 1927 u ­ ntil his death. Long, Haniel Clark (1888–1956), was an American poet, novelist, educator, and publisher. Born in British Burma to American missionaries, Long was educated at Phillips Exeter Acad­emy and Harvard. He began his ­career as a reporter for the New York Globe but left New York ­after accepting a teaching position at the Car­ne­g ie Institute of Technology (now Car­ne­g ie Mellon University). As chair of the En­glish department, he published Poems (1920) and Notes for a New My­thol­ogy (1926). Ill health led him to move to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he helped establish the publishing h ­ ouse Writers’ Editions, Inc., at which he served as executive director from 1935 to 1939. In the mid-1930s he

734  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

published some of his best-­regarded books, among them Atlantides (1933), Pittsburgh Memoranda (1935), and Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca, a historical novella about the sixteenth-­century journey of Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca from Florida to the Pacific Ocean. Lowes, John Livingston (1867–1945), was an American scholar and critic. ­A fter completing a PhD at Harvard (1905), he taught En­glish at Swarthmore College (1905–1909) and Washington University (1909–1918) before joining the faculty at Harvard, from which he retired in 1939. Noteworthy among his many publications are Convention and Revolt in Poetry (1919), The Road to Xanadu (1927), two books on Chaucer (1931, 1934), and two collections of essays, Of Reading Books and Other Essays (1930) and Essays in Appreciation (1936). MacKaye, Percy Wallace (1875–1956), was an American dramatist and poet. ­A fter graduating from Harvard in 1897, MacKaye spent several years traveling through Eu­rope and teaching in New York before he joined an artists’ colony in Cornish, New Hampshire, and devoted himself to writing drama. Between 1903 and 1919, he published fourteen plays, including The Canterbury Pilgrims (1903) and The Scarecrow (1908), upon which his reputation as a dramatist rests. MacKaye also published three volumes of poetry between 1912 and 1915. In 1920, Miami University of Ohio made MacKaye the first American poet-­i n-­ residence, an appointment he held ­until 1924. MacVeagh, Lincoln (1890–1972), was an American soldier, diplomat, businessman, and archaeologist. A ­ fter graduating from Harvard in 1913 and studying languages at the Sorbonne, he served with distinction as a major in World War I. He joined Henry Holt and Com­pany a­ fter the war and left in 1923 to establish the Dial Press. Between 1933 and 1953, MacVeagh served the Roo­se­velt and Truman administrations as ambassador to Greece, Iceland, South Africa, and Spain. During his years in Greece, he conducted excavations beneath the Acropolis and made contributions to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Makielski, Leon A. (1885–1974), was an American painter. Born in Pennsylvania and reared in Indiana, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago between 1903 and 1909. A ­ fter four years in Eu­rope, including two years in Paris at Académie Julian and Académie de la Grande Chaumière, he returned to the United States in 1913, settled in Ann Arbor, and taught at the University of Michigan from 1915 u ­ ntil 1927 as professor of fine arts. For a number of years, he worked at painting portraits of fellow faculty members and their families. ­A fter leaving the university, he divided his time between studios in Detroit and Ann Arbor.

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   735

Though he produced a number of highly regarded impressionistic landscapes, he is primarily known as a portrait painter. His portrait of RF hangs in the University of Michigan Art Museum. Manthey-­Zorn, Otto (1879–1964), was an American scholar and educator. ­A fter graduating from Western Reserve University (1901), he completed a PhD at the University of Leipzig (1904). He joined the Amherst College faculty in 1906 and retired as professor of German in 1955. In 1907, he married Canadian-­born Ethel K. Bray. Among his notable works are Germany in Travail (1922) and Dionysus: The Tragedy of Nietz­sche (1956). Manwaring, Elizabeth (1879–1949), was an American educator and scholar. She was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and received her BA in En­glish from Wellesley (1902) and PhD from Yale (1924). A ­ fter publishing her dissertation, Italian Landscapes in the 18th ­Century (1925), she returned to Wellesley as a professor of En­glish composition, specializing in the relationship between lit­er­ a­t ure and graphic arts and teaching courses on poetry and versification. As director of the Katherine Lee Bates Fund for Poets’ Readings, she was responsible for bringing many prominent poets to Wellesley ­until her retirement in 1947. Martin, Frederick C. (1883–1945), was a Vermont politician. He served for some years as collector for the US Internal Revenue Ser­vice, District of Vermont. In 1934, he ran for the US Senate as a Demo­crat, on a platform that affirmed his support for FDR and the New Deal. He lost the election by some 4,000 votes to Republican Warren Austin (1877–1962). Martin also lost his 1924 and 1938 bids—as a Democrat—in the Vermont gubernatorial race. For a number of years, he served as Village President, Bennington, Vermont (near South Shaftsbury, where the Frosts resided); as a member of the Vermont State Demo­cratic Committee; and as a director of the County National Bank in Bennington. Mayer, Clara Woolie (1895–1988), was an American educator and college administrator. She earned her BA from Barnard College, where she studied with historian James Harvey Robinson. When Robinson became the director of the New School for Social Research in 1919, Mayer followed her mentor to the fledgling college and began a lifelong affiliation with the school, serving in a succession of faculty and administrative roles, eventually becoming, in 1941, dean of the School of Philosophy and Liberal Arts and, from 1950 to 1961, vice president of the New School for Social Research. ­A fter her departure from the New School, she remained in New York and

736  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

became a staunch advocate for nuclear disarmament. She died of pneumonia in Los Angeles at the age of 93. McAfee, Helen Flora (1884–1956), was an American scholar and editor. Educated at Smith College (BA 1903, MA 1914), she did additional gradu­ate study at Yale and taught briefly in Turkey. She was assistant and l­ater managing editor at the Yale Review, and coedited with Wilbur Cross a number of volumes reprinting material from the Review. In 1916, she published Pepys on the Restoration Stage. McClintock, Sara Handy (1875–1963), was raised in Hyannis, Mas­sa­c hu­setts. ­A fter her ­mother died, she was sent to California to live with her (paternal) aunt and u ­ ncle. Years ­later, she returned to the northeast, settling (in 1908) in Brooklyn, where she worked as a m ­ usic teacher, painter, and poet. McCole, Camille John (1905–1939), was an American educator. He was born in Sagola, Michigan, and received his BA and MA from Notre Dame. He was a professor of En­glish at St. John’s College while working ­toward completion of his PhD at Columbia. With Andrew Smithberger, he coauthored the college textbook On Poetry in 1931. He died unexpectedly in New York due to complications of an appendectomy. McConaughy, James Lukens (1887–1948), was an American educator, college president, and politician. He received his BA in En­glish at Yale (1909), his MA in En­glish at Bowdoin (1919), and his PhD in En­glish at Columbia (1913). ­A fter completing his gradu­ate studies, he was a professor of En­glish and education at Bowdoin (1909–1915) and professor of education and director of admissions at Dartmouth (1915–1918). He served as president of Knox College (1918–1925) and president of Wesleyan University (1925–1943). In 1939, he became lieutenant governor of Connecticut and in 1946, as a member of the Republican Party, was elected governor. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack during the second year of his term. McCord, David (1897–1997), was an American poet and college fundraiser. Author and editor of nearly fifty books, McCord completed both his BA (1921) and MA (1922) at Harvard. He served briefly as editor of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and as executive director of the Harvard College Fund for nearly forty years, raising tens of millions of dollars. His most celebrated accomplishments ­were in the realm of c­ hildren’s verse. In 1941, he won a Golden Rose Award, sponsored by the New ­England Poetry Club, and in 1954 he was named a Guggenheim fellow. Nicknamed Harvard’s “Poet Laureate,” his alma mater awarded him its first LHD in 1956.

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   737

Melcher, Frederic Gershom (1879–1963), was an American publisher, editor, and bookseller. Although he had planned to attend MIT, financial circumstances led him to accept a job in the mailroom of Estes & Lauriat Bookstore in Boston. Moving into sales, he developed what would be a lifetime commitment to ­children’s books. ­A fter managing a bookstore in Indianapolis, he assumed the editorship of Publishers Weekly in 1918. He became president of the firm in 1933 and, in 1959, resigned to become chairman of its board of directors. Over the course of his long ­career, Melcher not only served the bookselling profession as head of many trade associations; he also advanced the field of library science and nurtured the development of c­ hildren’s lit­er­a­t ure. He established the Newberry Medal in 1922 and the Caldecott Medal in 1937. Meloney, Marie Mattingly (1878–1943), was an American journalist and socialite, best known for raising funds in support of Marie Curie. Self-­educated at her home in Bardstown, Kentucky, she launched her journalism ­career with the Washington Post at the age of fifteen. At sixteen, she covered the Republican National Convention of 1894 for the New York World and at eigh­teen worked for the Denver Post as the first w ­ oman to cover the United States Senate. She then worked as a reporter for the New York Sun before serving as an editor at a variety of publications (including ­Woman’s Magazine, Every­body’s Magazine, the Delineator, the Sunday Magazine of the New York Herald Tribune, and This Week Magazine). During her storied c­ areer, she interviewed Benito Mussolini four times and once refused an interview with Adolf Hitler. Mencken, Henry Lewis (1880–1956), was an American journalist, editor, essayist, and scholar. With a high school diploma from the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and a correspondence course in writing, Mencken became the most influential journalist of his age. At the Baltimore Morning Herald (1899–1906) and the Baltimore Sun (1906–1941), he was a reporter, editor, columnist, and theater critic. In 1908, he joined the staff of the Smart Set and in 1914 became coeditor with George Jean Nathan. In his fifteen years at the Smart Set, he reviewed about 2,000 books, wrote nearly 200 articles, and established himself as one of the most significant critics of the day. From 1924 ­until 1933, he edited the American Mercury. He was the author of some thirty books and collections of essays and criticism, including the acclaimed philological study The American Language (1919, 1945, 1948); and books on politics, religion, and ethics, including Notes on Democracy (1926), Treatise on the Gods (1930), and Treatise on Right and Wrong (1934). Mertins, Marshall Louis (1885–1973), was an American poet, author, and clergyman. He attended William Jewell College from 1905 to 1910 and the Kansas

738  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

City Seminary from 1906 to 1907. From 1911 to 1916, Mertins served as a Baptist minister in Missouri and began writing poetry. He was also a Chautauqua lecturer on Western lit­er­a­t ure, a columnist, and a radio commentator. Mertins ­later taught at San Bernardino Valley College. In 1932, he met RF and established a friendship that would last ­until Frost’s death. Mertins left a rec­ord of their friendship in Robert Frost: Life and Talks Walking (1965), and, with his wife Esther, compiled The Intervals of Robert Frost: A Critical Bibliography (1947). Metcalf, Keyes Dewitt (1889–1983), was an American librarian. He grew up in Elyria, Ohio, where he was raised by his ­sister. He attended Oberlin College and worked in the college library, which was directed by his brother-­in-­law, Azariah Root. A ­ fter graduating from Oberlin in 1911, he attended the New York Public Library School. A ­ fter graduating in 1915, he accepted a number of positions at the New York Public Library, eventually becoming director of its Reference Department. In 1937, Metcalf was appointed director of the university libraries at Harvard, where he applied the latest in technology to preserve and protect books. ­Under Metcalf’s leadership, Harvard expanded its library system, adding the Houghton Library and the Lamont Library. From 1942 to 1943, Metcalf served as president of the American Library Association. He consulted frequently for other library systems and in 1965 published Planning Academic and Research Library Buildings. Monroe, Harriet (1860–1936), was an American poet, editor, publisher, and critic. While working as a freelance correspondent and art critic for the Chicago Tribune, Monroe convinced one hundred prominent Chicago business leaders to sponsor a magazine devoted to new poetry. A ­ fter founding Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in 1912, she served as editor u ­ ntil 1936. Moody, Paul Dwight (1879–1947), was an American cleric and educator who served as the tenth president of Middlebury College from 1921 u ­ ntil 1942. A native of Baltimore, he graduated from Yale in 1921 and did postgraduate work at New College, Edinburgh, Glasgow College, and Hartford Theological seminary. A ­ fter serving as an army chaplain in World War I, he served as minister at several Congregationalist churches before accepting the presidency of Middlebury. During his tenure, he helped to bring into national prominence both the Bread Loaf School of En­glish and the Middlebury College Language Schools. Morris, Harrison Smith (1856–1948), was a Philadelphia-­based industrialist, poet, editor, and patron of the arts. A native of Philadelphia, he went to work at age sixteen for the Reading Coal & Iron Com­pany to support his ailing parents. In 1893 he became managing director of the Philadelphia Acad­emy of

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   739

Fine Arts, a position he held ­until 1905. Morris also served as editor of Lippincott’s Magazine, art editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal, and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the National Acad­emy of Design. From 1909 to 1917, he was president of the Wharton Steel Com­pany. He also wrote and published his own works, in both En­glish and Italian, on Roman history, lit­er­a­t ure, and culture, as well as at least seventeen volumes of poetry, fiction, and essays. In his capacity as trea­surer of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (the parent organ­i zation of the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters), Morris officially informed RF that he had won its Loines Award. Morrison, Theodore (1901–1988), was American poet and educator. He was born in Concord, New Hampshire, and earned an AB in En­glish at Harvard in 1923. Though he never completed a gradu­ate degree, he became director of the renowned course “En­glish A” at Harvard. He was the author of several novels, including The Stones of the House (1953), The Whole Creation (1962), and To Make a World (1957), and several collections of poetry, including The Serpent in the Cloud (1931), The Devious Way (1944), and The Dream of Alcestis (1950). He served on the editorial staff of the Atlantic Monthly. He joined the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1930, eventually becoming its director (1932–1955). His wife, Kathleen Morrison, became Frost’s personal secretary ­after Elinor Frost died in 1938. Mostrom, Donald Gordon (1922–2008), was an American minister. He grew up in Danvers, Mas­sa­chu­setts, and earned a BA and MA at Wheaton College and an MDiv at Northern Baptist Seminary. He was the author of three books, The Dynamics of Intimacy with God (1983), Spiritual Privileges You ­Didn’t Know ­Were Yours (1986), and Christians Facing the ­Future (2002). Moult, Thomas (1893–1974), was a British journalist, novelist, poet, and editor. A gradu­ate of the University of Manchester, he was associated with the Georgians and published his first volume of poems, Down H ­ ere the Hawthorn, in 1921. A versatile writer, he was a m ­ usic critic for the Manchester Guardian and art and drama critic for Athenaeum and the En­glish Review, as well as a sportswriter for En­glish and Australian journals. From 1922 to 1943, he edited a series of anthologies of the best British and American poems of the year. From 1952 to 1962, he was president of the Poetry Society and chairman of the editorial board of Poetry Review. Among his critical works are studies of Mary Webb, J. M. Barrie, and W. H. Davies. Munson, Gorham Bockhaven (1896–1969), was an American literary critic, social historian, editor, and educator. ­A fter graduating from Wesleyan University (BA 1917), he came to prominence as part of the avant garde literary

740  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

culture of Greenwich Village. In 1922, he cofounded—­w ith Matthew Josephson and Kenneth Burke—­the short-­lived but influential journal Secession. He wrote Waldo Frank: A Study (1923), Robert Frost: A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense (1927), Destinations: A Canvass of American Lit­er­a­ture Since 1900 (1928), Style and Form in American Prose (1929), and The Dilemma of the Liberated: An Interpretation of Twentieth ­Century Humanism (1930). In 1931, having taught frequently at Bread Loaf, he conducted a workshop at the New School for Social Research that proved so popu­lar he taught it annually for nearly three de­cades. His guide, The Written Word: How to Write Readable Prose (1949), was a standard in the field. His Awakening Twenties: A Memoir-­History of a Literary Period was published posthumously in 1985. Murphy, James Patrick J. (1910–1984), was a poet manqué and a collector. He was born in Philadelphia and served in World War II. He began collecting autographs and manuscripts in the early 1930s. He died with no heirs in Gloucester City, New Jersey. Upon his death, his m ­ other donated his extensive collection to St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Newdick, Robert Spangler (1897–1939), was an American educator and scholar. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, and attended Ohio State, where he received his BA in En­glish in 1919. He then attended Harvard on a fellowship, earning an MA in 1920 and a PhD in 1930. He was assistant professor of En­g lish at Miami University in Ohio before accepting a position at Ohio State, where he became professor of En­glish. In 1934, Newdick began work on a bibliography of RF, but was dissuaded from the proj­ect when he learned that Charles R. Green and W. B. Shubrick Clymer ­were already compiling what would become their authoritative bibliography in 1937. Newdick then channeled his energies ­toward writing Frost’s biography. In 1939, Newdick died unexpectedly from complications of an appendectomy. In 1976, William  A. Sutton published Newdick’s unfinished biography, along with notes and commentary, as Newdick’s Seasons of Frost: An Interrupted Biography. Norlin, George (1871–1942), was an American educator and administrator. He was born in Concordia, Kansas, and attended Hastings College and the University of Chicago, where he studied classics. A ­ fter briefly attending the Sorbonne in Paris, in 1899, he began teaching Greek language and lit­er­a­t ure at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 1917, Norlin became acting president of the university and, in 1919, president. He guided it through a tumultuous period in the 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan, which controlled the state legislature, demanded that Jewish and Catholic faculty members be fired. Norlin peremptorily refused; the legislature retaliated with bud­get cuts ­u ntil the

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   741

Klan’s power subsided in 1926. From 1932 to 1933, Norlin was Theodore Roo­ se­velt Professor of American Life at the University of Berlin. ­There he witnessed the rise of fascism and anti-­Semitism and, alarmed by what he saw, published a warning for his countrymen: Fascism and Citizenship (1934). Norlin resumed the presidency of the University of Colorado on his return from Berlin, resigning in 1939. Three years l­ater, he died in Boulder. The university established the George Norlin Award in his memory, honoring alumni for distinguished lifetime achievement. Notopoulos, James Anastasios (1905–1967), was an American classicist. Notopolous was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and attended Mercersburg Acad­emy. He graduated from Amherst College in 1928. A ­ fter receiving his AM at Jesus College, University of Oxford, he taught classics and philosophy at Trinity College (Connecticut), Hobart College, and Columbia University, and, late in life, served as visiting professor for brief stints at Prince­ton and Harvard. Nuhn, Ferner (1903–1989), was an American author, critic, and artist. He grew up in Cedar Falls, Iowa, where he attended public schools, and graduated with a BA in En­glish from North Central College (Naperville, Illinois). He received an MA in En­glish lit­er­a­ture from the University of Illinois in 1925 and extended his gradu­ate studies at Columbia. He left his studies when H. L. Mencken accepted his first short story for the American Mercury. He subsequently published fiction in the New Yorker, the Nation, the New Republic, and the Christian ­Century. In 1929, Nuhn married writer Ruth Suckow and held a variety of jobs, in several states, as an artist, literary critic, and college instructor. A devout Quaker, he was a conscientious objector during World War II. Nuhn and his wife eventually settled in Claremont, California. ­A fter Suckow died in 1960, Nuhn, with his second wife, Georgeanna, established the Ruth Suckow Memorial Foundation. O’Conor, Norreys Jephson (1885–1958), was an American poet, playwright, and scholar. He was born in New York City and attended Harvard, where he earned an AB (1907) and MA (1911) in En­glish. An expert in Irish lit­er­a­t ure, he published poetry, plays, and criticism, including Celtic Memories and Other Poems (1913), Beside the Blackwater (1915), The Fairy Bride: A Play in Three Acts (1916), Songs of the Celtic Past (1917), ­Battles and Enchantments Retold from Early Gaelic Lit­er­a­ture (1922), and Changing Ireland: Literary Backgrounds of the Irish ­Free State, 1889–1922 (1924). ­A fter working as an editor for vari­ous publications, he taught En­glish at a number of universities, including Harvard, Radcliffe, Grinnell, Mount Holyoke, and Bryn Mawr.

742  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

Orton, Vrest (1896–1986), was a writer and, in 1946, founder of the Vermont Country Store in Weston, Vermont. He was born in Calais, Vermont, and attended high school in western Mas­sa­chu­setts. As a young man he traveled the United States, hitchhiking and walking to Mexico. A ­ fter graduating from high school, he worked for H. L. Mencken on the American Mercury and published Dreiserana (1929), a book about Theodore Dreiser. He returned to Vermont and published nearly a dozen more books, among them The Forgotten Art of Building a Good Fireplace (1969), Vermont After­noons with Robert Frost (1971), and Cooking with Wholegrains (1982), which he wrote with his wife, Mildred Ellen Wilcox. Orton founded Colophon, a bibliophiles’ magazine, as well as the Stephen Daye Press (Brattleboro, Vermont). Osborn, Paul (1901–1988), was an American playwright. He grew up in Evansville, Indiana, and attended the University of Michigan, where he was a student of RF. ­A fter receiving his BA in En­glish and MA in psy­chol­ogy from Michigan, he briefly studied with noted Yale drama instructor George Pierce Baker, and then moved to New York, where he made his Broadway debut with Hotbed in 1928. His subsequent plays included Ledge (1929), The Vinegar Tree (1930), Oliver, Oliver (1934), and Mornings at Seven (1939). In his ­later years, Osborn wrote the screenplays for East of Eden (1955), directed by Elia Kazan; Sayonara (1957), starring Marlon Brando; Wild River (1960), again directed by Elia Kazan; and South Pacific (1958). For his stage and screenwriting achievements, Osborn won a Tony Award for Mornings at Seven and the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement from the Writers Guild of Amer­i­ca. Page, Curtis Hidden (1870–1946), was an American educator, translator, poet, and anthologist. He grew up in Greenwood, Missouri, and in 1892 was awarded a PhD from Harvard, where he won the first George B. Sohier Prize for lit­er­ a­t ure. He published his poetry in leading periodicals and translated novels by Anatole France and Cyrano de Bergerac as well as eight plays by Molière. During World War I, he served in the Ordinance Corps. He held teaching positions at Harvard (1893–1908), Columbia (1908–1909), Northwestern (1909– 1911), and Dartmouth (1911–1946). In 1933 and 1939, he was elected to the New Hampshire state legislature. Palmer, W. Phillips (1915–2000), was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in Brattleboro, Vermont. He received a BA from Middlebury College in 1939. In 1940, he married Ann Sibert of Amenia, New York, where he worked as a tutor. He served as a lieutenant in the naval reserves during World War II and for many years worked as a public health official in West V ­ irginia and Pennsylvania.

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   743

Paradise, Scott H. (1891–1959), was an American educator. He grew up in Medford, Mas­sa­chu­setts, and graduated from Yale with an AB in En­glish (1914). As a Rhodes scholar, he attended Balliol College, University of Oxford. He served as a field artillery officer during World War I and in 1924 returned to Phillips Acad­emy, Andover, his alma mater, to teach En­glish. He edited the Andover Alumni Bulletin and compiled several local history books of the Andover region. Payne, Leonidas W., Jr. (1873–1945), was an American linguist and literary scholar. Educated at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (BA 1892, MA 1893), he taught En­glish at Southwest Alabama Agricultural School, the State Normal School, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his PhD in 1904. He accepted a position at the University of Texas in 1906 and was made full professor in 1919. Cofounder and the first president of the Texas Folklore Society, he was the author of History of American Lit­er­a­ture (1919). He also published the first anthology of Texas writing, A Survey of Texas Lit­er­a­ture (1928), and Texas Poems (1936). Pease, Arthur Stanley (1881–1964), was an American scholar and academic administrator. Educated at Harvard University (AB 1902, AM 1903, PhD 1905), he taught Latin ­there (1906–1909) before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois (1909–1924). He joined the faculty at Amherst College in 1924, and was named its president in 1927, which position he resigned in 1932 to return to teaching at Harvard. He was appointed Pope Professor of Latin in 1942. Although an accomplished classicist, Pease is best remembered for his amateur contributions to New ­England botany; four species of plants are named for him. He donated an herbarium of more than 12,000 specimens to Harvard. Phelps, William Lyon (1865–1943), was an American author and scholar. A native of New Haven, Connecticut, Phelps graduated from Yale in 1887 and, in 1891, si­mul­ta­neously earned an MA at Harvard and a PhD at Yale. Phelps taught at Harvard for a year before returning to Yale, where he taught En­ glish ­until his retirement in 1933. Phelps published more than a dozen books, several of which became standards in the field. Notable among them are The Beginnings of the En­glish Romantic Movement: A Study in Eigh­teenth ­Century Lit­ er­at­ ure (1893), Essays on Modern Novelists (1910), The Advance of the En­glish Novel (1916), The Advance of En­glish Poetry in the Twentieth ­Century (1918), and Some Makers of American Lit­er­at­ ure (1923). Potter, Russell (1894–1970), was an American educator and college administrator. He was born in Milton, Iowa, and earned a BA in En­g lish from the University of Denver in 1921. During World War I, he served with Battery F

744  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

of the 150th Field Artillery in France. He received an MA from the University of Colorado in 1922 and a PhD from the University of North Carolina in 1926. He taught En­glish at the University of North Carolina from 1926 to 1930 and from 1930 to 1958 directed, with ­g reat success, the Columbia Institute of Arts and Sciences, a division of Columbia University’s Adult Education Program. When the institute closed in 1958, Potter directed the Columbia Office of Community Affairs u ­ ntil his retirement in 1962. Pound, Arthur (1884–1966), was an American poet and historian. He was born in Pontiac, Michigan, where he worked for a variety of newspapers. From 1935 to 1936, Pound was a professor of American history at the University of Pittsburgh, and from 1940 to 1944 served as state historian and director of the Division of Archives and History for New York. Pound is the author of the poetry collection Mountain Morning and Other Poems (1932) and several histories, including The Iron Man in Industry (1922), Johnson of the Mohawks (with Richard E. Day) (1930), Hawk of Detroit (1939), Detroit: Dynamic City (1940), and Lake Ontario (1945). Proctor, Mortimer Robinson (1889–1968), was an American business executive and politician. He was born in Proctor, Vermont, the son of Fletcher Dutton Proctor, the fifty-­first governor of Vermont. He attended the Hill School (Pottstown, Pennsylvania) and graduated from Yale in 1912. Before entering politics, he served as an executive at the Vermont Marble Com­pany, his f­ amily’s business, and became active in the Green Mountain Club, eventually serving as its president. He oversaw the completion of the Long Trail, the oldest long-­ distance hiking trail in the nation. From 1937 to 1941, he was elected (as a Republican) to the Vermont state senate, in which he served as president from 1939 to 1941. Proctor also served as lieutenant governor of Vermont (1941–1945), and as governor (1945–1947). A ­ fter retiring from politics, Proctor established the Mortimer Proctor Trust, which supported nonprofit organ­izations and the arts in and around his hometown. Putnam, Arthur James (1893–1963), was an American editor. He was born in Deposit, New York, on the Pennsylvania border, and graduated from Cornell University in 1914 with a degree in Romance languages. He served in the American Ambulance Field Ser­v ice, attached to the French Army, during World War I. He attained the rank of first lieutenant and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for valor in 1917. A ­ fter the war, Putnam served as secretary of the PEN Club in New York and joined the publishing ­house of Macmillan, where he worked for twenty-­five years, first in its textbook division and ­later

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   745

as general editor. Putnam was a representative of the Lend Lease Administration and of the North African Economic Board in Dakar and Tunis during World War II. Putnam acquired for Macmillan Immanuel Velikovsky’s best-selling Worlds in Collision (1950), a pseudoscientific account of cosmology based on ancient texts; the controversy that attended its publication led to his dismissal from the firm. Late in his ­career he joined the World Publishing Com­pany. In 1926, Putnam married sculptor Marion Walton (1899–1996). The ­couple had one son, John Christopher Putnam (1929–2016). Randall, David Anton (1905–1975), was an American bookdealer, librarian, and bibliographer. He was born in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, and attended the Harrisburg Acad­emy and Lehigh University, where he earned a BA in En­glish in 1928. He entered Harvard Law School but dropped out ­after taking a course from book historian George Parker Winship. Randall subsequently landed a job as director of Scribner’s Rare Book Department. In 1956, Randall left Scribner’s to take a position at Indiana University; ­there he served as director of the Lilly Library and professor of bibliography. He contributed scholarly articles to leading journals and was a member of the Bibliographical Society of Amer­i­ca, the Grolier and University Clubs of New York, and the Caxton Club in Chicago. Revell, Frank (1891–1967), was a publicist, with literary interests, at RCA Victor in New York (he had worked for the Victor Talking Machine Com­pany before RCA bought it out in 1929). Born in L ­ ittle Creek, Delaware, Revell served in the army during World War I. He had a wife, Augusta M. Revell (1889–1968), and one ­daughter, Edythe J. Revell (­later Edythe Hughes, a­ fter marrying in 1946). In 1932, RF inscribed a copy of NH to Revell as “my friend the poet Frank Revell,” but we have found no evidence that Revell published any poetry. Reeves, Henrietta (1871–1968), was an amateur poet and patron of the arts in Nashville, Tennessee. She published several sentimental poems in newspapers across the country, including the New York Times. She never published a full-­ length collection of poetry. Reeves, Ruth G. (1892–1984), was an American college administrator. She was born in Washington, DC, and attended Hollins College, where she received a BA in 1913. She married Robert Hughes Reeves in 1916 and for years served as secretary of the Alumnae Association at Hollins and chairperson of the American Alumni Council, District 3. Richards, Edward Ames (1898–1964), was an American college professor and poet. He was born in Williamstown, Mas­sa­chu­setts, and received his AB from

746  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

Amherst (1922) and his AM (1928) and PhD (1937) from Columbia. He taught En­glish at Amherst College, the University of Rochester, and Columbia University, and in 1961 won the Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca’s Robert Frost Award. He was the author of several books of poetry, including Time Strikes (1939), Cathedral (1959), and the posthumous collection The Slopes of Night (1965). Richardson, Ellen Search (1894–1972), was born in Philadelphia. She was the ­w idow of George Lynde Richardson Jr., a faculty member at Phillips Exeter Acad­emy. Richardson, George Lynde, Jr. (1895–1934), was an American educator. He was born in Philadelphia and graduated with an AB in En­glish from Williams College in 1917. In 1919, he became a member of the En­glish faculty at Phillips Exeter Acad­emy in New Hampshire and was appointed director of admissions in 1932. He died of a stroke in 1934. Roo­se­velt, Theodore, Jr. (1887–1944), was an American politician, business­man, and soldier. The eldest son of President Theodore Roo­se­velt, he attended Albany Acad­emy and Groton and graduated from Harvard in 1909. A ­ fter he graduated, Roo­se­velt worked in the steel and banking industries and amassed a considerable fortune. During World War I, he commanded the 26th Regiment in the 1st Infantry Division at the rank of lieutenant col­ o­nel. ­A fter the war, he served as a member of the New York State Assembly, as governor-­g eneral of the Philippines, as governor of Puerto Rico, and as assistant secretary of the navy ­u nder President Warren G. Harding. In 1924, he ran for governor of New York, but his association with the Teapot Dome Scandal caused him to lose the race to Al Smith. During World War II, as brigadier general in the US Army, he participated in the Normandy invasion, for which he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Root, Merrill Edward (1895–1973), was an American poet, essayist, and educator. ­A fter graduating from Amherst (1917), he went to France as a member of the American Friends Ser­vice Committee and returned to study at Andover Theological Seminary. In 1920, he joined the En­glish faculty at Earlham College and taught t­ here ­until his retirement in 1960. In the late 1930s, his position had shifted from Quaker pacifism to extreme conservatism. His Collectivism on the Campus (1954) and Brainwashing in the High Schools (1958) w ­ ere vitriolic condemnations of American liberalism and red-­baiting diatribes about American education. In retirement, Root became an editor of American Opinion, the bimonthly magazine of the John Birch Society. Among his volumes of poetry

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   747

are Dawn Is Forever (1938), Before the Swallow Dares (1947), and Ulysses to Penelope (1952), a sonnet sequence. Rowell, Wilbur Everett (1862–1946), was an American attorney. Educated at Wesleyan University (AB 1885, AM 1888) and Harvard Law School (class of 1888), he was a prominent attorney (at the firm of Rowell & Gray), a banker, and district court judge in Lawrence, Mas­sa­chu­setts. Executor of the estate of William P. Frost, RF’s grand­father, he published an article in the Survey condemning the Lawrence Bread and Roses strike of 1912. He served as a trustee of the Lawrence Public Library and of the White Fund (which supported local education). Rugg, Harold Goddard (1883–1957), was an American librarian, historian, botanist, and collector. A gradu­ate of Dartmouth College (1906), he began his ­career as a library secretary in 1906, became executive assistant to the librarian in 1912, and was promoted to assistant librarian in 1919. He also held a faculty position in the art department, offering courses on the history of book design and printing. From 1914 u ­ ntil retirement in 1953, he served as the literary editor of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. Shortly before his death, he was elected vice president of the American Fern Society. Russell, Diarmuid (1902–1973), was the son of the Irish poet George Russell (also known as AE). Born in Dublin and educated t­ here at the Royal College of Science, he immigrated to the United States in 1929. In 1940, with Henry  T. Volkening, he founded the literary agency Russell & Volkening, which would represent Bernard Malamud, Eudora Welty, Reynolds Price, George Plimpton, and other luminaries. Russell was also a scholar; he edited The Selected Prose of Bernard Shaw and The Portable Irish Reader. Sarett, Lew (1888–1954), was an American poet, scholar, and public speaker. Born Lewis Saretsky, he was educated at the University of Michigan (1907– 1908), Beloit College (BA 1911), Harvard Law School (1911–1912), and the University of Illinois Law School (LLB 1916). From 1912 to 1920, Sarett taught En­ glish and public speaking at the University of Illinois. He published the first of his six volumes of poetry, Many Many Moons, in 1920. He became an advisory editor of Poetry magazine in 1921 and won the Levinson Poetry Prize in 1921 and the Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca’s annual prize in 1925. As professor of speech at Northwestern University from 1920 ­until 1953, Sarett became famous for his dual lifestyle, teaching one semester and living in the Wisconsin wilderness the remainder of the year. He was widely successful as a lecturer on the wilderness.

748  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

Schmitt, Howard George (1910–1989), was an American businessman and book collector. He was born in Buffalo, New York, and attended the Nichols School, where he developed a love of poetry, particularly the verse of E. A. Robinson, with whom he carried on a lengthy correspondence. He graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell in 1933 and pursued gradu­ate work at the Harvard Business School. He was chief executive officer of the Bishop Com­pany, a food distribution and ­wholesale grocer in Buffalo. Over the course of his long friendship with RF (which began in the mid-1930s), he collected scores of the poet’s manuscripts and signed books. Schreiber, Georges (1904–1977), was a Belgian-­born American painter and cartoonist. As a young man, Schreiber studied art at the German Real Gymnasium in Brussels (1913–1918), the Arts and Crafts School in Elberfeld, Germany (1920), and the Academies of Fine Art in Berlin and in Düsseldorf (1922). In 1928, he emigrated to the United States and contributed drawings and cartoons to most of New York’s daily papers. From 1936 to 1939, Schreiber toured the United States, painting scenes and sketching portraits. His portrait of RF, ­accompanied by the poem “The Lost Follower,” was included in Schreiber’s Portraits and Self-­Portraits (1936). Sedgwick, Ellery (1872–1960), was an American journalist and editor. ­A fter graduating from Harvard in 1894, Sedgwick was assistant editor of the Youth’s Companion in Boston (1896–1900) and editor of Leslie’s Monthly Magazine (1900– 1905) and the American Magazine (1906–1907) in New York. He purchased the Boston-­based Atlantic Monthly in 1908 and served as editor from 1909 u ­ ntil 1938. Sills, Kenneth C. M. (1879–1954), was a Canadian-­born American educator, academic administrator, and poet. A ­ fter graduating from Bowdoin College (1901), he earned an AM from Harvard in 1903 and joined the Bowdoin faculty as instructor in En­glish and classics. With the exception of one year as a tutor in En­glish at Columbia (1904–1905), he remained at Bowdoin u ­ ntil retiring in 1952. From 1907 to 1946, he was Winkley Professor of Latin Language and Lit­er­a­ture, and he served successively as dean (1910–1918), acting president (1917–1918), and president (1918–1952). He was chairman of the board of the Car­ ne­g ie Foundation from 1939 to 1941. He published The First American and Other Poems, a volume of poems and translations, in 1911. Silver, Ernest Leroy (1878–1949), was an American educator. He was educated at Pinkerton Acad­emy and Dartmouth College (BL 1899). He served as superintendent of schools in Rochester and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and as principal of Pinkerton Acad­emy before becoming principal of Plymouth

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   749

Normal School, where RF taught psy­chol­ogy (among other ­things) from 1911 to 1912. For thirty-­five years, Silver served as principal, director, and president of the school that became Plymouth Teachers College in 1939 (now Plymouth State University). Sinclair, Gregg Manners (1890–1976), was an American educator and university administrator. Born in St. Mary’s, Ontario, Canada, Sinclair earned a BA from the University of Minnesota in 1912 and an MA from Columbia University in 1919. He taught En­glish in Japan before accepting, in 1928, a position at the University of Hawaii. In 1938, he married novelist Marjorie Putnam, and served as the fourth president of the University of Hawaii (1942–1956). ­A fter his retirement in 1956, he became chairman of the Citizen’s Advisory Commission on Statehood for Hawaii and an influential member of the Demo­ cratic Party. Slusser, Jean Paul (1886–1981), was an American artist, art critic, museum director, and educator. Educated at the University of Michigan (AB 1909, AM 1911), he studied further at the University of Munich (1909–1910), the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston (1913–1915), the Art Students League of New York (summers 1914–1917), and the Hans Hofmann Schule in Munich (1924–1925). Before joining the art faculty at Michigan in 1927 as assistant professor of drawing and painting, he worked as art critic for the Boston Herald (1913–1915) and assistant art critic for the New York Herald (1921–1923). Made full professor in 1944, he served as director of the University of Michigan Art Museum from 1947 ­until retiring in 1957. An accomplished painter, his works ­were frequently exhibited and widely collected. Snow, Sydney (1878–1944), was an American clergyman. Born in Winchester, Mas­sa­chu­setts, he graduated from Harvard in 1901 and, ­after marrying Margrette Kennedy of Windsor, Vermont, began his ­career as a journalist for the Boston Eve­ning Transcript. In 1906, he graduated from Harvard Divinity School. ­A fter spending several years as an ordained minister in Palo Alto, California, he became an associate minister at King’s Chapel in Boston and traveled abroad frequently on behalf of the American Unitarian Association. He served briefly as a minister at the Church of the Messiah in Montreal, and in 1928 became president of the Meadville Theological School in Chicago, where he worked ­until his death in 1944. Snow, Charles Wilbert “Bill”  (1884–1977), was an American poet, educator, and politician. Born in Maine and educated at Bowdoin College (BA 1907) and Columbia University (MA 1910), he held academic appointments briefly at

750  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

Williams College, Miami (Ohio) University, the University of Utah, and Indiana University, but his leftist politics prevented permanent appointments at all four institutions. ­A fter serving as an artillery officer and instructor during World War I, he joined the faculty at Wesleyan University and, despite occasional po­liti­cal contretemps, remained t­ here ­until retiring in 1952. Active in Demo­cratic politics, Snow was elected lieutenant governor of Connecticut in 1944 and served thirteen days as governor from 1946 to 1947. Notable among his volumes of poetry are Maine Coast (1923), The Inner Harbor (1926), Down East (1932), and Spruce Head (1959). His Collected Poems appeared in 1963. In 1974, he published Codline’s Child: The Autobiography of Wilbert Snow. Spencer, Shirley (1892–1971?), was an American columnist. She studied at the Rice Institute of Graphology in New York City, and, beginning in 1935, wrote graphology columns for the New York Daily News ­under the titles “Handwriting Reveals Character” and “Pen Points to Vocations” (offering advice, based on samples of writing sent her care of the Daily News, as to what field best suited a person). She also wrote columns (again for the Daily News) titled “Your I.Q.” and “Intelligence Test.” By the 1960s she had turned to astrology, writing regularly for Dell Horoscope. She claimed to have predicted the assassination of John F. Kennedy (among other t­ hings). Census rec­ords for her are all but non­ ex­is­tent, and “Shirley Spencer” was likely a pen name (perhaps a­ dopted from the grandee of nineteenth-­century American penmanship, Pratt Rogers Spencer). In an article about her published in 1969 (again: the Daily News), she claims to have attended both the Columbia School of Journalism and the Yale Drama School, to have acted off-­Broadway, and to have begun publishing “fantasy” stories at the age of twelve; we can substantiate none of this. St. Hilare, Annette (1923–2007), was an American homemaker and bookkeeper. She grew up in Danvers, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, and graduated from Holten High School. For years, she worked in Danvers as a bookkeeper for a variety of companies, including Sylvania, Weathersfield Dairy, and Temco Corporation. She was the wife of George Dodge, to whom she was married for fifty years. Stevens, Wallace (1879–1955), was an American poet and businessman. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and attended Harvard as a special student from 1897 to 1900. At Harvard, he met the phi­los­o­pher George Santayana, whose religious skepticism and ideas about the imagination influenced him considerably. Stevens attended New York Law School, graduating in 1903, and worked for several business concerns, eventually settling in Hartford, Connecticut, where he became an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indem-

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   751

nity Com­pany. Alternating his time between business and poetry, and with very few of his colleagues aware of his literary life, Stevens published some of the most significant poetry of the twentieth ­century: Harmonium (1923), Ideas of Order (1936), The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937), Parts of a World (1942), Transport to Summer (1947), and The Auroras of Autumn (1950). He won the Bollingen Prize, two National Book Awards, and, in 1955, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems (1954). Stone, Walter King (1875–1949), was an American painter and educator. He was born in Barnard, New York, and attended public schools in Rochester. He studied art at Rochester’s Mechanics Institute and Athenaeum (now Rochester Institute of Technology) and the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He began his ­career as an in­de­pen­dent artist and developed a reputation for watercolors of American landscapes, many of which w ­ ere reprinted in the leading magazines of the day, including Scribner’s, Colliers, and Country Life. From 1920 to 1943, he was a professor of art at Cornell University. Suckow, Ruth (1892–1960), was an American novelist and short-­story writer. She grew up in Hawarden, Iowa, and attended high school in Grinnell, Iowa, where her ­father had obtained a position as minister. She received a BA (1917) and an MA (1918) in En­glish from the University of Denver, where she developed an interest in beekeeping. For several years, she ran a small apiary in Earlville, Iowa, and began to write stories. She attracted the attention of H. L. Mencken, who published several of her stories in the Smart Set and the American Mercury. She then turned her talents to the novel, often infusing her work with the Iowa landscapes and ­people she knew so well. Among her novels are Country ­People (1924), The Odyssey of a Nice Girl (1926), The Bonney F­ amily (1929), Cora (1929), The Kramer Girls (1930), The Folks (1934), New Hope (1942), and The John Wood Case (1959). In 1929, she married short-­story writer Ferner Nuhn. Taggard, Genevieve (1894–1948), was an American poet and educator. She was born in Waitsburg, Washington, and was raised in Hawaii by her parents, who ­were schoolteachers and missionaries. She earned a BA in En­glish from the University of California, Berkeley, and promptly moved to New York City, where she worked for the publishing com­pany B. W. Huebsch and founded Mea­sure: A Journal of Poetry. While living in New York, she published several collections of poetry, including For ­Eager Lovers (1922), Hawaiian Hilltop (1923), Words for the Chisel (1926), and Traveling While Standing Still (1928). In 1931 she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, which allowed her to travel to Spain, where she deepened her commitments to socialism. From 1929 to 1947, she

752  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

taught En­g lish at vari­ous colleges, including Mount Holyoke, Bennington, and Sarah Lawrence. The author of thirteen poetry collections and The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson (1930), she died of complications from high blood pressure at the age of fifty-­three. Thompson, Lawrance Roger (1906–1973), was an American educator and biographer. He was born in Franklin, New Hampshire, and received a BA from Wesleyan in 1928 and a PhD from Columbia University in 1939. In 1937, while completing his PhD, Thompson accepted a position as curator of the Prince­ton University Library special collections. During World War II, he served in the United States Naval Reserve, attaining the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and was awarded the Legion of Merit. ­A fter the war, Thompson became professor of En­glish at Prince­ton in 1951 and, having won Guggenheim and Ford Foundation fellowships, was named Holmes Professor of Belles Lettres in 1968. As a young man, Thompson met RF at Wesleyan. In 1939, RF named the young scholar his official biographer, with the stipulation that the biography not be published ­until ­after his death. Thompson published Robert Frost: The Early Years in 1966; Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph in 1970; and, with R. H. Winnick, Robert Frost: The L­ ater Years in 1977. Though nominated for a National Book Award for the Early Years and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Biography for the Years of Triumph, Thompson’s three-­volume work—­which vilified RF—­generated considerable controversy among scholars and occasioned a number of revisionary biographies (by Stanley Burnshaw, William Pritchard, Jay Parini, Lesley Lee Francis, and Henry Hart, among ­others). Thompson also wrote a book about RF’s poetry (Fire and Ice: Essays on the Art of Robert Frost [1942]) and published studies of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, and William Faulkner. While at work on The L­ ater Years, Thompson died in Prince­ton at the age of 67. R. H. Winnick completed the book. Thornton, Richard (1888–1977), was an American educator, editor, and publisher. A gradu­ate of Lynchburg (­Virginia) College (1907), he completed an MA at Columbia University (1914) and a PhD at the University of Chicago (1926). ­A fter serving as a Navy ensign in World War I, he taught En­glish and journalism at the University of North Carolina and was on the faculty of the ­Women’s College of North Carolina at Greensboro. He joined Henry Holt in 1924 as head of the foreign language department and served as president of the com­pany from 1932 ­until 1938. From 1939 u ­ ntil retirement in 1955, he was editor of college publications and a director of Ginn & Com­pany. Tilley, Morris Palmer (1876–1947), was an American scholar and teacher. A student of both lit­er­a­t ure and language, he earned a BA (1897) and MA (1899) in

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   753

En­glish from the University of ­Virginia, and a PhD in German language and lit­er­a­t ure at the University of Leipzig in 1902. As a professor of En­glish at the University of Michigan from 1906 ­until 1946, his most notable scholarly work was A Dictionary of the Proverbs in E­ ngland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1950). Trapp, Jacob Hendrick (1899–1992), was an American poet and Unitarian Universalist minister. He was born in Muskegon, Michigan, and earned a doctorate in Sacred Theology from Star King Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California. He served as a Unitarian Universalist minister in California, Utah, Colorado, and New Jersey. He was also an active member of the Demo­cratic party, serving on the Utah State Board of Public Welfare and as a New Jersey delegate to the Demo­cratic National Convention in 1968. He wrote poetry and devotional hymns, scattering his verses in a variety of magazines. He published an anthology of sacred poetry, Modern Religious Verse (1964), and one collection of poetry, Santa Fe Otowi Crossing and Other Poems (1989). He died in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Untermeyer, Louis (1885–1977), was an American poet, anthologist, critic, and editor. Having left high school to work in his f­ ather’s jewelry firm, Untermeyer published his first book of poems in 1911. Sympathetic to socialist ­causes, he wrote for many of the radical magazines of the time, including The Masses and The Liberator. In 1923, he left business to devote himself to writing. Over the next fifty years he wrote, edited, or translated more than one hundred books, including some twenty volumes of his own poetry. His anthologies, notably Modern American Poetry (1919) and Modern British Poetry (1920), ­were regularly reissued and became classroom standards. As anthologist and critic, he was an influential figure in the creation of the modern poetic canon. One of the original panelists on What’s My Line, he was blacklisted from tele­vi­sion in 1951 as a Communist sympathizer. In 1956, Untermeyer was awarded a Gold Medal by the Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca. He was Con­sul­tant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1961 u ­ ntil 1963. Valentine, Alan (1901–1980), was an American rugby player, educator, and administrator. Born in Glen Cove, New York, Valentine attended Swarthmore College, where he played varsity football, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned an MA in 1923. In 1924, while at Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, Valentine led the US rugby team to a gold medal win in the Olympics (held in Paris). On his return to Amer­i­ca, Valentine taught En­ glish at Swarthmore before accepting a position as Master of Pierson College at Yale. In 1935, he became the youn­gest person ever named to the presidency

754  Biographical Glossary of Correspondents

of Rochester College, where he served for fifteen years. In 1950, President Truman appointed him head of the Economic Stabilization Agency. In 1956, Valentine published a memoir, Trial Balance: The Education of an American (Pantheon). He and his wife, Lucia Garrison Norton Valentine, had three ­children. Van Dore, Wade Kivel (1889–1989), was an American poet and environmentalist. Born in Detroit, he left school in the tenth grade and labored as a carpenter, ice harvester, gardener, and farmhand. His poetry appeared not only in prestige publications such as the Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic, and the New Yorker, but also in ecol­ogy journals such as The Land and Nature. In 1950, he was poet-­i n-­residence at Marlboro College (Vermont); he was elected to membership in the Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca in 1968, the same year in which he cofounded the Thoreau Fellowship. He would ­later serve as poetry editor for the Thoreau Journal Quarterly. In addition to several essays about RF, he published Far Lake (1930) and Verse with a Vengeance, a Volley of Epigrams for the Gratification of Honestly Educated Men (1961) and occasional monographs, including Walden as the American Bible: A Gospel of Ecol­ogy (1971) and Richard Eberhart: Poet of Life in Death (1982). Robert Frost and Wade Van Dore: The Life of the Hired Man, an autobiographical narrative edited by Thomas Wetmore, appeared in 1986. Van Doren, Mark (1894–1972), was an American poet, novelist, critic, and scholar. ­A fter graduating from the University of Illinois (BA 1914), he completed a PhD at Columbia University in 1920 and joined the En­glish department, where he taught with ­g reat distinction ­until retiring in 1955. Van Doren was a highly influential teacher and critic, mentoring, inter alia, John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lionel Trilling, and Donald Keene. In 1940, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems: 1922–1938. In addition to numerous books of poetry, he published three novels, a volume of short stories, and studies of Thoreau, Dryden, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, and E. A. Robinson. His 1943 book, A Liberal Education, is still often cited in debates over the role of the humanities. Vanamee, Grace Davis (1876–1946), was an American suffragist, lecturer, writer, and cofounder of the ­Women’s National Republican Club. Born Grace Davis in North Adams, Mas­sa­c hu­setts, she married William Vanamee in 1909. During World War I, Vanamee was head of the American Poets’ Ambulance Committee, in which capacity she was awarded a gold medal by the Italian Red Cross. For a number of years, Vanamee worked as secretary to the president of the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters. She died a w ­ idow in Pinellas, Florida, where she had moved in 1941.

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   755

Walpole, Hugh Seymour (1884–1941), was an En­glish novelist, critic, and dramatist. Born in Auckland, New Zealand, he was sent to ­England as a boy and attended William Borlase’s Grammar School in Marlow and King’s School in Canterbury. From 1903 to 1906, he studied history at Cambridge University, where he was tutored by A. C. Benson. With the encouragement of Henry James and Arnold Bennett, Walpole published his first novel, The Wooden Horse, in 1909, and then followed that with Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill (1911) and The Dark Forest (1916). He was a prolific writer, publishing thirty-­six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays, and critical studies of Anthony Trollope, Sir Walter Scott, and Joseph Conrad. His books w ­ ere im­mensely popu­lar, and his lectures in the 1920s and 1930s drew large audiences. He was knighted in 1937 and died shortly ­after the outbreak of World War II. Walter, Dorothy Charlotte (1889–1967), was a Vermont socialite and promoter of Vermont writers. She was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and was educated at Lyndon Acad­emy and Brown University, from which, as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, she graduated in 1912. ­After graduating, she served as a field worker for the Vermont Commission on Rural Life and as secretary of the League of Vermont Writers. Holding a variety of jobs, including stints as a teacher and an editor, she spent several years as a live-in caretaker for her ­uncle, Herbert Eugene Walter, who was professor of biology at Brown. Wells, James Raye (1898–1971), was an American publisher. He ran a number of small, boutique presses—­the Fountain Press, the Bowling Green Press, and, as a private venture, the Slide Mountain Press—­and worked also at Crosby Gaige. Wells’s par­tic­u ­lar merit was to or­ga­n ize the publication in Amer­i­ca of luxury editions of British and Eu­ro­pean writers. To this end he corresponded with James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, V ­ irginia Woolf, George Moore, and many o ­ thers. Weygandt, Cornelius (1871–1957), was an American scholar and author. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania (1891), he worked five years as a newspaper reporter before joining the En­glish faculty at Penn as an instructor in 1897. ­A fter completing a PhD in 1901, he ­rose to the rank of professor and taught ­until retirement in 1952. He was responsible for bringing con­temporary lit­er­a­t ure into the curriculum. His interest in the Celtic Re­nais­sance led to Irish Plays and Playwrights (1914); A ­Century of the En­glish Novel followed in 1925. In fifteen books between 1929 and 1946, he wrote about his Pennsylvania Dutch heritage and about nature and folkways in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Wheelock, John Hall (1886–1978), was an American poet. He grew up in Rockaway, New York, and in 1908 graduated from Harvard, where he was class

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poet. He began publishing poems in the leading journals of the day, eventually publishing thirteen collections of poetry. He served as vice president of the Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca, vice president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and chancellor of the Acad­emy of American Poets. Throughout his life, he won many accolades for his poetry, including the Bollingen Prize, the Golden Rose Prize of the New ­England Poetry Society, the Ridgely Torrence Memorial Award, the Signet Society Medal (Harvard), and the Gold Medal of the Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca. Whicher, George Frisbie (1889–1954), was an American scholar and educator. ­A fter graduating from Amherst College (1910), he completed his MA (1911) and PhD at Columbia (1915). He was professor of En­glish at Amherst from 1915 to 1954. Notable among his publications are This Was a Poet: A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson (1938), The Goliard Poets (1949), and Poetry and Civilization (1955). Wilde, Irene (1884–1964), was an American poet and librarian. She attended Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. ­A fter graduating, she worked as a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle and as a librarian at Maywood High School in Los Angeles. In the 1920s she began writing poetry, publishing her work in Driftwind, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Poetry, the Saturday Eve­ning Post, and the Saturday Review. She won several regional awards for her poetry and was a member of the League of Western Writers (Los Angeles Branch) and the Southern California ­Women’s Press Club. Her books include the poetry collections Driftwood Fires (1928) and Fire Against the Sky (1938), and a novel, The Red Turban (1943). Williams, Ralph Mehlin (1911–1975), was an American educator. He received his BA from Amherst College in 1933 and a PhD from Yale in 1938. ­A fter graduating, he was professor of En­glish at Boston University and Trinity College (Connecticut). He was the author of Poet, Painter, and Parson: The Life of John Dyer (1956). Wolfers, Arnold Oscar (1892–1968), was a Swiss American po­l iti­cal scientist. Born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, to an American merchant and his Swiss wife, Wolfers graduated summa cum laude from the University of Zu­r ich in 1917, ­after which he practiced law for two years. He next studied po­liti­cal science in Switzerland, Germany, Britain, and the United States, receiving a PhD from the University of Giessen in 1924. From 1924 to 1930, Wolfers lectured in po­ liti­cal science at the Hochschule für Politik in Berlin. He emigrated to the

Biographical Glossary of Correspondents   757

United States in 1933 and obtained an appointment at Yale. By 1935 he was professor of international relations and, in 1949, was named Sterling Professor of International Relations. He was Master of Pierson College at Yale from 1935 to 1949. Wolfers left Yale in 1957 to take a post as founding director of the Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research. Wood, Roland (1896–1980), was an American publisher and actor. He graduated from Amherst College in 1920 and, with John Fass, worked for the publishing ­house of William Edwin Rudge. At Rudge, the two men apprenticed with renowned book designer Bruce Rogers. In 1925, Wood and Fass started the Harbor Press, which produced special print runs of famous authors for major publishing h ­ ouses. In 1929, Harbor Press issued Frost’s one-­act play, A Way Out, in which Wood had acted at the Northampton Acad­emy of M ­ usic in 1919. The press closed in 1942, a casualty of World War II. Thereafter Wood pursued a successful ­career as an actor. Young, Charles Lowell (1865–1937), was an American scholar and teacher. Educated at Harvard (AB 1893), he joined the faculty at Wellesley in 1898 and retired as professor of American lit­er­a­t ure in 1933. His most notable scholarly work, Emerson’s Montaigne, was published posthumously in 1941. Zabel, Morton Dauwen (1901–1964), was an American author, critic, and editor. He was born in Minnesota Lake, Minnesota, and earned his BA from St. Thomas Military Acad­emy, his MA from the University of Minnesota, and his PhD from the University of Chicago. As associate editor for Poetry from 1928 to 1936 and editor from 1936 to 1937, he helped guide the magazine through the G ­ reat Depression. He taught at several academic institutions, including Loyola University (Chicago), Northwestern, Notre Dame, and the University of California, Berkeley. From 1947 u ­ ntil his death, he was professor of En­glish at the University of Chicago. His notable books of criticism include Literary Opinion in Amer ­i­ca (1937), Craft and Character: Texts, Method, and Vocation in Modern Fiction (1957), and The Art of Ruth Draper: Her Dramas and Characters (1960).

Chronology: January 1929–­December 1936 1929 ​­A fter spending the holidays with ­family in South Shaftsbury, Vermont, RF and Elinor move into their ­house at 34 Amity Street in Amherst, Mas­sa­ chu­setts (RF’s contract with the college required his presence t­ here from early January through March). On February 5, Marjorie Frost departs for Baltimore to enter the nursing program at Johns Hopkins. RF spends February 12–13 at Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut), where he gives a talk and a reading. On March 14, to a group of students assembled in the Latin Room at Amherst College, RF reads aloud, in its entirety, Joseph Moncure March’s The Set-­Up, a book-­length poem based on the life of the first African American heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson. On April 3, RF embarks on a lecture tour that takes him to Philadelphia (April 3–5), Chicago (April 5–9), Nashville (April  12), Pittsburgh (April  17), and the University of V ­ irginia (April 18). During the Nashville visit RF meets some of the Fugitive Poets. From May 1 through mid-­August, RF and Elinor live in the Shingled Cottage in North Bennington, Vermont, as they oversee renovations on the Gully Farm ­they’d purchased (in South Shaftsbury) in 1928; RF’s friends Wade Van Dore and J. J. Lankes assist in the renovations. On July 30, RF gives a talk and reading at the Bread Loaf School of En­glish, a­ fter which, to remain above the hay-­fever line, he and his wife reside in Franconia, New Hampshire, at the guest cottage of Edith H ­ azard Fobes, a ­family friend. On September 7, RF’s ­sister Jeanie Florence Frost dies in Augusta, Maine (where s­ he’d been confined for eight years at the Maine Insane Asylum, a­ fter suffering a psychotic break in April 1920). RF travels with his son Carol to Maine the next day to see to his s­ ister’s affairs and attend the funeral and interment. On October 1, RF and Elinor move into the Gully farm­house. Autumn brings with it lecture engagements at the University of Richmond (October 23–24) and an invitation to attend the dedication of the Amy Lowell Poetry Room at the Widener Library at Harvard (December 16). RF spends the holiday season in South Shaftsbury with his f­ amily. 1930 ​RF returns to Amherst the first week of January for a twelve-­week stint of teaching. On January 20, he attends the annual dinner of the Amherst

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Alumni Association in New York City. His duties at Amherst completed for the year, RF embarks on a lecture tour, addressing the W ­ omen’s Club in Sharon, Pennsylvania (April 2), speaking at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania (April 3), and spending a week as poet-­in-­residence at the University of Michigan (April 7–14). On April 15, RF speaks in Dayton, Ohio, before returning to the Gully Farm. On June 16, he travels to the University of New Hampshire in Durham to receive—at the invitation of his friend Edward Morgan Lewis, president of the university—an honorary LittD degree (with, as it happened, Thomas A. Watson [1854–1934], coinventor of the telephone). Afterward, RF writes Lewis: “You ­don’t know what ideas you w ­ ere putting into my head as you apostrophized me on the platform last Monday. One dangerous one was that I ­ought to be ashamed to live anywhere but in New Hampshire. You watch the idea work. I predict that it w ­ ill land me back in the state where my f­ ather was born and three fourths of my ­children and practically all my poetry.” On June 24, RF joins the New Hampshire Historical Society. From July 7 to July 12, he serves on the faculty at the Institute of En­ glish Education at Pennsylvania State College (together with his friends and fellow poets Padraic Colum, Eunice Tietjens, and Percy MacKaye). RF gives talks and a reading at the Bread Loaf School of En­g lish on July 21 and 22. During August, back at the Gully Farm, RF hosts Joseph Blumenthal, head of Spiral Press, then preparing the ­limited edition of RF’s Collected Poems for publication in October (the trade edition ­w ill appear a month ­later, in November). Travels with Elinor to Franconia, New Hampshire, for his yearly refuge from hay fever, staying, as usual, at the Fobes cottage (August 31–­September 12). From October through December, RF teaches at Amherst College. On October 31, he writes his editor at Henry Holt and Com­ pany, Richard Thornton, “I want to tell you how perfect a book [Collected Poems] I think you have made for me. I wouldnt have a ­thing dif­fer­ent in the make-up, what­ever I might want to blot or alter in the content.” RF is pleased when his protege Wade Van Dore’s first book, Far Lake, is published by Coward-­MacCann (RF had assisted Van Dore in arranging the contents of the book). Travels to Cleveland to give a talk at Western Reserve University on November 10, staying at the home of Professor Holley Hanford. Five days ­later, on the fifteenth, RF delivers the “meditative monologue” before the Amherst Alumni Council that would be published in February 1931 as “Education by Poetry,” one of his major statements about poetics (CPPP, 717–728). On November 13, RF is elected to membership in the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters and, on the seventeenth, attends the opening night, on Broadway, of

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Paul Osborn’s comedy The Vinegar Tree; illness prevents Elinor from joining him. He writes Osborn, whom he’d known since his first stint at the University of Michigan in 1921: “The play was a fine bold stroke; and nothing schoolboyish [sic] left lingering in it. And though no judge of first night audiences I was dead sure your audience liked it. You had them crowing like babies.” Spends Christmas in Baltimore, where Marjorie Frost had been hospitalized (for tuberculosis). Writes friend and woodcut artist J. J. Lankes: “We are in Baltimore among the Mds for Christmas, and the Mds have it on our f­ amily: they tell us Marjorie is out of nursing [school] and w ­ ill have to be taken away for her lungs. I have seen the X-­ray pictures and it seems to be so. Well it has been a hard pull for her and her ­mother. She stuck it and stood up to it two years of the three required. I have been afraid she would die on her feet sometimes. So I am relieved to have it end no worse than with incipient consumption that ­theres a good chance Colorado Arizona or New Mexico ­w ill cure.” 1931 ​RF writes his University of Michigan friend Morris Tilley on January 28: “Elinor is just back from having taken Marjorie to Boulder Colorado and we seem composed for the moment. We dont know how serious Marjorie’s case may be. We hope not too serious. I suppose it is something ­these years of debilitation ­were leading up to. The tendency to tuberculosis has merely come out into the open.” On January 8, RF delivers the first of six weekly eve­n ing lectures at the New School for Social Research, while traveling back to Amherst to teach in between. On March 8, RF gives a reading at Yale and, a­ fter winding up his affairs at Amherst, attends a dinner sponsored by the Signet Society at Harvard (of which he was a member) and, ­going further east and north, gives a reading and holds conferences with students at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine (March 23 and 24), and at Bates College (March 25). RF then makes his way back south, stopping in Worcester, Mas­sa­chu­setts, to read at Clark University on March 27—­after which hectic season he and Elinor spend the month of April in New York City visiting friends and resting (the month is punctuated only by one lecture: at Wells College, Aurora, New York, on April 8). Returning to South Shaftsbury and the Gully Farm on April 27, RF and Elinor squeeze in a few weeks of time, catching up on correspondence. On May 4, RF learns that his Collected Poems (1930) has been awarded the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. RF writes his ­daughter Lesley, in mid-­May (she was debating ­whether to divorce her husband Dwight Francis): “Your question to decide is ­whether Dwight’s not being right in the mind and his having wronged you come to the same t­ hing for practical purposes. If he has only wronged

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you b­ ecause he is not right in the mind it makes it harder to be hard on him. I can see how you must feel. But you must have been all over this ground several times before. . . . ​Only if you can contemplate a life of self-­sacrificing and child-­sacrificing tragedy could you begin over with him. Some ­people cant resist tragedy. My ­mother ­couldn’t. Nothing could have saved her but my ­father’s death. . . . ​I from my point of view see you as dif­fer­ent and differently situated. You can get out.” Lesley was then in the eighth month of her second pregnancy and, in late May, Elinor and RF travel to Montauk, Long Island, to be with her. They remain with Lesley u ­ ntil her second d­ aughter, Lesley Lee, is born on June 20. Back in Vermont in early July, RF heads up to Ripton to give a reading at the Bread Loaf School of En­g lish (July 9), then visits his daughter-­in-­law Lillian Labatt Frost (Carol’s wife) at a sanitarium in Pittsford, Vermont. Like Marjorie, Lillian is suffering from tuberculosis; she and her husband would soon move to California for her health. ­A fter making one more visit to Lesley and her two d­ aughters in Montauk in mid-­July, RF and Elinor board a train bound for Colorado. ­A fter giving a reading at the University of Denver on July 20, RF, Elinor, and Marjorie vacation in Evergreen, Colorado. RF writes his friend Vrest Orton on July 25: “This is a beautiful country but hot where we sojourn thirty miles west of Denver up Bear cañon ­under Mt Evans of nearly 1400[0] ft. T ­ heres snow in sight. E ­ very two or three hours the drought is broken with a bump of thunder but no rain. The region is flowery. I am learning to like the U.S. section by section.” In early August, the Frosts take Marjorie back to Boulder, where she reenters the sanitarium and they stay with f­ amily friends John and Margaret Bartlett. On August 10, RF begins a four-­day poetry seminar at the University of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference. ­A fter spending a night with poet Thomas Hornsby Ferril and his wife, RF and Elinor board a train for California (via Salt Lake City). They reach San Bernardino on August 25—­Carol, Lillian, and their son Prescott had preceded them—­and help the young f­ amily ­settle into a ­house in Monrovia, near Mt. Wilson, with its celebrated observatory. On September 2, RF and Elinor began the trip back east a­ fter first visiting San Francisco, which RF had not seen since he left it as a boy in 1885. Along the way they spend a few days more with Marjorie in Boulder, fi­nally reaching the Gully Farm on September 18. On October 12, RF is awarded an honorary LHD at Wesleyan University, ­a fter which, on November 12, he and Elinor ­settle into the ­house they lately purchased in Amherst (with the help of f­ amily friend and realtor Warren Brown) at 15 Sunset Ave­nue. ­A fter a brief trip to Boston in early December, the Frosts spend the night in Lawrence, Mas­sa­chu­

Chronology  763

setts (where RF attended high school) with the f­amily of Wilbur E. Rowell (the Frosts’ attorney). From December 5 to 7, the Frosts stay in Exeter, New Hampshire, where RF speaks at Phillips Acad­emy, Exeter. ­There follows a three-­day visit with Edward Morgan Lewis and f­ amily (December 8–11), and then RF takes the train (with Elinor) to Philadelphia, where the poet is awarded the Russell Loines Prize ($1,000) by the National Institute of Arts and Letters. While in the city, they stay with Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Robert Von Moschzisker and his wife (­family friends for more than a de­cade). Then RF and his wife return for the holidays to the Gully Farm—­the first Christmas ­they’d spend in South Shaftsbury without Marjorie, Carol, Lillian, and Prescott. 1932 ​RF writes his friend Frederic Melcher (editor of Publishers Weekly) to ask what he might do for the ­family of Vachel Lindsay, who had committed suicide on December 5: “It seems to us we heard that money was being raised in memory of Vachel. Was it for a monument or for his f­ amily? What is the absolute (not relative) poverty of his ­family? . . . ​Can we do anything for the Lindsays through you? Would 100 be no more than a drop in their bucket?” He returns to Amherst with Elinor on January 18, temporarily residing at 21 Lincoln Ave­nue while their h ­ ouse on Sunset Ave­nue undergoes renovations. On January 27, RF gives a reading at Sheffield House, Yale University. Four days ­later, the Frosts move into the Sunset Ave­nue ­house and RF resumes his teaching duties at Amherst. In February, RF sends five inscribed books to painter and illustrator Walter King Stone (1875–1949) to requite him for five illustrations Stone had done of RF’s poems; he writes Stone on February 4: “I’ll take the one about the stars over drifting snow for all my autobiography, more than satisfied with my bargain.” RF also buys a painting by New E ­ ngland landscape artist Robert Strong Woodward for the Sunset Ave­nue ­house. On March 3, he lectures at Syracuse University and on the fifteenth at Wells College. On his way to a three-­day residency at Bowdoin College (March 21–23), RF attends a dinner at the Signet Club at Harvard. A ­ fter winding up his student conferences at Bowdoin, RF reads at Phillips Acad­emy, Andover (March 25), then proceeds to Boston to read u ­ nder the auspices of the Committee for the Amy Lowell Memorial Fund. On his birthday, March 26, he writes Marjorie, who was then visiting Carol and his f­ amily in Monrovia, California, and who had lately become engaged to Willard Fraser (a student at the University of Colorado): “Your last news from Boulder went to our hearts and imaginations. Willard sounds like a good boy in a sad world. Bless you

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both.” RF falls ill in early April, and cancels a scheduled reading in Pittsfield, Mas­sa­chu­setts, where his ­daughter Lesley was then living. On April 8, writes his friend Louis Untermeyer, advising him not to publish a damning review he’d written of a new book by E. A. Robinson: “Way down in my heart I d­ on’t know about you ­doing that to Robinson. You and he are old friends. He ­w ill suffer if you find it necessary to go back on him too publicly.” On April 18, writes Marjorie’s fiancé: “That was a fine letter. I know I c­ ouldn’t have done half as well u ­ nder the circumstances. What between you and Marj we begin to get quite an idea of you. We o ­ ught to reciprocate and describe ourselves to you. But we ­shall be coming out so soon now where you can see us and save us the necessity.” A day ­later, writes Sidney Cox to fend off a biographical study of the poet Cox had hoped to prepare: “You are getting out of hand. . . . ​I have written to keep the over curious out of the secret places of my mind both in my verse and in my letters to such as you.” His health now recovered, RF gives readings at Middlebury College (May 6) and Bennington College (May 11), before ­going down to New York City to read, as Phi Beta Kappa Poet at Columbia, his political-­pastoral poem “Build Soil” (May 31). A ­ fter receiving an honorary LittD from Columbia, RF travels north to Williams College where, on June 20, he is awarded an honorary LHD (also honored ­were newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo and RF’s friend Edward Morgan Lewis). On June 22, RF and Elinor depart by train for Colorado where they w ­ ill see Marjorie and meet her fiancé Willard (June 25–30), and for Monrovia, California, which they reach, Marjorie with them, on July 2. RF and Elinor rent a ­house at 219 West Greystone Ave­nue—­scouted for them by Carol for its view of the San Gabriel Mountains—­for a three-­month stay, during which they spend time with Carol and his f­ amily and attend the Los Angeles Olympic Games (on August 3 [track and field], 10 [crew racing], and 13 [swimming and boxing finals]). While in Southern California, RF gives readings at Occidental College (September 27) and at the University of Southern California (September 29) and attends a dinner in his honor given at Cal Tech (September 30). RF and Elinor head east again in early October, stopping off in Boulder to stay with the Bartletts for three days (October 10–13), during which time RF lectures at the University of Colorado (October 12) on the topic “All Thinking is Meta­phor.” On the seventeenth, RF and Elinor reach Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a ten-­day stay with Dean Joseph A. Bursely and his wife Marjorie Knowlton Bursley, and with the ­family of Louis Strauss (friends from their first term in Ann Arbor [1921–1923]). On October 17, RF gives a talk to gradu­ate students in En­glish at the University of Michigan, and on the eigh­

Chronology  765

teenth gives a public reading at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, a 600-­seat hall on the campus of the university. In late October, the Frosts reach their home in Amherst, where Marjorie w ­ ill soon join them for the holidays. Meanwhile, RF gives readings before the New Jersey Association of Teachers of En­glish (November 12) and at Wellesley College (November 14), and attends a dinner in Cambridge held at the St. Botolph Club (on November 15) in honor of T. S. Eliot, marking the first time the two poets meet. (Eliot was then Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard, a position RF would hold in 1936.) At the dinner, when another guest asks Eliot to read his poem “The Hippopotamus,” Eliot agrees—on the condition that RF read one of his. RF says he ­will do more than that—­he’ll compose a poem as Eliot reads. Scribbling a draft of a “Rec­ord Stride” on place cards as Eliot performs, RF then reads it—­ affecting to improvise its last stanza; in fact, he’d written the poem months ­earlier and is astonished when no one at the ­table seems to get the joke. (He writes f­amily friend Bessie Zaban Jones, wife of Howard Mumford Jones: “When my turn came I was not quite finished but said I would do the best I could with the last stanzas extempore. I stumbled a ­little for verisimilitude. Someone exclaimed, ‘Quite a feat’ and next day The Atlantic begged the poem for publication. All w ­ ere so unexpectedly solemn that I hadnt the courage to disabuse them. My lie kept me awake one w ­ hole night.”) RF falls seriously ill on his return to Amherst and is bedridden for two weeks. A ­ fter recovering, he attends a meeting of the American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters in New York (December 1), before spending the holidays in Amherst with Marjorie and Irma, her husband John, and their son John Jr. (“Jackie”). 1933 ​RF writes his son Carol a long New Year’s Day letter discussing the latter’s poems (among other t­ hings), and soon resumes his duties at Amherst, taking time out for occasional lectures. The need for funds to support his growing extended ­family never relaxes. RF reads in Albany, New York (January 11), at the Brooklyn Institute (January 27), and at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania (February 11). He declines an offer (March 15) from NBC to read his poems on one of its radio programs. Again, RF writes Carol about his poetry: “Your Stratton poem is power­f ul and splendid. You have hammered it close and hard and you have rammed it full of all sorts of t­ hings, observations both of nature and of ­human nature. . . . ​It is written with a man’s vigor and goes down in to a man’s depth. You perhaps ­don’t realize what that means to me.” His obligations at Amherst completed, RF embarks alone on an extensive lecture tour, taking the “Katy” Bluebonnet train to Texas. Marjorie

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remains in Amherst with her ­mother, making arrangements for her wedding (scheduled for June 3, in Billings, Montana, Willard Fraser’s hometown). RF gives a reading at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, on April 18 and, the following morning, holds a private session with students before departing for Dallas, where he reads that night at Southern Methodist University. On April 23, Elinor joins RF in Austin where, on the twenty-­fourth, RF gives a public reading (before an audience of more than a thousand) and, the following day, a talk at the annual banquet sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at the University of Texas. On the twenty-­sixth, RF reads in Nacogdoches at Stephen F. Austin State College, before proceeding the next day to give a talk at Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas. April 29 finds the Frosts in Denton, where RF reads at North Texas State College. The tour is widely covered, with more than forty articles and announcements peppering the pages of the local press. In Waco alone RF endures a picnic, a banquet, and several luncheons. On April 25, the Austin American had printed the following: “As a wind-up for the eve­n ing, Frost told of selecting recently a favorite from his own works, ‘Birches.’ How he arrived at the choice was a Scotch story of wanting a poem not too long, nor too short, which appeared on opposite pages, so only one book would have to be torn up to get it out for a friend. Then to justify the choice, he told the friend [William Rose Benét] that he picked the poem ­because of its ‘vocality and its ulteriority.’ The first quality he demonstrated in an ­earlier reading. The habit of arraigning the latter attribute to poetry he razzed ­gently, suggesting that any poem must have a point and a finish line. T ­ hose who attempt to mea­sure ‘ulteriority’ literally seek to grab the poet and drag him beyond his last word, Dr.  Frost complained. The audience thought it funny.” ­A fter the talk at North Texas State, RF and Elinor board a train and reach Amherst on May 1—­just in time for RF to attend a dinner (May 4) in New York in honor of Pulitzer Prize winners, sponsored by the Friends of the Prince­ton Library. On his return to Amherst, RF falls gravely ill (the doctors suspect tuberculosis, but are proved wrong). The illness is prolonged enough to prevent him and Elinor from attending Marjorie and Willard’s wedding, which is held on June 3 in the Fraser home in Billings. Elinor writes Richard Thornton (RF’s editor) on May 31 (from Amherst): “I expect that ­after we get up to the [Gully] farm, he ­will improve, as the air is ­really better up ­there, and prob­ably his digestion and appetite ­w ill improve. I hope I am mistaken, but my opinion is that he is in for real trou­ble this time” (YT, 405). RF would suffer a number of ailments in the coming months, some of them incapacitating. By June 19, he recovers enough

Chronology  767

to attend a banquet at Wellesley College (which had named him an honorary member of the class of 1933), and on the twentieth he receives an honorary LittD from Dartmouth, but he ­w ill not give a talk again ­until July 3, at the Bread Loaf School of En­glish. ­A fter this engagement he and Elinor remain at the Gully Farm—­where Carol and Prescott pay a visit, having driven across the country—­until moving, again, into the Fobeses’ cottage in Franconia to escape hay fever; t­ here they remain u ­ ntil returning to the Gully on October 1. RF spends relatively ­l ittle time in Amherst during the fall (writing as often as not from South Shaftsbury). On November 11, he is appointed associate fellow of Pierson College at Yale (newly founded), for a term of five years. RF and Elinor spend December in Amherst at their ­house on Sunset Ave­nue. 1934 ​In January, RF resumes his three-­month annual term at Amherst. In the March issue of the Yale Review, he publishes his first new poem (in a magazine) since 1928: “Neither Out Far Nor in Deep,” thereby beginning his customary scattering, in magazines, of new poetry in the run-up to what ­w ill be his next book (AFR). Illness prevents RF from attending his inauguration as fellow at Pierson College, scheduled for February 9. He writes Wilbur Cross, editor of the Yale Review, on February 17: “I’m glad if I still can please you [i.e., with ‘Neither Out Far Nor in Deep’]. I need all the encouragement you can give me in that kind of poetry to hold me to it. The temptation of the times is to write politics. But I m ­ ustn’t yield to it, must I?” RF sends three new poems to John Hall Wheelock, editor of Scribner’s Magazine. RF is again bedridden (writes Louis Untermeyer on February 22: “I have been in bed with a bug and a tropical temperature again etiolating and emaciating”). By early March, he has recovered enough to give two lectures on “What Poetry Thinks” in Johnson Chapel at Amherst (March 7 and 14). On March 16 Marjorie Frost Fraser gives birth to her ­daughter Marjorie Robin Fraser in Billings, Montana. Marj contracts puerperal fever, which her first doctor misdiagnoses; the infection quickly overtakes her and so begins the terrific strug­gle that would consume the Frost and Fraser families in the coming seven weeks. The gravity of the situation now plain, RF and Elinor start for Montana on April 4, reaching Billings on the eighth. RF writes his son Carol on April 18: “You realize by this time that Marjorie’s sickness is that worst disease of all, child-­bed fever, and her chances of recovery are small. Our best hope is her having lasted as long as she has. The doctors and vari­ous ­people tell us that patients who stand the fever a month very often get the better of it. Marjorie has stood it a month and three days now. Several times she has been at the point of death. Nothing

768  Chronology

has kept her alive so far but blood-­transfusions. Willard’s friends have come forward in a host to give their blood for her. I never i­magined anything like it for kindness and friendship.” On April 26, RF and Elinor arrange for Marj to be flown, by private plane, to Rochester, Minnesota, where she is admitted to the Mayo Clinic and treated by Edward Carl Rosenow (1875–1966), head of Mayo’s Department of Experimental Bacteriology. RF, Elinor, and Willard shadow the plane by car. RF writes his Amherst colleague George Whicher (from Rochester) on April  29: “I mustnt say it but I fear Marjorie loses ground. . . . ​­Here at Rochester she has all that modern science and humanity can do for her.” He writes on the same day to Untermeyer: “Rosenow the ­great biologist finds he has a serum for a close cousin of the organism diffused in her bloodstream. It would be better if it ­were for the exact organism. But that and blood-­transfusions ­every other day and Marjorie’s tenacity and Elinor’s devotion and the mercy of God are our hopes. You ­w ill prob­ably see us home again alive what­ever the outcome, but it ­w ill be months hence and changed for the worst for the rest of our days.” Three days l­ater, on May 2, Marjorie dies. A ­ fter the funeral—­held on May 4 at the First Congregational Church in Billings—­R F and Elinor, together with Robin, head east (by train) on May 9, reaching Amherst several days l­ ater. RF writes Untermeyer again on May 15: “The noblest of us all is dead and has taken our hearts out of the world with her. It was a terrible seven weeks’ fight—­too indelibly terrible on the imagination.” RF and Elinor remain in Amherst throughout May and June, devastated; they return to the Gully Farm in early July, and RF resumes correspondence with friends and magazine editors, albeit slowly. On July 27, he writes Howard Schmitt for the first time, initiating what ­w ill become a lifelong friendship. In summer 1934 Charles R. Green, chief librarian at the Jones Library in Amherst, begins work on the first serious bibliography of RF (published in 1937, in collaboration with Shubrick Clymer). From August 17 through September 19, RF retires, with Elinor and their ­daughter Irma, to Franconia. While ­there, RF scouts out farms, purchasing one in nearby Concord Corners, Vermont, hoping to establish a retreat that would not impose on Edith Fobes (Elinor and RF would spend only one summer in Concord Corners [1937], though their ­daughter Irma would sometimes reside ­there). From Franconia, RF writes for the first time to Robert Newdick, a young scholar at Ohio State University who would (in 1935) begin writing a biography of the poet. Back in South Shaftsbury on September 20, the Frosts relax for a few weeks before boarding a train for Rockford, Illinois, to attend the inauguration, on October 10, of ­family friend Gordon K. Chal­mers as president of Rock-

Chronology  769

ford College (where their ­daughter Lesley taught). Back in Amherst, Elinor suffers a severe attack of angina pectoris on November 8. ­Under doctors’ ­orders, the Frosts decide to winter in Key West, Florida, for which they depart on November 26, stopping along the way in Washington, DC, where RF delivers (on December 1) a talk ­under the title “Can Poetry Be Taught?” before a meeting of the National Council of Teachers of En­glish. On December 7, the Frosts reach Key West (crossing the keys by train) and rent a ­house at 410 Caroline Ave­nue. An outpouring of letters follows, over the course of the month, touching on the history and condition of Key West, and the intense activity t­ here, done u ­ nder the auspices of Federal Emergency Recovery Act (FERA). On the thirty-­fi rst, Carol arrives by car with his f­amily to join his parents for the winter, taking up residence at 707 Seminole Ave­nue (one block off the beach). 1935 ​RF continues his remarkable bout of letter writing from Key West, chiefly to friends up north, teasing them about the balminess of the weather, schooling them on the history and culture of the island, and making wisecracks at the expense of FERA. The letters continue apace in February, some to Charles Green and Shubrick Clymer (concerning the Frost bibliography), ­others to Harold Rugg, librarian at Dartmouth College, about the preparation, ­there, by a group of bibliophile undergraduates—­called Daniel Oliver and Associates— of a ­l imited, fine letterpress edition of three of RF’s earliest published poems (Three Poems [Hanover, NH: Baker Library Press, 1935]), still ­others to old friends, including the Scottish poet Ted Davison and the Irish poet Padraic Colum. On February 20, RF writes his friend Cornelius Weygandt, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania: “This is the strangest city in the United States t­ oday—­governed directly by the President without intervention of mayor or governor. Every­body is on relief and working lazily with hoes digging up all the native vegetation in the vacant lots. It’s symbolic. The motto of the New Deal: Every­thing native must be extirpated. . . . ​The climate has been good for me. The ­others are not too sure they like it.” On March 1, RF heads up to Carol Gables to lecture on the theme “Before the Beginning and ­A fter the End of a Poem” at the Winter Institute (University of Miami), and then returns to Key West where he remains with Elinor (and Carol and his ­family) ­until starting north with Elinor on March 28. Before settling down in Amherst, RF gives a series of talks in Trenton, New Jersey (April 2), at Glassboro State Teachers College (also in New Jersey; April 3), in Middleburg, ­Virginia (April 4), at Harvard (April 17), and at Milton Acad­emy (May 3). On

770  Chronology

May 22, RF delivers a lecture on “Good and Bad Originalities” in the Johnson Chapel at Amherst; he lectures ­there again on June 14 on “Our Darkest Concern,” which completes his college duties for the spring. On July 6, he and Elinor return to the Gully Farm for a few weeks of rest before departing by rail, on the twenty-­fourth, for Boulder, Colorado. From July 29 through August 2, RF gives a five-­day course at the Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference at the University of Colorado. On August 3, he takes the train from Denver to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where, on August 5, he gives a reading before a meeting of the Writers’ Edition Group (while in New Mexico, RF also visits the Native American village of Santo Domingo, thirty-­five miles north of Albuquerque, to witness the annual Corn Dance Festival of the Keres Pueblo Indians). RF returns to Denver on August 6, where he and Elinor are the guests of Colorado poet Thomas Hornsby Ferril. The next day, Elinor and RF board a train bound for New ­England. On August 10, RF gives a talk and reading at the Bread Loaf School of En­glish. A ­ fter a brief stay back at the Gully Farm, the Frosts depart for Franconia on August 19 for a month’s stay at the Fobeses’ guest cottage (renovations at the place RF bought the previous year in Concord Corners, Vermont, are as yet incomplete). RF completes—­w ith some difficulty—an introduction for Edwin Arlington Robinson’s last book, King Jasper (New York: Macmillan, 1935). A ­ fter a brief return to the Gully Farm, RF heads to New York to deliver a series of four Tuesday lectures at the New School for Social Research (October 3, 10, 17, and 24, in between which he travels by rail back up to Amherst). He then travels south to Decatur, Georgia (outside Atlanta) where, on November 7, he lectures for the first time at Agnes Scott College, initiating a relationship with the college that would endure for more than twenty years. Two days ­later, on the ninth, RF takes part in the annual meeting of the Amherst Alumni Council, before heading to Wells College for a November 21 reading. With Elinor, RF travels again to Rockford, Illinois, to visit Lesley and to participate in a roundtable discussion. On their way back east, the ­couple spend two days (December 4–5) with Dean Joseph A. Bursely and his wife Marjorie. A ­ fter a brief stay in Amherst, RF and Elinor depart (via New York) for Coconut Grove, Florida. En route, RF writes John Livingston Lowes (December 18) accepting an invitation to serve as the Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard for 1936. On reaching Coconut Grove, RF and Elinor rent a h ­ ouse at 3670 Avocado Ave­nue belonging to University of Miami professor Orton Lowe. On Christmas Day, the Frosts are joined for the holidays by Carol and his f­ amily, and by Lesley and her d­ aughters Elinor and Lesley Lee.

Chronology  771

1936 ​As in 1935, RF’s Floridian January finds him writing often and at length (more than 6,000 words). On January 25, RF lunches with novelist Hervey Allen and writer Dubose Heyward at the Pan American Club in Miami. On January 27, 28, and 29, RF gives three talks at the University of Miami’s Winter Institute, all ­under the title “Learning How to Have Something to Say” (the Miami News quotes him: “Feel around in your pockets and see what you can find valuable in your life for you. ­Things not only ‘happen,’ meaning external experiences, but they must ‘occur’ to you and w ­ ill bring forth ideas”). He follows up this series with lectures on “The Uses of Ambiguity” ( January 30) and “An After­noon’s Anthology” ( January 31). On February 14, a rare photo­g raph appears in the Miami News of a publicity-­shy Elinor Frost at a luncheon at the Pan American Club; her expression is not one of delight. RF is irritated when newspaper accounts of his upcoming tenure at Harvard fail to bring in his connection to Amherst. RF and Elinor arrange for Joseph Blumenthal of the Spiral Press to publish a collection of Marjorie Frost Fraser’s poems, in a private edition not for sale, titled Franconia. Meanwhile, RF continues assembling his own new book (AFR), due out in the spring. On or about February 20, the Frosts begin their trip north to Harvard, stopping off in Baltimore and New York along the way. On March 1, they move into a furnished h ­ ouse at 56 Fayerweather Street in Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts, where RF readies himself for the Norton lectures, given ­under the general heading, “The Renewal of Words.” On March 4, he lectures on “The Old Way to Be New” (writing his son Carol on March 9: “­After the unfriendliness of Florida I might say the coldness of Florida the warmth of New E ­ ngland t­ oward us has almost taken our breath away. I’ve never been welcomed anywhere with the noise and enthusiasm I met with at my opening lecture. You’d think I was some musical hero”). The subsequent lectures are “Vocal Imagination—­the Merger of Form and Content” (March 11), “Does Wisdom Signify?” (March 18), “Poetry as Prowess (A Feat of Words)” (March 25), “Before the Beginning of a Poem” (April  8), and “­A fter the End of a Poem” (April  15). The Frosts remain in Cambridge through mid-­May, socializing with Harvard faculty members (befriending Professor Theodore Morrison and his wife Kathleen). RF makes forays out to read at the Hampshire Bookshop in Northampton (April 16) and to lecture at Wesleyan University on April  28 (title: “On Not Getting Stuck in the Golden Mean”). On May 19, the Frosts return to the Gully Farm and ­there they remain, making occasional trips down to Amherst. Henry Holt publishes AFR on May 20 (the book is made a se­lection of the Book of the Month Club). Edward Morgan Lewis—­family friend, former major league

772  Chronology

baseball pitcher, and president of the University of New Hampshire—­d ies on May 23 in Durham, New Hampshire; RF eulogizes him at memorial ser­vices held on May 26. During June, RF is awarded three more honorary degrees (on June 8 at the University of Pennsylvania, on June 10 at Bates College, and on June 16 at Elinor’s alma mater, St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York). He travels to Plymouth, New Hampshire, to give a talk and reading for the summer session of the Plymouth Normal School (where he taught from 1911 to 1912); and renews his friendship with Ernest Silver (the man who brought him to Plymouth and remained president of the school). On July 1 writes Wade Van Dore, whose first book he’d helped see into print: “I must caution you in advance as I have cautioned you at other times against putting your dependence on poetry to get you out of your hole and on your feet. If ­there is no living at ­Grand Marais [on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula] by farming fishing and care-­taking, you cant stay t­here. Your wife and child have to be considered. When I heard that they ­were left alone away off up ­there with no friends and neighbors while you ­were in Detroit for money, I about despaired of your judgement.” RF corresponds and occasionally meets with Charles R. Green (of the Jones Library, in Amherst), as Green continues work on the bibliography he’d undertaken with Shubrick Clymer. Spends July and the first two weeks of August in South Shaftsbury before decamping with Elinor on August 15 for the Fobes Cottage in Franconia. He makes a trip over to Ripton, Vermont, to give a talk and reading at the Bread Loaf School of En­glish on August 27, then gives a reading the next day in Newport, Vermont, before the League of Vermont Writers. Back in Franconia on the twenty-­n inth, succumbs to a painful case of shingles. The illness worsens as the weeks roll on, and RF is at length compelled to skip out on obligations to deliver a Phi Beta Kappa poem and an ode for Harvard’s tercentenary celebrations; Robert Hillyer takes his place as Phi Beta Kappa poet, John Masefield as deliverer of the ode. He returns to Amherst in November and writes Untermeyer from t­ here on November 25: “Away back [in] early September I swore off on letter-­writing till I should get well entirely. But I begin to think if I wait till then I ­shall wait forever. So ­here I am writing again though from bed. . . . ​At one stroke I cut out all duties away from Amherst. I left Harvard to the En­glish and I left the American Acad­emy to Billy [William Lyon] Phelps. I dropped all the pay engagements. From that moment I was a dif­ fer­ent man. It dawned on me that all this I had been imperceptibly getting deeper and deeper into wasnt the life of my choice and liking.” Henry Holt issues a special Christmas gift edition of RF’s From Snow to Snow (a booklet

Chronology  773

featuring twelve of his poems, one for each month of the year), and some 5,400 copies sell out by year’s end. In mid-­December, RF departs with Elinor for Texas, where they winter in San Antonio. Arriving on the eigh­teenth, they are joined by their son-­i n-­law Willard Fraser and his ­d aughter Robin; the next day Lesley arrives with her two ­d aughters and on the twenty-­fi rst Carol and his ­family join them all for the holidays. On Christmas Day, the entire extended ­family dines at the luxurious, ten-­story St. Anthony ­Hotel (built in 1909, and renovated, complete with air-­conditioning, in 1935)—­and then closes out the year.

Acknowl­edgments

But yield who ­w ill to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever r­ eally done For Heaven and the f­ uture’s sakes. —­Robert Frost, “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” 1934

The editors of this volume are neither sure of Heaven nor of what might be done for its sake. (We suspect that Frost himself ­wasn’t.) But it has often occurred to us that, in editing The Letters of Robert Frost, we work from the two motives spoken of h ­ ere: love and need. We need to get each book done: t­ here are deadlines, no ­matter how often deferred. But the imperative to fulfill our obligation so often involves plea­sure that it is hard to say where satisfaction shades off into necessity. We have not “yielded,” in editing The Letters of Robert Frost, to any separation of avocation and vocation. The stakes may not be mortal, but they are high enough. It is certainly for the sake of ­f uture readers that we have brought t­ hese first three volumes into print. Many ­people have generously worked with us to bring The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 3, to completion. At the end of this section is a list of the many institutions, librarians, curators, archivists, executors, and technical support personnel whose assistance we wish with gratitude to acknowledge. Our work in locating and acquiring copies of the letters suitable for transcription, over all t­ hese years, would have been impossible without their help. Our greatest debt is, as always, to the Robert Frost Copyright Trust for permission to publish the letters. To Peter A. Gilbert, Executor, we are additionally indebted for his wit, ready assistance, good cheer, and expert advice. We are deeply grateful as well to the Frost ­family, in par­t ic­u ­lar to Lesley Lee

776  Acknowl­edgments

Francis, Elinor Wilbur, Robin Hudnut, and John P. Cone Jr. for their interest and encouragement. We wish specially to thank Robin for making available to us copies of the letters her grand­father Robert wrote to her ­mother and f­ ather (Marjorie Frost Fraser and Willard Fraser). It can have been no easy ­thing for her to revisit the events of 1934, but she persevered with unfailing grace and warmth. We acknowledge also, with much gratitude, Carla Hughson-­Schmitt. She very kindly welcomed us into her home (in the person of Mark Richardson) to examine and to make copies of the letters Frost wrote to her ­father Howard Schmitt (a trusted friend of the poet from the mid-1930s on). Pat Alger not only granted us full access to his remarkable Frost collection, but also provided welcome guidance in ­matters related to con­temporary collectors and collecting. He has become so integral a part of our enterprise that we chose to dedicate this volume to him. We would also like to thank Nancy Dalrymple, ­great niece of Frederic Melcher, for helping us locate letters to R. P. T. Coffin. We thank Welford Taylor for his generous responses to all our queries involving J.  J. Lankes. We thank also historian Richard Holmes (Derry, New Hampshire), for answering our Pinkerton Acad­emy queries. The late Jack Hagstrom, whose memory we cherish, generously shared his firsthand knowledge of the assembly and disposition of the earliest Frost collections. Over the course of the past fifteen years Jack became much more than a friend to us. We miss him dearly. In locating materials and navigating the intricacies of cata­logs and archives, we enjoyed the benefits of frequent consultations with John Lancaster and Daria D’Arienzo, librarian-­archivists nonpareil. Alex Gouttefangeas rendered highly able assistance in the Kyoto offices of this operation, as much for volume 3 as he did for volumes 1 and 2. We also owe thanks to Emma Giering, gradu­ate assistant in En­glish at the University of Vermont, and to Derek Sawer and Matthew Hass of Allegheny College for their assistance in voice-­checking transcripts of more than 190 letters. Among the special collections librarians listed, we are most (and happily) indebted to a few to whom we turned repeatedly, and often urgently, for help: Jay Satterfield at Dartmouth College, whose enlightened oversight of the Rauner Library makes it so delightful a place to work; Alice Staples at Plymouth State University; Mike Kelly at Amherst College, who generously helped us sort out many a m ­ atter to do with Frost’s years at Amherst College; Heather Riser at the University of V ­ irginia; and Cynthia Harbeson at the Jones Library, Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts. Preparation of this edition of Frost’s letters was supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities We the P ­ eople grant (2006). Additional support was provided by the Japa­nese Ministry of Education (MEXT / JSPS)

Acknowl­edgments  

777

through three kakenhi grants (numbers 19520273, 23520341, and 30388053). For this support, and for that of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, we are grateful. In every­thing related to the publication of this volume, we have depended on the professionalism and patience of Lindsay W ­ aters, Executive Editor for the Humanities at Harvard University Press, and Joy Deng, editorial assistant. We are thankful as well to Deborah Masi and Julia Kurtz for the efficient expertise with which our detailed and always evolving typescript was readied for publication. * * * Estate of Edward Thomas Richard Emeny, Executor; Rosemary Vellender Greenaway ­Family David Greenaway III; Malcolm Greenaway Makielski ­Family Larry Elder, Elder Gallery Agnes Scott College, McCain Library Marianne Bradley, Library Administrative Coordinator Amherst College Library T. Michael Kelly, Head, Archives and Special Collections; Margaret R. Dakin, Archives and Special Collections Specialist Bauman Rare Books New York Bodleian Library Oxford University, Richard Ovenden, Executive Librarian Boston University Library, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center Vita Paladino, Director; Ryan Hendrickson, Assistant Director for Manuscripts Bowdoin College Library, George. J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives Richard Lindemann, Director; Daniel Hope, Assistant Bryn Mawr College Library Marianne Hansen, Special Collections Librarian

778  Acknowl­edgments

University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library Elaine Tennant, Director; David Kessler, Archivist University of California, Los Angeles Library Thomas Hyry, Director, Library Special Collections; Robert D. Montoya, Operations Man­ag­er, Public Ser­vices Division University of Chicago Library Daniel Meyer, Director, Special Collections Research Center, University Archivist; Christine Colburn, Reader Ser­vices Man­ag­er Columbia University Library Michael Ryan, Curator of Manuscripts, Rare Books and Manuscript Library; Tara C. Craig, Reference Ser­vices Supervisor Connecticut College Library Linda Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives, Benjamin Panciera, Director of Special Collections Cornell University Library Special Collections Gerald R. Beasley, Kroch University Librarian Dartmouth College Library Jay Satterfield, Special Collections Librarian Derry (New Hampshire) Museum of History Richard Holmes, Director and Town Historian Duke University David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library; Naomi Nelson, Director; David Strader, Library Assistant Emory University Library Kathy Shoemaker, Research Ser­vices Associate Archivist University of Florida George A. Smathers Library, Carl Van Ness, Curator of Manuscripts and Archives Femimore Art Museum Research Library University of Georgia, Hargrett Library, Mary Linnemann, Digital Imaging Coordinator

Acknowl­edgments  

779

Harvard University Houghton Library, Leslie Morris, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts; Heather G. Cole, Assistant Curator; Emilie L. Hardman, Public Ser­vices Assistant; Pamela Madsen, Curatorial Assistant, Harvard Theatre Collection Harvard University Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Sarah Hutcheon, Reference Librarian HistoryMiami Archives and Research Center Dawn Hugh, Archives Man­ag­er Huntington Library Sara S. (Sue) Hodson, Curator, Literary Manuscripts University of Illinois Library Chatham Ewing, Curator of Special Collections Indiana University Library Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives; Joel Silver, Director; Rebecca Cape, former Head of Reference and Public Ser­vices University of Iowa Special Collections Margaret Gamm, Head, Special Collections; David McCartney, University Archivist Jones Library Amherst, Mas­sa­chu­setts, Cynthia Harbeson, Curator, Special Collections; Kate Boyle, Assistant Curator Library of Congress Jeffrey M. Flannery, Head, Reference and Reader Ser­vices Section, Manuscript Division Mas­sa­chu­setts Historical Society Tracy Potter, Assistant Reference Librarian University of Miami Otto G. Richter Library, Cristina Favretto, Head of Special Collections; Laura Capell, Research Ser­vices Assistant; Cory Czajkowski, Se­n ior Library Assistant

780  Acknowl­edgments

University of Michigan Library Martha O’Hara Conway, Director, Special Collections; Kate Hutchens, Reader and Reference Ser­vices Librarian; Nancy Bartlett, Head, University Archives and Rec­ords; Malgosia Myc, Assistant Reference Archivist Middlebury College Library Andrew Wentink, Curator, Special Collections and Archives Milton Acad­emy Diane Pierce-­Williams, Staff Assistant, Cox Library University of Montana–­Missoula, Mansfield Library Donna McCrea, Head of Archives and Special Collections; Steve Bingo, Adjunct Archivist; Mark Fritch, Archives Photo Specialist The Morgan Library and Museum Declan Kiely, Curator and Department Head, Literary and Historical Manuscripts The Newberry Library Alison Hinderliter, Manuscripts and Archives Librarian University of New Hampshire Library Douglas and Helena Milne Special Collections and Archives, Roland Goodbody, Manuscripts Curator; Nancy Mason, Special Collections Assistant New Hampshire Historical Society Sarah E. Galligan, Library Director New York Public Library Isaac Gewirtz, Curator, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of En­glish and American Lit­er­a­t ure; Laura Ruttum, Reference Archivist; Laura Slezak Karas, Archivist State University of New York at Buffalo Michael Basinski, Curator, The Poetry Collection University of North Carolina Library Walter C. (Tim) West, Curator of Manuscripts / Director of the Southern Historical Collection; Robin Davies Chen, Assistant Manuscripts Reference Librarian

Acknowl­edgments  

781

Northwestern University Library Kevin B. Leonard, University Archivist; Janet C. Olson, Assistant Archivist Ohio State University Library Rebecca Jewett, Assistant Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts University of Pennsylvania, Rare Book and Manuscript Library Nancy Shawcross, Curator of Manuscripts Pennsylvania State University Library Sandra Stelts, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts Phillips Acad­emy–­A ndover Ruth Quattlebaum, former Acad­emy Archivist Phillips Exeter Acad­emy Edouard L. Desrochers, Assistant Librarian and Acad­emy Archivist University of Pittsburgh Library System Charles E. Aston Jr., Curator, Rare Books, Prints, and Exhibits, Special Collections Department Plymouth State University Library Alice P. Staples, Archives / Special Collections Librarian; Susan Jarosz, Archives Assistant Prince­ton University, Firestone Library Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts; AnnaLee Pauls, Special Collections Assistant III Rollins College, Olin Library Wenxian Zhang, Head of Archives and Special Collections St. Lawrence University Mark McMurray, Curator of Special Collections and University Archivist; Darlene Leonard, former Archives Assistant Smith College Libraries Special Collections Elizabeth Meyers, Director of Special Collections University of Southern California, Doheny Memorial Library Melinda Hayes, Head, Special Collections; Claude Zachary, University Archivist and Manuscript Librarian

782  Acknowl­edgments

Stanford University Library Polly Armstrong, former Public Ser­vices Man­ag­er, Special Collections and University Archives Temple Univeristy Special Collections Research Center Margery Sly, Director of Special Collections Tennessee State Library and Archives Jay Richiuso, Assistant Director for Manuscripts Ser­vices University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center Rick Watson, Head of Reference Ser­vices; Elspeth Healey, Public Ser­vices Intern University of Toledo, Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections Kimberly Brownlee, Manuscripts Librarian and Assistant University Archivist Trinity College, Watkinson Library Richard J. Ring, Head Curator University College Dublin Seamus Helferty, Principal Archivist University of ­Virginia, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Molly Schwartzburg, Curator; Heather Riser, Head, Reference and Research Ser­vices; Christina Deane, Head, Digitization Ser­vices Vassar College Library Catherine Pelton Durrell Archives and Special Collections, Dean M. Rogers, Special Collections Assistant Vermont Historical Society Paul Carnahan, Librarian Wellesley College, Margaret Clap Library Ruth R. Rogers, Special Collections Librarian; Mariana S. Oller, Special Collections Research and Instruction Specialist University of Wisconsin—­Eau Claire, McIntyre Library Special Collections Greg Kocken, Head of Special Collections

Acknowl­edgments  

University of Wisconsin—­La Crosse, Murphy Library Laura M. Godden, Librarian; Megan Gosse, Library Assistant, Special Collections University of Wyoming Toppan Rare Books Library Anne Marie Lane, Curator Yale University, Beinecke Library Nancy Kuhl, Curator, Poetry, Yale Collection of American Lit­er­a­t ure

783

Index Abernethy, Julian W., 583 Acad­emy of American Poets, 533 Acad­emy of Norwich (Norwich, VT), 487 Ackland, Valentine, 378, 385, 386 Adams, Elbridge, 182 Adams, Frederic Baldwin, Jr., 415, 483, 485, 500; letter to, 483 Adams, Helen, 415, 416; letter to, 415 Adams, James Truslow, 143, 227–228; work mentioned / quoted, Revolutionary New ­England, 143 Adams, John (US president, 1797–1801), 206 Adler, Elmer, 310; letter to, 310 Adler, Frederick Henry, 180 Agee, James, 440–441, 463; work mentioned /  quoted, “Ann Garner,” 441; “Lyr­ics,” 441; Permit Me Voyage, 440, 463 Agnes Scott College (Decatur, GA), 567, 586, 587 Agonistic, The, 587 Agricultural Adjustment Administration (US, 1933–1936), 511, 605, 606, 618, 699 Agriculture Adjustment Act (US Congress, May 1933), 239, 363, 606, 618 Albany, Joseph, 139 Albany, Sylvia, 139 Alberts, Sydney Seymour, 54, 55; letters to, 54, 55 Albin, Berthold Richard, 396, 608 Albin, Mary Louise, 608 Aldington, Richard, 434, 435 Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 115, 179, 258, 273, 274, 360 Alger, Patrick, 75, 83, 296, 361, 432, 534 Allen, Ann, 139, 612 Allen, Hervey, 96–97, 139, 521, 522, 612, 620, 657; letters to, 96, 521; work mentioned /  quoted, Anthony Adverse, 612 Allis, Frederick, 489, 511 Amend, Victor, 504; work mentioned /  quoted, Ten Con­temporary Thinkers, 504

American Acad­emy of Arts and Letters, 126, 220, 224, 297, 578, 602, 690 American Book Collector, The, 310 American Expeditionary Force (World War I), 252 American Mercury, The, 125, 127, 222, 229, 356, 369, 575, 580, 582, 619, 626, 627, 636, 643, 672, 679 American Pushkin Committee, 685, 686 American Smelting and Refining Com­pany, 503 Amherst Alumni Association / Council, 21, 41, 81, 95, 162, 489 Amherst College, 41, 46, 49, 65, 66, 81, 90, 94, 99, 104, 122, 130, 131, 132, 142, 188, 189, 190, 205, 214, 215, 223, 234, 235, 249, 252, 253, 266, 269, 278, 283, 295, 304, 307, 311, 332, 339, 341, 343, 354, 362–363, 364, 381, 394, 401–402, 438, 440, 480, 481–482, 486–488, 489, 490, 491, 501, 502, 511, 518, 525, 530, 534, 539–540, 542, 544, 548, 588, 591, 597, 598, 600, 614, 620, 638; RF’s association with, xi, 30, 141, 163, 167, 257, 278, 297, 362, 401–402, 491, 501, 502, 525, 534, 544, 560, 571, 587, 599, 612–613, 614, 640, 690 Amherst Gradu­ates’ Quarterly, The, 489 Amherst Monthly, The, 516 Amherst Student, xii, 22, 219, 299, 465, 479, 519; letter to, 519 Amphion (Greek mythological character), 34, 179, 325 Amy Lowell Poetry Room (Harvard), 133 Anderson, Sherwood, 98, 99, 107, 108, 166, 255, 685; work mentioned / quoted, “J. J. Lankes and his Woodcuts,” 166; Perhaps ­Women, 98 Andrews, Ann (actress), 356 Andrews, Charles A., 214, 219 Angoff, Charles, 222; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Worst American State,” 222 Annual of New Poetry 1917, An, 498

786  Index

Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry (1929), 57 Anthony, Joseph, 42, 118; work mentioned / quoted, Casanova Jones, 118; “The Making of a Book,” 42 Antietam, ­Battle of (US Civil War, September 1862), 412 Antiope (Greek mythological character), 34 Appalachian Mountain Club, 467, 696 Aquinas, Thomas, 235 Argo (Greek mythology), 375 Arlington Woolen Mill, 556 Armstrong, A. J., 318, 319; letters to, 318, 319 Arnold, Matthew, 6, 111, 368, 396, 415–416, 427, 519, 549; works mentioned / quoted, “Cadmus and Harmonia,” 6, 111, 290, 396, 398; Culture and Anarchy, 368; Empedocles on Etna, 111; “Mycerinus,” 427; “The Scholar Gypsy,” 416; “Sick King in Bokhara,” 549; “Sohrab and Rustum,” 415–416; The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems, 549 Ashe, Bowman Foster, 635 Astor, John Jacob Astor IV (American real estate tycoon), 450 Astor, Vincent (American businessman), 450 Atlantic Monthly, The, 83, 94, 298, 329, 511, 538, 563, 624, 625, 627, 642, 643 Atlantic Monthly Press, 97 Auchincloss, Charles Crooke, 55 Auden, W. H., 438, 653, 688 Audubon, John James, 79; work mentioned /  quoted, Birds of Amer­i­ca, 79; Viviparous Quadrupeds of North Amer­i­ca, 79 Audubon, John Wood­house, 80 Augustana College, 371 Auslander, Joseph, 651 Avery Hopwood Awards in writing (University of Michigan), 385 Ayers, Roy E., 701 Aztec Civilization, 77, 78, 110, 265, 323, 696 Babbitt, Irving, 148, 370–371 Babbott, Frank Lusk, 598 Babbott Room (Amherst College), 598, 599 Badger, Grace Ansley, 574 Baily, Harold J., 548; letter to, 548 Baird, Theodore (colleague of RF at Amherst College), 66, 132, 189, 234, 381, 389, 394, 397, 438, 487; letter to, 66

Baker, Karle Wilson, 324; works mentioned / quoted, The Birds of Tanglewood, 324; “The Pine Tree Hymn,” 324 Baker, Newton D., 252–253 Baker, Nicholson, 517; work mentioned /  quoted, The Anthologist, 517 Ballantyne, Alice Kate Elliot, 168 Ballantyne, John, 168 Barker, Shirley Frances, 417–418, 502, 567; work mentioned / quoted, The Dark Hills ­Under, 417 Barlow, Joel, 136 Barratt, Joseph, 487 Barry Docks (Wales), 146 Bartlett, John, 59, 60, 174, 177, 195, 222, 243, 344, 361, 363, 364, 464, 544, 547, 554, 555, 636; letters to, 59, 174, 177, 222, 361, 464, 554 Bartlett, Margaret, 243, 544, 547, 554, 555; letter to, 554 Bates College, 187, 232, 671 ­Battle of Lexington (American Revolution, 1775), 144 ­Battle of Marathon (Greece, 490 BCE), 325 Bax, Clifford, 283; work mentioned /  quoted, The Rose Without a Thorn, 283 Baylor University, 318, 320, 371 Beardsley, Aubrey, 76; work mentioned /  quoted, The Yellow Book, 76 Beaumont, Harry, 168 Beauregard, P.G.T. (Confederate army general), 413 Beerbohm, Max, 414, 461; work mentioned /  quoted, “A. V. Laider,” 414; Seven Men, 461 Belfast, Northern Ireland, 548 Bell, Alexander Graham, 106 Bell, Rupert, 658 Benchley, Robert Charles, 31; work mentioned / quoted, 20,000 Leagues ­Under the Sea, or David Copperfield, 31 Benét, Stephen Vincent, 478, 584 Benét, William Rose, 67, 264, 309, 310; letters to, 309, 310; work mentioned /  quoted, Fifty Poets: An American Anthology, 309–310 Bennett, Helen Champion, 100; letter to, 100 Bennington Banner (Bennington, VT), 295, 381, 573 Bennington College, 367, 559, 573 Bentley, Marshall A., 213, 217 Beretska, Edward, 284

Index  787

Beretska, Frank, 284 Beretska, Ignacy, 284 Bernardi, A. J., 263; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Columbine,” 263 Bernheimer, Earle, 113, 296, 536, 630; letters to, 536, 630 Best American Short Stories, The, 45–46 Bianchi, Martha Dickinson, 122, 152, 227, 475; work mentioned / quoted, The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson, 122, 152 Bibliophile Press, 630 Bickerstaffe, Isaac, 546; work mentioned /  quoted, Love in a Village, 546 Billings Gazette, 429 Bird, Remsen DuBois, 331, 332, 333; letter to, 333 Blair, Francis (Union Army general), 413 Blair, Francis G., 38; letter to, 38 Blake, William, 98, 340 Blanton, Alexander J., 564 Blanton, Roland, 689 Blumenthal, Ann White, 469, 573, 574 Blumenthal, Joseph, 6, 64, 81–82, 86, 88, 89, 90, 114, 124, 134, 137, 443, 445, 451, 459, 460, 468, 536, 573, 574, 594, 595, 622, 642, 644–645, 657, 696; letters to, 86, 88, 89, 90, 124, 134, 137, 443, 445, 451, 459, 468, 573, 595, 622, 644, 645, 696; work mentioned /  quoted, Robert Frost and His Printers, 87, 89, 90, 124, 137, 459, 642 Bobrowsky, Albert S., 300; letter to, 300 Bogan, Louise, 121, 291, 574; letter to, 291 “Boll Weevil” (song), 348–349 Boston Americans (baseball team), 93, 260 Boston and Sandwich Glass Com­pany, 571 Boston Beaneaters (baseball team), 93, 259 Boston Eve­ning Transcript, 57, 498, 500, 653, 688 Boston Globe, 614, 684 Boston University, 27, 60 Boston YWCA, 384 Boulard, Gary, 448; work mentioned /  quoted, “State of Emergency: Key West in the G ­ reat Depression,” 448 Boulder, CO, 165, 167, 177, 178, 192, 194, 195, 197, 200, 203, 242, 243, 257, 281, 344, 361, 364, 381, 468, 499, 513, 526, 529, 544, 550, 551, 568, 681 Boutell, H. S., 39, 127, 164; works mentioned /  quoted, “A Bibliography of Robert

Frost,” 164; “Robert Frost and His Books,” 39, 127 Bouton, Archibald, 579; letter to, 579 Bouton, Caroline Jessup McNair, 579 Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME), 149, 187, 232 Bowdoin Institute of Natu­r al Sciences, 149, 162 Bower, Lesley, 355 Bower, Warren, 354–355; letter to, 354; work mentioned / quoted, The College Writer, 354 Boyles, Kate, 190; work mentioned /  quoted, Langford of the Three Bars, 190 Boyles, Virgil D., 190; work mentioned /  quoted, Langford of the Three Bars, 190 Boynton, Percy, 83–84; work mentioned /  quoted, Some Con­temporary Americans: The Personal Equation in Lit­er­a­ture, 83–84 Bradbury’s Young Shawm: A Collection of School ­Music, 694 Bradford, Gamaliel, 683 Bradley, Phillips, 477 Bragdon, Clifford Richardson, 45–46; letter to, 45; works mentioned / quoted, “Love’s So Many ­Things,” 46; “Suffer the C ­ hildren,” 45 Braithwaite, William Stanley, 57; letter to, 57 Branch, Anna Hempstead, 45, 187, 188; letters to, 45, 187, 188 Brandeis, Louis (US Supreme Court Justice), 606 Bread Loaf Summer School, 61, 62, 96, 101, 117, 122, 191, 92, 335, 596 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, 13, 96, 97, 116, 117, 329, 335, 492, 520, 550, 561–562, 568, 583, 646, 684, 690 Brett, George P., 19, 611 Brickell, Herschel, 34–35, 52, 74, 81, 91, 05, 113–114, 120, 140, 150, 220, 224, 236–237, 303; letters to, 34, 74, 81, 91, 105, 113, 114, 120, 140, 150, 220, 224, 236, 303 Brickell, Norma Long, 35, 237, 303 Bridges, Robert, 202, 436–437 Brisbane, Albert, 482 Brisbane, Arthur, 447, 482 Broadmoor Art Acad­emy (Colorado Springs, CO), 266

788  Index

Brooke, Rupert, 434; work mentioned /  quoted, “Dust,” 434 Brooks, Helen, 169, 356 Brooks, Van Wyck, 535, 683; letter to, 535; work mentioned / quoted, The Letters of Gamaliel Bradford, 683 Broomell, Margaret, 402; letter to, 402 Brower, Reuben, 104; works mentioned /  quoted, I. A. Richards: Essays in His Honor, 104; The Poetry of Robert Frost: Constellations of Intention, 104 Brown, Frosty, 587 Brown, George, 206; work mentioned /  quoted, Vermont Folk-­Songs and Ballads, 206 Brown, Harry Alvin, 351; work mentioned /  quoted, The Readjustment of a Rural High School to the Needs of the Community, 351 Brown, Warren R., 214, 218, 221, 231, 234, 348; letters to, 214, 218, 231, 234, 348 Browne, George, 590, 666 Browne, Thomas Sir, 357, 522 Browning, Robert, 93, 246, 301, 505 Brownsville, TX, 701 Bruce, Edward (High King of Ireland), 508 Bruce, Edward Bright, 502, 508 Bruce, Margaret Peggy Stow, 502 Bruce, Robert the (King of Scotland), 112, 508, 641 Bryant, William Cullen, 136 Buchman, Frank, 420 Buchmanism, 420 Buck, Burdella, 212 Buell, Bill, 129; work mentioned / quoted, “Landmarks: Legacy of Land and Lit­er­a­t ure,” 129 Builter, Raymond, 523, 524; letter to, 524 Bulletin (Lawrence, MA, High School), 77, 110, 201, 499, 557 Bullock, Marie, 533; letter to, 533 Bunzel, Ruth L., 80; work mentioned /  quoted, The Pueblo Potter: A Study of Creative Imagination in Primitive Art, 80 Burchfield, Charles, 98 Burgh, Thomas (Earl of Lincoln, 1558–1597), 509 Burlington F­ ree Press, 97, 213, 351 Burnett, Whit, 682 Burr and Burton Seminary, 552 Burroughs, William S., 601; work mentioned /  quoted, The Last Words of Dutch Schultz, 601

Bush, Louis (American college football player), 283 Butler, Nicholas Murray, 224 Butler, Pierce, 546 Butler, Samuel H., 21, 691 Bynner, Witter, 109–111, 338, 351; letters to, 109, 351; works mentioned / quoted, A Book of Love, 110; “La Francesca,” 111; Grenstone Poems: A Sequence, 109; “I Change,” 111–112; Journey with Genius, 110; Indian Earth, 110; Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments, 109; The Beloved Stranger, 111; The Jade Mountain: Being Three Hundred Poems of the T’ang Dynasty, 109–111 Byrd, Richard E., 76 Cady, Daniel Leavens, 142; work mentioned / quoted, Rhymes of Vermont and Rural Life, 142 California Fruit Growers’ Association, 664 California Writers’ Guild, 333, 352 Callahan, Beth, 284 Calverton, Victor Francis, 682 Calvin, John, 153 Cambridge University, 499, 608, 660 Campbell, Walter M., 499, 555 Canby, Henry Seidel, 97, 116, 223, 462, 514, 575, 580, 614, 685; letters to, 116, 614 Canby, Marion Roberts, 116 Cannell, Skipwith, 301 Canopus (Alpha Carinae), 461–462 Caplan, Albert, 44; letter to, 44 Cardozo, Benjamin N. (US Supreme Court Justice), 461, 477, 515, 606 Carlisle, Alexandra, 356 Carrère, John M., 466 Carrick, Lynn, 86; letter to, 86 Carroll, Nicholas, 184; letter to, 184 Car­ter, John W., 344; work mentioned /  quoted, New Paths in Book Collecting, 344 Casa Marina ­Hotel (Key West, FL), 466–467, 515 Cather, Willa, 208, 315 Catherwood, Frederick, 77, 80; work mentioned / quoted, Views of Ancient Monuments in Central Amer­i­ca, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 77, 80 Catlin, George, 80; work mentioned /  quoted, Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, 80

Index  789

Centennial Club (Nashville, TN), 31 Central Park, (New York City), 145, 443 ­Century Magazine, The, 83, 414 Chal­mers, Gordon Keith, 357, 402, 486, 524, 574; works mentioned / quoted, Sir Thomas Browne’s Thought and Its Relation to Con­temporary Ideas, 357; Sir Thomas Browne, True Scientist, 357 Chal­mers, Thomas, 356 Chapin, James, 82, 86 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (Harvard), 489, 490, 522, 583, 592–593, 597–602, 608, 613–614, 617, 621, 626, 629–630, 634, 636, 638, 640, 643, 650, 652, 668, 689 Charles Eliot Norton Professorship, 297 Chase, Stanley Perkins, 149 Chase, Stuart, 360; work mentioned /  quoted, A New Deal, 360 Chaulmoogra Oil, 436 Chekhov, Anton, 552 Chicago Tribune, 50 Choate, Rufus, 384 Christian Science Monitor, The, 617 Christman, Henry, 129 Christman, William W., 129; letter to, 129 Christodora House (New York City), 45 Churchill, Winston, 269 City College of New York, 560 Civilian Conservation Corps (US New Deal program, 1933–1942), 316 Civil War (American), 61, 307, 364, 410–414 Civil Works Administration (US New Deal program, 1933–1934), 457 Clark University, 174, 187, 648 Clemens, Cyril, 577, 655, 660–661, 663; letters to, 577, 655 Clemens, Samuel. See Twain, Mark Cleveland, Grover (US president, 1885–1889, 1893–1897), 17, 380 Clymer, Anita Blackwell, 337, 453 Clymer, William Branford Shubrick, 309, 444, 452, 453, 455, 460, 464, 485, 495, 497, 498, 500, 536, 537, 538, 557, 558, 631, 640, 676; letters to, 309, 336, 485, 500; work mentioned / quoted, Robert Frost: A Bibliography, 309, 495, 497, 498, 500, 536, 557, 558, 585, 631, 640, 676, 685 Coates, Walter J., 144, 145–146; works mentioned / quoted, Mood Songs: Voices

Within Myself, 144; Vermont Verse: An Anthology, 146 Coffin, George Martin, 175; letter to, 175 Coffin, Robert Peter Tristram, 125, 259, 277, 304, 311, 358, 359, 626, 650–651, 663, 696; letters to, 259, 311, 358; works mentioned / quoted, “An Old Man Raking Leaves,” 259; “Crystal Moment,” 259; “He Was of the Forest,” 259; “Night Hawk,” 259; Saltwater Farm, 125; Strange Holiness, 126; “The Shropshire Lad,” 663; The Yoke of Thunder, 259 Coite-­Hubbard House (Middletown, CT), 30 Colebrook Acad­emy (NH), 351 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 133, 245, 473; works mentioned / quoted, “Cologne,” 473; “Kubla Khan,” 133, 246; “The Rime of the Ancient Mari­ner,” 133, 246 College Candy Kitchen (Amherst, MA), 366 College Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca, 166, 180 College Verse, 166 Collier’s Weekly, 232 Collins, Michael (Irish Revolutionary), 510 Colum, Mary (“Molly”) Gunning Maguire, 509, 601, 612 Colum, Padraic, 114, 509–510, 601, 612, 657; letter to, 509 Columbia, NH, 349, 350, 351 Columbia Daily Spectator, 548 Columbia University, 128, 254, 260, 264, 272, 281, 298, 353, 371, 377, 383, 422, 448, 452, 477, 533, 548, 551, 566, 585, 588, 599, 604, 651, 697 Columbine (Union Pacific train), 263 Columbus McKinnon Chain Com­pany, 450 Combes, Gladys Ewing Abbot, 334, 518; letter to, 518 Committee on Supplies on the Council of National Defense (US Congress, 1916), 253 Commodore ­Hotel (New York City), 482 Conant, James, 487, 684 Cone, John Paine (husband of Irma Frost). See ­u nder Frost, Robert Lee, ­family of Cone, John P., Jr. “Jack” / “Jackie” (son of Irma Frost Cone and John Cone). See ­u nder Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of Cone, Julius Horatio, 351 Cones, NH, 349, 356 Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments (Geneva, Switzerland, 1932), 238 Conklin, Edward Groff, 456; letter to, 456

790  Index

Connick, Charles, 540, 570; letters to, 540, 570; work mentioned / quoted, Adventures in Light and Color, 540 Conrad, Lawrence H., 27–28, 71–72, 73, 115, 151, 169, 256, 257, 354, 401, 507–508, 515; letters to, 71, 151, 254, 401, 515; works mentioned / quoted, Descriptive and Narrative Writing, 72, 115; Temper, 72 Conrad, Lawrence Henry, Jr., 257 Conrad, Roberta Williams, 257 Constitution of the United States, 138, 222, 282, 330, 352–353, 477, 683 Consumers’ Union (US nonprofit, 1936), 477 Cooley, Charles, 409–410; work mentioned /  quoted, Life of the Student: Roadside Notes on ­Human Nature, Society and Letters, 410 Cooley, Mary, 410 Coo­l idge, Calvin, 19, 41, 146, 222, 236, 365, 384, 606 Cooney, Frank H, 380–381 Cooper Union University, 283 Corbin, Alice. See Henderson, Alice Corbin Cornell University, 237, 600 Corpus Christi (TX), 694, 695, 696, 701 Cortés, Hernándo, 77–78, 110, 285, 696 Cosgrave, William Thomas, 510 Couzens, Frank, 658 Coward, Thomas Ridgway, 579 Coward-­McCann (publishing h ­ ouse), 57, 107, 579, 658, 674 Cowden, Roy William, 385 Cox, Arthur Elmes, 411 Cox, Sidney, 35, 67–68, 69, 83, 161, 202–203, 244–245, 249–250, 251–252, 260, 357–358, 382, 409, 410, 411, 489, 529, 640; letters to, 67, 69, 161, 202, 244, 249, 251, 260, 357, 409, 529, 640; works mentioned / quoted, Prose Preferences: Second Series, 409–410; Robert Frost: Original “Ordinary” Man, 83, 141 Cramer, Carl Lamson, 408; work mentioned / quoted, Stars Fell on Alabama, 408 Crane, Hart, 436, 465; work mentioned /  quoted, “At Melville’s Tomb,” 436 Crane, Joan St. C., 696 Crockett, Walter H., 206; work mentioned /  quoted, Vermonters: A Book of Biographies, 206 Croesus (King of Lydia), 143 ­Cromwell, Oliver, 462, 650 ­Cromwell, Richard, 462

Cross, Wilbur, 211, 224, 373, 377; letters to, 373, 377 Cullen-­Harrison Act (US Congress, 1933), 282 Curran, John Philpot, 201–202; work mentioned / quoted, “The Deserter’s Lamentation,” 201–202 Cushing, Caleb, 384 Cushwa, Elizabeth Washburn Tucker, 470; letter to, 470 Cushwa, Frank William, 470 Cushwa, George L., 470 Cushwa, E. Aime, 470 Cuthbert, Margaret, 313; letter to, 313 Cutler, Nathan Abalino, 445; letter to, 445 Dahlstrom, Grant, 696 Damon, S. Foster, 576; work mentioned /  quoted, Amy Lowell: A Chronicle, With Extracts from her Correspondence, 576 Dana, Richard Henry, Sr., 136 Daniel Oliver Associates Club (Dartmouth College), 484, 497, 523, 534 Darrow, Clarence, 482 Darrow, Whitney, Sr., 181, 315; letters to, 181, 315 Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, 146 Dartmouth College, 31, 67, 113, 140, 142, 150, 203, 236, 244, 251, 290, 322, 329, 363, 371, 460, 484, 497, 517, 523, 525, 534, 543, 601, 656 Dartmouth Verse, 150 Dashiell, Alfred Sheppard, 184, 223, 462; letter to, 184 ­Daughters of the American Revolution, 176 Davidson, Donald, 32 Davies, Mary Carolyn, 202; work mentioned / quoted, “Borrower,” 202 Davis, Chester, 511 Davis, Lambert, 444, 445, 623, 628, 631; letters to, 444, 623, 628, 631 Davison, Edward “Ted,” 103–104, 364, 467–468, 471, 479, 499, 513, 555, 578–579, 681; letters to, 103, 467, 471, 479, 499, 513, 681 Davison, Natalie, 104, 468 Davison, Peter, 104 Davison, Wilfred, 96, 117 DeLacey, James A., 656 Delano, Ellen Walters, 415 Del Castillo, Bernal Diaz, 263, 323; work mentioned / quoted, True History of the Conquest of New Spain, 263, 323

Index  791

Dempsey, Jack, 232 De Pineda, Alvarez, 696 Der Oyfkum: Hodesh-­zshurnal fur Literatur un Kultur-­inyonim (Yiddish magazine, NY), 675 Derry, NH, 59, 100, 135, 318, 409, 554, 557 Des Imagistes, 434 Detroit ­Free Press, 160 Deutsch, Babette, 241, 685; work mentioned /  quoted, Epistle to Prometheus, 241 De Vére, Aroldo du-­Chêne, 557 Devereaux, Frederick L., 585 DeVoto, Bernard, 522, 646–647, 686, 688; letter to, 686; work mentioned / quoted, Forays and Rebuttals, 686–687 De Vries, V ­ irginia Lee Mertins, 457, 501 Dewey, John, 465, 685 Dickinson, Emily, 28, 92, 122, 152, 188, 227, 338, 475 Dierkes, William Henry, 383, 428, 517; letters to, 383, 428, 517; works mentioned /  quoted, The Man from Vermont and Other Poems, 383, 428, 517 Dillon, George, 264; work mentioned /  quoted, The Flowering Stone, 264 Dobson, Henry Austin, 79, 371; works mentioned / quoted, “A Ballad to Queen Elizabeth (of the Spanish Armada),” 371; “Urceus Exit,” 79 Dodd, Lee Wilson, 116 Dodd, Loring Holmes, 174, 648; letters to, 174, 648 Dodd, Marion Elza, 74, 92, 271; letters to, 74, 92 Doolittle, Hilda (H. D.), 434–435 Doremus and Com­pany (advertising agency, NY), 98 Dos Passos, John, 255, 465, 520, 525 Doughty, Howard Walters, 132 Dowson, Ernest, 663; work mentioned /  quoted, “To a Lady Asking Foolish Questions,” 663 Dreiser, Theodore, 365, 685 Dresbach, Glenn Ward, 638; works mentioned / quoted, The Enchanted Mesa, 638; In Colors of the West, 638; Selected Poems, 638 Drummond, William, 240; work mentioned / quoted, “The Prob­lem,” 240 Dryden, John, 153, 185; works mentioned /  quoted, “A Song for St. Celia’s Day,” 185; The Hind and the Panther, 153

Dunsany, Lord (nom de plume of Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany), 283; work mentioned / quoted, Mr. Faithful: A Comedy in Three Acts, 283 Dunster House (Harvard), 252 Dunster House Press, 419 Dwiggins, William Addison, 258 Eakins, Susan Hannah, 433 Eakins, Thomas, 433; work mentioned /  quoted, Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, 433 Eastaway, Edward (nom de plume of Edward Thomas). See Thomas, Edward Easter Uprising (Ireland, 1916), 509 Eastman, Joseph B., 384 Eastman, Max, 465, 685 Eaton, Alan T., 269 Eaton, Elise Morris Underhill, 238 Eaton, Walter Prichard, 238, 256, 338, 340, 399; letter to, 238 Ebert, Friedrich, 132 Eckert, Robert P., 310; letter to, 496; work mentioned / quoted, “Edward Thomas: Soldier Poet of his Race,” 310, 496 Eddington, Arthur Stanley, 439, 440 Edison, Thomas, 136 Effinger, John R., 168, 169; letter to, 169 Einstein, Albert, 217, 439, 685; work mentioned / quoted, “Theory of General Relativity,” 217 Eliot, Ada, 434. See also Sheffield, Alfred Eliot, Charles William, 650 Eliot, T. S., 19, 264, 265, 297, 298, 299, 300, 308, 342, 375, 434, 435, 437, 438, 597, 601, 650; works mentioned / quoted, Ash Wednesday: Six Poems, 438; “The Hippopotamus,” 298; “Preface” to Anabase, 264, 265, 437; The Waste Land, 375 Eliot House (Harvard), 650, 652 Elizabethan Club, The (Yale), 478, 584 Elliott, George Roy (Colleague of RF at Amherst College), 83, 94, 148, 167, 168, 188, 307, 393–394, 397, 449, 533, 569, 591, 600, 601, 659; letters to, 393, 449, 569, 600; works mentioned / quoted, The Cycle of Modern Poetry: A Series of Essays T ­ oward Clearing Our Pre­sent Poetic Dilemma, 168; “The Neighborliness of Robert Frost,” 83 Emerson, Helen J., 647

792  Index

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 123, 136, 210, 341, 483, 488, 504, 520, 577, 592; work quoted /  mentioned, “The Method of Nature,” 520; “Plato,” 341; Representative Men, 341; “Uriel,” 488 Empson, William, 598; work mentioned /  quoted, Seven Types of Ambiguity, 598 Engle, Paul, 424, 425, 591, 653, 688; work mentioned / quoted, American Song, 424; Worn Earth, 424 Englemann, William A., 363 Ente Nazionale Italiano per il Turismo (Italian National Tourism Agency, generally called ENIT), 503 ERPI (Electrical Research Products, Inc.), 584, 585 ERPI Picture Con­sul­tants, Inc., 585 Evans, Charles Seddon, 47, 52 Evans, David, 15 Fabing, Jolyn, 356 Farley, James, 607, 686, 687 Farm and Fireside, 495, 630 farm bloc co­a li­t ion (US Senate), 239 Farr, Eri M., 396 Farrar, John Chipman, 97, 117, 118, 329, 355, 478, 583, 584; letter to, 583 Fass, John, 119 Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA; US, 1933–1935), 14, 15, 447, 448, 461, 465–467, 468, 475, 478, 497, 502, 508, 525 Federal Farm Board (US Congress, 1929), 363 Federal Writers’ Proj­ect (subsidiary to Works Pro­g ress Administration, 1935–1943), 502 Fellows, Marguerite, 134 Felt, Truman, 599; work mentioned / quoted, “Lying on the Sands” (newspaper column, Miami News) 599 Ferril, Thomas Hornsby, 196, 517; work mentioned / quoted, High Passage, 196 Feuillerat, Albert, 83; work mentioned /  quoted, “Poètes américains d’aujourd’hui: Robert Frost,” 83–84 Ficke, Arthur Davison, 109; work mentioned / quoted, Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments, 109 Field, William Henry, 145, 146 Field, William Lusk, 455, 512; letter to, 455, 512

Fineman, Irving, 573 Firuski, Maurice, 418, 483 Fisher, Dorothy Canfield, 144, 218, 329, 372; letter to, 372; work mentioned / quoted, Bonfire, 372 Fisher, John, 372 Fisher, Theodore M., 60, 141, 196–197, 557; letters to, 141 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 462; work mentioned / quoted, Tender is the Night, 462 Fitzgerald, Robert, 353 Flaccus, Kimball, 150, 153, 290, 293, 328, 329, 331, 337, 371, 463, 510; letters to, 150, 293, 328, 331, 337; work mentioned / quoted, Avalanche of April, 293, 331, 463; “­Here by the Connecticut,” 337; “Personality,” 293 Flagler, Henry M., 448 Flanders, Helen H., 206; work mentioned /  quoted, Vermont Folk-­Songs and Ballads, 206 Flegenheimer, Arthur Simon (Dutch Schultz), 601 Fletcher, John Gould, 300, 434, 435 Fletcher, Robert S., 540 Fletcher, William I., 540 Fletcher Farm, 335 Flint, F. S., 199, 434, 435, 503 Florida East Coast Railway, 448, 513 Florida Emergency Relief Administration (US, 1933–1935), 447 Foehrenbach, Rita, 56; letter to, 56 Foerster, Norman, 208, 561, 587, 588, 591, 629, 698; letters to, 208, 561, 587 Foley, Martha, 681–682 Foley, P. K., 43 Ford, Henry, 40, 41, 507 Ford, James W., 255 Fort Lauderdale News, 656 Fortune Magazine, 291 Forum, The, 338, 452, 484, 538, 637 Foster, Charles Howell, 190, 340, 341, 424, 425, 429, 490, 533, 588, 591, 628, 629, 669, 690, 698; letters to, 190, 340, 424, 591, 628, 669, 670, 698; works mentioned / quoted, “In the Time of Early Dew,” 628; “Not for the World,” 628 Foster, Doris Van Denbergh, 629 Foster, Raymond, 670 Foster, William Z., 255 Foxcroft School (Middleburg, VA), 525

Index  793

Francis, Elinor. See ­u nder Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of Francis, J. Dwight. See ­under Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of Francis, Lesley Frost. See u ­ nder Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of Francis, Lesley Lee. See ­under Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of Francis, Robert, 444, 615, 617, 618–619; works mentioned / quoted, “Blue Winter,” 615, 617, 618; Stand with Me ­Here, 617; Valhalla and Other Poems, 617 Franco, Francisco, 695 Franconia House. See Frost, Robert Lee, topical index: residences of Franco-­P russian War (1870–1871), 482, 483 Frank, Jerome, 511 Frank, Waldo, 255, 685 Frank­furter, Felix (US Supreme Court Justice), 252 Fraser, Claud Lovat, 76 Fraser, Marjorie Frost. See ­u nder Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of Fraser, Marjorie Robin. See ­u nder Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of Fraser, Marvin John, 608 ­ nder Frost, Robert Lee, Fraser, Willard. See u ­family of Frazer, James George, 246; work mentioned /  quoted, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, 246 Frederick, John T., 229 Freeman, Marilla Waite, 147, 166, 180, 181; letters to, 147, 180 Freneau, Philip, 136 Freud, Sigmund, 227 Friebus, Florida, 283; work mentioned /  quoted, Alice in Wonderland (adapted play), 283 Friends of the Prince­ton University Library, 181, 315 Frost, Robert Lee, ­family of: Cone, Irma Frost. See Frost, Irma Cone, John P., Jr. “Jack” / “Jackie” (son of Irma Frost Cone and John Cone), 9, 49, 65, 173, 306, 347, 409, 645 Cone, John Paine (husband of Irma Frost), 9, 49, 61, 65, 125, 185, 214, 220, 240, 269, 348, 349, 409, 478, 545, 665

Francis, Elinor (eldest ­d aughter of Lesley Frost Francis and Dwight Francis), 9, 53, 61, 182, 183, 303, 306, 634, 645, 694 Francis, J. Dwight (husband of Lesley Frost), 61, 213, 216, 280–281 Francis, Lesley Frost. See Frost, Lesley Francis, Lesley Lee (youn­gest d­ aughter of Lesley Frost Francis and Dwight Francis), 9, 182, 183, 299, 634, 694; Lesley Lee Francis Papers (UNH), 381, 396, 607, 608 Fraser, Marjorie Frost. See Frost, Marjorie Fraser, Marjorie Robin (­daughter of Willard and Marjorie Frost Fraser, originally named Shirley), 9, 328, 389, 390, 391, 395, 607, 701 Fraser, Willard (husband of Marjorie Frost), 4, 5, 9, 20, 242–243, 248, 327–328, 363, 380, 389, 390, 391, 393, 394, 395, 396, 604, 607, 608, 701; letters to, 248, 327, 380, 389, 390, 604 Frost, Carol (RF’s son), xi, 2, 3, 4, 7–14, 37, 48, 58, 61, 65, 73, 76, 78, 80, 83, 99, 100, 164, 173, 176, 177, 178, 183, 185, 194, 198, 200, 203, 206, 211, 213, 216, 217, 221, 233, 243, 249, 257, 263, 265–266, 270, 271, 278, 280, 281, 282, 283, 290, 294, 295, 299, 305–306, 313, 314, 321, 346, 347, 349, 350, 351, 362, 391, 392, 409, 422, 456, 466, 467, 474, 480, 512, 545, 556, 557, 572, 573, 633, 634, 645, 662, 700, 701; letters to, 200, 211, 216, 281, 294, 305, 307, 313, 321, 346, 349, 391, 572, 633; untitled poems by, 294, 572; works mentioned /  quoted, “Stratton,” 11–12, 313–314; “Their Rings Are Bones,” 305–306; “Songs,” 306; ­mental illness of, xi, 7–9, 14, 305–306, 556, 700 Frost, Elinor Miriam White (RF’s wife), xi, xii, 3, 4, 5, 7, 13, 14, 15, 28, 32, 38, 41, 60, 65–66, 82, 91, 92, 96, 99, 100, 113, 122, 135, 140–141, 159, 163, 167, 173, 175, 177, 178, 185, 187, 190–191, 192–193, 196, 197, 198, 200, 218, 219, 229–230, 241, 243, 256, 268, 282, 290, 291, 293, 299, 304, 305, 317, 319, 321, 322, 324, 325, 328, 338, 342, 345, 347, 348, 349, 356, 358, 361, 364, 382, 389, 392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 399, 402, 407, 422, 433, 446, 448, 450, 460, 469, 473, 474, 477, 488, 499, 500, 508, 509, 510, 512, 513, 521, 522, 524, 525, 535, 536, 547, 549, 561, 565, 571, 573, 574, 580–581, 585, 590,

794  Index

Frost, Elinor Miriam White (RF’s wife) (continued) 597, 598, 604–606, 608, 612, 620, 624, 630, 633, 634, 642, 645, 651, 657, 658, 662, 663, 668, 673, 680, 686, 694, 701; illnesses of, 4, 159, 178, 196, 328, 358, 422, 446, 447, 509, 521, 525, 536, 547, 549, 597, 598, 630, 633, 642, 668; RF’s remarks about, 28, 241, 325, 392, 393, 394, 397, 499, 500, 608; po­l iti­cal views of, 15, 447, 597, 604–606, 608 Frost, Irma (RF’s ­m iddle ­daughter), xi, 9, 49, 61, 65, 100, 108, 173, 185, 240, 269, 347, 348, 392, 409, 423, 545, 645; m ­ ental illness of, xi, 65, 392 Frost, Isabelle Moodie (RF’s m ­ other), 112, 265 Frost, Jeanie Florence (RF’s ­sister, sometimes called Jean), xi, 265; ­mental illness of, xi; death of, xi Frost, Lesley (RF’s eldest surviving ­daughter), 3, 4, 7, 9, 11, 43, 53, 56, 61, 65, 78, 82, 100, 111, 118, 182, 183, 185, 187, 194, 198, 211, 212, 213, 216, 233, 249, 258, 280, 305, 306, 341, 357, 393, 397, 402, 433, 450, 463, 487, 499, 520, 524, 525, 526, 529, 555, 572, 573, 574, 590, 595, 608, 634, 645, 660, 687, 694, 701; letters to, 280, 393, 397, 433, 524, 529, 573; marriage to / divorce from Dwight Francis, xi, 213, 280–281; work mentioned / quoted, Murder at Large, 258, 499 Frost, Lillian LaBatt (wife of Carol Frost), 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 58, 78, 200, 203, 218, 278, 282, 283, 285, 305, 307, 320, 321, 322, 347, 351, 466–467, 474, 480, 634, 645; illnesses of, xi, 183, 185, 191, 218, 263, 282, 290, 314, 362, 396, 422 Frost, Marjorie (RF’s youn­gest ­daughter), xi, xiii, 3, 4, 5–6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 32, 41, 54, 58, 61, 65, 78, 100, 126, 149, 165, 167, 177, 183, 185, 187, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 203, 242, 243, 248–249, 257, 290, 306, 327–328, 363, 373, 381, 382, 389, 390–401, 403, 409, 456, 499, 573, 574, 595, 622, 657; death of, xi, xiii, 3, 4, 5–6, 389, 397–398, 399, 400–401, 403, 456; illnesses of, xi, 4, 5–6, 41, 61, 149, 165, 167, 177, 183, 185, 194, 195, 198, 257, 290, 328, 389, 390–396; letters to, 242, 327; marriage to Willard Fraser, 243, 248–249, 327–328; works mentioned  /  quoted, “Amer­i­ca,” 382,

574; Franconia, 6, 382, 595, 622; “Grief,” 574; “If I Should Live to Be a Doll,” 574, 595; “No Common Hand,” 574 Frost, Nicholas (RF’s ancestor), 409 Frost, William Prescott (son of Carol Frost and Lillian Labatt Frost), 9, 10, 58, 61, 173, 200, 214, 218, 243, 282, 283, 285, 295, 296, 299, 306, 314, 315, 319, 320, 321, 322, 346, 347, 369, 379, 380, 392, 466, 474, 480, 556, 634, 645, 701; letters to, 173, 319, 320, 369, 379, 556 Frost, William Prescott, Jr. (RF’s ­father), 268, 281, 409, 411, 597, 638 Frost, William Prescott, Sr. (RF’s grand­father), 221, 281, 409, 411 Labatt, Lillian. See Frost, Lillian Labatt Moodie, John (New Zealand cousin of RF), 605 Frost, Robert Lee, topical index: academic affiliations / teaching appointments of: Amherst College, xi, 81, 90, 99, 104, 141, 162, 188–189, 205, 214, 234–235, 252–253, 257, 266, 278, 283, 284–285, 304, 306–307, 342, 354–355, 362–363, 394, 397, 401–402, 438, 440, 482, 486, 487, 501, 511, 536, 539–540, 544, 545, 549, 560, 587–588, 614, 620, 640; New School for Social Research, 133–134, 141, 145, 153, 165, 168, 170, 172, 358, 559–560, 567, 571, 573, 575, 580; Pinkerton Acad­emy (Derry, NH), 46, 59–60, 72, 135, 189, 363, 415, 464, 554–555, 636; University of Michigan, 27, 71, 72, 159, 160, 168, 169–170, 282, 283, 338, 354, 410, 451, 587, 614, 640, 700; Yale University, Pierson College (fellow at), 374, 377, 534, 535, 630, 640, 644 anthologies, contributions to / interest in, 45, 49, 51, 123, 123, 126, 135, 136–137, 145, 146, 184–186, 186–187, 188, 190–193, 197, 201–202, 204, 206, 210, 215, 226, 270, 365–366, 542, 581, 626, 651 athletics / sports, interest in and remarks about, 81, 93, 150, 232, 268, 271, 283, 291, 295–296, 307, 322, 327, 343, 357, 664 Bible, references to / echoes of / quotations from, 268–269, 595; par­tic­u­lar books /  passages therein: Beatitudes, 160; Exodus, 542; Judges, 46; 1 Kings, 238, 425; Samuel, 209; John, 226, 635; Luke, 245;

Index  795

Mark, 245; Matthew, 5, 513, 670, 687, 691; Psalm 46, 253; Psalm 137, 635; Zechariah, 643 book design / fine printing / comments upon / interest in, 64, 70, 76, 81–82, 83, 86–87, 88, 89, 90, 105, 114, 119, 124, 134, 140, 150, 155, 164, 175, 182, 194, 221, 258, 273, 274, 279, 303, 360, 418, 443, 445–446, 459, 460, 468, 495, 523, 529, 534, 557–558, 561–562, 645–646, 702 botany and gardening, interest in, 68, 196, 203–204, 204–205, 212, 215, 218, 235 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (Harvard, 1936), preparation, delivery, and reception of, 592–593, 597–598, 599, 600–601, 608, 613, 614, 617, 621, 626, 629–630, 633, 636, 638, 640, 650, 652, 668, 699–700 education, remarks about, 50, 61, 244–246, 276–277, 67–68, 69, 71–72, 99, 107–108, 132–133, 188–189, 202–203, 214, 227, 234, 244–246, 251, 253, 276–277, 304, 357, 363, 501, 524, 562, 693 farming / agriculture, remarks about and engagement in, 76, 80, 93, 102, 173, 178–179, 185, 200, 211–212, 213, 255, 257, 314–315, 316, 317–318, 322, 325, 341, 351, 362, 441, 456, 568, 634, 677, 680, 692, 699 fellowships: Guggenheim, 103–104, 103, 208, 291, 355, 502, 600; Rhodes Scholar, 228, 502, 600, 608; Robert Frost Fellowship (Amherst College), 544, 545, 647–648 honorary degrees, awarded to, 89, 92–93, 99–100, 112, 173, 211, 259–260, 322, 329, 525, 536, 651, 652, 671 illnesses of, 238, 308, 309, 321–322, 327–328, 328–329, 331–333, 337, 345, 374, 376, 378, 381, 384, 445, 603, 633, 653, 690, 695, 698 Key West (FL), remarks on character /  history / archaeology of (for remarks about New Deal programs in Key West, see Frost, Robert Lee, topical index: politics, remarks about: New Deal and associated programs), 451–452, 454, 455, 461, 463, 465–467, 468–469, 473–475, 490, 497–498, 508, 511–512, 514, 524–525 lecturing / lecture agents and agencies /  lectures and readings, character of / and lecture fees, 60, 141, 149, 152, 162, 169–170, 171, 172–173, 174, 196–197, 205, 208–209,

215, 256, 313, 321–322, 328–329, 332–333, 342, 372, 382, 394, 439, 471, 479, 499, 501, 525, 542, 543, 545, 549, 554, 558–560, 579, 583, 584, 586–587, 588, 596, 598, 676, 682. See also Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (Harvard, 1936) literary / artistic vocation, nature and difficulties of, 27–29, 35–37, 38–39, 45–46, 50, 73, 94, 106–107, 124–125, 135, 139–140, 152–153, 160–161, 199, 230–231, 248, 335–336, 337, 352, 400, 417–418, 444–445, 508, 530, 540, 573, 576, 621–622, 693 marriage, remarks about, 32–33, 37, 126–127, 242–243, 247–248, 248–249, 257, 280–281, 316–317, 323–324, 327–328, 345, 530, 647–648, 658 Native Americans / the pre-­Columbian Amer­i­cas, remarks about, 77–78, 110, 111, 205, 265, 321, 322, 346, 474, 569–570, 659 Phi Beta Kappa Poet, appearances as and failures to appear as, 78, 254, 264, 272, 298, 320, 377, 448, 533, 548, 594, 597, 602, 604, 627, 672, 684, 690, 695, 697 poetics / style / aesthetics, remarks about, xii–­x iii, 1–3, 5–6, 11–12, 21–23, 50, 62–63, 67–68, 101, 109–111, 135, 142–143 (“Trou­ble Rhyming”), 150–151, 151–152, 160–161, 165, 166, 186, 198–199, 202, 231, 244, 249–250, 292, 293, 294, 296–297, 310, 313–314, 325–327, 330–331, 335–336, 340–341, 352, 365, 368, 373, 377, 385, 419–420, 421, 426, 434–438, 440–441, 473, 489, 504–505, 513, 517, 519–521, 539, 588, 591–592, 599, 621–622, 674–675, 690–691, 698; RF’s reflections on his own poetry, 42–44, 154–155, 185, 191, 197, 260, 264, 265, 272–274, 279–280, 296–297, 297–298, 299–300, 310, 334, 496, 373, 377, 419–420, 422, 427–428, 434–444, 454, 457–458, 473, 480–482, 484, 485–486, 495, 497, 511, 516, 529–530, 531–533, 539, 595, 603, 609, 624, 625–626, 627, 631, 633, 636, 637, 654, 665–667 politics, remarks about, 14–23, 77, 146, 207, 209, 222, 227–228, 236, 239–240, 252–253, 254–256, 269, 307, 328, 352–353, 360, 363–364, 375, 377, 380–381, 411–414, 423–424, 425, 426–427, 464, 476–478, 512, 521, 545–546, 582, 604–608, 637, 667, 672–673, 677, 678–681, 683, 686–687,

796  Index

politics, remarks about (continued) 690–691, 700; colonialism / imperialism, 227–228; Germany and, 375, 476; India and, 228; Ireland, and, 228, 509, 510; Italy and, 375, 476, 542; Japan and, 269; New Deal and associated programs, xii, 6, 15–23, 316, 330, 363, 423–424, 447–448, 449–451, 455, 461, 465–467, 475, 476–478, 497, 502, 508, 511, 542, 597, 604–608, 618, 663, 679, 686–687, 690, 701; USSR and, 375, 552, 667, 669, 700 prizes, literary: Avery Hopwood Award (University of Michigan), remarks about, 385; Pulitzer Prize, awards of and remarks about, 208, 225, 420, 649, 650; Russell Loines Award for Poetry (National Institute of Arts and Letters), 220, 220, 224–225 publishers of, remarks about and contracts with: David Nutt (London), 83, 418, 485, 538, 655; Harbor Press (NYC, fine press; Roland Wood, proprietor), 119; Heineman (London), 52; Henry Holt and Com­pany (NYC; RF’s chief publisher), x, 30–31, 30, 44, 52, 64, 82, 89, 90, 101, 114, 115, 125, 137, 140, 155, 170–171, 175, 219, 303, 304, 312, 359, 443, 460, 489, 495, 535, 558, 566, 585, 617, 622, 624, 625, 634, 638, 642, 643–644, 702; Jonathan Cape (London), 653, 653; Longmans, Green & Com­pany (London), 52, 105, 113–114, 120; Random House (NYC), 137, 155, 236–237; Spiral Press (NYC, fine press; Joseph Blumenthal, proprietor), 74, 81–82, 86–88, 105, 114, 137; Wells, James R. (US; proprietor of several small fine presses), 44, 46, 54–55, 64, 69–70, 76, 181–182, 359, 665 race / ethnicity, remarks about, 16–17, 21, 61, 66, 83–84, 134, 146, 436, 451, 461, 474, 609 residences of: in Amherst, MA (15 Sunset Ave­nue, 1931–1938), 156, 214, 215, 218–219, 221, 231–232, 231, 234, 243, 290, 519, 665; in Derry, NH (1900–1911), 100, 135, 318, 409, 557; in Franconia, NH (1915–1920), 11, 118, 291, 328, 557, 574; Gully Farm (sometimes spelled “Gulley,” South Shaftsbury, VT 1929–1940), 35, 37,

38–39, 41, 47–49, 57–58, 66, 73, 76, 91, 99, 102, 118, 173, 213, 232, 233, 234, 269, 295, 350, 356; The Stone House (South Shaftsbury, VT, 1920-), 13, 14, 61, 178, 282, 295, 347, 349–350, 351, 392, 557 science / astronomy / archaeology /  physics, interest in and remarks about, 68, 95, 162, 201, 209, 217, 249, 381, 439–440, 461, 548 teaching appointments of. See academic affiliations / teaching appointments of United States Supreme Court, remarks about, 364, 477, 546, 597, 606, 618 writers, remarks about / quotations of: Ackland, Valentine, 378–379, 385, 386; Agee, James, 440–441; Aldington, Richard, 434; Allen, Hervey, 521–522; Arnold, Matthew, 111, 396, 398, 415–416, 519, 549; Auden, W. H., 438; Beerbohm, Max, 414, 461; Bridges, Robert, 436–437; Brooke, Rupert, 434; Bynner, Witter, 109–111; Cannell, Skipwith, 301; Coffin, Robert P. Tristram, 259, 277; Cramer, Carl Lamson, 408; Crane, Hart, 436; DeVoto, Bernard, 686–688; Dowson, Ernest, 663; Dreiser, Theodore, 365; Eliot, T. S., 300, 375, 434, 435, 437–438, 650; Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 123, 504–505, 577; Engle, Paul, 424–425, 429; Fisher, Dorothy Canfield, 372–373; Fletcher, John Gould, 300, 434; Flint, F. S., 434; Francis, Robert, 615, 618–619; Garland, Hamlin, 457, 560; Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 482–483; Grant, Ulysses S., 410–411; Hard, Walter, 206–207, 222; H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 434; Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 408; Hemingway, Ernest, 370; Hendricks, Walter, 278–279; Herbert, George, 591; Hewlitt, Maurice, 437; Hillyer, Robert, 420; Holden, Raymond, 574; Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 202, 436–437; Housman, A. E., 340, 655, 660–661, 671–672; Hulme, T. E., 435; Jeffers, Robinson, 247; Joyce, James, 507, 601; Keats, John, 50, 505; Kipling, Rudyard, 39–40, 102; Lewis, Sinclair, 326, 365; Lincoln, Enoch, 431, 432; Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 123; Lowell, Amy, 300, 325, 576; McCord, David, 301–302, 367–368, 384–385; MacLeish,

Index  797

Archibald, 263–264, 265, 323, 370, 504–506, 506–507; March, Joseph Moncure, 278; Markham, Edwin, 62–63; Masters, Edgard Lee, 687; Mencken, H. L., 365; Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 241; Milton, John, 437; Moore, Merrill, 386, 410, 503–504; More, George, 410; Nuhn, Ferner, 355–356; Osborn, Paul, 163, 168–169, 354, 356, 375–376; Perse, Saint-­John (Alexis Saint-­Léger Léger), 264, 437; Pound, Ezra, 300–301, 434–435, 437–438, 475–476, 483, 650, 682; Robinson, E. A., xii, 19–20, 93–94, 209, 246–247, 442, 537, 551–552, 555, 562–563, 565, 567, 568, 577, 602; Root, Merrill, 278, 617, 618; Sandburg, Carl, 384; Scott, Evelyn, 410–411; Shakespeare, William, 108, 127, 203, 210, 245, 363, 438, 441, 565, 676, 677; Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 505; Shirley, John, 250; Suckow, Ruth, 229–230, 453; Snow, Wilbert, 325–326–327, 439–440; Stein, Gertrude, 436, 438, 487–488; Stevens, Wallace, 553; Taggard, Genevieve, 367; Thomas, Edward, 231, 310–311, 385, 496, 498, 590; Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard, 338, 351; Turgenev, Ivan, 326; Twain, Mark, 577; Untermeyer, Louis, 122, 211, 227, 241–242, 463, 471–473, 492–494, 503; Van Doren, Mark, 588; Warner, Sylvia Townsend, 378–379, 385, 386; Weygandt, Cornelius, 407–408; Wheelock, John Hall, 337; Williams, William Carlos, 301; Wolfe, Thomas, 546, 551; Words­worth, William, 504–505, 519; Wylie, Elinor, 279; Yeats, William Butler, 300, 437, 687; advice to younger writers and assistance rendered them: Barker, Shirley Frances, 417–418, 502, 567; Bragdon, Clifford Richardson, 45–46; Conrad, Lawrence, 71–72, 73, 115, 151–152, 507–508, 515; Dierkes, Henry, 428, 517; Flaccus, Kimball, 150–151, 293, 331, 371, 510; Foster, Charles, 190, 424–425, 588, 591–592, 628–629, 647–648, 669–670, 698–699; Frost, Carol (RF’s son), 7–12, 294, 305–306, 313–314, 321, 347, 572–573; Harris, Ray Baker, 230–231; Lankes, J. J., 115, 124–125, 127, 130, 304, 562; Murphy, James Patrick, 621–622; Pound, Arthur, 2–3, 292, 308; Trapp, Jacob, 335–336; Van

Dore, Wade, 27–29, 48, 65, 73, 106–107, 159–161, 198–199, 247–248, 268, 399–400, 442, 657–659, 673–675; Wilde, Irene, 330–331 writers’ conferences, attendance at and remarks about: Bread Loaf School of En­g lish, 61, 62, 96, 101, 117, 122, 191–192, 335, 520, 561, 568, 596, 690; Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, 13, 96, 97, 97, 116–118, 117, 329–330, 329, 335, 646; Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference, 60, 174, 178, 195, 197, 364, 372, 499, 526, 529, 544, 551–552, 554, 555, 681–682 Frost, Robert Lee, works by: ­ ill (1913), xv, 81, books of poetry: A Boy’s W 83, 160, 211, 231, 237, 240, 254, 255, 300, 418, 419, 428, 443, 446, 451, 452, 473, 498, 483, 484, 532, 538, 539, 589, 639, 655; A Boy’s ­Will (1915), 500; A Boy’s W ­ ill (1934), 332, 459, 460, 589; Collected Poems (Holt, 1930), xi, xvi, 25, 58, 73, 81, 82, 86, 91, 93, 105, 140, 150, 154, 155, 156, 170, 191, 220, 281, 289, 296, 303, 332, 361, 378, 416, 428, 498, 535, 640, 654, 665; Collected Poems 1930 (­l imited edition [Spiral Press]), 82, 86, 134, 182, 187, 236; Collected Poems (1930, UK edition), xvi, 52, 105, 114; Collected Poems (1939), xvi, 87, 154, 539, 621; Complete Poems (1949), xvi, 154, 621; A Further Range (1936), xv, xxi, 17, 19, 22, 87, 107, 170, 274, 279, 298, 299, 317, 336, 360, 361, 417, 429, 432, 440, 458, 486, 495, 505, 511, 514, 526, 539, 558, 563, 575, 580, 581, 599, 603, 619, 620, 622, 623, 624, 625, 626, 628, 629, 632, 634, 637, 639, 62, 643, 644, 645, 652, 653, 654, 665, 667, 672, 676, 680, 682; In the Clearing (1962), xvii, 192, 505; A Lone Striker (1933), 258, 372, 373, 440; Mountain Interval (1917) xvii, 11, 28, 43, 74, 81, 82, 191, 300, 361, 535, 536, 557, 590, 625, 666; New Hampshire (1923), xvii, 35, 126, 201, 237, 241, 276, 385, 495, 516, 533, 625; North of Boston (1914), xvii, 18, 82, 83, 145, 154, 160, 196, 231, 300, 408, 418, 483, 484, 485, 532, 535, 582; North of Boston (­l imited edition, illustrated, 1919), 82; Selected Poems (1923), xviii, 47, 191, 229, 428, 492; Selected Poems (1928), xviii, 427, 428; Selected Poems (1934), xviii, 332, 428, 457,

798  Index

books of poetry (continued) 473, 501, 589; Selected Poems by Robert Frost: Chosen by the Author with Introductory Essays by W. H. Auden, C. Day Lewis, Paul Engle, and Edwin Muir (UK edition 1936), 653, 688; Three Poems (1935), 55, 440, 444, 496, 497, 523, 529, 531, 534, 536, 594, 697; Twilight (1894), 41, 113, 127, 163, 164, 344, 484; West-­Running Brook (1928), xi, xix, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, 38, 43, 49, 55, 58, 81, 82, 86, 94, 105, 215, 237, 281, 296, 334, 378, 422, 428, 432, 473, 498, 535, 654, 667, 678; A Witness Tree (1942), xv, 71, 153, 255, 272, 273, 299, 440, 443, 480, 529, 530, 632, 641, 678 Christmas card poems and remarks about, 74, 81, 82, 86, 229, 459–460, 485, 581, 594, 696; “Christmas Trees” (1929), 74, 81, 82, 86, 88, 594, 696; “Letter to The Amherst Student (Grant Dahlstrom ­l imited edition, 1936), 696; “Neither Out Far, Nor in Deep” (1935), 581, 594, 696; “To A Young Wretch” (1937), 696; “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (1934), 107, 451, 455, 459, 460, 482, 485 essays and remarks about: “The Constant Symbol” (1946), 79, 438; “Education by Poetry” (1931), 21, 71, 95, 131, 162, 294, 489, 511, 549; “The Figure a Poem Makes” (1939), 71, 539, 621; “The ­Future of Man” (1959), 192; “Introduction to E. A. Robinson’s King Jasper” (1935), xii, 5, 19, 507, 534, 551, 555, 562, 563, 564, 565, 567, 602, 603, 610, 611; “Letter to The Amherst Student” (1935), xii, 22, 219, 299, 465, 479, 519–521, 696 lectures, titles / topics of: “­A fter the End of a Poem,” 626, 636; “All Thinking is Meta­phor,” 281; “Before the Beginning and A ­ fter the End of a Poem,” 471, 479, 489, 513, 525; “Before the Beginning of a Poem,” 626, 636; “Does Wisdom Signify?,” 601, 626, 636; “Education by Poetry” (1930, delivered before the Amherst Alumni Council), 21, 95, 131, 162, 489, 511, 549; “Is Poetry an Escape?,” 318; “Jingle and the Balanced Sentence,” 116; “Learning How to Have Something to Say,” 598; “The Old Way to Be New,” 621, 626, 630, 636; “Our Darkest Concern,”

543, 545, 549, 620; “On Not Getting Stuck in the Golden Mean,” 630, 644; “Poetry as Prowess and Feat of Words,” 636; “The Poet’s Next of Kin in College,” 271, 357; “The Renewal of Words,” 598, 599, 601, 621; “The Uses of Ambiguity,” 598; “Vocal Imagination,” 489, 601, 621, 626, 636; “What Poetry Thinks,” 372, 479, 490; “When the Anthologist Anthologizes Himself,” 191; “Who Owns Poetry?,” 116 plays: A Way Out (1929), 55, 57, 64, 75, 119, 120, 610, 622; The Cow’s in the Corn (1929), 46, 55, 64, 69, 75, 181, 359; In an Art Factory, 55; The Guardeen, 55; A Masque of Mercy (1947), 55, 250, 534; A Masque of Reason (1945), 55, 250 poems: “Acquainted with the Night,” 186, 193, 428; “Afterflakes,” 1, 419, 432; “The Aim was Song,” 193; “Asking for Roses,” 81, 87, 332; “The Ax-­Helve,” 625; “The Bear,” 428, 581; “The ­Bearer of Evil Tidings,” 582; “Birches,” 192, 193, 310, 334, 440, 581, 698; “The Birds Do Thus,” 444, 454, 484; “The Black Cottage,” 18, 191, 532; “A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury,” 511, 563, 625, 627, 654, 683, 697; “The Bonfire,” 78, 154, 594, 697; “Build Soil” (1921), 264, 548, 697; “Build Soil” (1932), 254, 260, 281, 298, 377, 448, 604, 677, 692, 697; “Caesar’s Lost Transport Ships,” 443, 444, 454, 484, 532; “Canis Major” (first titled “On a Star Bright Night”), 296, 297, 432, 498, 667; “Christmas Trees,” 28, 74, 81, 82, 86, 88, 498, 594, 696; “Class Hymn,” 558, 594; “Clear and Colder,” 43, 44, 432; “A Cliff Dwelling,” 321; “The Cocoon,” 38; “The Code,” 207; “The Death of the Hired Man,” 154, 191, 193, 250, 334, 532, 581, 609; “Departmental,” 22, 480, 481, 486, 563, 580, 581, 582, 603, 641; “Desert Places,” xi, 22, 23, 369, 581, 582; “A Drumlin Woodchuck,” 625, 627; “Dust of Snow” (also titled “A Favour” and “Snow Dust”), 184, 193, 334, 498, 516; “The Egg and the Machine” (also titled “The Walker”), 57, 58, 81; “The Fear,” 191, 193, 440; “The Figure in the Doorway,” 317, 445, 628; “The Flower Boat,” 43; “The Generations of Men,” 145; “Ghost House,” 593; “A Girl’s Garden,” 154; “God’s

Index  799

Garden,” 498; “The Gold Hesperidee,” 495, 630, 666; “Gone Astray,” 276; “Goodby and Keep Cold,” 241, 242; “Greece,” 498; “The Grindstone,” 237, 334, 495; “Happiness Makes Up in Height for What it Lacks in Length,” 641; “The Hill Wife, 317”; “Home Burial,” 190, 191, 193, 197, 440; “The House­keeper,” 185; “Hyla Brook,” 193, 229, 498; “I W ­ ill Sing you One-­O,” 1, 334; “In Equal Sacrifice,” 81, 332; “In Hardwood Groves,” 81, 91, 332, 498; “In Time of Cloudburst,” 445, 628, 631; “Into My Own,” 255, 538; “Iris by Night,” 445, 496, 628, 631; “La Noche Triste,” 77, 110, 265, 474, 558; “Last Word of the Bluebird,” 43, 82; “A Late Walk,” 237; “A Leaf Treader,” 369, 440, 575, 580; “Let Congress See to It,” 275; “The Line-­Gang,” 473; “Lodged,” 49, 215, 678; “A Lone Striker,” 258, 372, 373, 440; “Lost in Heaven,” 22, 575; “The Lovely S­ hall be Choosers,” 81, 86, 281; “Mending Wall,” 258, 334, 570, 581; “The Middletown Murder,” 57; “A Missive Missile,” xiii, 2, 419; “Moon Compasses,” 1, 419, 666; “The Mountain,” 191, 193, 334, 539, 697; “Mowing,” 192, 193, 334, 446; “My Butterfly,” 595; “My November Guest,” 45, 190, 192, 193, 197, 237, 334, 452, 500; “My Olympic Stride” (first titled “A Rec­ord Stride”), 299; “Nature’s Neglect” (early title of “On G ­ oing Unnoticed”), 43; “The Need of Being Versed in Country T ­ hings,” 192; “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep,” xii, 22, 373, 377, 581, 594, 683, 696; “New Hampshire,” 92; “Not of School Age,” 272; “Not Quite Social,” 514, 539, 575; “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” xiii, 193, 532; “Now Close the Win­dows,” 92, 452; “October,” 211, 538; “The Offer,” 273, 576; “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” 190, 191, 192, 193, 197, 334, 581; “On a Bird Singing in Its Sleep,” 368, 416, 432, 581; “On a Tree Fallen Across the Road,” 495; “On Going Unnoticed,” 43; “On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations,” 186, 192, 237; “On the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind,” 315, 336, 368, 374, 377, 415, 462, 581; “Once by the Pacific,” 186, 334, 422, 428; “One

Guess,” 526, 632; “The Onset,” 193, 516; “Out, Out—­,” 193; “The Oven Bird,” 193, 334, 498; “The Pasture,” 82, 193; “The Pauper Witch of Grafton,” 154; “Pea Brush,” 498; “A Peck of Gold,” 422, 498; “Pride of Ancestry,” 417; “Putting in the Seed,” xiii, 192; “The Quest of the Orchis” (first titled “The Quest of the Purple-­Fringed”), 443, 453, 454, 455, 484, 496, 497, 529, 531; “Reluctance,” 192, 334, 452, 484, 538, 593; “Revelation,” 428; “A Roadside Stand,” 429, 625, 626, 627; “The Runaway,” 45, 193, 334, 516; “The Self-­Seeker,” 154, 196; “A Serious Step Lightly Taken,” 480, 481, 486; “Snow,” 193, 361, 369; “A Soldier,” 192, 473; “Spoils of the Dead,” 81, 332; “Spring Pools,” 49, 192, 237, 334, 428; “The Star in a Stone-­boat,” 193; “The Star-­Splitter,” 201; “Stars,” 237; “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve­ning,” 94, 145, 186, 190, 192, 193, 197, 271, 334, 540, 561, 581; “Storm Fear,” 192; “The Strong are Saying Nothing,” 22, 369, 580, 625, 626; “Summering,” 500; “Ten Mills,” 491, 558, 624, 632, 636; “They W ­ ere Welcome to Their Belief,” 22, 368, 581; “A Time to Talk,” 498, 557; “To a Thinker” (first titled “To a Thinker in Office”), 575, 620, 637; “To a Young Wretch,” 696; “To Earthward,” 190, 192, 193, 197; “Tree at My Win­dow,” 190, 191, 193, 197, 379, 428; “­Triple Bronze,” 255; “Trou­ble Rhyming,” 142; “Two Look at Two,” 192, 193, 334; “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” 107, 207, 451, 455, 457, 458, 459, 460, 482, 485, 486, 514, 575, 612, 639, 696; “Waiting” (first titled “Waiting—Afield at Dusk”), 240, 473; “Warning,” 443, 454, 484, 496, 529; “Waspish”(first titled “Untried”), 558, 563, 632, 636; “West-­r unning Brook,” 334, 428; “The White-­tailed Hornet,” 563, 636, 641, 680; “Winter Owner­ship,” 376; “The Witch of Coös,” 154, 334; “At Woodward’s Gardens,” 626, 627, 632, 633, 491, 625, 641; “The Wrights’ Biplane” (first titled “The Biplane of Wilbur and Orville Wright”), 274, 275, 632 short stories (about poultry farming), mention of, 318

800  Index

Fuess, Claude Moore, 384 Fugitive, The, 32 Fugitive Group (poets), 386, 412; work mentioned / quoted, I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, 412 Fun Magazine, 46 Gallagher, Marie, 589; letter to, 589 Gandhi, Mahatma, 28, 228 Ganso, Emil, 443; work mentioned / quoted, Summer Night, Central Park, 443 Garbo, Greta, 476; as star of Anna Christie, 476 Garland, Hamlin, 13, 322, 420, 457, 560, 578; work mentioned / quoted, After­noon Neighbors: Further Excerpts from a Literary Log, 13, 457 Garner, Richard, 609 Garnett, Edward, 83; work mentioned /  quoted, “A New American Poet,” 83 Gates, Thomas Sovereign, 651–652 Gay, Robert Malcolm, 117, 596 General Foods Corporation, 341 George Washington National Forest, 316 Gersh­w in, George, 131, 612; works mentioned / quoted, Funny Face, 131; Porgy and Bess, 612 Gibbon, Edward, 341, 447; work mentioned /  quoted, The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, 341 Gibbs, Charles, 474 Gibson, Charles Dana, 602–603 Gibson, Wilfrid, 567 Gilbert, W. S., 46; works mentioned /  quoted, Bab Ballads, 46; “The Yarn of the Nancy Bell,” 46 Gilchrist, Marie, 250, 251; work mentioned /  quoted, Writing Poetry: Suggestions for Young Writers, 250, 251 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 482; works mentioned / quoted, In This Our World, 482; “Similar Cases,” 482 Glaser, Otto C., 486, 487–488 Glassboro Normal School (­later State Teachers College of New Jersey and now Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ), 525 Glendower, Owen (Prince of Wales), 112 Godwin, William, 505; work mentioned /  quoted, Enquiry Concerning Po­liti­cal Justice

and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness, 505 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 425; work mentioned / quoted, Faust, 425 Goetz, George, 682 Goetz, Ruth Goodman, 115, 130; letter to, 115 Gohdes, Clarence, 532, 538, 675; letter to, 532 Gold, Mike, 682 Golden, John, 657 Golden, Samuel, 352; work mentioned /  quoted, Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, 352 Goodman, Ruth. See Goetz, Ruth Goodman Goodson, W. C., 654; letter to, 654; work mentioned / quoted, Dark ­Music, 654 Goodspeed, Charles Eliot, 77, 79 Goodspeed, George Talbot, 79 Goodspeed’s Bookshop, 77, 79 Gould, George, 122 Gould, Hannah Flagg, 136; works mentioned / quoted, “The Pebble and the Acorn,” 136; The Youth’s Coronal, 136 Gracchus, Caius Sempronius (Roman politician), 447 Gracchus, Tiberius Sempronius (Roman politician), 447 Grade, Arnold, 173 Graf, Gretchen, 617; letter to, 617 Granich, Itzok Isaac, 489 Grant, Ulysses S. (Union army commander; US president, 1869–1877), 364, 410–414; work mentioned / quoted, Personal Memoirs, 410, 411 ­Great Depression, The, xi, 15, 205, 239, 274, 282, 310, 329, 366, 448, 635, 658, 664, 686, 687 ­Great Hurricane of 1935, 448 ­Great Purge, The (USSR, 1936–1938), 669, 700 ­Great Stone Dam, The (Lawrence, MA), 661 Green, Charles R., 309, 418, 452, 459, 463, 474, 483, 484, 495, 497, 498, 500, 536, 538, 557, 558, 561–562, 589, 631, 640, 664, 670, 675, 676, 683, 684, 685; letters to, 418, 452, 495, 497, 557, 664, 670, 675, 676, 684, 685; work mentioned / quoted, Robert Frost: A Bibliography, 484, 495, 497, 498, 500, 536, 538, 557, 558, 561, 585, 589, 631, 640, 676, 684, 685 Greenough, Chester Noyes, 649; letter to, 649 Greenough, Ruth Hornblower, 649 Greenslet, Ferris Lowell, 323; letter to, 323

Index  801

Greet, William C., 585 Greever, Garland, 307, 457 Griffis, Orrin Adelbert, 343 Griffith, William, 49, 51, 215; letters to, 49, 215; work mentioned / quoted, American Scrapbook, 49; The Garden Book of Verse, 49 Griswold, Rufus, 699 Groton School (Groton, MA), 687 Groves, John Stuart, 305, 589; letter to, 305, 589 Grubbs, Verna Elizabeth (a.k.a. Ann Winslow), 166–167, 180; letter to, 166 Guest, Edgar, 513 Guggenheim, John Simon, 355, 502–503 Guggenheim, Meyer, 503 Guggenheim, Olga Hirsch, 355, 503 Guggenheim Fellowship, 103, 104, 208, 291, 355, 502, 503, 600 Gully Farm, (South Shaftsbury, VT). See Frost, Robert Lee, t­ opical index: residences of Haardt, Sara (wife of H. L. Mencken), 126 Haas, Leonora, 433 Hackett, Francis, 612 Haeckel, Ernst, 439–440 Hague Convention of 1899, 607 Haight, Herbert, 381 Haines, John Wilton “Jack,” 419, 498 Hall, James Norman, 490; work mentioned /  quoted, Mutiny on the Bounty, 490 Halleck, Henry (Union Army general), 413 Hammond, Eunice Strong, 516. See Tietjens, Eunice Hammond, Idea Louise Strong, 516; letter to, 516 Hampshire Bookshop (Northampton, MA), 74, 92, 271 Hanford, James, 27 Harcourt, Alfred, 507, 515, 573, 625 Harcourt, Ellen, 573 Hard, Walter, 206–207, 222; works mentioned / quoted, “A Chopping Block,” 207; The Salt of Vermont, 206 Harper’s Magazine, 259 Harper’s Latin Dictionary, 554 Harris, Raymond Baker, 230, 231; letter to, 230 Hart, Henry, 280; work mentioned /  quoted, The Life of Robert Frost: A Critical Biography, 280, 409 Hart, Raymond McMillan, 608

Hart-­Albin Com­pany (Billings, MT), 396, 608 Harte, Bret, 110; work mentioned /  quoted, “Plain Language from Truthful James,” 110 Harvard College Fund, 50, 301, 384 Harvard COOP, 664 Harvard University, 50, 78, 79, 84, 97, 104, 111, 142, 148, 170, 246, 252, 297, 298, 301, 329, 357, 363, 366, 371, 381, 434, 470, 482, 487, 489, 490, 522, 525, 553, 583, 592, 593, 594, 597, 599, 600–601, 608, 613, 614, 617, 619, 620, 626, 629, 636, 638, 640, 643, 645, 646, 647, 649, 650, 652, 664, 668, 677, 684, 687, 689, 690, 695, 697–698, 699; RF’s association with, 78, 142, 363, 366, 371, 434, 489, 490, 522, 525, 583, 592, 593, 594, 597–598, 599, 601, 608, 613, 614, 617, 620–621, 626, 629–630, 636, 640, 649, 650, 668, 677, 684, 689, 695, 697–698, 699 Harvey, Edwin Morse, 430 Harvey, Mrs. P. Casper, 558 Haselden, Reginald B., 42–43, 113, 128, 344; letter to, 42 Haskell, Arlo, 553; work mentioned / quoted, “The Trou­ble with Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens,” 553 Haskell, Nelson Cary, 422, 446 Hastings, Thomas, 466 Hathaway Brown School (Shaker Heights, OH), 148 Hauptmann, Bruno, 605 Hawkins, Anson S., 392 Hawkins, Clifford H., 233 Hawkins, Edwin Numan, 212 Hawkins, Jennie Lind, 212 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 149, 207, 408 Hayford, Helen J. Emerson, 647 Hayford, James, 544, 647; letters to, 544, 647 Hazlitt, Henry Stuart, 369; letter to, 369 Head, Cloyd, 516 Hearst, James, 692 Hearst, William Randolph, 447 Hemingway, Ernest, 370, 474–475, 631; works mentioned / quoted, “A Natu­ral History of the Dead,” 370; “Fifty G ­ rand,” 631; Winner Take Nothing, 370 Henderson, Alice Corbin, 186, 657; letter to, 657; works mentioned / quoted, The New Poetry: An Anthology of Twentieth-­ Century Verse in En­glish, 186

802  Index

Henderson, G. F. R., 307; work mentioned /  quoted, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, 307 Hendrick, Leo, 504; work mentioned /  quoted, Ten Con­temporary Thinkers, 504 Hendricks, Walter, 65, 279, 441–442; work mentioned / quoted, Double Dealer, 279; Flames and Fireflies, 279; Spires and Spears, 279 Henry Holt and Com­pany, xi, 30, 34, 44, 52, 82, 83, 84, 86, 89, 101, 114, 125, 140, 150, 155, 175, 229, 312, 328, 443, 460, 489, 495, 535, 558, 585, 617, 626, 634, 643, 660, 672, 702; letter to, 312 Herbert, George, 425, 691; works mentioned / quoted, Jacula Prudentum, 691; “The Pulley,” 425 Hewlett, Maurice Henry, 437 Heyward, DuBose, 612, 616; work mentioned / quoted, Porgy, 612; Porgy and Bess, 612 Hibbitt, George W., 566, 585; letter to, 585 Hillyer, Robert, 170, 298, 366, 371, 420, 421, 522, 684; letters to, 170, 420, 522; works mentioned / quoted, “A Letter to Robert Frost,” 170; Collected Verse, 420; Sonnets and Other Lyr­ics, 420 Hilton Village, VA (home of J. J. Lankes), 38, 115, 259, 562, 693 Hitchcock, Dal, 80 Hitler, Adolf, 269, 375, 476 Hodge, William Prescott, 556 Hoffman, Harold C., 605 Hofstadter, Samuel H., 272 Holden, Raymond, 11, 118, 121, 291, 573–574; letter to, 121; works mentioned / quoted, Chance Has a Whip, 574; “North of Boston” (New Yorker article), 121, 291; “Reminiscences of Robert Frost” (unpublished), 11 Hollander, John, 104; work mentioned /  quoted, I. A. Richards: Essays in His Honor, 104 Hollins Alumnae Quarterly, 543 Holmes, Ella M. Smith, 661 Holmes, John, 643, 688; works mentioned /  quoted, Address to the Living, 643; “Harvard: Robert Frost and the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures,” 643; “Robert Frost Conquers the Poetic Realm,” 688

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. (US Supreme Court Justice), 477 Holmes, Richard, 60 Holmes, Susan P., 661–663; letter to, 661; work mentioned / quoted, “Thou Shalt Not,” 663 Holmes, Thomas Savery, 661 Holmes, William, 662 Holt, Hamilton, 482, 483, 613; letter to, 613 Home O ­ wners’ Loan Corporation (US Congress, 1933–1954), 423 Homer, 111; work mentioned, quoted, The Odyssey, 325, 576 Hoover, Herbert, 19, 115, 205, 209, 236, 239, 258, 363, 449, 515, 606 Hope, Anthony, 360; work mentioned /  quoted, The Prisoner of Zenda, 360 Hopkins, Ernest Martin, 244 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 202, 436–437; work mentioned / quoted, “Pied Beauty,” 437; Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 202, 437 Hopkins, Harry, 607 Hopkinson, Joan, 685, 686; letter to, 685 Horace (Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus), 371 Horton, Thomas W., 213 ­Hotel Boulderado (Boulder, CO), 200, 364, 553 House Un-­American Activities Committee (US Congress, 1938–1975), 685–686 Housman, A. E., 340, 655, 660–661, 663, 671–672; works mentioned / quoted, A Shropshire Lad, 660, 671; Last Poems, 660, 671–672; The Name and Nature of Poetry, 340, 660–661 Housman, Laurence, 660 How, Louis, 338 Howard, Charles (first Earl of Nottingham), 371 Howard, David M., 573 Howard, Edward, 573 Howe, Frederick, 511 Howe, Mark Antony DeWolfe, 84, 452, 538, 593, 597; letter to, 593; work mentioned /  quoted, Barrett Wendell and His Letters, 84 Howe, ­Will David, 51; work mentioned /  quoted, The Lit­e r­a­ture of Amer ­i­ca: An Anthology of Prose and Verse, Volume 2: From the Civil War to the Pre­sent, 51

Index  803

Hubbell, Jay Broadus, 581; letter to, 581; works mentioned / quoted, American Life in Lit­er­a­ture, 581; “Robert Frost,” 581 Hubble, Edwin, 217 Hudnut, Robin Fraser. See ­u nder Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of: Fraser, Marjorie Robin Hudson, John A., 267 Hughes, Howard, 278; work mentioned /  quoted, Hell’s Angels, 278 Hughes, Langston, 255 Hughes, Thatcher, 97 Hulme, T. E., 435, 503 Humphrey, Leonard, 122 Hunt, Robert, 109 Hunter, William Joseph “Dard,” 36 Hunter College, 189, 542 Huntington Library, 42, 43, 44 Hurd, Charles Edwin, 500 Ickes, Harold, 508, 607 Imagism and Imagists, 3, 109, 301, 434, 435 Imperial Theatre (New York City), 524 In­de­pen­dent, The, 43, 443, 444, 454, 497, 532, 538, 595, 613 Industrial Workers of the World, 58 Insull, Samuel, 366 International Mark Twain Society, 577 Iowa Homestead, The, 692 Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (Dublin, 1894), 664 Irish Homestead, The, 664 Irish Rebellion (1798), 202 Irish War of In­de­pen­dence (1919–1921), 228 Ivens, Bryna, 430 Jackson, Cummins, 470 Jackson, Gardner, 511 Jackson, Moses, 471 Jackson, Sarah R, 324; work mentioned /  quoted, “Karle Wilson Baker brings Robert Frost to Nacagdoches,” 324 Janney, Francis Lamar, 543 Japa­nese Diet, 269 Japa­nese Foreign Ser­v ice, 269 Jeffers, Robinson, 166, 247, 264; work mentioned / quoted, Thurso’s Landing, 247 Jennings, Alice, 526; letter to, 526 Johns Hopkins University Hospital School of Nursing, 41, 54, 165

Johnson, Alvin Saunders, 134, 575, 580 Johnson, Burges, 142, 205, 208, 215, 238; letters to, 205, 208, 215, 238; work mentioned /  quoted, New Rhyming Dictionary and Poets’ Handbook, 142 Johnson, James Weldon, 685 Johnson, Lionel, 240; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Dark Angel,” 240 Johnston, Albert Sidney (Confederate army general), 413 Johnston, Joseph E. (Confederate army general), 36, 413 Johnston, Paul, 86 Jones, Bessie Zaban, 297, 459; letter to, 297 Jones, Floyd S., 390 Jones, Howard Mumford, 297, 298, 459, 645, 682 Jones Library (Amherst, MA), 188, 309, 418, 536, 538, 589, 631, 640, 684 “Journey” (anonymous ballad), 694 Joyce, James, 182, 507, 601 Judicial Procedures Reform Bill (US 1937, a.k.a. “Court Packing Plan”), 606 Juvenal, 365 Kantor, MacKinlay, 524; work mentioned /  quoted, Turkey in the Straw: A Book of American Ballads and Primitive Verse, 524 Karno, Ethel Cooperman, 640; letter to, 640 Kase, Toshikazu (Japanese diplomat), 269 Keats, John, 50, 246, 505–506; works mentioned / quoted, Hyperion, 505–506; “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” 246 Keeler, “Wee” Willie, 507 Kennerly, Mitchell, 452, 484 Kent, Clifton Pratt, 282, 295, 347, 350 Kent, Rockwell, 36, 37, 75–76, 98, 130; work mentioned / quoted, Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska, 75 Kent, Rockwell III (“Rocky”), 76 Kent School (Kent, CT), 420 Kewa Pueblo, 569 Keyser, Cassius Jackson, 548; work mentioned / quoted, Mathematical Philosophy: A Study of Fate and Freedom, 548 Key West, FL, 9, 14–15, 23, 139, 422, 446–455, 461, 463, 466–469, 473–476, 490, 495, 497–498, 501, 508, 511–512, 514–515, 521, 525, 553 Key West Aquar­ium, 465

804  Index

Key West Cemetery Map and Self-­Guided Tour, 514 Key West Naval Station, 448–449, 467 King, Margaret Pinckney Jackson-­A llen, 266, 440 King, Stanley, 252, 304, 307, 332, 394, 402, 440, 488, 490, 539, 545, 597, 599; letter to, 252 King Henry III, 687 King Philip’s War (1675–1678), 409 Kingston, NH, 409 Kipling, Rudyard, 39–40, 102, 104, 454, 529; works mentioned / quoted, “The Legend of Evil,” 39–40, 102; “Recessional,” 454, 529 Kirov, Sergei, 450 Knopf, Alfred A., 685 Korzybski, Alfred, 548 Kowalewski, Edmond, 429; work mentioned / quoted, Deaf Walls, 429 Kreymborg, Alfred, 72, 452 Kudravetz, Julia, 444, 623 Labatt, Francis (father of Lillian Labatt Frost), 218 Labatt, Lillie Belle Haskins (mother of Lillian Labatt Frost), 218 LaFollette, Robert M., 326, 540–541 Lamb, Charles, 274; works mentioned /  quoted, “The Dream ­Children,” 274 Lambuth, David, 497, 543 Lambuth, Myrtle Spindle, 543 Landis, Benson Y., 364; works mentioned /  quoted, Rural Amer­i­ca, 364; The Third American Revolution, 364 Landmark, The, 151 Landon, Alf, 690 Laney, Emma May, 586; letter to, 586 Lang, Andrew, 111; work mentioned /  quoted, The Odyssey (translator), 111 Lankes, John Julius (“J. J.”), 31, 35–37, 38–39, 40, 50, 58–59, 75–76, 98, 99, 107, 115, 124, 125, 127, 130, 165, 166, 181, 259, 274, 276–278, 300, 303, 304, 311, 353, 358, 359, 367, 400, 414, 561–562, 563, 581, 610, 612, 615, 619, 681, 683, 693, 695, 697; letters to, 35, 38, 75, 98, 107, 124, 130, 165, 181, 276, 303, 400, 561, 610, 683, 693; works mentioned /  quoted, A Woodcut Manual, 115, 125, 274, 414; “Barn Near Carlisle, Pennsylvania,” 259; ­Virginia Woodcuts, 98 Larooco Log, The, 455

Lawrence, D. H., 110; work mentioned /  quoted, Mornings in Mexico, 110 Lawrence, John, 455 Lawrence, MA, 77, 85, 128, 151, 201, 219, 344, 363, 411, 499, 500, 530, 556, 557, 661–662, 663–664 Leach, Henry Goddard, 637; letter to, 637 League of Nations, 64, 238, 689 League of Vermont Writers, 552 Lear, Edward, 302; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Jumblies,” 302 Ledbury (UK), 140 Ledoux, Louis, 19, 611 Lee, Henry II, 414 Lee, Henry “Light-­Horse Harry” III, 414 Lee, Robert E. (Confederate army general), 36, 410–414 Le Gallienne, Eva, 283; work mentioned /  quoted, Alice in Wonderland (adapted play), 283 Legge, Alexander, 363 Leigh, William Colston, 171; letter to, 171 Leippert, James George, 128, 353; letters to, 128, 353 Lemaître, Georges, 217 Lenin, Vladimir, 108 Lesser, Joseph, 179; letter to, 179 Levy, Benn, 283; work mentioned /  quoted, The Devil Passes, 283 Lewis, Cecil Day, 653, 688 Lewis, Edward Morgan, 89, 90, 92, 93, 99, 112, 175, 232, 259, 260, 339, 342, 343, 417, 502, 517, 566; letters to, 89, 2, 99, 112, 175, 232, 259, 339, 342, 343, 417, 502, 517 Lewis, Margaret Charlton, 53 Lewis, Margaret Williams, 90, 260 Lewis, Sinclair, 62, 207, 222, 326, 365; works mentioned / quoted, A Letter to Critics, 227, 222; Elmer Gantry, 59, 60, 326 Lili‘uokalani (Queen, Kingdom of Hawai‘i), 468 Lime Rock Artists Colony (Lime Rock, CT), 36 Lincoln, Enoch, 431, 432, 460, 566; work mentioned / quoted, The Village: A Poem with an Appendix, 431, 460, 566 Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, 605 Lindbergh, Charles, 605 Lindbergh, Charles, Jr., 605 Lindsay, Elizabeth Connor, 235–236 Lindsay, Nicholas Cave, 235–236

Index  805

Lindsay, Susan Doniphan, 235–236 Lindsay, Vachel, 39, 177, 224, 228, 235, 576 Lipp­mann, Walter, 298–299, 377, 546; works mentioned / quoted, A Preface to Morals, 546; Public Opinion, 377; “The Scholar who Troubled the World,” 298–299 Locker-­Lampson, Frederick, 301; work mentioned / quoted, “A Terrible Infant,” 301–302 Lodge, Henry Cabot, Jr., 684 London Mercury, The, 498 Long, Haniel Clark, 659; letter to, 659; work mentioned / quoted, Pittsburgh Memoranda, 659 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 123, 136, 149, 151, 210, 487; works mentioned /  quoted, “My Lost Youth,” 151, 487; Tales of a Wayside Inn, 123; The Golden Legend, 210 Longstreet, James (Confederate army general), 412 Long Trail, The (VT), 78–79, 144, 294 Loos, Anita, 655; work mentioned /  quoted, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 655, 660 Lord Jeffery Inn (Amherst, MA; now The Inn at Bolton), 46, 290, 394 Los Angeles County Fair, 306 Los Angeles Times, 331, 333, 457, 501 Loveman, Amy, 580 Lowe, Orton, 518, 635 Lowell, Amy, 50, 83, 101, 133, 300, 325, 576, 638; work mentioned / quoted, Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, 83 Lowell, James Russell, 136 Lowes, John Livingston, 133, 246, 298, 592; letter to, 592; work mentioned / quoted, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination, 133, 246 Lucas, Al, 396 Lucullus, Licinius (Roman politician), 541 Luther, Martin, 507 Lyons, Edward, 212 MacDougal, Kelly K., 274 MacDowell, Edward, 55 MacDowell, Marian, 55 MacDowell Artist Colony (Peterborough, NH), 55 MacKaye, Christy, 226 MacKaye, Percy, 62, 226, 489; letter to, 489 MacLeish, Archibald, 263–265, 323, 370, 465–466, 504, 505–507, 524; works

mentioned / quoted, Conquistador, 263–265, 323, 370; Panic: A Play in Verse, 524; “The Writer and Revolution,” 504, 506 Macmillan, Donald, 687 Macpherson, James, 265; work mentioned /  quoted, The Poems of Ossian, 265 MacVeagh, Lincoln, 34, 52, 53, 77, 78, 365, 366, 417–418; letters to, 52, 77, 365 MacVeagh, Margaret Ewen, 53 Maddox House (Rockford College, IL), 526 Madigan, Mark, 372, 373; work mentioned /  quoted, “A Newly Discovered Letter to Dorothy Canfield Fisher,” 372 Magna Carta, 687 Makielski, Leon, 302; letter to, 302 Mallery, Otto Tod, 574 Manthey-­Zorn, Ethel, 15, 132 Manthey-­Zorn, Otto, 3, 14, 15, 130, 265, 307, 341, 401, 423, 446, 462, 476, 487, 568, 597; letters to, 30, 265, 374, 401, 423, 446, 462, 476, 568, 597 Manthey-­Zorn, William, 341–342, 568 Manwaring, Elizabeth, 289; letter to, 289 March, Joseph Moncure, 278; works mentioned / quoted, The Set-­Up, 278; The Wild Party, 278 Markham, Edwin, 63; work mentioned /  quoted, “How Oswald Dined with God,” 63 Mark Twain Centennial, 579 Mark Twain Quarterly, 663 Marsh, Carrie, 284 Martin, Frederick, 430; letter to, 430 Martin, Theodore, 425; work mentioned / quoted, Faust, 425 Marvell, Andrew, 250, 370; work mentioned /  quoted, “To His Coy Mistress,” 370 Marx, Karl, 21, 207, 582, 691 Masefield, John, 139, 690, 684, 697; works mentioned / quoted, “Lines on the Tercentenary of Harvard College in Amer­i­ca,” 684 Mas­sa­chu­setts Agricultural College (now University of Mas­sa­chu­setts), 61, 240 Masses, The, 239, 266 Masters, Edgar Lee, 473, 687 Matthews, Albert, 590; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Topographical Terms Interval and Intervale,” 590 Matthiessen, F. O., 553, 650 Maya Civilization, 77, 474–475

806  Index

Mayer, Clara Woolie, 575; letter to, 575 Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN), 4, 395, 396, 398, 403 McAfee, Helen Flora, 1, 2, 373, 419, 581, 582; letters to, 419, 582 McCarthy, Don, 429 McClintock, Sara Handy, 421, 422; letter to, 421 McCole, Camille John, 66, 101; letter to, 101; work mentioned / quoted, On Poetry, 101 McConaughy, Elizabeth Townsend Rogers, 30 McConaughy, James Lukens, 29, 173, 630; letter to, 29 McCord, David, 50, 172, 301, 302, 367, 368, 384, 522, 620, 626, 677; letters to, 50, 172; works mentioned / quoted, “A Child’s Garden of Reverses,” 302; The Crows, 368; Poems Far and Few: Rhymes of the Never Was and Always Is, 302 McDonald, James G., 689 McFarland, ­Virginia, 609 McKerihan, Jean, 131, 133 McReynolds, James, 456 Meadville Theological School (Chicago, IL), 572 Meeks, Carroll, 479 Meiklejohn, Alexander, 90, 284–285 Melcher, Daniel, 566 Melcher, Frederic, 39, 42, 79, 80, 83, 86, 113, 127, 133, 134, 223, 224, 235, 236, 341, 344, 360, 361, 459, 460, 462, 484, 537, 539, 565, 566, 580, 639; letters to, 39, 42, 79, 83, 86, 223, 235, 341, 360, 460, 539, 565, 580; work mentioned / quoted, “Robert Frost and His Books,” 39, 83, 113, 127–128, 133, 164 Meloney, Marie Mattingly, 312, 376; letters to, 312, 376 Melville, Herman, 490; Typee, 490 Mencken, H. L., 125, 126, 127, 138, 145, 222, 229, 365, 655, 679; letter to, 126; work mentioned / quoted, “The Worst American State,” 222 Meredith, George, 327; work mentioned /  quoted, Modern Love, 327 Merriam, Frank, 423 Merrill, Georgia Drew, 350; work mentioned /  quoted, History of Coös County, 350 Mertins, Marshall Louis, 272, 294, 333, 352, 456, 491, 500, 501, 514, 558, 560, 577, 578;

letters to, 272, 352, 456, 491, 500, 514, 558, 577; work mentioned / quoted, Robert Frost: Life and Talks-­Walking, 352, 491, 558, 560, 578 Merwin, Samuel, 97 Mesa Verde (Mesa Verde, CO), 321 Mesa Vista Sanitarium (Boulder, CO), 191, 192 Metcalf, Keyes DeWitt, 681; letter to, 681 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 433 Metropolitan Opera House, 466 Miami News, 513, 599, 607, 612–613 Michaud, Régis, 123; work mentioned /  quoted, Emerson: The Enraptured Yankee, 123 Middlebury College (VT), 13, 96, 123, 335, 583, 596, 646 Midland, The, 229 Milch, Albert, 433 Milch, Edward, 433 Miller, Alec, 660, 671 “Miller of the Dee” (anonymous ballad), 546 Milligan, Pamela, 608 Milton, John, 27, 143, 171, 265, 354, 437, 507, 650; works mentioned / quoted, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 143; “Lycidas,” 507; Paradise Lost, 265, 437; “Sonnet 19,” 171, 354; “To Oliver ­Cromwell,” 650 Milton Acad­emy (Milton, MA), 455, 512, 517, 525 Mitchell, Stewart W., 381 Moley, Raymond, 576 Monfort, Simon de (fifth Earl of Leicester), 687 Monfort, Simon de (sixth Earl of Leicester), 687 Monroe, Charles Andrew, 316 Monroe, Harriet, 62, 137, 166, 176, 177, 186, 436, 491, 553, 624, 632, 633; letters to, 624, 632, 633; work mentioned / quoted, “A Discussion with Hart Crane,” 436; The New Poetry: An Anthology of Twentieth-­ Century Verse in En­glish, 186 Monrovia, CA, 12, 13, 185, 200, 203, 204, 206, 221, 242, 243, 257, 263, 264, 267–268, 270, 274, 275, 295, 299, 320, 346, 349, 369, 456 Monrovia Sanitarium (Monrovia, CA), 362 Monsour, Leslie, 43 Montana, 328, 380–383, 608, 701

Index  807

Montana State Department of Agriculture, ­Labor, and Industry, 382 Montana Yearbook, The, 382 Montclair State Teachers’ College (now Montclair State University), 72, 115, 354 Montmorency Cherry (Prunus cerasus), 317 Moodie, John. See ­u nder Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of Moody, Charlotte May Hull, 596 Moody, Harriet Brainard, 31, 242, 510; work quoted / mentioned, Mrs. William Vaughn Moody’s Cook-­Book, 242 Moody, Paul Dwight, 13, 117, 583, 596, 646; letters to, 583, 596 Moody, William Vaughn, 31, 242, 510 Moore, Louis T., 167 Moore, Merrill, 32, 94, 306, 410, 504, 620; work mentioned / quoted, Six Sides to a Man, 504 More, Paul Elmer, 148, 168, 410; work mentioned / quoted, Shelburne Essays: Sixth Series, 410 Morgan, Charles Hill II, 304 Morgan, Emanuel (nom de plume of Witter Bynner). See Bynner, Witter Morison, Samuel Eliot, 408; work mentioned /  quoted, Builders of the Bay Colony, 408 Morison, Stanley, 622 Morris, Earl Halstead, 381 Morris, Harrison Smith, 224, 225, 433; letter to, 433 Morrison, Henry C., 72 Morrison, Kathleen, 619; work mentioned /  quoted, Robert Frost: A Pictorial Chronicle, 619 Morrison, Theodore, 97, 329, 330; letter to, 329 Morrow, Dwight, 205 Morrow, Dwight, Jr., 249, 381 Morton, David, 49, 223, 354–355, 363, 370; works mentioned / quoted, Six for Them, 223 Mosher, Thomas, 484, 538; works mentioned / quoted, Amphora, 484; Cata­logue of Imprints, 538 Mosher Press, 538 Mostrom, Donald Gordon, 700; letter to, 700 Moult, Thomas, 415; letter to, 415; work mentioned / quoted, The Best Poems of 1934, 415 Mount Holyoke College, 131, 402, 482, 483

Mount Wilson Observatory (Los Angeles, CA), 217 Muir, Edwin, 653, 688 Muir, Helen, 472; work mentioned / quoted, Frost in Florida, 472 Mukerji, Dhan Gopal, 612 Mullins, Helene, 589; works mentioned /  quoted, Convent Girl, 589; Earthbound and Other Poems, 589 Mumford, Lewis, 72, 255 Munro, Harold, 76 Munson, Gorham, 83, 84, 97, 403, 578–579, 609, 636, 640; letters to, 403, 578; work mentioned / quoted, Robert Frost: A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense, 84, 403, 578, 609, 636 Murphy, James Patrick J., 610, 621–622; letters to, 610, 621 Murray, George Gilbert Aimé, 111 Mussolini, Benito, 375, 476, 503, 542, 543 Mustazza, Chris, 566 Mutual Orange Distributors (CA citrus cooperative), 664 Mycerinus (Egyptian king), 427 Nashville Tennessean, The, 32 Nason, Thomas W., 443, 446, 459 Nation, The, 83, 207, 356, 369 National Broadcasting Com­pany (NBC), 313, 315 National Council of Teachers of En­glish, 477, 585 National Industrial Recovery Act (US Congress, 1933), 363, 477 National Institute of Arts and Letters, 126, 224, 225, 420 National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis), 310, 375, 439, 483, 664, 691 Neuces River (TX), 696 Nevils, Mary Jane, 295, 347, 349, 350 Nevils, William H., 295 New Deal Programs. See Frost, Robert Lee, topical index: politics, remarks about Newdick, Robert Spangler, 427, 531, 532, 533, 537, 538, 550, 558, 590, 617, 675; letters to, 427, 537, 550, 590; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Early Verse of Robert Frost and Some of his Revisions,” 532, 538; Newdick’s Season of Frost: An Interrupted Biography, 427, 532, 590

808  Index

New E­ ngland Magazine, 538 New Frontier, The, 643 New Republic, The, 356, 439, 577, 611–612 New School for Social Research, 133–134, 141, 145, 153, 165, 168, 559–560, 567, 575 New York Daily Mirror, The, 695 New York Daily News, The, 145, 657 New Yorker, The, 121, 291, 302 New York Eve­ning Post, The, 303 New York Herald Tribune, The, 16, 163, 297, 376, 498 New York Public Library, 467, 681 New York State Athletic Commission, 55 New York Stock Exchange, 497 New York Times, The, 142, 217, 298 New York Yacht Club, 450 Niagara Grape (Vitis labrusca), 211 Nicholson, Lillian Louise, 53, 135; work mentioned / quoted, The Art of Robert Frost, 53, 135 Nickolaiev, Leonid, 450 Nock, Albert J., 673, 679 Nordal, Sigurður, 599 Nordhoff, Charles, 490; work mentioned /  quoted, Mutiny on the Bounty, 490 Norlin, George, 551, 555; letter to, 551 Norreys, Sir John, 509 North, Clarence E., 399 Northampton Acad­emy of ­Music (Northampton, MA), 119 North Texas State Teachers’ College (now University of North Texas), 320 Notch, Frank K. (pseudonym for Maurice Samuel). See Samuel, Maurice Notopoulos, James, 130–131, 132; letter to, 132 Notre Dame University, 61, 101, 229, 307 Nuhn, Ferner, 229, 355, 356, 453, 545, 546, 547, 677, 678, 679, 680, 699; letters to, 355, 545, 677 O’Brien, Edward, 45 O’Bryan, Deric Nusbaum, 608 Occidental College, 321, 332, 333 O’Conor, Maira Jephson, 509 O’Conor, Norreys Jephson, 509; letter to, 509; work mentioned / quoted, Godes Peace and the Queenes: Vicissitudes of a House, 509 OGPU (Soviet Joint State Po­l iti­c al Directorate), 450 Ohio State University, 427, 590, 617 Olds, George Daniel, 13, 548 Olds, Marion, 419

Olin Memorial Library (Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT), 639 Olympic Games (Los Angeles, 1932), 268, 271, 306, 322 Olympic Games (Berlin, 1936), 655, 664 O’Neill, Eugene, 688 Orage, Alfred Richard, 103, 505 Orange Blossom Special (passenger train), 592 Ordway, Frederick Ira, 464 Orpheus (mythological Greek character), 34, 325 Orton, Vrest, 127, 138, 156, 163, 164, 194, 205, 221, 442; letters to, 127, 138, 156, 163, 164, 194, 205, 221; works mentioned / quoted, The Colophon, 127; Green Mountain Series, 194; Proceedings of the Com­pany of Amateur Brewers, 138; Vermont After­noons with Robert Frost, 127, 156, 163, 194; Vermont Verse, An Anthology, 206; The Vermont Year Book and Guide, 128 Osborn, Florence Louchheim, 356 Osborn, Paul, 159, 161, 163, 168, 195, 354, 356, 375–376, 547; letters to, 159, 161, 163, 356, 375, 547; works mentioned / quoted, Oliver, Oliver, 195, 354, 356, 375, 547; The Vinegar Tree, 159, 161, 163, 356, 375, 547; The Yearling (adapted from M. K. Rawling’s novel), 168 O’Shaughnessy, Arthur, 504; work mentioned / quoted, “Ode,” 504 Overland Monthly, The, 110 Owsley, Frank L., 412 Oxford University, 104, 130, 131, 132, 608, 671, 688 Ozark Mountain Range, 317 Page, Curtis Hidden, 656; letter to, 656 Palgrave, Francis Turner, 136–137, 240; work mentioned / quoted, The Golden Trea­sury of En­glish Songs and Lyr­ics, 137, 240 Palmer, Elmer Drew (student of RF at Pinkerton Acad­emy), 59–60 Palmer, Elwin True (student of RF at Pinkerton Acad­emy), 59–60 Palmer, Frederick, 253; work mentioned /  quoted, Newton D. Baker: Amer­i­ca at War, 253 Palmer, George Herbert, 111 Palmer, Paul, 580, 619, 625, 626, 672, 679 Palmer, Phillips, 646; letter to, 646 Paradise, Scott H., 384; letter to, 384 Paris, Frances Johnstone, 215; work mentioned / quoted, The Garden Book of Verse, 215

Index  809

Paris Commune, 483 Paris Review, The, 150, 314 Park, Mungo, 370 Partizans, The (student literary club in Elmhurst, NY), 334 Patmore, Coventry, 136, 137; work mentioned /  quoted, “An Eve­ning Scene,” 137 Paul Bergan Literary Festival (Foxcroft School, Middleburg, VA), 525 Payne, Leonidas W., Jr., 53, 154, 635, 665, 667, 701; letters to, 53, 154, 635, 665 Peach, Arthur W., 206; work mentioned / quoted, Vermont Prose, A Miscellany, 206 Pearse, Patrick, 509 Pearse, William, 509 Pease, Arthur Stanley, 81, 234–235, 252, 307; letters to, 81, 234; work mentioned /  quoted, “A Visit to Northwestern Newfoundland,” 235 Pease, Henrietta Faxon, 81 Peck, Gregory, 168 Peek, George N., 511 Pendleton, Ellen Fitz, 289 PEN International, 223, 224, 312 Pennsylvania College for ­Women (now Chatham University), 31 Pennsylvania State University, 103, 114, 116, 122, 131 Pennsylvania State University En­g lish Institute, 114, 116, 122, 131 Peralta-­Ramos, Arturo, 119 Percy, William Alexander, 35; work mentioned / quoted, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son, 35 Perelman, S. J., 465 Perkins, Nathan, 206; work mentioned /  quoted, A Narrative of a Tour Through the State of Vermont, 296 Perry, Bliss, 571 Perry, Henry TenEyck, 572 Perse, Saint-­John (nom de plume of Alexis Saint-Léger Léger), 264–265, 437, 438; work mentioned / quoted, Anabase, 264–265, 437, 438 Pershing, General John J. (US army general, commander of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I), 252; work mentioned / quoted, My Experiences in the World War, 252–253 Pervigilium Veneris, 456

Phelps, William Lyon, 180, 215, 224, 478, 646, 690; letters to, 180, 478; work mentioned /  quoted, The Advance of En­glish Poetry in the Twentieth ­Century, 215 Phillips Academy, Andover (Andover, MA), 384 Phillips Exeter Acad­emy (Exeter, NH), 219, 403, 464, 469, 470 Pierpont, John, 136 Pierson College (Yale), 374, 377, 534, 535, 629, 640, 644 Pinkerton Acad­emy (Derry, NH), 46, 59, 60, 72, 135, 189, 363, 415, 464, 554, 636 Plato and Platonism, 341, 521 Plunkett, Horace, 664 Plymouth Normal School (now Plymouth State University), 498, 668 Poe, Edgar Allan, 136, 291, 340, 699; works mentioned / quoted, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, 291; “The Philosophy of Composition,” 340; “The Raven,” 340; Tamerlane, and Other Poems, 291 Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, 62, 137, 166, 186, 331, 336, 434, 436, 451, 491, 558, 574, 624, 627, 632, 636, 643 Poetry Bookshop, The (London), 76, 199 Poetry Society of Amer­i­ca (New York City, founded 1910), 452, 542 Poets’ Guild, The (literary society affiliated with the Christodora House), 45, 188 Poirier, Richard, 20; work mentioned /  quoted, Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing, 20 Pope Innocent III, 687 Pope Pius XI, 542 Porte, Joel, 520, 592; work mentioned / quoted, Emerson in His Journals, 592; Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures, 520 Pottenger, Caroline, 362 Pottenger, Francis Marion, 362 Potter, Russell, 383; letter to, 383 Pound, Arthur, 2–3, 292, 308; letters to, 292, 308; work mentioned / quoted, Mountain Morning and Other Poems, 2, 292 Pound, Elizabeth, 308 Pound, Ezra, 3, 19, 300–301, 434–435, 437–438, 475–476, 483, 495, 506, 650, 652, 682; works mentioned / quoted, A Draft of Cantos 17–27, 495; “Doria,” 434; Eleven New Cantos XXXI–­XLI, 475–476, 483; Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, 495 Pound, Mary Madelon Paterson, 308 Powell, Arthur G., 553

810  Index

Prescott, William, Jr. See ­u nder Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of Prescott, William, Sr. See ­u nder Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of Prescott, William Hickling, 474; work mentioned / quoted, The History of the Conquest of Mexico, 474 Presidential Range (White Mountains, NH), 423 Prince­ton University, 181, 271 Prince­ton University Library, 181, 315, 368 Proctor, Mortimer Robinson, 78, 144, 147; letters to, 78, 144, 147 Progressive Party (1912), 146 Progressive Party (1924–1934), 540 Prospect, The, 498 Prynne, William, 681; work mentioned /  quoted, The Histriomastix: Player’s Scourge, or Actor’s Tragedy, 681 Public Utility Holding Company Act (US Congress, 1935), 366 Public Works of Art Proj­ect (New Deal program), 502, 508 Publishers’ Weekly, 42, 80, 223, 462, 540, 639 Pueblo P ­ eoples, 80, 321, 569–570, 659 Puerto Rico, 126 Pulitzer Prize, xiii, 94, 208, 225, 252, 263, 264, 315, 323, 420, 452, 626, 640, 649, 651 Pushkin, Alexander, 685 Putnam, Arthur James, 564; letter to, 564 Pyle, Howard, 480 Quiller-­Couch, Arthur, 103, 104, 436; work mentioned / quoted, The Oxford Book of En­glish Verse, 103, 436 Quinn, Arthur H., 51; work mentioned /  quoted, The Lit­er­a­ture of Amer­i­ca, 51 Quinn, Gerard, 206; work mentioned /  quoted, Vermont Verse: An Anthology, 206 Quinn, John Kerker, 626 Rahway News-­Record, The, 343 Rall, Udo, 204 Randall, David Anton, 344; letter to, 344; work mentioned / quoted, “American First Editions 1900–1933,” 344 Ransom, John Crowe, 32 Rathman, Omar C., 395, 396 Raymond, Mary E., 148

Read, Herbert, 435; work mentioned /  quoted, Form in Modern Poetry, 435 Reconstruction and Finance Corporation (US, 1932–1957), 239, 511 Reed, Stanley, 618 Reedy, William Marion, 484; work mentioned / quoted, Reedy’s Mirror, 484 ­Reese, Lizette Woodworth, 36; work mentioned / quoted, A Victorian Village: Reminiscences of Other Days, 36 Reeves, Henrietta, 31; letter to, 31 Reeves, Ruth G., 543; letter to, 543 Reichstag Fire (Berlin, 1933), 310 Reid, Arthur William, 168 Rennie, Hugh, 356 Revell, Frank, 275, 276; letter to, 275 Revue des Deux Mondes, 83, 84 Rhodes, Cecil John, 502 Rhymers’ Club (London, founded 1890), 240 Rice, Grantland, 126; work mentioned /  quoted, TAPS: Selected Poems of the ­Great War, 126 Richard Crawford Campbell Jr. Travelling Fellowship (Dartmouth), 371 Richards, Edward Ames, 78, 245, 530; letter to, 530; work mentioned / quoted, Time Strikes, 530 Richards, I. A., 104, 435, 650, 652; Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment, 104 Richardson, Ellen Search, 469; letter to, 469 Richardson, George Lynde, Jr., 403, 469; letter to, 403 Rimbaud, Arthur, 699 Ritten­house, Jesse Belle, 202, 338; work mentioned / quoted, The Second Book of Modern Verse, 202 Robert Frost Review, 372 Roberts, Owen Josephus (US Supreme Court Justice), 546 Robinson, Boardman, 266, 267, 277 Robinson, David H., 213 Robinson, Edwin Arlington, xii, 5, 19, 20, 45, 51, 55, 93, 94, 110, 166, 209, 224, 246, 442, 507, 534, 537, 551, 555, 562–563, 565–569, 577, 580, 602–603, 611; works mentioned /  quoted, “Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford, 94”; “Dark Hills,” xii; King Jasper (1935), xii, 5, 19, 507, 534, 551, 555, 562–565, 567, 602–603, 610–611; Matthias at the Door (1931), 206, 246–247;

Index  811

“The Mill,” 20; “Miniver Cheevy,” 110; “New ­England,” 51; “The Rat,” 565; Selected Letters (1940), 577; Selected Poems (1932), 209; The Town Down the River (1920), 94; Tristram (1927), 94 Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers (UK, 1844), 664 Rockford College, 357, 402, 433, 524, 526, 529, 567, 572, 574, 587 Rocky Mountain Writers’ Conference (Boulder, CO), 60, 174, 178, 195, 364, 372, 499, 526, 529, 544, 551, 554–555, 681 Rodker, John, 495 Rogers, Mary Millicent Abigail, 118–119 Rollins Animated Magazine, 280 Rollins College (Rockford, IL), xviii, 482 Romer, Thomas, 514 Roo­se­velt, Eleanor, 415 Roo­se­velt, Franklin Delano, (“FDR,” US president, 1933–1945), viii, xi, xii, xxii, 15, 17, 19–23, 22, 138, 239, 258, 282, 310, 339, 363, 365, 405, 418, 423, 430, 432, 450, 454–455, 461, 465, 475, 476, 502, 508, 511, 541–542, 546, 576, 605–608, 633, 637, 673, 680, 684, 686, 690, 692, 700 Roo­se­velt, Theodore, Jr., 126; letter to, 126; work mentioned / quoted, TAPS: Selected Poems of the G ­ reat War, 126 Roo­se­velt, Theodore, Sr. (US president, 1901–1909), 126, 146 Root, Edward Merrill, 278, 617–618, 638; letter to, 638; works mentioned / quoted, Bow of Burning Gold; Dawn is Forever, 617; Lost Eden and Other Poems, 278 Roscoe, William, 584; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Butterfly’s Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast,” 584 Rosenburg, James N., 576 Rosenow, Edward Carl, 396 Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, 370, 505 Rowan University. See Glassboro Normal School Rowell, Wilbur, 219, 221; letter to, 221 Rugg, Harold, 113, 140, 204, 206, 290, 322, 431, 443–444, 453, 454, 460, 484, 496, 497, 523, 529, 531, 534, 594–595, 697; letters to, 113, 140, 204, 290, 322, 431, 443, 454, 496, 523, 594, 697; work mentioned / quoted, Vermont Prose, A Miscellany, 206 Ruggles, Charles Sprague “Carl,” xxii, 108, 277

Rural Amer­i­ca, 237 Rush, Charles Everett, 540, 605 Russell, Diarmuid, 692, 699; letter to, 692 Russell, George (AE), 699, 510, 665, 692; works mentioned / quoted, The Building Up of a Rural Civilization, 664; Enchantment and Other Poems, 664; The Rural Community: An Address to the American Commission of Agricultural Inquiry, 664 Russell Loines Poetry Award (National Institute of Arts and Letters, founded 1931), 220, 224–225 Ryan, Agnes Edna, 339 Sacco, Nicola, 511 Salm-­Hoogstraeten, Ludwig von, 119 Sam Houston State Teachers College (now Sam Houston State University), 319 Samuel, Maurice, 95; work mentioned /  quoted, King Mob: A Study of the Present­Day Mind, 95 San Antonio, TX, 9, 694, 696, 701 Sanborn, Pitts, 365; work mentioned /  quoted, Greek Night, 365 Sandburg, Carl, 166, 177, 186, 348, 384, 576; works mentioned / quoted, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, 384; The American Songbag, 348; Mary Lincoln: Wife and ­Widow, 384 Sanders Theater (Harvard), 684 San Francisco, CA, 61, 85, 141, 145, 267, 268, 281, 299, 331, 380, 421–422, 511, 556, 633, 659, 694 Santa Cruz Sentinel, The, 379 Santo Domingo Pueblo, 569–570 Sarah Lawrence College (Yonkers, NY), 367 Sarett, Lew, 61–62, 101, 176–177, 491; letters to, 61, 176 Sarett, Margaret Husted, 176 Sarris, Charles N., 366; work mentioned /  quoted, My Ninety-­Five Year Journey, 366 Sarris, James N., 366 Satterfield, Jay, 378, 523 Saturday Review of Lit­e r­a­ture, The, 57, 116, 122, 263, 378, 418, 504, 514, 539, 575, 580, 637, 643, 653, 681–682, 688 Saxe, John Godfrey, 207; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Rhyme of the Rail,” 207 Sayler, Oliver M., 116; works mentioned /  quoted, Our American Theatre; The Rus­sian Theatre, 116

812  Index

Schmitt, Howard George, 416, 537, 571, 585; letters to, 416, 537, 571 Schneider, Isidore, 462 Schneider, Jon, 444; work mentioned /  quoted, “Robert Frost and VQR,” 444 Scholtz, David (governor of Florida, 1933–1937), 15, 447 Schreiber, Georges, 602; letter to, 602 Scott, Carlyle MacRoberts, 85 Scott, Evelyn, 410–411; work mentioned /  quoted, The Wave, 410 Scott, Winfield T., 576; work mentioned /  quoted, Exiles and Fabrications, 576 Scribner’s Magazine, 184, 223, 337, 368, 374, 415, 417, 643 Seabury, Samuel, 272 Searle, C. W., Mrs., 363 Second American Caravan, The, 58, 82 Second Five-­Year Plan (USSR, 1933–1937), 669 Sedgwick, Ellery, 624–625, 627; letters to, 624, 637 Sellers, Thomas, 664 Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley, 83, 252, 281; works mentioned / quoted, “Robert Frost: A Good Greek out of New E ­ ngland,” 83; Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence, 252, 281 Seven Arts, The, 55–56, 610, 622 Severus, Alexander (Roman emperor), 447 Shafer, Robert, 168; works mentioned /  quoted, Paul Elmer More and American Criticism, 168 Shakespeare, William, 108, 118, 210, 148, 203, 210, 224, 245, 251, 340, 363, 400, 427, 438, 441, 449, 565, 676; works mentioned / quoted, As You Like It, 108, 203, 441, 449, 565; Cymbeline, 676; Hamlet, 251, 438; Henry IV, Part 2, 148; Julius Caesar, 363, 676; Macbeth, 677; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 118, 203, 427; Richard III, 245; “Sonnet 29,” 210 Shaw, Esther, 13, 213 Shaw, George Bernard, 21, 691 Shaw, Walter H., 13, 213, 282 Sheehy, Donald G., 300, 374 Sheffield, Alfred, 434 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 95, 340, 505; work mentioned / quoted, Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem with Notes, 95 Sherman, William Tecumseh (Union Army general), 364, 412 Sherwood, John T., 272

Shippey, Henry Lee, 333, 457 Shirley, John, 250; work mentioned / quoted, “The Glories of Our Blood and State,” 250 Short, Charles, 554; work mentioned /  quoted, Harper’s Latin Dictionary, 554 Should Ladies Behave? (screen adaptation of Paul Osborn’s play The Vinegar Tree), 168 Shurcliff, Joan Hopkinson. See Hopkinson, Joan Siege of Madrid (Spain, 1936–1939), 695 Sills, Edith Lansing Koon, 149 Sills, Kenneth C. M., 149, 162; letters to, 149, 162 Silver, Ernest Leroy, 668; letter to, 668 Simmons College, 117, 596 Simons, Walter, 131; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Evolution of International Public Law in Eu­rope since Grotius,”131 Simonson, Lee, 426, 429 Simpson Chair of Lit­er­a­t ure (Amherst College), 614 Sinclair, Gregg Manners, 267, 271; letters to, 267, 271 Sinclair, Upton, 423 Sinn Féin (Irish republican po­liti­cal party), 202 Sirius, 461 Slusser, Jean Paul, 125; letter to, 125 Smalls, Lillian, 433 Smart, Christopher, 202; work mentioned /  quoted, “Song to David,” 202 Smart Set, The, 127, 229 Smith, Floyd, 380 Smith, Henry de Forest, 132 Smithberger, Andrew, 101; work mentioned /  quoted, On Poetry, 101 Smitter, Wessel, 508; works mentioned /  quoted, F. O. B. Detroit, 508 Snow, Charles Wilbert “Bill,” 30, 172, 325, 439, 629, 654; letters to, 172, 325, 429, 629; works mentioned / quoted, “The Ballad of Jonathan Coe,” 326; Codline’s Child: The Autobiography of Wilbert Snow, 172, 325, 326, 439, 629; Down East, 326; “Etching,” 325; “The Evangelist,” 325; “The Flood,” 326; ”Heritage,” 326; “The Hungry Shark,” 325; “Indian Pioneer,” 325; “January Thaw,” 325; “Tides,”439; “Wave ­Music,” 325

Index  813

Snow, Sydney, 572; letter to, 572 Social Security Act (US Congress, 1935), 605 Society of United Irishmen (Dublin, founded 1791), 202 Southern Methodist University, 320 Southern Quarterly, The, 643 South Shaftsbury, VT. See Frost, Robert Lee, f­ amily of: residences of South Shaftsbury Parent Teachers Association, 233 Spargo, John, 144, 146 Sparling, Louise, 396 Spencer, Herbert, 673, 679 Spencer, Shirley, 656; letter to, 656 Spewack, Bella, 168; work mentioned /  quoted, Should Ladies Behave, 168 Spewack, Samuel, 168; work mentioned /  quoted, Should Ladies Behave, 168 Speyer, Leonora, 452; work mentioned /  quoted, American Poets: An Anthology of Con­temporary Verse, 452 Sproul, Robert Gordon, 491 Stalin, Joseph, 207, 375, 450, 669, 686, 700 Standard Oil Com­pany, 119 Stanford, Leland, 295 St. Anthony H ­ otel (San Antonio, TX), 701 State Teachers College of New Jersey (­earlier Glassboro Normal School and now Rowan University), 525. See also Glassboro Normal School Stein, Gertrude, 436, 438–439, 487–488; works mentioned / quoted, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 439; Four Saints in Three Acts, 488 Stephen F. Austin Teachers College, 319, 324 Stephens, James, 510 Stephens, John Lloyd, 79, 110; work mentioned / quoted, Incidents of Travel in Central Amer­i­ca, Chiapas, and Yucatán, 79, 110 Steri, Fritz, Jr., 213 Sterne, Laurence, 691; work mentioned /  quoted, A Sentimental Journey, 691 Stevens, Henry Baily, 339 Stevens, Thaddeus, 146 Stevens, Wallace, 128, 204, 353, 465, 553–554, 650; letter to, 553; work mentioned / quoted, Ideas of Order, 353; Letters of Wallace Stevens, 554; Owl’s Clover, 128, 353

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 490 St. Hilaire, Annette, 700; letter to, 700 St. Lawrence College (Canton, NY), 41, 339, 343, 530, 536 St. Mary’s College (Notre Dame, IN), 307, 336 Stolo, Caius Licinius (Roman tribune), 447 Stone, Harlan F. (US Supreme Court Justice), 606 Stone, Julius Frederick, 15, 450, 465, 475, 478; work mentioned / quoted, Compulsory Spending: A Means to Economic Prosperity Through the Forced Circulation of Money, 475, 478 Stone, Walter King, 237; letter to, 237 Stone House (South Shaftsbury, VT). See Frost, Robert Lee, ­topical index: residences of Store, Frank, 102 Suckow, Ruth, 127, 229, 356, 453, 547, 677; letters to, 229, 453; works mentioned /  quoted, ­Children and Older ­People, 229; The Folks, 453; “The Valentine Box,” 230 ­Sullivan, Mark, 365 Supreme Court of the United States, 330, 364, 477, 486, 488, 493, 515, 597, 606–607, 618 Sutherland, George (United States Supreme Court Justice), 546 Sutton, William A., 427, 532, 590; work mentioned / quoted, Newdick’s Season of Frost: An Interrupted Biography (as editor and compiler), 427, 532, 590 Swartz, Roberta Teale, 524 Swift, Jonathan, work mentioned / quoted, Gulliver’s Travels, 246; Robinson Crusoe, 666, 693 Syracuse University, 142, 205, 209, 358 Tabb, John Bannister, 235 Taft, William Howard (US president, 1909–1913), 146 Taggard, Genevieve, 122, 152, 367, 463, 685; letter to, 367; works mentioned / quoted, The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson, 122, 152; Not Mine to Finish: Poems, 463; Remembering Vaughan in New E­ ngland, 463 Tarkington, Newton Booth, 623 Tate, Allen, 32 Taylor, Edward C., 233 Taylor, Welford, 36, 59, 75, 561, 610

814  Index

Taylor and Hawkins General Store (Bennington, VT), 233 Teasdale, Sara, 226 Tennyson, Alfred, 34, 94, 207, 240, 253, 564, 565; works mentioned / quoted, “The Lotus-­E aters,”253; “The Passing of Arthur” (in Idylls of the King), 240 Tennyson, Hallam, 565; work mentioned /  quoted, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son, 565 Tenochtitlan (pre-Columbian capital city, Aztec), 78, 110, 265, 696 Theodore Fisher Intimate Series for Adults (Denver, CO), 60 Thomas, Edward, 50, 97, 231, 310, 378, 385, 458, 485, 496, 498, 590; work mentioned /  quoted, Poems, 378 Thomas, Helen Noble, 458 Thomas, Norman, 605 Thompson, Francis, 139, 336; work mentioned / quoted, “The Hound of Heaven,” 139 Thompson, Joseph “Toggles” Osgood, 283–284 Thompson, Lawrance Roger (later, biographer and editor of RF), xxi, 11, 32, 52, 77, 219, 326, 329, 365, 417, 542, 639; letter to, 639; work mentioned / quoted, Robert Frost: A Chronological Survey, 639; Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 329, 417; Selected Letters of Robert Frost, xxi, 52, 77, 326, 329, 365 Thompson, Lulu B., 284 Thompson, Virgil, 436; work mentioned /  quoted, Four Saints in Three Acts, 436, 488 Thoreau, Henry David, 28, 583 Thornton, Richard, 25, 30, 35, 49, 51, 52, 54, 82, 85, 128, 140, 141, 145, 155, 157, 164, 170, 178, 186, 187, 195, 203, 219, 220, 223, 225, 229, 311, 312, 328, 331–332, 443, 458, 460, 514, 531, 537, 548, 642, 643, 652–653, 668, 672, 701–702; letters to, 30, 51, 52, 85, 145, 155, 164, 170, 186, 195, 203, 219, 223, 225, 229, 331, 359, 458, 514, 531, 642, 643, 668, 701 Thorpe, Clarence, 505; work mentioned /  quoted, The Mind of John Keats, 505 Tietjens, Eunice, Strong Hammond, 114, 516 Tietjens, Paul, 516 Tilley, Morris, 167, 188, 556; letters to, 167, 556 Tilton, Fred L., 380

Times Literary Supplement, The, 418 Tinker, Edward Larocque, 183, 237 Tinker, Frances McKee, 183, 220, 237 Torrence, Ridgely, 577; work mentioned / quoted, Selected Letters of Edwin Arlington Robinson, 577 Townsend, Francis Everett, 605 Townsend Plan (propogated by Francis Everett Townsend), 605 Trapp, Jacob Hendrick, 335–336; letter to, 335 Traveler’s Aid Society (philanthropic organization for immigrants), 363 Trea­sury Relief Art Proj­ect (US, 1935), 502 Treaty of Lima (treaty to end Chaco War, 1929), 606 Treaty of Versailles (Paris, 1919), 363 Trotsky, Leon, 685, 700 Tucker, Sophie, 657 Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard, 338, 351, 352; works mentioned / quoted, Poems, 338; The Sonnets of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, 338 Tugwell, Rexford Guy (New Deal economist), 477, 511, 605, 607, 663 Tunney, James Joseph “Gene,” 232; work mentioned / quoted, A Man Must Fight, 232 Tupper, Frederick, 145 Turgenev, Ivan, 326; work mentioned /  quoted, ­Fathers and Sons, 326 Turnbull, Arthur, 564–565; work mentioned /  quoted, Life and Writings of Tennyson, 564 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 143 Tuten, Nancy, 155; work mentioned /  quoted, The Robert Frost Encyclopedia, 155 Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens), 577, 579, 655, 686; works mentioned / quoted, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, 577”; “Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec’d,” 655 Twinem, James “Leo” Leonard, 206 Tyler, Royall, 206; work mentioned /  quoted, The Algerine Captive, 206 Tyrtaeus (Spartan poet), 53 Ulmann, Doris, 91, 124, 140, 141 United States v. Butler (US Supreme Court case, decided January 1936), 606, 618 University of California, 166, 491, 502 University of Chicago, 31 University of Cincinnati, 167, 168

Index  815

University of Iowa, 208, 561, 588, 591, 670 University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, 591 University of Miami, 277, 468, 471, 510, 518, 525, 553, 598, 635 University of Michigan, 71, 72, 125, 159, 282, 302, 354, 385, 410, 505, 587, 614 University of Minnesota, 85, 190, 670 University of New Hampshire, 89, 90, 112, 232, 259, 269, 339, 417, 464, 525 University of New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station, 339 University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension Ser­v ice, 269 University of Northern Iowa, 692 University of Pennsylvania, 51, 511, 512, 566, 651 University of Strasburg, 283 University of V ­ irginia, 31, 32, 623 Untermeyer, Esther Antin, 32, 323, 345, 372, 430, 492, 503, 542, 567, 618, 654, 672, 677, 691 Untermeyer, Jean Starr, 32, 33, 135, 239, 258, 274, 323, 345 Untermeyer, Joseph, 96, 201, 263, 323, 345, 654, 691 Untermeyer, Laurence “Larry,” 201, 323, 345, 654, 691 Untermeyer, Louis, viii, xi, 4, 5, 6, 19, 20, 22, 23, 28, 31, 32–33, 37, 57–58, 60, 82, 83, 84, 93, 95–97, 11, 116, 122–124, 135, 142–143, 179, 184–185, 190–193, 196–197, 201, 208, 209–211, 222, 226–227, 239, 241, 242, 246, 251, 253–254, 256, 258, 263, 272, 273–274, 275, 277–280, 290, 298–300, 302, 323–325, 335, 345, 348, 370–372, 377, 378, 384–385, 386, 387, 395–396, 397, 405, 410, 426, 429–430, 437, 438, 440, 463, 471, 473, 481, 483, 492–493, 503–504, 506, 507, 510, 515, 541–543, 548, 549, 553, 555, 562, 567, 571, 575–576, 580, 602, 603–604, 609, 615, 618–619, 620, 625–626, 627, 632, 642, 649, 651, 653, 655, 660, 663, 671–672, 676, 679–680, 682, 684, 689, 691; letters to, 32, 57, 93, 95, 116, 122, 135, 142, 184, 190, 196, 201, 209, 226, 239, 246, 253, 258, 263, 272, 273, 275, 278, 298, 323, 335, 348, 345, 370, 378, 386, 395, 397, 426, 429, 440, 471, 492, 503, 506, 541, 549, 555, 567, 575, 580, 603, 615, 618, 620, 625, 627, 649, 653, 660, 663, 671, 676, 684, 689; works mentioned / quoted, American Poetry from the Beginning to

Whitman, 135, 210, 349; “As Earth Was,” 211; Blue Rhine, Black Forest: A Hand-­and Day-­Book, 122; The Book of Living Verse: En­glish and American Poetry from the Thirteenth C ­ entury to the Pre­sent Day (1932), 185, 190, 226; The Book of Modern Letters (1933), 386; “The Burning Bush,” 494; “Caliban,” 493; “Country Eve­n ing,” 494; “Critique of Pure Rhyme,” 493; “Digging,” 494; “Disenchantment,” 494; “Dog at Night,” 494; The Donkey of God (1932), 280, 503, 542; “The Eternal Masculine,” 494; “Feeble Whistler,” 493; “Feuerzauber,” 494; Food and Drink (1932), 241, 493; “The Glory of the Commonplace,” 371; “He Goads Himself,” 493; “Jewish Lullaby,” 492; “Last Words Before Winter,” 241, 242, 494; “The Leaf,” 493; “The Long Feud,” 494; “Lost Jerusalem,” 494; Modern American Poetry (1917), 83; Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology, Fifth Revised Edition (1936), 542, 680; Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology, Sixth Edition (1942), 542, 651, 653; Modern American Poetry: An Introduction (1919), 609; Modern American, Modern British Poetry (1930), 227; “Mozart,” 494; “The New Adam,” 494; The New Adam (1920), 494; “New Era in American Poetry” (lecture), 241; The New Era in American Poetry (1919), 84; The New Spirit in American Poetry (1916), 84; “Portrait of a Supreme Court Judge,” 493; “Prayer on the Birth of a Child,” 493; “Portrait of a Friend,” 493; “Portrait of a Jewelry Drummer,” 493; “Positano,” 494; “Prayer,” 493; Rainbow in the Sky (1935), 632; “Return to Birds,” 492; “Rich Return,” 494; “Roast Leviathan,” 494; “Robert Frost: Revisionist,” 653; “Scarcely Spring,” 494; Selected Poems and Parodies (1935), 463, 473, 492, 626; “Song Tournament,” 493; “Steel Mill,” 493; “Strikers,” 493; “Ten Years Old,” 494; ­T hese Times (1917), 493; “To the Child of a Revolutionist,” 493; “To a Self-­Confessed Phi­los­o­pher,” 493; “To an Asking Girl,” 241; “Transfigured Swan,” 494; “Two Jewish Folk Songs,” 492; “­Water, ­Water, Wine-­flower,” 493; “What Americans Read and Why” (lecture), 371; “The Woodpecker,” 494

816  Index

Updike, Daniel Berkeley, 31, 105 Ur (ancient Sumerian city-­state), 85 US Forest Ser­v ice, 316 USS Missouri, 269 USS Queen Mary, 684 Valentine, Alan, 534; letter to, 534 Valera, Éamon de (Irish politician), 510 Vanamee, Grace Davis, 224, 602; letter to, 602 Vanderbilt University, 32, 386 Van Devanter, Willis, 546 Van Dore, Edrie MacFarland, 247, 248, 316, 317, 399, 366, 441, 442, 658, 673; letter to, 247; work mentioned / quoted, “A Spring Poem by Edrie MacFarland and Wade Van Dore,” 247 Van Dore, Peter, 366, 441, 442, 658 Van Dore, Wade, xxiii, 27, 47, 48, 49, 57, 58, 59, 65, 73, 106, 159–160, 198, 200, 233, 247, 248, 268, 316, 322, 399, 441, 657, 673; letters to, 27, 47, 48, 49, 65, 73, 106, 159, 198, 200, 233, 247, 268, 316, 399, 441, 657, 673; works mentioned / quoted, “A Spring Poem by Edrie MacFarland and Wade Van Dore,” 247; Far Lake, 27, 29, 48, 107, 159, 318; The Life of the Hired Man, 27, 59, 160, 161, 199, 233, 247, 248, 317, 399, 400, 442, 658, 673, 675; “Looking from February,” 318; “Peter Goes to Work,” 442, 657, 673 Van Doren, Carl, 83; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Soil of the Puritans: Robert Frost, Quintessence and Subsoil,” 83 Van Doren, Mark, 588; letter to, 588; work mentioned / quoted, A Winter Diary and Other Poems, 588 Van Ek, Jacob, 195 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 511 Vaughan, Henry, 367; work mentioned /  quoted, “The World,” 367 Vendler, Helen, 104 Verlain, Paul, 699 Vermont Country Store, 127 Vildrac, Charles, 110; work mentioned /  quoted, A Book of Love, 110 Villiers, Alan, 229; work mentioned /  quoted, Sea-­Dogs of ­Today, 229 Villon, François, 699 Vincent, Henry, 356

­Virginia Quarterly Review, The, 166, 361, 444, 623, 628, 636, 643, 688 ­Virginia Revolutionary Convention (American colonies, 1774–1776), 414 Volstead Act (US Congress, 1919), 282 Von Moschzisker, Robert, 224, 225 Waddell, Helen, 360, 548; work mentioned /  quoted, Peter Abelard, 360, 548 Walker, James, 272 Wallace, Henry A. (US Secretary of Agriculture, 1933–1940), 479, 511, 516, 692, 699 Wallace, William, 112 Wallaces’ Farmer, 692 Wall Street Stock Market Crash (US, 1929), xi, 75, 138, 448 Walpole, Hugh, 270; letter to, 270 Walter, Dorothy Charlotte, 552; letter to, 552 Walton, Edna Lou, 207 Ward, Alfred Charles, 303; work mentioned /  quoted, American Lit­er­a­ture: 1880–1930, 303 Ward, Susan Hayes, 613 Ward, William Hayes, 43, 613 War Industries Board (US, 1917), 363 Warne, Colston, 477 Warner, Sylvia Townsend, 378, 385 War of 1812 (1812–1815), 514 Warren, Robert Penn, 32 Watson, Thomas A., 106, 112 Waugh, Frank Albert, 90, 124, 140 Waye, Oliver, 576; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Forgotten Man,” 576 Waymouth, Olivia, 351 Webster, Daniel, 384 Weeks, Edward A., 97 Weimar Republic (1918–1933), 132 Welles, Orson, 524 Wells, James R., 44, 46, 54, 63, 69, 70, 102; letters to, 46, 54, 63, 69, 70, 102 Wells College (Aurora, NY), 36, 125, 238, 259, 274, 304, 311, 358, 414, 562, 567, 610, 693 Wendell, Barrett, 83–84, 134 Wernham, James I., 396 Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT), 29–30, 42, 172, 173, 211, 326, 439, 559, 630, 639, 644, 654 Western Progressive, The, 380 Weygandt, Cornelius, 407, 408, 431, 432, 460, 511–512, 651–652; letters to, 407, 432, 511, 651; works mentioned / quoted, The

Index  817

Heart of New Hampshire: T ­ hings Held Dear by Folks of the Old Stocks, 407; New Hampshire Neighbors: Country Folks and ­T hings in the White Hills, 407; November Rowen: A Late Harvest from the Hills of New Hampshire, 407; The White Hills: Mountain New Hampshire: Winnipesaukee to Washington, 407–409 Wheelock, John Hall, 181, 301, 315, 337, 367, 368, 374, 377, 462; letters to, 301, 367, 374, 377 Whicher, George Frisbie (colleague of RF at Amherst College), 88, 97, 188, 307, 311, 390, 395, 397, 542, 599; letters to, 188, 390, 395, 397, 599; work mentioned / quoted, This Was a Poet: A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson, 189 Whicher, George Meason, 189, 542 Whicher, Harriet Fox, 311 Whicher, John Fox, 483 Whicher, Stephen Emerson, 483 Whimsies, The (student literary society at the University of Michigan), 339 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 136 Widener Library (Harvard), 50, 133 Wigglesworth, Michael, 136 Wijdeveld, H. T., 52 Wilbur, Elinor. See Francis, Elinor ­u nder Frost, Robert Lee, ­family of Wilde, Irene, 330, 331; letter to, 330; work mentioned / quoted, Driftwood Fires, 331; Fire Against the Sky, 331 Wilhelm II (German emperor, 1888–1918), 375 William Jewell College (Liberty, MO), 558 Williams, Margaret H. (wife of Edward Morgan Lewis), 90, 260, 261 Williams, Ralph Mehlin, 343, 364; letter to, 343 Williams, William Carlos, 301 William Vaughn Moody Foundation, 31 Willson, Hilda, 181 Wilson, Edmund, 255 Wilson, Elena, 255; work mentioned /  quoted, Edmund Wilson: Letters on Lit­e r­a­ture and Politics (editor) Wilson, James Southall, 623 Wilson, Woodrow (US president, 1913–1921), 146, 363 Winchell, Walter, 695 Windust, Bretaigne, 356 Winslow, Ann (pseudonym for Verna Elizabeth Grubb). See Grubbs, Verna Elizabeth

Winter Institute of Lit­er­a­t ure (University of Miami), 471, 472, 510, 513, 518, 598 Wolfe, Thomas, 520, 546, 551 Wolfers, Arnold Oscar, 534, 644; letter to, 644 Wolff, ­Sister M. Madaleva, 336; work mentioned / quoted, Chaucer’s Nuns, and Other Essays, 336 ­Woman’s Journal, 339 ­Women’s Christian Temperance Union (US, founded 1873), 687 Wood, Roland A., 55, 64; letter to, 119 Woodbridge, Homer Edwards, 30, 630 Woodstock Skirunners Club (Woodstock, VT), 213, 233, 280 Woodward, Robert B., 422, 633 Woodward’s Gardens (San Francisco, CA, 1866–1891), 422, 491, 625, 626, 627, 632, 633, 641 Wooley, Mary Emma, 483 Woolf, V ­ irginia, 182 Woolley, Leonard, 85; work mentioned /  quoted, Ur of the Chaldees, 85 Words­worth, William, 239, 301, 367, 505, 519, 672; works mentioned / quoted, “The Affliction of Margaret,” 239; “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” 367 Work, H. C., 694; work mentioned /  quoted, “The Buckskin Bag of Gold,” 694 Works Pro­g ress Administration (US, 1935–1943), 408, 474, 502 World’s Fair (Chicago, IL, 1933–1934), 10, 346 World War I (1914–1918), 350, 448, 449, 608 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 52 Wright, Rita Forenbach. See Foehrenbach, Rita Wurdemann, Audrey, 651; work mentioned /  quoted, Bright Ambush, 651 Wyeth, N. C., 190 Wylie, Elinor (Mrs. William Rose Benét), 67, 264, 279; work mentioned / quoted, Collected Poems, 264 Wyman, Jane, 168 Yaddo (artist’s colony, Saratoga Springs, NY), 356 Yale Review, The, 1, 2, 126, 211, 224, 263, 373, 419, 486, 498, 533, 563, 581, 582, 636, 643, 688

818  Index

Yale University, 61, 103, 116, 180, 187, 240, 374, 381, 478, 479, 491, 525, 534, 535, 540, 545, 559, 584, 587, 630, 640, 644, 656, 689, 690 Yale Younger Poets Prize, 196, 417, 440 Ybor, Vincente Martinez (American cigar manufacturer), 448 Yeats, William Butler, 182, 202, 258, 300, 434, 437, 510, 653, 664; works mentioned /  quoted, “The Song of the Happy Shepherd,” 258; “­T hose Dancing Days are Gone,” 437; “Two Kings,” 434; The Winding Stair, 437; “A Word from Mr. Yeats,” 434

Young, Charles Lowell, 289, 296, 667; letters to, 289, 296 Young Demo­c ratic Clubs of Amer­i­c a (founded 1932), 380 Youth’s Companion, The, 452, 538, 593 Zabel, Morton Dauwen, 490; letter to, 490 Zehren, Leroy, 609 Zethus (character in Greek my­t hol­ogy), 34 Zubizarreta, John, 155; work mentioned /  quoted, The Robert Frost Encyclopedia, 155