Joyce Kilmer

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.