Joyce Kilmer

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.

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.