Yet any poet going about the streets today must see and feel a quantity of poetical things. A week or so ago, I saw an endless baggage-train belonging to the artillery, as it passed through Barnet. It had come from Worcester, commandeering horses and wagons on the way; it was going to Brentwood and thence—God knows! It was very long and uneven—the carts had bakers’ and butchers’ names on them—the horses were ridden with halters and sacks for saddles—the men were tired and dishevelled. I spoke to one of them who was watering his horse at a trough, offered to bring him beer from a public-house close by; but someone had given him tea farther back on the road and he would rot. He thanked me and rode away, drooping very much over his horse’s neck. It was all a poem in itself or it gave me the emotions of a poem, because it had none of the conventional glitter of war. It was poetical because it was business-like, just as our khaki service uniforms are more beautiful than the bright clothes the troops wear in peace.
If the war-poets would confine themselves to real and tangible things like this, they might well express the experience through which we are now passing. But they seem unhappily obsessed with the idea of expressing an obstreperous valour and self-confidence and bluster which the nation is very far from feeling. The nation, so far as I can gauge it, is showing an obstinate, workmanlike silence and does not either make light of, or grumble at, the hardships it has to suffer: the baggage-train of which I have spoken was a very adequate symbol of this. But no one is ever so greatly out of touch with the people as a popular poet.
At the beginning of the war, the musical in London were shocked by an announcement that no German or Austrian music would be played at the famous Queen’s Hall Promenade Concerts. We were naturally a little upset, as we depend on these performances for solid and regular entertainment: and it seemed hard and unnecessary to renounce Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and even Schönberg. Luckily good sense and humour killed the absurd idea, but not before a French and Russian programme had been substituted for the first Wagner night. Now, much as I shrink from the thought of having to hear Tschaikowsky instead of Wagner, I do believe that we have a cause for national resentment against the second of these composers. His ridiculous and windy prose-works have been among the writings which have provoked the war. With Nietzsche, and with the renegade Englishman, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, he has encouraged the notion that there is a special Teutonic culture which is superior to any other and which deserves to be spread at any cost. Such an idea has never appealed to the true Germans (e. g., Goethe, who knew what he owed to France and England), but it has been useful to the Prussian soldiers, who have debased and vulgarized true German culture. Perhaps I am exceeding the duties of a London letter-writer and becoming an advocate; but I think I am giving you an accurate account of the feelings of those here who admire German poetry and music. I am not a Chauvinist in art—few people are. I read Goethe impenitently in the public trains and trams, to the disgust of my neighbours, and I continue to sing German songs, a little out of tune: unless my Territorial uniform is served out to me very soon, I shall probably be arrested as a spy.
New York Letter
George Soule
Some years ago a good woman, who would like to be foster-mother to all struggling heroes, was sitting at midnight in her down-town flat. Suddenly there was a noise at the front door, someone leapt up the staircases two steps at a time, and rushed into her room shouting “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” She turned around and saw the dark face of a young actor, shining with excitement. He immediately burst into a superb interpretation of a passage from Hamlet. He had been working over it for two weeks without being able to satisfy himself, but it had come to him that evening. He could not wait to let his good friend know, had jumped on an elevated train, and after being carried two stations too far in his elation, was there with his prize.
No, this is not the beginning of a magazine story, nor is it a passage from the biography of a deceased European celebrity. It is the simple truth about a young American dramatist who is known only to a few;—and he is of New England stock!
Later the young Hamlet, having completed his acting apprenticeship, began to write, and went into the real estate business to support himself. Nobody wanted his plays; they were too “highbrow.” So he began to build a theatre of his own. The managers’ trust put every difficulty in his way, and finally, when the building was nearly done and the company was engaged, succeeded in crushing him. The next attempt was a repertory company on the East side, but this wiped out what little was left of his resources before it got fairly started. One play was produced on Broadway;—it ran two weeks. Last year another was rehearsed for nine weeks, but it was withdrawn on the day of the dress rehearsal, because the author refused to make a change insisted on by the manager. Now the writer has retired to his farm in the Connecticut hills, where he and a companion have with their own hands built a little theatre. In this, on Sunday afternoons during the summer, he reads from his fifteen manuscript plays to such few people as can get there to hear him. And as he reads, there is on his face much the same enthusiasm as on the night years ago when he got his passage from Hamlet.
I visited Butler Davenport for the third time last Sunday. The main house is a rambling mid-Victorian affair, with queer crannies and cupola rooms from which one can look far across the hills to the Sound. On its left is an old farmhouse of the eighteenth century, furnished as Mr. Butler’s grandfather left it, and with a musty smell which no old-furniture shop could counterfeit. Between the two is an old-fashioned garden, in midsummer filled with larkspur, cosmos, and a hundred other flowers which few but our grandmothers could name. At the intersection of walks at its center is a crab-apple tree, surrounded by a bench. A formal garden with high, thick cedar hedges, bird-houses, unsuspected grass walks and an avenue of woodbine arches lies on the other side of the main house. In the rear, stretching out towards the wide valley, is a long, hedged walk ending in an arch, between fields of wild flowers. Down it one could go to any kind of distant mystery.
The theatre is a simple, strong little building behind the old farmhouse. Its most expert bit of carpentry is the balcony, but that is, of course, unpretentious. The seats are ordinary kitchen chairs, and there is nothing on the stage but a reading desk. But the luxury of sitting between wide-open doors in the hill-breeze, full of grass odors and wing sounds, is better than the comfort of plush seats and much gilded fresco.