We went to Springfield, Illinois, and there we had a general clean-up and our mosquito netting came back from the laundry marked “Lace; two pieces.” I visited all Vachel’s cronies and friends and acquaintances and enemies, and there were articles about us in the Register and Journal every day for a fortnight, and I spoke to the Radical Kaffee Klatsch for the celebrated Isidor Levine, and to the Conservative Luncheon Club for the ubiquitous Elmer Neale, and I spoke to the Via Christi class for Mrs. Lindsay, and to the High School for Vachel’s old teacher, and to the readers in the Public Library for Martha Wilson. I had all the books on Russia put on a table, and I discoursed upon them. The most-read book was The Brothers Karamazof, which looked as if it had been in every bed in Springfield. We went to the Negro churches together; we talked to Charlie Gibbs the famous coloured attorney. We were entertained by Mrs. Warren—Drinkwater’s Springfield hostess. We could not visit the Governor—he was under arrest. But we visited the unsuccessful candidate for the governship at the last election. Vachel discoursed on small-town politics while Mrs. Sherman made us meringues. The poet introduced me to his sweethearts, who were of all ages, from twelve to eighty. I made friends with beautiful little Mary Jane Allen, who danced and glided into and out of our presence, and smiled at us and lifted her child’s heart to us. And we called on “Judith the Dancer,” who taught little Mary Jane. Always along the Springfield streets the sight of the children exhilarated my companion—“Stephen, I just love them to death,” said he.
I got to be very well known. I had a sort of royal progress in the street, questioned and smiled at on all hands. “’Scuse me,” they would say, “those boots, did you tramp in them?” or, “How d’ye do? My little girl heard you give your talk in the school yesterday. She’s full of it; it was mighty good of you.”
I came to love the people of this little city, and to see the place with Vachel’s creative eyes. Surely no one ever encountered such kindness, such real warmth of heart, as I did there. It was very moving for one who had come right out of the bitterness and quarrels of Europe and out of the loneliness of London. They know something about living which we are forgetting. They taught me much, and the poet has taught me much also—the bounty of good humour and of unfailing kindness and warmth. I love those who’ve got the strength of heart to lift their hands to take yours, who open their mouths actually to speak to you.
So I cannot tell the poet what I owe him, and he says he cannot tell me what he owes me. We made one final quest together, and that was to Salem where Abraham Lincoln lived a poor man’s life, and learned mathematics from Dominie Graham and fell in love with the daughter of his landlord—unforgettable Anne Rutledge. And we paused before the massive block of granite which marks Anne’s grave, strewn otherwise with flowers, and refulgent with thoughts. And we read Masters’s beautiful lines inscribed over the grave:
I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union
But through separation.
Bloom for ever, O Republic
From the dust of my bosom!