Robert Frost A study in sensibility and good sense
and, as has been noted before, Harriet Monroe’s _Poetry: A Magazine of
Verse_ first appeared in October, 1912. Frost left his country just
one month before the event which is usually taken as the beginning
of a new, more enlivened and more extensive interest in contemporary
American verse, and he stepped into England during a particularly
hopeful and exciting season in the arts.
England just before the war of 1914-1918 was full of idealistic
movements and a new era seemed about to open its buds. There was
an upper crust of writers--Shaw, Wells, Bennett, Conrad, Hudson,
Carpenter, Galsworthy, Chesterton, Cunninghame Grahame, Max
Beerbohm--that was distinguished enough or respected enough to make
it worth while to continue their work or to resist it or to try to
supplant them. There were coming up such figures as D. H. Lawrence,
Compton Mackenzie, and Gilbert Cannan for Henry James to cast a keenly
appraising eye upon. There were at least two brilliantly edited
reviews--Ford Madox Hueffer’s (now Ford) _English Review_ and A. R.
Orage’s _The New Age_--which sought for new work and instigated new
literary developments. There were the Irishmen across their Channel
working up a little re-birth on their own. Ezra Pound was everywhere,
fighting, initiating, infusing fresh vitality into poetry and poetry
discussions. Wyndham Lewis was breaking bonds in painting and prose.
Imagism and vorticism, the Bloomsbury groupings and the reactionary
schools, all made the scene stirring and great things were expected.
Then the war crashed in and the fragility of all the movements became
sooner or later apparent. But that was two years after Frost arrived.
At first Frost was not aware of this metropolitan ferment. He repaired
to _T. P.’s Weekly_ which conducted a department of country walks and
inquired for quiet places in the countryside where he wished to live.
The conductor of this department was an ex-policeman (and therefore as
becomes a London “bobbie” intelligent in giving directions) and Frost
took a fancy to him. On his advice he settled in the little suburban
town of Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire.
One night Frost sat before his fire spreading out before him his
poems and reading them over. As was his custom, a certain number were
discarded. Of those that remained he pondered on making a selection
that might form some sort of coherent book. He shuffled through them,
arranged and rearranged, and gradually _A Boy’s Will_ came to birth. He
had a book of manuscript but no publisher in mind.
In this pass he recalled his friend, the ex-policeman, and determined
to ask his advice on a publisher for poetry! The former policeman was
equal to the call. He suggested Elkin Matthews, but said that as a rule
he required subsidized manuscripts. Frost objected to that, and his
counsellor brought up the name of David Nutt. This appealed to Frost:
he remembered that David Nutt had been Henley’s publisher: and thither
he went one afternoon only to be told that he could not see David
Nutt that day, but if he called the next day he would be able to do
so. Coming at the time directed, he was ushered into a private office
for an interview with a lady in dark clothes who informed him she
would speak for David Nutt. Later he learned that David Nutt had been
deceased for several years, and the lady was his widow, but at this
time the whole proceeding impressed him as mysterious.
Three days afterward he received a letter stating that the firm of
David Nutt would publish _A Boy’s Will_. The long period of twenty
years of frustrated publication was almost closed, and the first drops
of the exhilaration England was to give him had touched his lips.
More were to follow presently. Walking in London one day he noticed
that Harold Munro’s Poetry Book Shop was opening its doors that
very evening with a reception and reading. Although uninvited, he
walked in with the crowd that night and sat on the stairs during the
festivities. A man sitting below remarked, “I see by your shoes you are
an American,” and introduced himself as F. S. Flint. Frost confided to
him his engagement in writing poetry, and Flint asked if he knew his
countryman, Ezra Pound. Frost had never heard of Pound and was promptly
cautioned not to betray that fact to Pound himself.
Flint must have spoken to Pound about the new arrival, for shortly
there came to Frost’s suburban home a post card bearing an address,
the name of Ezra Pound, and beneath it: “At home sometimes.”
Some months later Frost called at Pound’s address and happened to find
him at home. Piqued at first because Frost had been so leisurely in
responding to his card, Pound soon warmed to his rugged caller with the
boyish face and when he learned that possibly proof sheets of _A Boy’s
Will_ might now be secured at David Nutt’s he insisted on going at once
to the office. The proof sheets were ready, and the pair returned to
Pound’s studio. Frost was directed to occupy himself in some way while
Pound turned immediately to reading the poems. Satisfied that here was
sound poetry, Pound then dismissed his guest with the remark that he
had a review to write, and in a short time the first salutation to _A
Boy’s Will_ appeared in type over the distinguished name of Ezra Pound.
_A Boy’s Will_ was received quickly and warmly by the literary press:
the general tenor can be felt from a quotation from the notice in the
_Academy_. It said: “We have read every line with the amazement and
delight which are too seldom evoked by books of modern verse.” The
poetry-reading public was lured.
Pound had a new “find” and he began to take Frost here and there to
luncheons, studios and parties, and among the most delightful of the
last were the Tuesday evenings at T. E. Hulme’s. Frost was pleased and
interested, but did not change his stripe.
All the time his capital was decreasing, for although he was now a
“success”[4] in a moderate way, he never succeeded in winning any
royalty statements from David Nutt. _A Boy’s Will_ had appeared in
1913 and the following year the same firm gladly brought out _North
of Boston_ which was greeted by the _Times Literary Supplement_ with
the statement that “poetry burns up out of it, as when a faint wind
breathes upon smoldering embers,” and there were more buyers. But only
a success of estimation for Frost. To eke out his capital, he fell
back upon farming and in the winter of 1914 leased a small farm called
Little Iddens near Leadbury in Gloucestershire. His near neighbors were
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson and Lascelles Abercrombie.
Gibson enjoyed joshing Frost about America. It appeared that Gibson’s
poetry aroused various people in America to write him letters of
gratitude that sometimes began, “Dear Bro.,” and proceeded to give
other signs in orthography and grammar of semi-literacy and raw taste.
Frost himself now received his first letter from an American admirer.
It was on stationery of high quality from a farm in Stowe, Vermont,
called Four Winds Farm. The neat script merely informed him that the
writer and her mother had enjoyed his poetry, and the signature was
that of a lady named Holt. It was a publisher’s wife, though Frost
did not suspect the fact. But the letter did enable him to return
triumphantly Gibson’s joshing: he displayed it to him as an example of
the way farmer’s wives wrote in America as well as evidence of the kind
of people who read _his_ books.
Gibson has commemorated this delightful time in a poem entitled _The
Golden Room_ printed some time ago in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and for
the sake of the picture the first two stanzas may well be quoted here.
Do you remember the still summer evening
When in the cosy cream-washed living-room
Of the Old Nailshop we all talked and laughed--
Our neighbors from the Gallows, Catherine
And Lascelles Abercrombie; Rupert Brooke;
Elinor and Robert Frost, living awhile
At Little Iddens, who’d brought over with them
Helen and Edward Thomas? In the lamplight
We talked and laughed, but for the most part listened
While Robert Frost kept on and on and on
In his slow New England fashion for our delight,
Holding us with shrewd turns and racy quips,
And the rare twinkle of his grave blue eyes.
We sat there in the lamplight while the day
Died from rose-latticed casements, and the plovers
Called over the low meadows till the owls
Answered them from the elms; we sat and talked--
Now a quick flash from Abercrombie, now
A murmured dry half-heard aside from Thomas,
Now a clear, laughing word from Brooke, and then
Again Frost’s rich and ripe philosophy
That had the body and tang of good draught-cider
And poured as clear a stream.
Meanwhile the war was increasing its diabolical momentum and the arts
in England were going under. Poets went to the front instead of to
studios and review offices, and among them was Edward Thomas with whom
Frost formed his most congenial friendship on English soil. Thomas had
been a critic and author of several biographical studies and travel
books. Frost fanned the critic’s hitherto latent talent for writing
poetry to a quiet blaze and the outcome was the volume, _Poems_, by
Thomas in 1917, a volume that was gratefully dedicated to Robert Frost.
Thomas was killed on Easter Monday in 1917 and Frost has commemorated
both the poetry and his friend.
You went to meet the shell’s embrace of fire
On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day
The war seemed over more for you than me,
But now for me than you--the other way.
Two years before the death of Thomas, in March of 1915, Frost had left
England for America, bringing with him the fifteen year old son of his
friend.
He had gone through years of non-recognition: in a foreign land he
had been exhilarated with a modest success and the sympathetic praise
of fellow poets: all had been engulfed in the horror and sadness
of the greatest war in our history: and now Frost faced again the
uncertainties of America. There was a surprise awaiting him.
VII. “INTO MY OWN”
Passing down a side street in New York as he came away from the steamer
which had brought him back from England, Robert Frost’s eyes saw
propped on a stand a magazine he had never heard of. From curiosity he
purchased it at once: it was called _The New Republic_. Inside he came
upon a page appreciation of _North of Boston_ which was signed by Amy
Lowell. But more arresting still, the book appeared to be published by
Henry Holt and Co. An American publisher! He did not know he had one.
This seemed a good omen, and the following day Frost called on the Holt
company.
Yes, they had imported the sheets for three hundred bound copies from
David Nutt, and this small order had been very quickly exhausted.
Now they would like to publish _North of Boston_ and _A Boy’s Will_
themselves, but David Nutt had reserved all rights. It soon appeared,
though, that David Nutt had violated the agreement, and Henry Holt
won the legal right to bring out Frost’s books in America. In quick
succession they published _North of Boston_ and _A Boy’s Will_ within
that year, 1915.
Rapid sales followed. _North of Boston_ eventually ran around twenty
thousand copies, and the other books have done well, considering the
market for poetry, though not nearly so well as the first.[5] The
critics were exuberant: among them was Edward Garnett who contributed
an influential article on Frost, since included in _Friday Nights_, to
the _Atlantic Monthly_. Furthermore, public taste for a time appeared
to have crystallized about such work as Frost’s. The hour was right,
for there was ripening a new interest in contemporary American verse:
the critics were enthusiastic: and the character of Frost’s writing,