To Charles Willis Thompson
The New York Times.
November 1, 1914.
Dear Charlie—
Can you lend me $1.00? I wish to go to New Brunswick, N. J. Help me to gratify this strange whim!
J. Kilmer.
To Shaemas O’Sheel
Mahwah, N. J.
My dear Shaemas—
Aline and I are heartily glad of the splendid fortune that has come to you and Blanche. I am sure you will enjoy Washington—it’s a very lovely city as I remember it—I was there for two days at the age of four.
With love from Mayor Gaynor, Cale Young Rice, Alfred Noyes, Madison Cawein, B. Russell Hertz and Harriet Monroe,
I am,
Yours,
Joyce.
The New York Times.
February 12, 1916.
Dear Shaemas:
I have been thinking a good deal about you for the last day or so, and might therefore have known that a message from you was on its way. The Minaret is a fine adventure, and God knows Washington needs adventures more than any other city in the United States. There is some beautiful writing and some brave and direct thinking in the copies you sent me, and of course I enclose my subscription for a year. I’d support any enterprise of yours, so long as it wasn’t a scheme to make the Kaiser Mayor of Mahwah, New Jersey. I also enclose a poem, with my blessing.
But why do you let your young collaborator—I suppose he is responsible—be so damned vindictive! No poet has any right in the world to knock the work of another poet who is honest. Vachel Lindsey is, in my opinion, a sincere artist, whose work sometimes—as in “The Chinese Nightingale”—glows with genius. That is of course only my own opinion—but it is not merely a matter of opinion, but a matter of absolute fact, that he is an honest man, consistently serving his ideal, earnestly endeavouring to express the beauty that is in him. And abuse is not what he should receive from his brother poet.
However, go ahead, and good luck to you. But lay off the hammer! Poets have enough to suffer without being castigated by other poets. Keep out of jail, and give my love to Blanche and Patrick Wilhelm.
Yours as always,
Joyce Kilmer.
To Louis Bevier, Jr.
New York Times.
November 28, 1916.
My dear Louis:
I am sending you by this mail a copy of my book “The Circus and Other Essays,” which our friend Laurence has just published. I had intended to dedicate it to your father and yourself, but I suddenly discovered that I had never dedicated a book to my own father. So I have dedicated this one to him, and will dedicate to your father and yourself one of the two books coming out in the Spring—either the poems or the interviews.
At any time you wish, I will buy you a drink.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.
To Sara Teasdale Filsinger
New York Times.
February, 1916.
Dear Sara:
I don’t know that POETRY could use a Valentine poem, but if it could do so, it ought by all means to use it long after Valentine’s day, for timeliness, the greatest curse of our much cursed magazines, is certainly not one of POETRY’S vices. And how do you like it? It’s the first free verse I’ve written since free verse made a special label for itself—it’s a highly artificial poem, and yet passionately sincere.
I’ve quit being a critic, thank God! I resigned from the Bookman and Book News Monthly, and I no longer review poetry for the Times. I still run the Digest’s “Current Poetry” department, but that’s not criticism, it’s just an exhibition. I merely hold up for admiration the best poetry I can find, saying nothing about inferior stuff. And I can do that without losing my self-respect. But criticism of poetry is no task for an enthusiastic poet, however little he may deserve the title.
Aline is still in hospital, impatient for the new baby. She likes to receive letters.
Yours, Joyce.
To Katherine Brégy
The New York Times,
Times Square.
November 6, 1914.
My dear Miss Brégy:
It is delightful to find on my desk this morning your letter telling me of the honour in store for me. Of course I am reading with enjoyment the “Opera” in America; how valuable a friend Catholic poetry, that is poetry, has in you!
A verse-maker, I suppose, is an unskillful critic of his own work. But in reply to your question, I will say that I am greatly pleased when people like “Trees,” “Stars” and “Pennies,” when they see that “Folly” is a religious poem, when they praise the stanza fourth from the end of “Delicatessen,” and understand stanza three of section four of “The Fourth Shepherd.”
Before what Miss Guiney calls my “great leap into Liberty” I published a book of verses called “Summer of Love”; but I do not think it would interest you; it is, for the most part, a celebration of common themes. If you have not a copy of “Trees and Other Poems” please tell me and I will send you one. I will send also “Summer of Love” if you wish it, for some of the poems in it, those inspired by genuine love, are not things of which to be ashamed, and you, understanding, would not be offended by the others.
Your sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.
May 18th, 1917.
Dear Katherine:
Naturally I’m expecting to go to the Wars, being of appropriate age and sex. I was going to Plattsburg to try for a commission, but for many reasons—one of them being that I didn’t want to be an officer in charge of conscripts (the democratic bluff again! says Katherine)—I gave up the idea. So a month ago I enlisted as a private in the Seventh Regiment, National Guard, New York. We were reviewed by your friend Joffre—in 1824 we were reviewed by Lafayette. We go to training camp in a week or so—where I don’t know—and then we are mustered into Federal service. We may be sent to France, we may be sent to Russia, or it may be Mexico or Cuba—nobody knows.
Please come to New York and let me take you to luncheon. And give Mrs. Coates my love.
Joyce.
To Amelia Josephine Burr
Headquarters Company, 165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
My dear Josephine:
That is a magnificent piece of knitting—I am delighted to own it. Thanks ever so much! And I will thank you ever more for your book of poetry, which you promise to send me. I enjoyed your recent poems in the Outlook—you are one of the few American poets who should be allowed to write war songs. Your letter came up to the specifications of the order—it was highly entertaining and therefore genuinely appreciated. I sympathise with you in your trials in addressing camp audiences, though I don’t know as you deserve any sympathy. I think you have a pretty good time. And I know the audiences do.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of you coming over here as a nurse or something. Nice country, nice war. I wouldn’t be back in the States having meatless, wheatless, boozeless, smokeless days for anything. I am a Sergeant now. I spend my time working at Regimental Headquarters while we are in reserve, and in training and when we are in action I am an Observer in the Regimental Intelligence Section—very amusing work. I had a fine time during the recent activities of our regiment, activities of which you probably read in the papers. In the dug-out I wrote a poem I think you’ll like—“Rouge Bouquet” is its name. I expect to remain a Sergeant (unless I’m reduced), for to get a commission I’d have to leave the Regiment and go to a training school for several months and then I would be sent to some regiment other than this. And I’d rather be a sergeant in the 69th than a lieutenant in any other outfit.
Give my love to anybody you meet who would appreciate that commodity. And write often to
Yours,
Joyce.
To Howard W. Cook
Headquarters Company, 165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
June 28, 1918.
Dear Mr. Cook:
Your letter of May 31 has just arrived. I am afraid that such information as I can send you will reach you too late to be of use, but anyway I’ll do what I can.
You ask first for biographical details. All this material you will find in Who’s Who in America, except the information that I am the father of four children, named respectively Kenton Sinclair, Deborah Clanton, Michael Barry and Christopher.
Second, you ask for comments on myself and something about my earlier efforts in poetry. That’s harder to answer. How can I make comments on myself? I’ll pass up that part of the questionnaire, if I may, but I’m willing to write about my earlier efforts in poetry. They were utterly worthless, that is, all of them which preceded a poem called “Pennies” which you will find in my book “Trees and Other Poems.” I want all my poems written before that to be forgotten—they were only the exercises of an amateur, imitations, useful only as technical training. If what I nowadays write is considered poetry, then I became a poet in November, 1913.
Now, as to your other questions. I’ll take them in order. 1. What has contemporary poetry already accomplished? Answer—All that poetry can be expected to do is to give pleasure of a noble sort to its readers, leading them to the contemplation of that Beauty which neither words nor sculptures nor pigments can do more than faintly reflect, and to express the mental and spiritual tendencies of the people of the lands and times in which it is written. I have very little chance to read contemporary poetry out here, but I hope it is reflecting the virtues which are blossoming on the blood-soaked soil of this land—courage, and self-abnegation, and love, and faith—this last not faith in some abstract goodness, but faith in God and His Son and the Holy Ghost, and in the Church which God Himself founded and still rules. France has turned to her ancient Faith with more passionate devotion than she has shown for centuries. I believe that America is learning the same lesson from the war, and is cleansing herself of cynicism and pessimism and materialism and the lust for novelty which has hampered our national development. I hope that our poets already see this tendency and rejoice in it—if they do not they are unworthy of their craft.
2. What is American poetry’s influence to-day? Answer—This question I am ill-prepared to answer, but I would venture to surmise that the extravagances and decadence of the so-called “renascence of poetry” during the last five years—a renascence distinguished by the celebration of the queer and the nasty instead of the beautiful—have made the poet seem as silly a figure to the contemporary American as he seemed to the Englishman of the eighteen-nineties, when the “æsthetic movement” was at its foolish height.
3. What of American poetry’s future? Answer—To predict anything of American poetry’s future requires a knowledge of America’s future, and I am not a student of political economy. But this much I will tell you—when we soldiers get back to our homes and have the leisure to read poetry, we won’t read the works of Amy Lowell and Edgar Lee Masters. We’ll read poetry, if there is any for us to read, and I hope there will be. I believe there will.
Sincerely yours,
Joyce Kilmer.
To Thomas Walsh
Headquarters Co., 165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
April.
Dear Tom:
Where will you be, I wonder, when this letter reaches you? Perhaps in the Brooklyn sanctuary (this term is here used in a purely literary sense) reading reviews of your newest book of verse—pleasant reading indeed, judging by those I have seen. Perhaps you will be in your Sabine farm at Lake Hopatkong—if that is the way that strange word is spelled. Perhaps the postman will give it to you just as you parade away from your home, and you will take it with you to the palatial new Columbia University Club, and glance at it over your turtle soup and sherry and steak and mushrooms and corn and sweet potatoes and chaveis—but I’m breaking my heart describing this meal of yours. Soon the mess call will sound and I’ll take my aluminum meat dish and canteen cup, and wade through the mud to the mess-line. And I’ll get a plate of stew and some milkless tea or coffee, and I’ll stand in the mud or sit down in the mud and consume it.
Nevertheless, it’s a nice war and I’m enjoying most of it. Our time at the front—of which the newspapers have by this time informed you—was a wonderful experience. I had the privilege of spending a week as observer in the Regimental Intelligence Section—lively and interesting work. I’d love to see you at an observation post, Tom, you’d get as thin as I now am.
Send me your book, will you, Tom? I enjoy poetry more now than ever before—I suppose it is because I get it so seldom. When I’m writing verse and reviewing verse and talking about verse and to verse-makers all the time, I have not the enthusiasm for it I have over here, where most of the poetry is unwritten and undiscussed.
Nevertheless, it’s a nice country. I’d like to buy you a litre of red wine—for a franc and a half—with a dash of syrup in it. Also I could introduce you to the results of the labours of a few accomplished cooks, some of them soldiers, some of them French women.
Fr. O’Donnell quotes you to the effect that Louis is now in this land, or on his way hither. I hope to see him. He ought to be sent to an Officer’s Training School soon—I think that will happen. He is the sort of fellow who ought to have a commission. I might possibly be allowed to go to an Officer’s Training School, but I wouldn’t do so, because if I did so I’d be sent—whether or not I got a commission—to some Regiment other than this. And I take no pleasure in the thought of soldiering in a regiment of strangers. I like the crowd in this outfit very much and would rather be a sergeant—as I am—here than be a lieutenant in any other Regiment.
If you are ever minded to send me papers, please let them be Times Book Reviews or other sheets of a decidedly literary flavour. Occasional copies of The Bookman would be welcome. I like a bit of concentrated literature now and then.
Remember me, please, to your sisters and brothers and to any of my other friends whom you may meet. And believe me
Always yours sincerely,
Joyce.
To Robert Cortes Holliday
Headquarters Co., 165th Inf.,
A. E. F., France.
May 7, 1918.
Dear Bob:
I have not the time now to write you the letter I’d like to write—chiefly about your characteristic and delightful Tarkington book, which I greatly enjoyed and expect to enjoy during many re-readings. What I write now is merely a note in answer to your letter of April 12. This you will please communicate to Mr. Doran and regard as final.
The only way I can give you any material for a book is as I am doing now—sending you every six months or so some verses or an introspective essay which you can syndicate and eventually turn into a book. I sent you a prose sketch “Holy Ireland” (which represents the best prose writing I can do nowadays), another prose sketch, and (by way of Aline) a poem, “Rouge Bouquet,” which you ought to be able to do a good deal with. It is probably the best verse I have written. I never planned doing war-correspondence work—if I had I’d have come over as a correspondent instead of as a soldier. Many circumstances, including the censorship, the rules governing a soldier’s conduct and other things, prevent me from trying to make a consecutive narrative now, even if I so desired. I am a poet at present trying to be a soldier. The experience may naturally be expected to result in a book—of some kind, at some time. I am not going to try to “cover” the war or my Regiment’s share in it. But the title “Here and There With the Fighting Sixty-ninth” may probably be taken as well as any other to cover what, if I survive, I shall probably, in the course of time, write. My days of hack writing are over, for a time at least.
To tell the truth, I am not at all interested in writing nowadays, except in so far as writing is the expression of something beautiful. And I see daily and nightly the expression of beauty in action instead of words, and I find it more satisfactory. I am a Sergeant in the Regimental Intelligence Section—the most fascinating work possible—more thrills in it than in any other branch except possibly aviation. And it’s more varied than aviation. Wonderful life! But I don’t know what I’ll be able to do in civilian life—unless I become a fireman!
Please give my love to Stella and believe me always your affectionate and grateful friend
Joyce.
To Reverend Edward F. Garesché, S.J.
Hq. Co., 165th Inf.,
A. E. F.
Jan. 29, 1918.
My dear Father:
I have to thank you for three letters, for two poems, for the proof sheets of your book and for your beautiful Christmas gift, which I treasure and have with me always. The poem “To Rose in Heaven” is so exquisite that I cannot write or speak all my deep appreciation of it. But I know that it is not my personal feeling alone that makes me consider it one of the noblest elegiac poems in our language. I wish that I were still in the book-reviewing game—I’d like to express my opinion of your new book. My column in the Literary Digest is now conducted by Mrs. Edwin Markham. However, I occasionally send in some clippings and comment, and I’ll try to get some of your book quoted. I congratulate you on your book; it is an achievement for which you must be deeply grateful; of course none of us rhymers can really be proud if we’re true to the traditions of our craft. You see, I’m not in “The Proud Poet” mood now. I’m neither proud nor a poet—I’ve written only one poem since I sailed, a little thing called “Militis Meditatio.”
We all are well and happy—I do not think that any one of us can honestly say that he has not enjoyed this Winter. The trials and hardships of the life are so novel as to be interesting. But I imagine that one enjoys very little his tenth year of soldiering. It is especially pleasant to be in France and the part of France that we are in. I am surprised, I acknowledge, by the passionate Catholicity of the people. Even “Holy Ireland” can scarcely be more Catholic than rural France.
Tell my friends my address and urge them to write to me. Pray for me, and believe me always
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.
Headquarters Company, 165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
May 6, 1918.
My dear Father:
It is very comfortable to dwell in so genuinely Catholic a land as this; to be reminded in every room of every house, and at every cross-road of the Faith. I do not know when you last visited France, and perhaps you are already familiar with conditions here, but I do not cease to be surprised and delighted to see the number of people receiving Holy Communion not only on Sunday, but every day. And you will find soldiers of this Regiment in church whenever and wherever there is a priest to say Mass. I think that most of us are better Catholics now than when we were at home—certainly we should be.
My own work is growing steadily more interesting. For a while I worked, as you know, in the Adjutant’s Office, having special charge of recording and reporting statistics. But this I gave up recently to enter (as a Sergeant) the Regimental Intelligence Section. This is much better for me, since it is open-air work of an intensely interesting kind, and I think that I am now more useful to the Regiment. My newspaper training, you see, has made me a competent observer, and that is what I am nowadays—an observer of the enemy’s activities. I have already some strange stories to tell, but for telling them I must await a time when censorship rules are abrogated. I have written very little—two prose sketches and two poems since I left the States—but I have a rich store of memories. Not that what I write matters—I have discovered, since some unforgettable experiences, that writing is not the tremendously important thing I once considered it. You will find me less a bookman when you next see me, and more, I hope, a man.
Pray for me, my dear Father, that I may love God more and that I may be unceasingly conscious of Him—that is the greatest desire I have.
Your affectionate friend,
Joyce Kilmer.
To Reverend James J. Daly, S.J.
Cragmere, Mahwah, New Jersey.
Oct. 7, 1912.
My dear Father Daly:
I hope that I interpret your letter of September 20th correctly in thinking that it means that you will permit me to write to you occasionally, and that you will write me in return. Of course I know that your work occupies much of your time, and that you have pleasanter uses for your leisure than writing letters to some one you have not seen. So do not feel obliged by courtesy to answer me at length.
I am glad that you like some of my work. My present occupation is that of assistant editor of The Churchman, an Anglican weekly paper. It is a Church Newspaper, with some literary features. Did Grey tell you that I was not of your Communion? I hope that this knowledge will not shut me out of your regard.
Your remarks, in your letter, on the fact that many of our most famous writers to-day are anti-Christian, are certainly justified. Still, do you not think that a reaction is coming? Already we have Chesterton, and Belloc, and Bazin, and Miss Guiney, and Fr. Vincent McNabb, and a number of other brilliant writers who not as theologians but purely as literary artists express a fine and wholesome faith. People are beginning to tire of cheap eroticism and “realism” and similar absurdities.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.
Dec. 14, 1912.
My dear Father Daly:
The cards are rather laconic, but they are supposed to convey the information, as you thought, that my family is the larger by one. I have already a little boy, who will be four next March. His name is Kenton Sinclair. I married when I was twenty-one, immediately after my graduation from Columbia. Then—since you have twice asked for biographical information—I taught school in Morristown for a year, came to New York, went to work on the Standard Dictionary, and after three years took my present position on The Churchman.
Do you know the Rev. Michael Earls? I recently received a copy of his book of verse. He is a member of your Society—I think he is at Georgetown. The poems about children are very delicate and sympathetic—one called, I believe, “An Autumn Rose-bush” is admirable.
I see Grey frequently—I hope to take breakfast with him to-morrow. A number of us have the custom of breakfasting on Sunday mornings on the excellent Irish bacon to be procured at Healy’s, on 91st St. When you return to New York, you must join us. Do you know Thomas Walsh? He is with us occasionally—you should know him, and his translations from the Spanish, and his verse. I hope you are coming East soon.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.
Cragmere, Mahwah, N. J.
July 24, 1913.
Dear Father Daly:
I do not like to burden my friends with my troubles, but you have certain opportunities that I lack, so I am asking you the greatest favour. Please pray for the healing of my little daughter Rose. She is dangerously ill with infantile paralysis. This is a disease that has appeared among mankind only recently, and physicians are uncertain how to treat it. She is staying in New York with her mother to be near the doctor and I am staying here nights to take care of my other child. Of course the maid is here during the day so the house is kept up. But Rose cannot move her legs or arms—She was so active and happy only last week—she cannot even cry—her voice is just a little whimper—the danger is of its reaching her lungs and killing her. I cannot write any more. You know how I feel. Pray for her.
Joyce Kilmer.
Aug. 30, 1913.
Dear Father Daly:
There is not, it seems, any danger of the death of Rose now. And she has regained her strength. Her arms and legs have been left paralysed but her hands and feet move. It will take a year’s time for us to know whether or not this paralysis is permanent.
I am deeply grateful to you for your compliance with my request. I know that your prayers were of value in keeping her alive. Apologies for the brusqueness of my letter asking your aid, are, I think, not necessary—you were the only man to whom I could appeal for the special help needed, and I was in bitter grief and anxiety.
My wife asks me to express her sincere gratitude to you.
Now that the crisis is past, we have a strange tranquillity.
And we have acquired a humility that is, I think, good for us. Well, these are things not readily expressed—accept our heart-felt thanks.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.
New York.
Oct. 6, 1913.
Dear Father Daly:
This is to express our gratitude for your prayers. They have helped us in our trial—they are helping—and I know that in part to your efforts Rose owes her life and we our peace of mind. For fifteen or sixteen years she will, the doctors say, remain paralysed, unable to move her arms or legs. But her mind is active and we will keep her happy. I think that there are compensations, spiritual and mental, for the loss of physical power.
My wife and I are studying Catholic doctrine and we hope to be received this Autumn.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.
New York.
Dec. 5, 1913.
Dear Father Daly:
You may be amused by the circular which I enclose. You know, we have been having a plague of white-slave plays in New York this season—“The Lure,” “The Fight” and the rest; and now they are giving white-slave moving pictures—“The Traffic in Souls” they are called. I think that “The Drama as a Factor in Sex Education” is ridiculous—and I’m going to say so. Most of the other people who are to speak at the Academy of Medicine are very serious-minded settlement workers, ready to save the world by means of eugenics and inexpensive divorce. So I don’t think I’ll make myself very popular. But I hope to have a lot of fun.
My wife and I are very comfortable now that we are Catholics. I think we rather disappointed Father Cronyn (the Paulist who received us) by not showing any emotion during the ceremony. But our chief sensation is simply comfort—we feel that we’re where we belong, and it’s a very pleasant feeling.
I wonder if the enclosed verses will shock you. I am very much bored by the praise of suicide so common in “æsthetic” circles. Many of my friends like to think themselves “decadents” and they are most enthusiastic over the work of such third-rate versifiers as the late Richard Middleton, who killed himself at the age of thirty. It seems to me that suicide is the most absurd of all sins. There is, undoubtedly, pleasure in many sorts of evil; many crimes are reprehensible but not ridiculous. But suicide is a stupid sort of sin—the criminal gets no fun at all out of it. I have tried to put this idea into verse—and you should have heard the criticisms when the poem was read aloud at a meeting of the Poetry Society!
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.
New York, Dec. 22, 1913.
Dear Father Daly:
I am grateful to you for your sound criticism of “To a Young Poet Who Killed Himself.” It had previously been criticised by “pagans” who thought that suicide was romantic and charming. You gave me just what I needed—an analysis of its “philosophy.” Of course I’ll leave it out of my new book of verse, or else, as you suggest, make it the utterance of someone not myself.
You will be glad to hear of our Christmas present from Soeur Therese. Rose can lift her left forearm. I know that you have been getting her aid for us. Please tell us how to show our gratitude to her and to you.
A picture of Rose and her mother is going to you for Christmas. I hope that it may be a mirthful feast for you. We can honestly say that we have never before been so happy.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.
Mahwah, N. J.
Jan. 9, 1914.
Dear Father Daly:
At last I have leisure to thank you for your Christmas gifts. I did not know that such beautiful cards were made. How is it that in Prairie du Chien—a place of which the name suggests Indians and tomahawks and Deadwood stage-coaches—you can procure better cards than I can get in New York? The medals are highly valued—the workmanship on them is admirable—they will be worn properly as soon as I can afford to buy some silver chains—and that will be next Tuesday.
Of course you understand my conversion. I am beginning to understand it. I believed in the Catholic position, the Catholic view of ethics and æsthetics, for a long time. But I wanted something not intellectual, some conviction not mental—in fact I wanted Faith.
Just off Broadway, on the way from the Hudson Tube Station to the Times Building, there is a Church, called the Church of the Holy Innocents. Since it is in the heart of the Tenderloin, this name is strangely appropriate—for there surely is need of youth and innocence. Well, every morning for months I stopped on my way to the office and prayed in this Church for faith. When faith did come, it came, I think, by way of my little paralysed daughter. Her lifeless hands led me; I think her tiny still feet know beautiful paths. You understand this and it gives me a selfish pleasure to write it down.
I was very glad of your criticism of “The Young Poet Who Killed Himself.” I need some stricter discipline, I think, and it’s hard to get it. I enjoy Father Cullem’s direction very much, he is a fine old Irishman with no nonsense about him. But I need to be called a fool, I need to have some of the conceit and sophistication knocked out of me. I suppose you think this is “enthusiasm”—that much heralded danger of converts. Perhaps it is, but I don’t think so. I know I’m glad I live two miles from the Church, because it’s excellent for a lazy person like myself to be made to exert himself for religion. And I wish I had a stern mediæval confessor—the sort of person one reads about in anti-Catholic books—who would inflict real penances. The saying of Hail Marys and Our Fathers is no penance, it’s a delight.
Forgive this egotistical letter! I am praying that the New Year may bring you much happiness.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.
Mahwah, N. J.
July 14, 1914.
Dear Father Daly:
If you read my “Some Mischief Still” I hope the strong language of my janitor didn’t shock you. I’ve written to my long-suffering confessor to ask whether or not I can let characters in my plays and stories “cuss” when they feel so disposed. I fear that I introduced a new sin to him—vicarious profanity.
You asked me several questions recently. Let me see if I can answer them. In the first place, you asked me why I addressed the Holy Name Society of Suffern, New York. The answer to that is, why not? I go to Sacred Heart Church in Suffern. My parish church is in Ramsey, New Jersey, but we Mahwah Catholics (those of us who go to Church) are allowed to go to Suffern, which is much nearer. Ramsey has only a small Mission Church, to which comes the priest from Hohokus.
Furthermore, I tolerate no levity on the name Suffern! especially from a dweller in Prairie du Chien (named after a ridiculous vermin) who has been visiting a place called Pilsen (named after a beer) and conducting a retreat in a place called Peoria (obviously a corruption of Peruna, a patent medicine of ill repute).
You ask me if I know what a retreat is. I do, because long before I was a Catholic, before I was a wild-eyed Socialistic revolutionary, I was a ritualistic Anglican, and I went twice up to Holy Cross Monastery at West Park. This is an Anglican institution, which observes a modification of the Benedictine rule. And there I learned about imitation retreats, anyway. I must go to a regular retreat sometime.
I don’t expect to take any vacation this Summer, but I’m going to spend several Saturdays fishing. I hope you do not scorn that wholesome and unliterary diversion. Most writers of my acquaintance consider it lamentably base.
I hope you were satisfied with your efforts at Peoria. I did what you asked. By the way, when you pray for the Kilmers, please include a new Kilmer, who is coming, we hope, in October. He—or she—will have Barry among his or her names, after the family from whom my wife is descended.
Yours affectionately,
Joyce Kilmer.
Mahwah, New Jersey.
Nov., 1914.
Dear Father Daly:
We are now back in Mahwah, thank God! It’s the chief thing I thank Him for, of all the splendid things He’s given me—this home of mine. My children are all well, and my wife. Prayer has given Rose the almost normal use of one arm and the power to sit up. And prayer will do more.
Yours affectionately,
Joyce.
This is a postscript, to say that the smug young person portrayed in the Citizen resembles me only “as the dew resembles the rain.” I am fat and gross, and I have “elastic and rebellious hair,” like M. Baudelaire’s cat. Someday I’ll have a decent picture and courageously send it to you. In my young youth, I was slightly decorative. But now I drink beer instead of writing about absinthe. And therefore—
June 15, 1915.
Dear Father James:
Your suggestion as to a lecture tour is characteristically kind. I am already on the books of a lecture manager named Feakins, who manages Chesterton, Barry Pain and other people. I’ll probably lecture before Catholic organizations as well as secular ones, because I need the money, but I don’t want to for reasons you will, I know, understand. In the first place, I don’t want in any way to make money out of my religion, to seem to be a “professional Catholic.” In the second place, I have delight chiefly in talking veiled Catholicism to non-Catholics, in humbly endeavouring to be an Apostle to Bohemia. I have no real message to Catholics, I have Catholicism’s message to modern pagans. So I want to lecture chiefly to Pagans.
The Prairie du Chien correspondent of the Police Gazette has cabled that you are to read a paper at the St. Paul Educational Conference. Congratulations! And I’ll try to help you to the extent of my power—but you don’t need help as I do.
Yours affectionately,
Joyce.
Good Samaritan Hospital,
Suffern, N. Y.
August 2, 1916.
Dear Father James:
I am sorry that you received exaggerated reports of my accident. All that happened to me was the fracture of a couple of ribs, and I have been very comfortable in a delightful hospital. My secretary comes out several times a week, so I am keeping up with my work.
Remember me, if you please, to Mother Mercedes and Father O’Reilly.
Yours affectionately,
Joyce.
Mahesh, N. J.
Aug. 10, 1916.
Dear Father James:
This is to say that I am rapidly recovering my health, and hope to be in my office in a week. I had a fine time in the hospital, a comfortable place run by particularly amiable Sisters of Charity. It may interest you to know that I had received the Blessed Sacrament half an hour before the train struck me, and that to this fact I attribute my escape from death—since at the place where I was struck several men have been killed, being thrown forward and under the wheels, instead of, (as I was), to one side.
Affectionately,
Joyce.
(Aug 8, 1917).
Monday.
Dear Father James:
Your letter was opened and read by one Private Kilmer, a hardened military cuss, unused to literary activities. This is the first literary labor he has essayed for a month, aside from studying Moss’s Manual of Military Training and the art of shooting craps.
We’re still in New York—at the Armory from 9 A. M. to 4.30 P. M., but we usually get home at night. Young Louis is in the same company as myself. We probably will go to Spartansberg, North Carolina, about Aug. 17, but we may be here till October, or we may go to France to-morrow. Nobody knows. I find that there are many Catholics in the Seventh. It’s amusing that our training camp is in North Carolina—nothing to drink and no Jesuits! Bishop is a Benedictine mitred abbott—it’s in Belmont Abbey.
Before mobilisation I finished editing “Dreams and Images,” an anthology of Catholic verse written since (but including) Patmore. Terrible rush job, but pretty good book. Do you mind having it dedicated to you? Wanted to include some of your stuff, but didn’t have time to get any. Have dedicated it to you, but can change it, if you wish. Don’t hesitate to say so! Can’t hurt my feelings! Hard military character, seriously considering acquisition of habit of chewing tobacco.
This is an absurd note, but I find myself very stupid at writing. Perhaps after drill becomes easier, I’ll have more of a mind left at night. Fr. Dwight honoured me by asking me for a sonnet on St. Ignatius for America, but I fell down on the assignment. I could not write even a limerick on St. Ignatius in my present mental state! But it’s a comfortable life physically—mentally too, I guess, and as for spiritually, why, pray for yours affectionately,
Joyce.
(Sept., 1917).
Thursday.
Dear Fr. James:
I never expected to write to you on lined paper or Y. M. C. A. paper—uses of adversity! The Y. M. C. A. gives us poor “dough boys” the only place we have to sit down and read and write—so far the Knights of Columbus have not been in evidence in this highly papistical camp. I am, as you know, a member of the 165th Infantry, U. S., formerly the 69th New York. I have recently been transferred from Co. H. to Headquarters Co., and exchanged my 8 hours a day of violent physical exercise (most deadening to the brain, a useful anodyne for me, coming as it did after my grief) for exacting but interesting statistical work. I am called Senior Regimental Statistician, but in spite of all these syllables still rank as a private. My work is under the direction of the Regimental Chaplain, Fr. Francis Patrick Duffy. The people I like best here are the wild Irish—boys of 18 or 20, who left Ireland a few years ago, some of them to escape threatened conscription, and travelled about the country in gangs, generally working on the railroads. They have delightful songs that have never been written down, but sung in vagabonds’ camps and country jails. I have got some of the songs down and hope to get more—“The Boston Burglar”—“Sitting in My Cell All Alone”—they are fine, a veritable Irish-American folk-lore. Before I was transferred to Headquarters Co., I slept in a tent with a number of these entertaining youths, and enjoyed it tremendously. We sang every night from 9 to 9.30. Now I am in more sophisticated but less amusing company—ambitious youths, young office men, less simple and genial than my other friends.
I get to New York for part of Saturday and Sunday. Aline is staying with her mother in New York. It is good that I am not with the 7th Regiment in Spartanburg—as it is I can telephone to Aline every night. I will send you a picture of Rose soon. Her death was a piercing blow, but beautiful. It happened at the best time. Aline was there and I and our parish priest. Rose was happy but did not want to get well. “I’ll drink it in another house,” she said, when the nurse coaxed her to take some broth. Perhaps she meant the new house in Larchmont which we move to in October. And perhaps not. There was a Mission in our parish-church, just a couple of blocks from the house, and while Rose died the voices of the Sisters singing “O Salutaris Hostia” could be heard in the room. I thank you for your letter, beautifully interpretative. Certainly Rose makes Heaven dearer to us.
Yours affectionately,
Joyce.
Headquarters Company, 165th U. S. Infantry,
Camp Albert E. Mills, New York.
October 28, 1917.
Dear Father James:
I hope you don’t mind being typewritten to by an unskillful typist. I have learned all I know of this art since I became a soldier. It is ridiculous for a newspaperman to learn typewriting in the army, but I never had the time to learn it before—I found it better to have an expert typist for a secretary and dictate my stuff to him. I used to turn out four or five thousand words an hour when Watts was working for me. I haven’t much speed as yet but I ought to be pretty good at it when I get back. There are two things I always wanted to learn—how to typewrite and how to serve Mass. I’m learning the one and I’m going to get Fr. Duffy to let me pinch-hit for his orderly at Mass some mornings. So I’ll be an accomplished cuss when I come back from the Wars—I’ll know how to typewrite and to serve Mass and to sing the Boston Burglar.
Numerous philanthropic citizens are sending cigarettes to soldiers, and pipe-tobacco (in which last bounty I often share). But some enlightened person should start a nation-wide campaign for sending cigars to Senior Regimental Statistical Representatives. I am Senior Statistical Representative of the 165th U. S. Infantry, I am!
Yours affectionately,
Joyce.
Headquarters Company,
165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
April 5, 1918.
Dear Father James:
When I next visit Campion, I will teach you (in addition to “The Boston Burglar”) an admirable song called “Down in the Heart of the Gas-House District.” I sing it beautifully. Its climax is, “If you would meet good fellows face to face, Just hang around Jimmy Cunningham’s place, For it’s down in the heart of the Gas-house district, In Old New York.”
I received two most welcome letters from you recently. One had to do with the case of ——. It contains excellent advice, and I am carrying it in my pocket, intending to clip your name and the name of the college from it and to give it to him. I am deeply grateful, my dear Father, for your great and characteristic kindness in this matter. I think we’ll yet see him practicing and teaching philosophy. You see, in his veins is a dangerous mixture of bloods—like my own—German and Irish, perhaps that accounts for his troubles. Gaelic impetuosity and Teutonic romanticism—no, sentimentality—no, self-pity—no, what is it that makes Germans German? I mean Sturm und Drang, Sorrows of Werther and that sort of thing. Well, it doesn’t matter what it’s called. But all people with any German blood have a bit of it. And highly diluted it’s rather nice. Which reminds me that Father Duffy says I’m half German and half human.
I wrote a poem called “Rouge Bouquet.” I’ll ask Aline to send you a copy—it’s long—and you remind her. It will tell you of an incident which will indicate to you that handling statistics in Regimental Headquarters isn’t the dry task you imagine it. The statistics aren’t dry—they’re wet—and red. Also, I’m attached to the Regimental Intelligence Section, which is exciting. I had a very thrilling week not long ago—I’m not allowed to write about it yet. I’ll tell you about it some day. By the way, it was at that time—Feb. 26, that you wrote to me. I wasn’t in the office then, I was out working as an observer—finest job in the army! By the way, I’m a Sergeant now. I’ll never be anything higher. To get a commission I’d have to go away for three months to a school, and then—whether or not I was made an officer—I’d be sent to some outfit other than this. And I don’t want to leave this crowd. I’d rather be a Sergeant in the 69th than a Lieutenant in any other regiment in the world. Get Aline to send you a copy of “Holy Ireland”—it will explain, somewhat.
Please give my love to anybody who will accept it. Remember me with special fervour to Sister Eugene and Sister Stanislaus. I enjoy reading the Campion, and am glad to see the newspaper has become a reality.
You speak of French anti-clericals in your letter. They all must be in Paris. I haven’t found any in my rather extensive wanderings around France. As a common soldier, I have the privilege of intimacy with the French peasants—and I find them edifyingly good Catholics. Pray for me, dear Father James.
Affectionately,
Joyce.
April 8, 1918.
My dear Father James:
I am sending you with this letter some verses that will, I think, interest you. They are my first attempt at versification in a dug-out—a dug-out not far from the event of which the verses tell. I have sent a copy to Aline, but since the trans-Atlantic mails are so uncertain, will you be so kind as to write to her asking if she has received it?
Somewhere within a radius of five miles from where I write now slumbers (for it’s long after bedtime for soldiers who keep regular hours) one Drury Sheehan. Every day he meets someone from my outfit and asks after me and says he’s coming to see me. And some days ago I—riding on a truck—passed and was passed several times by his outfit. And I paged him, so to speak, unavailingly. Also numerous letters from the States tell me that young Father Charles O’Donnell is somewhere near. We’ll have a great reunion one of these days. I wish you’d be in it! But one of these nights I’ll jump off a freight at Prairie du Chien, break a pane of glass in a basement window and go to sleep in the Bishop’s room. The Brother will be aghast next morning at discovering a ragged mustachioed shaven headed soldier in such a place—I’ll try to explain to him that I’m an adopted alumnus of Campion—I’ll probably use French in my excitement—and he will promptly shoot me. Then I’ll spend two months in the Campion Infirmary, which is, I am told, a very nice place.
I am having a delightful time, but it won’t break my heart for the war to end. I feel much comforted and strengthened by many prayers—those of my wife and little children, those of many dear friends, mostly priests and Sisters. I value highly my share in your Masses. Always pray hard, my dear Father, for
Your affectionate friend,
Joyce.
May 15, 1918.
Dear Father James:
I thought you’d like to see how I looked after six months of soldiering. I’m having a lot of fun (I’m a Sergeant in the Regimental Intelligence Section now, you remember) but I haven’t been to Mass for three weeks! It so happened that I was away from churches (except the ruins thereof) and from Fr. Duffy. So you’ll have to be praying doubly hard for your affectionate friend,
Joyce.
To Mrs. Kilburn Kilmer
To My Mother, on Her Birthday, 1914,
With a Book of Poems
Gentlest of critics, does your memory hold
(I know it does) a record of the days
When I, a schoolboy, earned your generous praise
For halting verse and stories crudely told?
Over those boyish scrawls the years have rolled,
They might not bear the world’s unfriendly gaze,
But still your smile shines down familiar ways,
Touches my words and turns their dross to gold.
Dearer to-day than in that happy time
Comes your high praise to make me proud and strong.
In my poor notes you hear Love’s splendid chime
So unto you does this, my work, belong.
Take, then, this little book of fragile rhyme;
Your heart will change it to authentic song.
To A. K. K.
August the Fourth
Nineteen Hundred and Eleven
Now the English larks are singing,
And the English meadows flinging
Scarlet flags of blazing poppies to the fragrant summer air,
And from every tower and steeple
All the wondering English people
Hear a chime of fairy music, though no bell-ringers are there.
What has caused this jubilation?
Days ago the coronation
Went with jewelled pomp and splendour to the country of the past.
Is the land some Saint’s Day hailing?
Or has some tall ship gone sailing
Through the hostile fleet to triumph, with the Union at her mast?
Nay, it is no warlike glory,
Nor pale saint, of ancient story,
That has made the island blossom into beauty rare and new.
We in this sea-severed nation,
Share with England our elation,
As we keep this feast, your birthday, and are glad with love for you!
“White Horse” of Kilburn
To A. K. K. on Her Birthday, 1912
Last night the beat of hoofs was heard upon the shaded street,
It broke the silent brooding of the peaceful countryside;
I looked and saw a horse that stamped its terrible white feet,
A giant horse, as white as flame, long maned and starry-eyed.
“Who is this monstrous visitant?” said I, “Bucephalus?
Or Rosinante, looking for another crazy Knight?
Or (not to be conceited) may it not be Pegasus?
This mighty horse, this glowing horse, so beautiful and white.”
He proudly tossed his noble head, and neighed, “Across the foam
My stable lies, with clouds for roof, and mountainous green walls;
I come to take your message unto Her, who near my home
Will hold her Birthday feast before another evening falls.”
“Go back, O Horse,” I said, “and seek your pleasant dwelling-place,
And here’s a gift for you to take, I trust it to your care;
Support this heavy load of love until you see her face,
Then humbly kneel before her feet and lay my homage there.”
Having English blood in her veins, Mrs. Kilburn Kilmer considers herself something of a Yorkshire woman. The famous White Horse she has climbed many times.
Valentine Written for My Mother, 1913
I will send my heart to England, and will make it learn to act
Like a vacant minded vicar, or a curate full of tea;
I will make my heart talk Cambridgese, or Yorkshirish, in fact;
I will make it be as British as a human heart can be;
I will dress my heart in roses, roses red and ever gay;
I will steep my heart in scarletest of wine;
I will teach my heart to bow, and smile, and sing, and dance, and play—
Just to make you take it for a Valentine.
Birthday Poem—1913
England! England! put your veil of mist away,
Dress in green, with poppies in your hair.
England! England! let your birds sing “Holiday,”
Let your lanes be jubilant and fair.
She is made of singing, therefore hail her with a song;
Strew her path with loveliness, and crown her with delight.
Golden hours of joy and beauty should to her belong.
Everything that lives to-day must own her gentle might.
England! England! now the jocund feast is here.
Now is time for frolicking and mirth.
England! England! now another turning year,
Brings the day that celebrates her birth.
Valentine to My Mother, 1914
The English meadows call her, and the streets of London Town,
And the pleasant little villages under the Yorkshire Hills.
She can see the roads, like ribbons white, that stretch across the down,
And the great slow turning sails of sleepy mills.
She longs for stately mansions, in whose eaves the pigeons coo,
And she longs for yellow corn fields, where the scarlet poppies shine,
She loves the folk of England, and, of course, they love her too,
But she lingers in America to be my Valentine.
Set to music by Mrs. Kilburn Kilmer and published in London in the Spring of 1914.
To An Adventurous Infant
On Her Birthday, August, 1915
“England,” she said, “is surely England yet;
Therefore it is the place where I should be.
In spite of war, I know that tea is tea,
A cigarette is still a cigarette.
“Why should I worry over Wilhelm’s threat?”
And thereupon she said goodbye to me,
And gaily sailed across the dangerous sea,
To where, among the Zeppelins, tea was set.
What if the sea foam mountainously high
With waves that had in Hell their fiery birth?
What if black peril hover in the sky,
And bursting shell wound deep the trembling earth?
All evil things must harmlessly pass by
Her who doth bear the Talisman of Mirth.
Birthday Poem, 1915
To My Mother Singing
Out of the golden valleys of old years,
You have recalled so many a lovely thing.
Forgotten splendours glimmer when you sing,
With their long vanished light of mirth and tears.
Gay lovers flout their love’s delicious fears.
The proud swords clash for Charles, the rightful King,
A woman weeps, and turns her “Silver Ring.”
The “Men of Harlech” charge with level spears.
Yet, I crowned with my crown of vanity,
Have been more happy when you sang and played
The songs wherein your art had succoured me.
As starry note on starry note was laid,
Then my chained rhymes, by your designs set free,
Flew Heavenward on the radiant wings you made.
To My Mother, October, 1915
There fell a flood of devastating flame
On half the world, and all its joy was dead.
The sky was black, the troubled sea was red,
And from all mouths a lamentation came.
But you, in calm and hurricane the same,
Went with gay lips, brave heart and unbowed head.
What was the charm, from which all danger fled?
What did you say, what cabalistic name?
It was my love that sent its quickening breath
On all the waves that bore your ship along.
My love held out, against the flying death,
That clove the sea, a shield than steel more strong,
Bringing you back, where no war harrieth,
Stars in your eyes, and in your heart a song.
August Fourth, Nineteen Sixteen
The Berkshire Hills are gay
With a gladder tint to-day,
And Mount Graylock rears his mighty head in pride.
For the lady that they knew
Long ago, to them is true,
And has come within their shadow to reside.
And across the troubled sea,
Yorkshire hill and Cambridge lea,
Send their love to you by every wind that blows.
And a greater love than these
Hurries Northward on the breeze
From the little hills they call the Ramapos.
Valentine for My Mother, 1917
If some day, as you idly turn the pages,
Whereon my verses are,
You find a flower where angry winter rages,
On the black earth a star;
If in dead words you come on something living,
Some fair and vibrant line—
It is the message that my heart is giving,
It is your Valentine.
March, 1918.
Dear Mother:
The sweater arrived, and it certainly is a magnificent specimen of knitting, and the wristlets are wonderfully purled—whatever purling may be. Probably I shall need both sweater and wristlets for many weeks, for although it is Spring now, it often is cold.
Under separate cover I am sending you my warrant as Sergeant. I thought you might like to have it framed to hang in the Old-Fashioned Room. The “drafted” in the corner means that the regiment was drafted into Federal Service; that is, made a part of the United States Army instead of a part of the New York State National Guard.
I suppose that you have read in the newspapers of the Regiment’s recent activities. Now we are taking it easy in a very pleasant little town. I hope we may stay here at least a month, as it is hard to work when the Regiment is moving about the country. I had a week’s respite from office work some time ago and spent it doing what is called “observation” work for the Regimental Intelligence Section. It was most interesting.
Did Aline tell you of Kenton’s success in school? It seems that he won a gold medal for being the best pupil in the school. I was delighted to learn it. So nearly as I can remember, I was not an especially keen student when I was his age, although I became one later.
There is practically no chance of my rising any higher in the Regiment than Sergeant, and I am perfectly content. To become an officer I would have to go to school away from the Regiment for several months, then if I failed to pass my examinations and win a commission, I would be sent to some other Regiment than this, and if I succeeded I would be sent as an officer, not back to the 69th, but to some other outfit, and I want very much to stay with the Regiment. I have many good friends here, and I would feel lost in any other military organization.
I am looking forward to receiving the photographs you have had taken. By this time you must have received the one I sent you. I hope you like it.
Your letters are very gratefully received, and I am looking forward specially to receiving the cake and the candy you sent me. Everything else you have written of in your letters has arrived in good condition, and a day or two ago I got five big jars of excellent tobacco from the Dickens Fellowship... a most intelligent gift.
Affectionately yours,
Joyce.
May 15th, 1918.
Dear Mother:
As to your “War Mother” poem, I hesitate to tell you how much I like it, because I am afraid you may think I am trying to flatter you. It certainly is the best poem you ever wrote—beautiful, original and well sustained. I have seen no recent war verse I like so well. There is no question but what you will sell it to some good magazine. I certainly congratulate you, and congratulate the magazine fortunate enough to print your poem.
I am very glad to hear of the deserved success your songs made at Lakewood, and in general of your triumphs at the Dickens Fellowship, and elsewhere. I wish I could have witnessed them, but I will be seeing more of the same sort next winter. That is what we like to hear about over here—triumphs and celebrations, and in general the pleasant and prosperous course of civilian life.
Of course we soldiers are undergoing hardships and privations—we expect to, but we don’t spend our time advertising them. But in the States when you find they must do without quite as much wheat, or meat, or something of the sort, instead of just going without and keeping their mouths shut, they advertise their remarkable abstention by having “wheatless days” and “meatless days,” and all that sort of hysterical rubbish, and fill the papers with the news, thereby disgusting us soldiers and undoubtedly comforting the enemy. I think I will start a “strawberryless, ice creamless, sodaless day” for the army. It would be as sensible as what the people at home have been doing. If you (I don’t mean you personally, of course) have to eat hardtack instead of butter-raised biscuits, why eat the hardtack and shut up about it, but don’t be such an ass as to have a “butter-raised biscuitless Monday,” and don’t shut down on theatres and amusements; and don’t deprive people of their honest drink. Merely making stay-at-homes dismal does not help the soldiers a bit. England’s early “Business as Usual” scheme was more practicable, and this is something of a concession for me to make. There is quite a sermon on economics for you! Kindly read it to my father, whom it will edify and instruct. A recent letter from him shows that he utterly misunderstands my point of view on this subject, the result of lamentably careless reading by him of one of my letters in which I contrasted the gaiety and common-sense of the French, through years of starvation and ruin, with the wail which a little self-denial brought from the States.
Send your picture soon.
Affectionately yours,
Joyce.
May 27th, 1918.
Dear Mother,
I presume by this time you have received the humorous photographs of myself I sent you.
I am delighted to know of the Kilburn Hall project. By all means buy the Hall; it will be an excellent investment. Property is now very cheap in England, and prices will rise as soon as the war is over. I hope to be able to spend my summers in France after the war, and I have the place in mind—only about a day’s run from London. I am absolutely in love with France, its people, its villages, its mountains, everything about it. America would do well to copy its attitude in the war. It has suffered tremendous hardships with dignity and humour and kept its sanity and faith. America, to judge by the papers, grows hysterical over a little self-denial; can’t do without an extra lump of sugar in its tea without a band and speeches and “sugarless” Sundays. It is funny and rather pathetic to us soldiers. But I honestly think, although it may seem conceited to say so, that when we soldiers get back from the war we will do the spiritual and intellectual life of the States a lot of good. France has taught us lessons of infinite value.
I am having an absolutely Heavenly time since I joined the Intelligence Section. I wouldn’t change places with any soldier of any rank in any outfit. This suits me better than any job I ever had in civil life.
The cake is not yet here. I will soak it in wine all right, don’t worry about that. Speaking of wine, enclosed find some flowers given me by a very nice wine-shop girl in a city near here. “Madelon” is a perfectly respectable song, but “Madelon” is not a gun or anything else of the sort; it is the name of the girl who serves wine to the soldiers, as the song clearly states.
Yours affectionately,
Joyce.
June 14th, 1918.
Dear Mother:
There is a chance that I will be able to get to England on a seven days’ leave in a few weeks. In that case I shall probably spend most of my time in London, with a possible visit to Oxfordshire, where my friend Mrs. Denis Eden lives. I wish there was something I could do for you to expedite the purchase of Kilburn Hall, but since the Archbishop of Yorkshire is in the States you should, yourself, be able to make a deal with him. English real estate is a wise investment these days; it will go up fifty per cent in a year’s time. I wish I could afford to buy some property in this country. I certainly would like to live here. If the States go “dry” I honestly think I will move my family over here. I can write for American papers without living in America. Then if you move to Kilburn Hall I will be only a day’s trip away from you, and you will love rural France almost as much as you love rural England.
Learn to sing “Madelon.”
Affectionately yours,
Joyce.
June 28, 1918.
Dear Mother:
I received three letters from you yesterday and to-day, the first I have had from you in a long time. Your letters always come in bunches like that. And this morning I received two admirable boxes of Mirror Candy, in perfect condition. I certainly was delighted to get it, as it is a long time since I have had any candy. My gratitude is so great that I even will refer to it as “Sweets.”
I was also glad to get your picture, taken on shipboard. You must send to Larchmont another copy of the picture of yourself looking at my photograph, which you sent me some weeks ago, as I had to remove it from its mount and cut it down to make it fit into my wallet. All the rest of the fellows in the Intelligence Section (there are nine of us, nearly all college graduates, and men of some standing—editors, brokers, etc.), have pictures of their mothers, but none of them so good looking as mine.
You would be amused at some of the scenes when your picture is exhibited. Tired from a long hike from a stay in the trenches, I am having an omelet, and some fried potatoes, and some vin rouge, beau coup, le vin rouge in some French peasant’s little kitchen. It is a cottage such as you and I often visited in Derbyshire and Cambridgeshire; a low grey stone building with rose trees against the wall, a tiny garden, and a geometrically neat path. The kitchen floor is of stone, the table without a cloth, but shining from much polishing. The only thing to distinguish it from the typical English rural cottage is the crucifix on the wall, and the wooden shoes at the door. (People wear sabots out of doors, cloth slippers in the house, leather shoes on Sunday). Well, after such a repast as I have described, I take out my wallet to pay my bill, and the sharp eyes of little Marie, or little Pierre, intently watching this strange soldat Americaine espy the picture. At once an inquisitive, but delighted, infant is on my knee demanding a closer inspection of the picture; the Maman must see it, and Grandpere, and Veuve Vatre from across the street (the man of the house can’t see it; he is away from home on the errand that brought me across the sea). Well, they all say “Elle est jolie, ma foi, et jeune aussi.” These comments have been made on your picture many times in many towns, which I will one day show you on a map of France.
I have not much anxiety for my father, for I look on his condition as a state of rest really necessary to a mind so constantly busy. But I am glad that from you I have inherited the power of readily escaping from worry and work; of entering with enthusiasm into whatever mirth I find around me; in finding good and true and merry friends everywhere. I think that some of this quality would have helped my father very much, and increased his bodily and mental health. I worried grievously about you for a while, and wished I could have been with you when my father was taken ill, but I don’t worry now—you are too spirited and courageous for anybody to worry about. I certainly admire you more than ever, and look forward eagerly to regular banquets at Henri’s and Rector’s with you.
I want you to meet all the Regimental Intelligence Section—a fine bunch of brave men, and good comrades. We have taken big chances together, and it has made us the best of friends. You will like them all and they will like you.
Affectionately yours,
Joyce.
To Kenton Kilmer
Headquarters Co.,
165th Infantry,
A. E. F.
Nov. 28, 1917.
My dear Kenton:
I hope that by this time you have entirely recovered from your illness. I remember that I had whooping-cough when I was about your age. If you are back in school, send me some of your monthly reports. The address you must put on letters to me is just what you see at the top of this sheet, except that you must put before it “Private Joyce Kilmer.”
There is a school in the building where I work, much like the school you attend, except that there are no nuns here for teachers. When the weather is wet, the children wear wooden shoes instead of rubbers. They go to school at eight in the morning and don’t leave until five. You wouldn’t like that, would you?
This letter ought to reach you about Christmas time. I am not sending you anything at once, but I will later. And I know that your mother and all your grandparents will give you things, and so will Saint Nicholas.
Be a good boy, and pray to St. Francis and Our Lady to help you. You ought to go to Mass every morning, since you live so near the church. Take care of Deborah and Christopher and Michael, and do all you can to make things easy for your Mother.
From Your affectionate Dad.
To Kenton Kilmer
January 10, 1918.
My dear Kenton:
Your plan for ending the war is very good. I showed your letter to Sergeant Russell, who fought in the Spanish-American war, long before you were born, and he said that your plan was the one that the American Army would adopt.
I am glad to see that you can write and typewrite so well. I hope that you will get Fr. Morris to teach you how to serve Mass, we live so near the church that you can easily serve his Mass and get your breakfast and get to school on time, and if you are a priest when you grow up you will be glad you had such practice when you were young.
Take care of Deborah and Michael and Christopher and your mother and don’t forget to pray for
Your affectionate Dad.
To Deborah Kilmer
Headquarters Co.,
165th Inf.,
A. E. F., France.
May 27th, 1918.
My dear Deborah:
About a month ago, I sent you a rubber doll. If you didn’t get it, let me know and I’ll send you another one.
Yesterday morning about six o’clock I climbed down the mountain to go to Mass. And just outside the village where the church is, I met a young lady and walking beside her was a pleasant young pig with a pink nose.
“Bonjour, M’sieur!” said the young lady.
“Bonjour, Mam’selle!” I replied.
“Bonjour, M’sieur!” said the pig.
“Bonjour, M’sieur!” I replied.
And the young lady and the pig threw back their heads and laughed heartily and went on to breakfast. And I went on to Mass.
Remember me to young Michael and young Christopher, and believe me
Your respectful Dad.
To Mrs. Joyce Kilmer
Nov. 11, 1917.
This is what is technically known as a hurried scrawl. It is to the effect that I have arrived, in excellent health and spirits. I have recently read the Censorship Regulations, and am in doubt about what I can say—God help the people who have to interpret them! I mailed a postcard two weeks ago, which you should now receive. Also I’ll try to cable you soon, if it is allowed. I have not yet consulted the adjutant on the subject, but so far as I have been able to find from a diligent study of the censorship regulations, I am allowed to say that I love you. Accordingly, I state it, with considerable enthusiasm. Also, I have a certain regard for Kenton, Deborah, Michael and even Christopher. I hope to write you again very soon. You know my address—same as before, only American Expeditionary Forces. I enclose some verses which may entertain you. The brief one is a memory of the days when I used to drill. I don’t feel that way about a typewriter—which instrument I now use with accuracy and speed. Send me some magazines now and then, and Times Review of Books. And love me exceedingly.
Headquarters Co.,
165th Infantry,
A. E. F.
Nov. 24, 1917.
I am having a delightful time out here—absolutely beautiful country and very nice people. I am short of money, but I believe we’ll be paid soon and I’ve borrowed 80 francs from Fr. Duffy. That isn’t as much as it sounds—you get 5 francs and 70 centimes for a dollar at the Y. M. C. A. I enclose a bill I received for two enormous boxes of cakes I hired an old lady to make for me. I furnished the sugar—you know there was a bag of it in the box of groceries my mother sent me just before I left. I meant the cakes for dessert for Thanksgiving dinner, but with the help of my friends I’ve already eaten most of it. There is a rumour to the effect that we are to have duck for dinner to-morrow, and the Regiment is much more excited about it than about the good news of the War in yesterday’s paper. We get the Paris editions of the London Daily Mail, New York Herald and Chicago Tribune, and before long I suppose we’ll see the magazines when the Y. M. C. A. opens up its local tent. I never thought I’d regard the Y. M. C. A. with such esteem—I wish the Knights of Columbus had a chance to do as much work for us.
I haven’t written anything in prose or verse since I got here—except statistics—but I’ve stored up a lot of memories to turn into copy when I get a chance. The Colonel occasionally speaks of my historical work, but I doubt if it will be feasible to publish any part of it except some very general stuff until the war is over. I asked Thomas Hughes Kelley to send me a history of the 69th published some years ago, and another copy to you, to make sure. I think it will be useful in preparing the introductory chapters.
I love you very much indeed and see you clearly always and have a conviction that I will be with you soon—sooner than you expect.
Dec. 9th, 1917.
I was delighted to receive the other day (December 7th, the day after my birthday) a batch of letters, including two from you. I am glad Kenton is getting along well; I was worried about his illness. It is fortunate you were able to get a good nurse.
You ought to be receiving some money from the government soon. I made over half my pay to you, and the government is supposed to add to it so much for you and so much for each youngster. The whole thing will come to about $57 a month, I believe! I personally am not in need of money—I am getting a book of traveller’s cheques from my father and before I heard he was sending it I wrote to John Timpson Co., and asked them to open an account for me in some Paris bank. Also we are paid in francs, which makes us feel wealthy, as there are 5.70 of them in a dollar. And I could live comfortably without any spending money—all there is to buy is candy and canned stuff and wine and an occasional meal when the business of my department takes me to a nearby town.
Fr. Garesché’s poem certainly is beautiful; by far the best thing he has done. I am enclosing a letter from Sister —— which I think you will enjoy. Delightful old person, nearly blind, but tremendously energetic. Harriet Monroe was one of her pupils. Probably you remember her book on Fr. Tabb.
Your Christmas presents probably will reach you in time for Easter. I hope to get a pair of wooden shoes for Deborah.
I am having a fine time. My statistical work occupies me in the evening as well as all day, but it’s interesting, and will be increasingly important, since the Statistical Department really is the only link between the soldier and his family.
I hope as soon as we get settled I’ll be able to do some writing, I’ve been too busy so far. I love you very much, and always think of you.
In your letters you spoke of sending me some stuff. Send anything you think of as soon as you think of it—don’t wait to find out if I want it, because the mails take too long. Just now I want snap-shots of you and the children, especially Deborah, and tobacco. I love you.
December 17.
I hope you are getting the letters I send you from time to time. I got one admirable batch of letters from you by way of birthday present—they came on the day after my birthday. Perhaps I’ll get another batch for Christmas—it’s December 17th now, and we should receive another mail soon. I hope to send you a photograph soon. I believe personal pictures may be sent through the mail. It will be a beautiful sight. I got a Sing Sing haircut recently and am growing a corsair moustache. This is the pleasantest war I ever attended—nothing to do but fall in, fall out, pound a typewriter 13 hours a day and occasionally hike across France and back carrying a piano. However, I do really enjoy it, and the work is different in kind from newspaper work, and so a rest from it. By the way, I sent you some time ago a poem called “Militis Meditatio.” Please send a copy of it to a magazine and tell them to send the check for it to you. I hope to be able to do some writing as soon as we get settled and I get some of my statistical work out of the way. You ought to get your allotment this month, with additions from the Government (I hope you and the children are not yet in the poorhouse, or at any rate that you have struck a comfortable poorhouse). Send me pictures of yourself and the children, especially Deborah. I have made a nuisance of myself telling my bored friends about her intelligence in naming her doll “Hugh and Mrs. Leamy.” Also send me some tobacco, enough to fill a bedsack (also love me as intensely as possible; I love you more than ever before and think of you all the while)....
Christmas Eve.
The enclosed clippings may amuse you—after you read them you’d better send them to Bob Holliday. They came with a raft of letters a couple of days ago. It’s very nice the way feasts seem to be marked—I last heard from you just before my birthday, and I got three letters from you by way of Christmas present. There must be a lot of parcels awaiting me, judging from information in your letters and those of my father and mother. We may get the packages to-night, in which case I’ll have some hours hard work, for all the Adjutant’s office helps in assorting mail. But I don’t think the packages will come until after Christmas. I suppose that you and the children are in New Brunswick now, and will go to Midnight Mass at St. Peter’s and pray for a vagrant verse-maker who is trying to be a soldier. We may have a Midnight Mass in the church here to-night. Fr. Duffy has had a choir practising for it, and we possess a tenor soloist. He is an Italian, a barber when not singing or soldiering.
I have allotted half my pay to you, and the Government’s addition to that will bring it, I believe, up to about $60—enough to pay the rent. But don’t worry if there is delay in receiving it. It takes a long time, usually, to set things like that in motion. I recently read that a veteran of the Civil War had just received a check for $12 from Washington, representing his pay for his last month of service.
I am glad you are sending me some tobacco—I suppose it’s in the five truck loads of Christmas packages said to be awaiting us at a town some miles away. I have been able to get American tobacco, I am glad to say, but not my favourite brand. Also I’ll be glad to get the cigars my father has sent me—I have smoked all of Fr. Duffy’s. But be sure that tobacco or anything else you send me, such as Michael and Deborah, is very securely wrapped and tied, as the journey is hard on packages and many of them go to pieces.
I am hoping to get more letters from you soon—write as often as you can. I’d rather get a letter from you than anything else now possible. (I love you more than ever before).
Jan. 18, 1918.
Virginia is an excellent State. One evening last week I met by chance a Sergeant Interpreter named Nicholson Barney Adams. And he didn’t know my name and I didn’t know his—he is not connected with the 69th. And he said, “I see by the Times that Joyce Kilmer has enlisted.” And furthermore, thereafter, he put me up in his place—he and two other fellows have a room together—and I had admirable things to eat and drink, and slept in a bed, for the first time in over three months. And he came from Lynchburg, Virginia.
You will find with this letter $50 in American Express checks. Put the place and date in the upper right-hand corner when you cash them. You see, I had written to John Timpson for some money before I got a book of checks from my father, so I find myself having more money than I need.
I wrote this letter—the first part of it—this afternoon. Now it is evening, and five ambulance-loads of mail have arrived and I have helped distribute it. I got a November Harpers from my father and a copy of Frances Huard’s “My Home In the Field of Mercy” from Doran. To-morrow we get 14 more ambulance loads, they say—I hope I get some packages, but I especially desire letters from you. My last letter from you—dated Dec. 12—contained a very noble poem by you—“High Heart.” I was delighted to get it, I felt admitted to a realer intimacy than I had known since I crossed the ocean. Please send me all your poems, sad or spirited. I cannot write verse, but enjoy reading it more than ever before. And you happen to be my favourite poet.
I bought a copy of Conan Doyle’s new “Sherlock Holmes” book in a nearby town recently, in the Conrad edition. A French publisher named Conrad has taken over the Tauchnitz business—you remember the Tauchnitz books, don’t you? Also I’ve been reading Harry Leon Wilson’s, “The Spenders”—an entertaining imitation of Mr. Howells, and rereading “The Cardinal’s Snuff Box”—most delightful.
I love you very much, and I am very sorry for you—you aren’t having the amusing adventures I am having—but you’re able to write nice things, and that’s a consolation. I hope to see you and your admirable babies soon.
Joyce Kilmer.
Jan. 21, 1918.
Two or three days ago I received from you an admirable letter, dated December 12, and yesterday arrived our long errant Christmas mail—many trucks of it—and in it several letters from you dated about Thanksgiving. It is strange that my letters take so long to reach you, but you must have some of them by now. I certainly was glad to get ten cans of tobacco from you, I have wanted a pipe full of that excellent tobacco for months. I got a thousand stogies from Fr. Daly, a box of cigars from my father, another from John B. Kennedy and another from one Romaine Pierson, one of my father’s friends, who sent me also a large can of tobacco. Also I got a lot of jelly and candy from my mother and a little book of “Maxims of Fr. Faber” from Eleanor Rogers Cox, and enough scapulars to sink a ship.
It certainly gives me the keenest delight to read your poetry. The poem about the Christmas Tree has —— backed off the map. Also “High Heart” is very noble poetry. I envy you your power of writing poetry—I haven’t been able to write a thing since I left the ship. Also I envy you your power of being high hearted and, wholly legitimately, aware of your own high heartedness. Not that I am low spirited—I am merely busy and well-fed and contented. I am interested but not excited, and excitement is supposed to be one of war’s few charms. The contentedness is not absolute, of course, for I have, when away from you, always a consciousness of incompleteness. But I have not had the painful and dangerous times I expected to find as soon as we reached this country.
I am keenly interested in the novel you and Margaret are writing. But don’t plunge too deep into occult studies in getting dope for it. Don’t attend any seance of any kind or use Planchette or try automatic writing or make any experiments of a supernatural kind. If you do, I swear that if I do get shot I won’t haunt you—and I’m conceited enough to think I can’t make a worse threat.
By the way, Kenton’s suggestion that you send me a checkerboard is excellent. I’d like it very much.
I love you.
Feb 5, 1918.
I am enclosing a letter from Helen Parry Eden which should be put in the autograph-letter file. A good way to keep author’s letters is to paste special envelopes for them on the inside of the covers of author’s books. Do not use the original envelopes for this purpose. But probably this plan is unsafe in a library frequented by wild babies. But at any rate try to get the stuff stowed away safely and neatly. Bob Holliday could advise you intelligently as to the proper preservation of autographed letters.
It is about a week now since I heard from you, and I am eagerly awaiting to-day’s arrival of mail. I work in the place to which the mail is brought for assortment, so I get my letters without much delay—that is, delay after they reach the Regiment. The first delayed batches of mail are still arriving—I get a November letter one day, a January letter the next, a December the next.
Send me by all means all the verse you write—I find I enjoy poetry more these days than I did when I made my living largely by making it and writing and talking about it. But I wish I could make it as I used to—I have not been able to write any verse at all except “Militis Meditatio” which I sent you. I wrote a brief prose sketch which is still in process of censuring—the censorship regulations may or may not be so interpreted as to exclude it. I think I’ll be allowed to print it, however, as it is really not a writing on military subjects, but an introspective essay written by a sort of soldier. If it gets by, it will go immediately to George H. Doran to be censored.
The second package of tobacco has arrived. The package containing it was broken, but in the bottom of the mail bag I found all ten cans of tobacco. I certainly am glad to get it—after ten years this kind still seems to me to be the best tobacco in the world.
I am not especially delighted with the circumstances of my work just at present. I am perfectly comfortable, have good meals and quarters and my work is not at all hard. But I want to get into more interesting and important work—perhaps it will be all fixed up by the time I write to you again. I love you.
Joyce Kilmer.
February 22d, 1918.
My dear Aline:
It is a long time since I have heard from you—about three weeks. But I suppose that I will receive a number of letters at once. I do not yet know whether or not you have received the two batches of American Express Company checks, amounting in all to $100.00, which I sent you some time ago. But I am not worrying about it, if the checks are lost it still is possible to recover the money. I sent you two lots of prose and verse recently, and in the envelope containing this letter is a quaint supplement to one of my little sketches—that called “Breakfasts.” It is a letter to Kenton from the little girl who lives in the house by the Fountain, where Farrell and Driscoll and I used to eat every morning in our last station. I showed Solange (an excellent, demure and pious infant) Kenton’s photograph, and told her that he studied French in school. He is supposed to answer in French, tell him—of course his French teacher must help him. I saved the censor trouble by clipping from Solange’s letter the name of the town honoured by her presence, but I guarantee (with St. Anthony’s aid) the safe delivery to her of any epistle he may entrust to me.
The town we are in now has no Solange—or has revealed none to me as yet—but in a certain Cafe which I much frequent is Antoine, aged two, who can salute in the French manner, comme ca (illustrated) or in the American manner, comme ca, (illustrated). No, not with the left hand! good Heavens, child! Sacre bleu! nom d’um nom! Quelle dommage! Well, if you are going to cry about it, you needn’t salute at all. Here, shut up and drink the dregs of my vin rouge et sirop. Fini, bebe!
Also there is an admirable child named Jean who has six months. He wears a lavender cloak with a hood attached. His home is a barber shop, the most beautiful and extraordinary barber shop in the world. His father the barber has gone to the Wars—remain madame, grandpere, and M. Biebe. It is a very modern barber shop, with mirror-walls, and powdered soap in silver salt cellars. Grandpere sits by the stove all day long and says that there are many American soldiers in the town. Madame exhibits le petit Jean and asks if it is ever as cold as this in America. I shave with six razors if I desire, and wash in beaucoup de l’eau chaud. And Madame deftly swinging le petit Jean over her left shoulder opens a secret drawer under a mirror and proffers me a tiny tube of fixative for my moustache.
I have a delightful delusion now and then—I see you walk into the Adjutant’s office, past the Sergeant Major’s desk, and to me. The building in which we work was once a palace—but its inlaid floor never supported a duchess (gold powdered though her hair were, and light her laughter as champagne bubbles) so precious as this fleeting vision of you.
Joyce Kilmer.
Note.—Three small, spirited pen drawings are incorporated into this letter at the points indicated in the printed text.
A. E. F.
Dear Aline:
Sorry to use this absurd paper—but none other is accessible. I’m in a hospital at present—been here for three days with a strained muscle. It has been delightful to sleep between sheets again—I have rested up beautifully, I go back to the regiment to-morrow.
I sent you two batches of copy recently—or three, rather. Hope you get them—but if you don’t, I’ll write some more—like Caterina, you know when she was defending her husband’s castle against the enemy. The enemy took her six children as hostages. “Surrender the castle, or I’ll kill the children!” said he. “Go ahead, kill ’em!” said Caterina. “I can make more!”
As to your plan of renting a house at Shirley—wherever that is—for the Summer, go ahead, if you must—I don’t think there is any chance of my getting home this Summer. If I do come home, I’ll cable you in time for you to get back to Larchmont before my arrival. Larchmont is just about far enough from New York. Not for many a year will I consent to spend a day in any place more rural. I have had enough of wildness and rawness and primitiveness—the rest of my life, I hope, will be spent in the effetest civilization. I don’t want to be more than an hour’s distance from the Biltmore grill and the Knickerbocker bar. And God preserve me from farms!
I love you.
Joyce.
March 12, 1918.
Dear Aline:
I receive your letters frequently and regularly, and they are delightful, stimulating, typical. To-day I returned from a week’s sojourn in a charming hospital (a strained muscle, now healed, sent me there) and I found two letters from you awaiting me, the latest dated February 12. Let me congratulate you on your aviation poem—most beautiful and true, the most intellectual poem you have made. By all means put it in your book.
I received Francis Carlin’s wholly heavenly book just before I went to the hospital, and have read it many times with delight. When you see him, give him my homage. He should be walking goldener floors than those of a mortal shop—he should rather be over here with us, whatever his convictions may be. For it is wrong for a poet—especially a Gael—to be listening to elevated trains when there are screaming shells to hear, and to be sleeping soft in a bed when there’s a cot in a dug-out awaiting him, and the bright face of danger to dream about, and see.
I treasure your picture, and Christopher’s shadowy profile—send me more photographs. Love me constantly, never let a day pass without going to church for me.
Joyce.
March 14, 1918.
Dear Aline:
I enclose some verses that you may like very much. That is, I think I enclose them—I have yet to consult with our Regimental censor as to whether or not I may send them. If the place name is cut out, put in its stead any French proper name that rhymes and do with the poem as you will. Perhaps the best thing to do with it will be to hand it to Bob for publishing.
As to my book—why don’t worry about it—we all will live just as long and just as happily and probably be just as wealthy—or poor—if it is never written. I am cheerfully neglecting it, for many reasons. One is, of course, the censorship, which prevents the sending out of articles sufficiently topical and specific to be interesting. Another is a military regulation which forbids an officer or enlisted man from acting as a correspondent or writing for publication on a military subject. This will not, I suppose, prevent the publication of such of my verses and essays as are inspired by my experiences. But it will prevent my making for serial publication any consecutive record of events. What I will do will be to assemble, after the war is over, or after I have returned from it, such random essays or rhymes as I have made and bind them together with a thread of reminiscence—partly introspective, partly—what is the word? extraspective? external, at any rate. I shall write nothing that has any news value. I believe in my vanity that it will be a most charming book, not without its high lights of something more than charm. It really is the sort of book I’d like greatly to read, and I think that it will reach a public tired of the many war-narratives. And don’t think people won’t read it after the war is over! They will! The only sort of book I care to write about the war is the sort people will read after the war is over—a century after it is over! And that is the sort of book I am going to make. A journal intime, but as close to literature, as carefully thought and wrought as I can do. It will be episodic—chaotic, perhaps—no glib tale, no newspaper man’s work—but with God’s help, a work of art. So clamour not for copy! My enclosures of some weeks ago may have pleased you, but you’ll like this better.
Which for no reason brings me to the subject of growing middle-aged, an experience which you are enjoying, I trust; I know I enjoy it. What an advantage we have over our children! While they, to their embarrassment, grow up—voices changing, legs and arms becoming too obvious, self-consciousness and shallow romanticism seizing them—we gracefully, comfortably, grow down. Perhaps it is as a protective measure that I, a private soldier, grow vain—as snails develop shells—but I confess it is with consummate pleasure that I contemplate my senility and, may I say, mediævality. I picture myself at forty, rotund but eminently presentable, moustache and hair delicately grayed, tailored admirably, with the leisurely power no young man may have. I picture myself at sixty, with a long white moustache, a pale gray tweed suit, a very large Panama hat. I can see my gnarled but beautifully groomed hands as they tremblingly pour out the glass of dry sherry which belongs to every old man’s breakfast. I cannot think of myself at seventy or eighty—I grow hysterical with applause—I am lost in a delirium of massive ebony canes, golden snuff-boxes, and daily silk hats.
And as for you! My God! what a vision! That dear autumnal hair silvering—the mouth of my delight exquisitely etched with honourable lines—each one the record of a year’s love—those eyes richer in their mystery—but I cannot write of this—for the thought might give me power to sweep away the years and make me find you, when I come back from the Wars, becapped and tremulous and leaning on two sticks! NO! I don’t want you to be old now—I want you to be the innocent sophisticated young woman you are in the little picture I carry (traditionally!) over my heart. But I want to watch you grow old—if I can watch you and at the same time hold you in my arms.
Joyce.
April 1, 1918.
Dear Aline:
This letter is written to you from a real town—written, in fact, above ground. You may be surprised to know that recent letters to you were not written in these conditions. They were written in a dug-out, but I was not permitted to tell you so at the time. In a dug-out, also, were written the verses I sent you some two weeks ago—you may remember their damp-clayey flavour. I slept and worked (the latter sometimes for twenty hours at a time) in this dug-out for a month, except for one week when I was out on special work with the Regimental Intelligence Section. You don’t begrudge me that week, do you? I cannot now describe it, but it was a week of wonder—of sights and sounds essential, I think, to my experience. For there are obligations of experience—or experiences of obligation—to be distinguished from what I might call experiences of supererogation or experiences of perfection—but what rubbish this is! Let us rather consider my present great luxury, and the marvels of which it is composed. In the first place, one room (not a cot in a crowded barrack, not a coffin-like berth in a subterranean chamber) but a real room, with windows and a large bed and a table and chairs and a practical wash stand. The bed I share with one L—— D——, an amiable gamin, about to be made a Corporal. I am a Sergeant—with stripes some five days old. (It is the height of my ambition, for to be commissioned I’d be sent to school for three months and then, whether or not I succeeded, be assigned to another Regiment. And I’d rather be a Sergeant in the 69th than lieutenant in any other outfit.)
To continue—I also eat from a table excellent meals, with a napkin on my knees. I have soldiered pretty hard for some months now, taking everything as it came, and I think I’ve honestly earned my stripes. Now I’m going to have an easier life—not working less hard, but not seeking hardships. So I am paying seven francs a day for meals, and six francs a week for my share in a bed-room. And it’s delightfully refreshing. Also, I yesterday had a hot shower-bath—very much a novelty!
This morning I received two letters from you, to my great joy. The pictures of the children are excellent. I am glad to see Deborah’s hair so long and lovely. Do, by all means, send me pictures of yourself and Deborah in a leather case, as you promise. I can imagine no possible gift I’d rather receive. Mail is coming here every day now, so I look forward to frequent messages from you.
What a cheerless place the States must be these days! Don’t send me American papers (except the Times Book Review) for they depress me, showing me what a dismal land you live in. This meatless, wheatless day business is very wearying. It can do no earthly good—it is merely giving comfort to the enemy, who undoubtedly know all about it. I wish—aside from the obvious greatest reasons—that you were here in France—you’d like everything, but especially the gentle, kind, jovial, deeply pious people. Time enough—to resume—for wheatless days when the enemy takes your wheat. Until then, carpe diem!—that is, eat buckwheat cakes with plenty of syrup.
I am disgusted with all I read in the American Magazines about the Americans in France. It is all so hysterical and all so untrue. It isn’t jealousy that makes me say this—I have no desire to compete with newspaper-correspondents—but it annoys me to see the army to which I belong and the country on and for whose soil we are fighting so stupidly misrepresented.
I hope you received “Rouge Bouquet”—if you did receive it I know you liked it. General —— (I forgot, I mustn’t name generals lower in rank than Major-Generals) had twelve copies of it made. I sent it to you two weeks ago—you should be receiving it now. The newspapers by now have re-revealed its meaning to you, if any explanation was needed. It was read at an evening entertainment at one of our camps at the front. Father Duffy read it, and taps was played on the cornet before and after. I couldn’t get down to hear it—I was further front, at work in the dug-out that night.
I think most of my war book will be in verse. I prefer to write verse, and I can say in verse things not permitted to me in prose. You remember—no, probably you don’t—Coventry Patmore and his confessor. The confessor objected to the passionate explicitness of some of Coventry’s devotional poems—they dealt with things esoteric, he said, and should be set forth in Latin, not in the profane tongue. And Coventry replied that for most people poetry was an incomprehensible language, more hidden than Latin—or more hiding.
And speaking of Coventry Patmore, the best way to fry potatoes is to have deep oil or butter violently boiling in a great pot, to slip the slices of potatoes into it and stir them persistently, never letting them touch the pot’s bottom, to lift them out (when they are golden brown) by means of a small sieve, and to place them on paper so that the grease may be absorbed.
The best news I’ve had since I reached France is about Kenton’s medal. I’m going to write to-day and tell him so.
I love you,
Joyce.
April 19, 1918.
Dear Aline:
My chief occupation at the present time is awaiting a letter from you.
It is several hours since I wrote the first paragraph of this letter. I have been to supper (I am hitting the mess-line these days, for my money gave out and I didn’t want to borrow any more) and ridden in a motor-cycle-side car all over the countryside—through a dozen little villages, every one full of French and American soldiers, with a sprinkling of coolie labourers, in quest of a certain village which holds two companies of a certain outfit with which I had to have a conference. The village was hard to find (their names all sound alike, and old French ladies, when interrogated as to direction, always point in a direction in which there is no road and say something that sounds like “Honk! honk! Ba! ba!”) and also the night was cold. I have enjoyed many rides more. Returning to the office (I sleep in the same building) half frozen and weary, I found that not two truck-loads, but two sacks of letters had been delivered, and that I had received three letters. I leaped at the letters—one was an invitation to a Ladies’ Day at the Columbia University Club, another was from my mother, another from Fr. Garesché. None from You! You accused me in one of your letters of writing to you when I was depressed—well, I’m depressed now, all right! I’ll wait until to-morrow morning to finish this letter, I guess, or else I’ll give you real cause for complaint. Not that I blame you, or think you haven’t written often—it’s the mail system’s fault. Good night!
I hope Kenton has learned to serve Mass by this time. I wrote to him a long time ago and told him to see Fr. Morris about it, but I fear that he would be too shy to do this unless some pressure were brought to bear. If you would ask Fr. Morris to teach him how to serve Mass, and persuade him to ask Kenton to come to see him about it, so that the initiative would seem to come from Fr. Morris, I think things would work out well. I pray for Kenton to have the grace of a vocation to the priesthood—I hope he may have a Jesuit vocation—and I think it is good to do all we can toward the fulfillment of this desire—this is, I think, a supplementary way to “sway the designs of God.” I think of the children often and can visualise them well in spite of my long absence from them, that is, all except young Christopher. I am aware of Kenton’s gravity and of his thoughtful and radiant smile, of Deborah’s vivacity and exquisite colouring (she is like one of her mother’s gay thoughts), of Michael’s magnetic rotundity, of his blue eyes, of his charming habit of toppling over like a toy tumbler of lead and celluloid. And of Rose I am nearly always conscious, delightfully, when I am awake and often when I am asleep, and especially when I am in the church—which is twice every day, to receive Holy Communion immediately after Reveille and to pray for a few minutes in the evening. We have a magnificent old church in this town, as near to where I am now as the church is to our house in Larchmont. And right by the tower-door is a big statue of St. Nicholas of Bari, in his episcopal robes, and hopping around his feet are two little bits of babies he saved and brought back to life after they’d been cut up and pickled. Very nice! You’d like it! Pray to St. Nicholas for me, and to St. Stephen, St. Brigid, St. Michael, St. Christopher, St. Joseph, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Teresa, and all our other good friends in Heaven, and love me.
Joyce.
April 21, 1918.
Dear Aline:
I am glad of the auspicious beginning of Eleanor’s romance. I would so regard it, for I cannot understand the interpretation which makes marriage the termination instead of the beginning of a splendid adventure. If there should ever be the perfect novel of love, it would begin rather than end “And they were married.” Would the phrase continue: “And lived happily ever after”? I doubt it—but that depends upon the definition of happiness. I know that you dislike the symbolism which is the basis of Coventry Patmore’s greatest poems, but I think you will admit that there is this truth in his idea—the relationship of man and wife is like that of God and the soul in that it must be purified and strengthened by suffering. Also—to put it on a lower plane—Eleanor is enough of a poet to take some enjoyment out of being the wife of a soldier gone to the wars—or Irish enough, which is the same thing.
As to the matter of my own blood (you mentioned this in a previous letter) I did indeed tell a good friend of mine who edits the book-review page of a Chicago paper that I was “half Irish.” But I have never been a mathematician. The point I wished to make was that a large percentage—which I have a perfect right to call half—of my ancestry was Irish. For proof of this, you have only to refer to the volumes containing the histories of my mother’s and my father’s families. Of course I am American, but one cannot be pure American in blood unless one is an Indian. And I have the good fortune to be able to claim, largely because of the wise matrimonial selections of my progenitors on both sides, Irish blood. And don’t let anyone publish a statement contradictory to this.
Speaking of publishers, please be very careful that there is nothing in the book you and Margaret wrote to offend, in the slightest degree. I would go so far as to say that if the spirit of the book is not obviously and definitely Catholic—readily so recognised by Catholic readers—it would grieve me to see it published with your name attached—grieve me deeply. I don’t want anyone to say of you, “There is nothing about that novel to show she is a Catholic.” I don’t think Catholic writers should spend their time writing tracts and Sunday-school books, but I think that the Faith should illuminate everything they write, grave or gay. The Faith is radiantly apparent in your last poems. It is in Tom Daly’s clowning as it is in his loftier moods. Of course anyone would rather write like Francis Thompson than like Swinburne. But I can honestly say that I’d rather write like John Ayscough than like William Makepiece Thackeray—infinitely greater artist though Thackeray be. You see, the Catholic Faith is such a thing that I’d rather write moderately well about it than magnificently well about anything else. It is more important, more beautiful, more necessary than anything else in life. You and I have seen miracles—let us never cease to celebrate them. You know that this is not the first fever of a convert’s enthusiasm—it is the permanent conviction of a man who prayed daily for months for the Faith before that grace was given him. The Faith has done wonderful things for you, but I think since I have been in France it has done more for me. It has carried me through experiences I could not otherwise have endured. I do not mean that it has kept me from fear—for I have no fear of death or wounding whatever. I mean that it has helped me to endure great and continued hardships. These hardships are now past—they belong to last December—but I cannot forget what made me live through them and bear myself like a man. Therefore—for this and a multitude of other reasons, among which let me put that it is my most earnest request—be zealous in using your exquisite talent in His service of Whom, I am glad to have said, Apollo was a shadow. If what you write does not clearly praise the Lord and his Saints and Angels, let it praise such types of Heaven as we know in our life—God knows they are numerous enough.
Does this sound like the writing of the least desirable of your aunts? Forgive me if it does, and heed my request even if it seem unreasonable—the request, I mean, not to sign your name to the book if it is not Catholic in spirit. I can honestly offer “Trees” and “Main Street” to Our Lady, and ask her to present them, as the faithful work of her poor unskilled craftsman, to her Son. I hope to be able to do it with everything I write hereafter—and to be able to do this is to be a good poet.
Speaking of Poetry, I have read with exquisite relish, several times, the copy of the Bulletin you sent me. And always I stop reading—prevented from continuing by irresistible mirth. God help us! Let all the world, especially all of it that deals in thought, beat its breast and repeat after me “God help us.” Here are young men battling in a strange land to win back for the people of that land their decent homes. Here are French peasants (old men, children and women) kneeling at mass in a church with a yawning shell hole through the tower. Among them are American soldiers. And other American soldiers (God rest their brave young souls) rest in new graves by a fair road I know. We hear the crash of shells, the tattoo of machine guns, we see unearthly lights staining the black sky. And—Oh, God help us! Send me more bulletins! I want to read more about Mr. —— whose “mystic” (of course!) poems, seem to... “to challenge comparison with the works of Tagore.” I want to read more about... chaunting to crowds of old ladies who stink of perfume and cold cream and gasoline, while a young female shakes her shanks and “gives a visual embodiment of the poet’s idea.” I want to read about A... “What a privilege to be at once a poet and a fairy godmother!” And I want to read about W... going West and—just being himself! God forgive me for being a Pharisee, and keep me from judging others! But I do love to read about these things and then go across the street and drink a large drink with Joe Brady, meanwhile singing a coarse ballad entitled “The Old Gray Mare.”
We’re going to be paid to-morrow, I’m glad to say, so I’ll be able to have a few meals indoors. This roadside picnic stuff is all right in fair weather, but French weather is not always what it should be. I hope your allotment is arriving, but I doubt it. I think we’ll collect it in our old age. I read recently that a Civil War Veteran had just succeeded in collecting some pay due him in 1862—perhaps we’ll be as lucky. We’ll buy a carton of cigarettes for Christopher’s youngest son with the first payment.
Your poem “Experience” has lodgment in my brain and heart and soul. “She walks the way primroses go.” Simple—isn’t it? that line—to make it nothing much was required—genius merely. Thank God there’s you in a world of ——s and ——s. Do you mind being considered the “one just man”? Figuratively I kiss your hand—it was absurd of me to preach to you who are my mistress in the art of devotion as in the art of poetry.
Joyce.
April 27th, 1918.
Dear Aline:
Some mail came to-day and in it was a package containing ten boxes of tobacco, Merci bien! (when I get back I’ll talk just like —— or ——.) I received a box of admirable cigars yesterday (they were originally awarded to Father Daly in payment for a contribution to America, and he kindly directed that they be sent to me).
We are in a new town now (new to us, that is) a little bit of a place. We have been recently in a rather large town, where I lived very comfortably. I am comfortable here (especially since yesterday afternoon, when I had a hot shower bath and had my clothes sterilized) but not luxurious. But I’m looking forward to a much easier and vastly more interesting time for the rest of my stay in France. I have asked to be relieved from my office job, and my request has been granted. I hope on Monday (this is Saturday night) to become a member of the Regimental Intelligence Section, and the Adjutant tells me I am to be transferred as a Sergeant, although I was willing to give up my stripes for the sake of getting into this work. So henceforth I’ll be peering at the Germans through field glasses from some observatory instead of toiling in a dug-out or crowded office. You wouldn’t want me to come back round-shouldered and near-sighted, would you? Well, that would be the result of keeping on this statistical job much longer. The intelligence work is absolutely fascinating—you’ll be glad I took it up.
You would have liked the gutter-babies in our last town. About a dozen of them used to come out at meal times and besiege our mess-line. They brought their dad’s canteens to be filled with coffee, and they accepted, politely, bread and karo. They were very nice, and fat, as all French babies are. I don’t know whether the French are so devoted to my dear patron St. Nicholas of Bari, because they love children, as he does, or are devoted to children because they love him. Anyway they have the nicest children there are outside of Larchmont Manor and Heaven (these words mean nearly the same thing) and they treat them most enthusiastically. Large crowds of men and women stand for half an hour in a busy city street watching a young baby learn to walk, the baby being decorated, for the occasion, with his big sister’s broad-brimmed hat. And also nearly every church has a statue or window representation of St. Nicholas of Bari with the three babies he restored to life. It helps me to feel at home. I hope you and Kenton pray to him often, he is a very generous saint and has treated me beautifully.
I had a quaint experience to-night. There is no priest now in this town, but there is a fine old church, with God in it. Since there is no priest, I can’t get my daily communion, but I go in occasionally to say my prayers. Well, to-night there was a very old lady in the church. She was so crippled with age and rheumatism that she could not kneel, so she was huddled up on a bench near the rail. And she had a white cap on, and she carried a tall staff with a crutch top such as witches use. She was very pious, and prayed audibly, making pious ejaculations, like an old Irish lady. For some time she didn’t know anyone else was in the church. But when she found I was there, she waited until I had said my beads and then she came over to me (rising with great difficulty and putting on the heavy wooden shoes that lay beside her). Then she extended to me her beads. The link between two of them was undone, and she asked me to mend it. I tried to do so, but my clumsy fingers had little success. So I gave her my rosary in exchange for hers—which I can easily mend with a pair of pincers—and she was very grateful. But I feel that I got the best of the bargain, for there may be a special sort of a blessing attached to beads worn by the gnarled fingers of one so near God. I could make a rhyme out of this experience, but it would seem a profanation. You see some of the possible interpretations of it, don’t you?
The news about D—— is interesting—well, he is trying to serve his conscience, and I am trying to serve mine, and that’s all a gentleman can do. And since we’re both suffering, I believe we’ve both followed the right course. There are many ways to Heaven, but only one Lamp—as I once said in some verses.
But as to suffering—don’t be pitying me! It’s you that are doing the suffering, you with no exhilaration of star-shells and tattoo of machine-guns, you without the adventure. I feel very selfish, often.
I love you and you are never away from me.
Joyce.
April 29, 1918.
Dear Aline:
For Heaven’s sake, don’t tell me about how bad tea rooms are! I admit that I used to scorn them. Now I could live in one, enthusiastically. I wouldn’t mind at all the closeness, the bad service, the soiled table linen. Why, Max’s Busy Bee sounds better to me now than Sherry’s used to sound.
“She walks the way Primroses go” reechoes in my soul. What a delightful poet you are! Send me some more poems, at once, please.
It’s time I heard from you again. Some mail came to-day, but I got nothing from you. You should write me long letters often. By all means take up Fr. Hayes’ lecture offer. You can make your lectures chiefly readings. Get Dr. Pallen to help you make a circular, and put on it testimonials from whomever he suggests. Get Bob Holliday’s advice as to form of circular. You will find valuable suggestions as to engagements in my correspondence files, wherever they are.
(Here I paused to eat ten cakes purchased at the Y. M. C. A. for a franc.)
Young —— is in a nearby town—an amiable child indeed he is. I saw him twice, and he presented me with a bag of cakes and a box of cigars. He reminds me very much of Kenton, but is in many respects his inferior. I’d like to see Kenton and Fr. Daly and Deborah and Michael and Christopher and Sister Emerentia and some Bass’ Ale and some dry sherry and a roast of lamb with mint sauce and Blackwood’s Magazine and the bar in the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago and a straw hat and the circus. And I really wouldn’t mind seeing you.
Joyce.
May 15, 1918.
Dear Aline:
Your friends are a bit impertinent, I think. I don’t claim to be a learned French scholar (although I have talked French every day for six months). But I do claim to know the name of the place where I lived in constant danger of death for six weeks, where many of my friends gave their lives for their country. It is Rouge Bouquet, not Rouge Bosquet. I’ll be deeply grieved if it appears in print incorrectly. Also, I wish the grace in “Holy Ireland” to stand as I wrote it. It is just as Frank Driscoll said it on that unforgettable night—it is the grace used in Jesuit houses. Please see to this, and don’t let all the world revise my mss. I rather expected you’d like the poem better, but perhaps the reason the fellows in the Regiment liked it so much is because we all felt keenly the event it memorizes.
I’ll write to you more to-morrow. I love you.
Joyce.
The above is rather stern and brusque, isn’t it? Well I wrote it in rather stirring times—now only memories. I am resting now, in a beautiful place—on a high hilltop covered with pine and fir trees. I never saw any mountain-place in America I thought better to look at or from. I sleep on a couch made soft with deftly laid young spruce boughs and eat at a table set under good, kind trees. A great improvement on living in a dug-out and even (to my mind) an improvement on a room with a bed in a village. I am not on a furlough, I am working, but my work is of a light and interesting kind and fills only six out of twenty-four hours. So I have plenty of time for writing, and have started a prose-sketch (based on an exciting and colourful experience of the last month) which I will send you soon. Everything I write, I think, in prose or verse, should be submitted to Doran first.
I wish I could tell you more about my work, but at present I cannot. But there are advertised in the American magazines many books about the Intelligence Service—get one of them and you’ll find why I like my job. The work Douglas is doing is not allied to mine. Only I suppose he’ll have a commission. I won’t work for one, because I don’t want to leave this outfit. I love you more than ever, and long for the pictures you promise me. You will be amused by the postcards I enclose.
Joyce.
Say, the stuff about your not appreciating “Rouge Bouquet” was written before I got your delightful letter of April 18, admirable critic!
Dear Aline:
I have just received your letters of April 1st and April 5th. “Moonlight” is noble, like its author. As to being worried about you because it expresses pain, why, I’d be worried only if you did not sometimes feel and express pain. Spiritual pain (sometimes physical pain) is beautiful and wholesome and in our soul we love it, whatever our lips say. Do you not, in turn, worry because of my foolish letter to you from the hospital. At that time I was just an office hack—now I am a soldier, in the most fascinating branch of the service there is—you’d love it! It is sheer romance, night and day—especially night! And I am now therefore saner than when I wrote to you from the hospital. I’ve had only a week of this work—but I’m already a much nicer person.
“For Sergeant Joyce is three, and Oh,
He knows so much he did not know!”
As to the picture I sent you, why, surely I have a moustache, and not a “morning pout.” Mechante. A long moustache I have (illustration of moustache) comme ca. Also, I have thick hair which stands up (illustration) comme ci. I had my head shaved last November, you know, and it had a good effect. My letter is thrilling, isn’t it, with all these martial details? A veritable cross-section of battle, a flower from No Man’s Land. Well, I am sending some battling picture-postcards soon which you will find amusing, I think—portraits, in two striking histrionic poses, of myself. You know now, from my previous letters, that I am no longer (I thank God!) doing statistics, so gently, but widely and most firmly, correct the statement that I have a bullet-proof job. I had one, but succeeded, after two months’ intriguing, in getting rid of it. It wasn’t a shell-proof job—nothing in a real regiment is. (Such jobs are in the Ordnance or Supply Departments, back of the lines.) It wasn’t shell-proof, I say, and if I should be squashed by a shell, wouldn’t you hate to have it said that I was nobly holding my post in the office, or bravely manning my typewriter? Now, I’m doing work I love—and work you may be proud of. None of the drudgery of soldiering, but a double share of glory and thrills. But it is not so glorious and thrilling as you.
Joyce.
May 24, 1918.
Dear Aline:
I don’t know just what kind of a mental picture you have of my present life—to be accurate it would need to be rather kaleidoscopic, for my activities and the spheres of them vary frequently and greatly. But this afternoon you (or perhaps not you, but readers of Empey and Private Peat and the rest of that mob of war writers—thank God, let me Pharisaicly say, that I am not one of them—would do so) would have been amazed at the martial picture before you, had you seen me. Just outside the edge of the forest of firs and spruce in which we fourteen men live is a lovely meadow. There, among the knee-high buttercups, lay in the May sunshine all afternoon three warriors—myself being one. Whiles we smoked and gazed at the lovely valley miles below us—whiles we took turns in reading aloud from—what do you suppose? The Oxford Book of English Verse! We read Gray’s Elegy, the first chorus from Atalanta in Calydon, “They told me, Heraclitus,” that witch poem of William Bell Scott, “Love in the Valley,” “Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “Keith of Ravelston,” and half a dozen other poems, all of which brought you most poignantly and beautifully before me. No, they didn’t bring you before me—you are always before me and with me and in my heart and brain—but it’s dangerous to write this—it draws so tight the cords that bind me to you that they cut painfully into my flesh. Well, we are to be together sometime, inevitably, and soon in terms of eternity. For we are absolutely one, incomplete apart, and in Heaven is completeness. How unhappy must lovers be who have not the gracious gift of faith!
There is to be an Homeric banquet at our house one day—the day when I exhibit to my comrades the glory of my life—yourself. You will like them all—Watson (a gifted artist from Richmond, who is now at work on a fine drawing which must accompany Rouge Bouquet in Scribner’s), Bob Lee, Titterton (my especial friend), Beck, Mott, Kerrigan, Levinson—say a prayer for them all, they’re brave men and good, and splendid company. They are all men of education, and breeding, and humour, and we have fine times. Dangers shared together and hardships mutually borne develops in us a sort of friendship I never knew in civilian life, a friendship clean of jealousy and gossip and envy and suspicion—a fine hearty roaring mirthful sort of thing, like an open fire of whole pine-trees in a giant’s castle, or a truly timed bombardment with eight-inch guns. I don’t know that this last figure will strike you as being particularly happy, but it would if you’d had the delight of going to war.
Right here I had to pause to discuss theology with Watson, Titterton, Levinson and Jongberg. Jongberg is up here for a brief spell; he is a Swedish-Irishman, and now he is posing for St. Michael for Watson, using a bayonet for a sword. Levinson (in full uniform, including belt and helmet) is being model for the soldiers leaving Rouge Bouquet for Heaven. He is a quaint little French-Jewish-American, with whom we have a lot of fun. They all trooped into the room where Titterton and I sit writing to our respective sweethearts, to ask about the style of St. Michael’s sword and that of his halo. These questions settled, Watson became enamoured of the idea of angels saluting, and devised a whole manual of arms for angels—as “Angels, attention! Wings raised, by the numbers. 1 up! 2 down! Wings flap! Hey you down there! what’s the matter with you? Don’t you know enough to keep your hands down when you flap your wings? Awkward squad for you to-morrow!” Then they went back to their work.
Well, I don’t know how long the Intelligence Section is to stay in this lovely summer resort of a place, but it’s certainly fine while it lasts. And I am very fortunate to have such a crowd as this to work with. I never was with so congenial a company in civilian life. Fr. O’Donnell came up to see us yesterday—he is stationed not far away. Fr. Duffy has an assistant—Fr. Kennedy—a Jesuit, thank God! I have not met him yet. He is a brother of the publishers of Barclay Street. I have a new stripe—an inverted chevron of bright gold on the left cuff for six months service. Let you be proud of that too, please, and let my children be proud of it. That is all the news except that I love you.
Joyce.
Dear Aline:
To-day I was made very happy by receiving two nice little ridiculous letters from you—one of which considered itself to be long. As to Sr. Mary Leo—if you happen to be writing to her (you will be, for I told her to ask you for “Rouge Bouquet”) ask her by all means to tell you how her grandmother taught her geography. It’s an absolutely delightful story, and she’s a delightful old saint.
You say Tad will go “in a few months.” I’m glad I’m not Tad. There are many reasons for this, of course, but I mean I am especially glad I’m not to go in a few months. I’m glad I’m a Sergeant in the 69th, a volunteer regiment, the bravest and best regiment in the army. I’m glad I have a golden service chevron on my left arm—that means six months service in France, and is better than two bars on my shoulder, which would mean only three months stay at Plattsburg. If I get an honorable wound that will unfit me for soldiering but not for civilian work, that civilian work will not be hack-writing. It may be straight reporting, or editing, or writing (Evening World at $80 a week, for instance) a weekly essay-column, or dramatic criticism (this last appeals to me strongly). Also I’ll do less lecturing and more oratory—bombastic, thundering, literary, Henry Woodfin Grady oratory! It is exciting, and lecturing isn’t, especially.
Meanwhile I find myself approving your plan of getting literary work, although doing it makes me feel like a coloured man approving his wife’s plan of taking in washing. You relieve my mind greatly by your willingness to keep your name off the book. I thought I would acknowledge to you the pleasure I got from “A Wind Rose in the Night.” It is a holy and dear poem.
Please see that Kenton learns to serve Mass, won’t you? Sorry to keep teasing you about this, but you never write anything about it.
Your poem “To a Sick Child” is beautiful, and “cookies” is the making of it. I love you.
Joyce.
May 18, 1918.
Dear Aline:
I didn’t get your letter expressing enthusiastic approval of “Rouge Bouquet” until I had received two others just mentioning it. I certainly am glad the poem “got” you, as it got me. The Regiment—and soldiers outside the Regiment as high as a Brigadier General—are wonderfully enthusiastic. The Brigadier General had twenty-four copies made to send his friends. Of course we are especially moved by it because the event is so close to us. But to appreciate it you should have heard taps played and at a soldier’s funeral. P. C. ought to know the distinction between peacemakers and pacifists. I wonder he didn’t include St Michael in his catalogue of pacifists. We are peace-makers, we soldiers of the 69th, we are risking our lives to bring back peace to the simple, generous, gay, pious people of France, whom anyone (knowing them as I have come to know them in the last six months) must pity and admire and love. They are an invaded people—and invaded people always are right. The careful study of certain ghostly villages (I cannot forget them) has taught me where I would have stood in the 60’s and that is on the side of the invaded Southern States. God keep me from ever being ordered to take part in an invasion of a peaceful land! So long as I am helping drive out the invader, I know I’m right—and all questions of international politics are of no importance whatever. Here are nice old ladies, fat babies, jovial humorous men, and little girls just after making their First Communions. They’ve been driven out of their pretty sleepy little villages. They want to get back and mend the shell holes in the roof and go to school and take their place drinking red wine of an evening according to their tastes and ages. Well, we men of the 69th are helping to give these people back their homes—and perhaps to prevent our homes from one day being taken from us by the same Power—of whom nothing at all worse need be said than that it is an invader. And St. Patrick and St. Bridgid and St. Columkill and all the other Saints are with us—they are no more pacifists than they are Roycrofters! And God keep us from Washington Square! No Man’s Land is a damn sight healthier place—I have tried both, and I know what I’m talking about.
And as for you, you young flippertigibbet, you won’t be middle-aged, you say? Well, we’ll see about that! I’ll probably come back with one eye, one arm, one leg and a horrible temper, and turn your hair white in a day. Stop calling any child of ours “Billy.” When you referred to “Billy” in previous letters I thought you meant some rather unfortunately named dog or cat. Now I am annoyed to find out you meant Michael. The habit of so designating him probably started humorously—please stop it at once.
I have not read “The Tree of Heaven,” to which you refer in a recent letter. But I have read Carnival—and if when I get back to the States I find that you really think such books are “fine,” as you say in your letter, I’ll grab a baby (probably young Michael) and start for whatever South American Republic or other bellicose land has need of the services of a ranting, roaring, slashing, dashing young Sergeant, fresh from the ranks of the quarrelsome Irish, veteran of the Great War.
Joyce.
May 27, 1918.
Dear Aline:
I enclose three bits of verse by various hands. “A Nun’s Prayer for a Soldier” is by dear old Sister Mary Leo. The flattering sonnet was sent to me by Sr. Mary Emerentia, having been copied from a paper published by the girls of St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana. I destroyed Sr. Emerentia’s letter before I copied down the author’s name, so I couldn’t write to thank her, unfortunately. “The Green Estaminet” I want carefully preserved, for it must go in every anthology made by you or me or anybody we know. I like it better than any war poem I’ve read since I became a soldier, and I deeply regret that I didn’t write it. Many and many a jovial evening I have spent in just such bistrals as the poet describes. Dear old Madame—she always has that “strange disease,” and she finds that white bread is good for it—and in exchange for that white bread (from army kitchens) she gives the delicious soft-crumbed brittle-crusted war-bread, better than any bread in the States. “The great round songs begin”—they do, indeed! “Bing Bang Bingen on the Rhine!” “Down in the Heart of the Gas House District,” “Sidewalks of New York,” and always “Madelon,” in which the French soldiers in the corner enthusiastically join. Cecil Chesterton told me he always judged a country by its drinking-places. Well, here are the merriest, bravest drinking places in the world. If the States go dry, I’m going to bundle all you young critters over here to live—a comfortable, humorous, Catholic country. Honestly, the only drawback to living in this country is the absence of you and your gang. I’d like a house on the very mountain top I now inhabit, and I know you’d enjoy it tremendously. I’m perfectly serious about this, and look forward to bringing you here.
Write oftener, and longer! I love you.
Joyce.
June 1, 1918.
Dear Aline:
A terrible thing, this war, what with a pine forest to live in, all the latest novels to read, and bridge every evening. And now I am preparing for a short week-end in a certain nice small city, an hour’s walk through the forest and across the mountains. It is a lovely forest in which to wander of a June day—so deliberately European—a forest whose tall evergreen trees and smooth brown floor suggest all the folk tales I ever heard your dear voice beautify for our children’s delight. Reaching this certain town, I have interesting things to do—to collect my pay for one thing. To get mail—I hope from you. To go to confession to Fr. Duffy or Fr. Kennedy, S. J., our new assistant chaplain, or to some curé with thin hands and long white hair. To drink a bottle of beer at the Sergeants’ Club—among my brother noncoms, French, Italian and American, in horizon blue, green and olive drab respectively. To mail to you this letter and a splendid drawing for “Rouge Bouquet,” by Emmett Watson, of ours. To dine sumptuously on steak and fried potatoes and Pinard at a merry bistral on a side-street, where Madame la patronne will present me with a sprig of lilies of the valley, which I (imagine a boutonierre with an American uniform!) will present to the baby of the tailor’s daughter. To attend the movies—two sous! To sleep between clean sheets in a hotel-bedroom—half a franc! And to-morrow to be (gold service stripe flashing in the sunlight, trench-stick jauntily swinging) a part of the many-coloured Sunday afternoon procession along a certain broad avenue. Then back to my forest-lodge for supper.
I have written a long topical poem about a hike which I’ll send you soon.
I love you.
Joyce.
A. E. F., France.
Dear Aline:
So far, I have told about six people about your rejoicing in the fact that the possession of a kitten justifies you in purchasing a bird-cage. An absolutely delightful character-revelation—that is, the revelation of a delightful character. And the most genuine sample of you I have had since last November.
I am writing this letter in the end of one of our barracks, which its partition cuts to make an airy office for the Supply Sergeant of Headquarters Company. You’d like him very much—a very beautiful person of about my age, a playwright by profession, educated in Paris. At the other end of the long table sits a bridge party, of which the members are the Supply Sergeant (Lemist Esler is his name), Howard Young (who was a Marine before he became a fighting Irisher), Sergeant Kenneth Russell (a wealthy and charming business man of very literary taste, who knows most of the living poets we know and revels in the Oxford Book of English Verse), and Tom O’Kelly, who has the most beautiful tenor voice you ever heard. He is a professional singer from Dublin, with very tightly curled close-cropped hair, a reddish brown face, and the build of a prize-fighter. In the lulls of the game he sings snatches of “Digging for Gould” and other nice ballads. Admirable person.
I am with the Regiment now—the Intelligence Section is back from its Post, the beautiful place from which I wrote you many letters. Now we are in very flat country, the flattest I ever saw. Very violent flowers, chiefly scarlet poppies and small blue things, cornflowers, I believe. Gloriously hot, with good swimming nearby, and the best sort of shower-bath, obtainable by merely sitting under the spout of a pump while an obliging friend turns the handle.
Your letter of May twenty-sixth came after I had received a June letter. I am delighted to hear of Kenton’s confirmation and of his choice of a name—St. Stephen is a gallant gentleman and a true friend and does wonderful things for me.
I’m not very enthusiastic about that group picture of office-workers in which I appear—I like myself better as I am now, a soldier instead of a clerk, visiting the office only occasionally—to work on my history. And I’m ever so much happier now than when the picture was taken.
Is Kenton serving Mass yet? Please have him do so. And please send me my Anthology—I believe restrictions no longer keep packages from soldiers. I love you.
Joyce.