On Having Known a Poet

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

“ONLY two sorts of men are any good, I would n’t give a cotton hat for no other:

“The Poet and the Plug Ugly.”

So chanted a burlesquing undergraduate, wise beyond his years, and, like the wise poor man of old, “his name is forgotten.” In the obscure anthology that has preserved his weighty utterance, the Whitmanic dithyrambs are credited to that prolific author — that inglorious Milton —“ Anon.” He, no doubt, thought himself guilty of irreverence, and let concealment do irreparable harm to his fame; but several decades of going to and fro in the earth, and of walking up and down in it, have convinced me that, when he wrote these mighty lines, he was truly inspired.

I have known a Plug Ugly.

The hand that guides this typewriter has lain, like a roseleaf on a Meat Trust ham, in the palm of every ornament of the twenty-foot ring who has been acclaimed for several lustrums, and I have enjoyed the friendship of more than one thug, who would gladly sandbag a sheriff’s officer, or unappreciative editor, to oblige a friend who was no proud Jack, but a Corinthian. The Plug Ugly is certainly some good.

I have also known a poet.

But the value of the Poet is harder to define. Indeed, I should be at a loss for a definition, were it not for a talk I had with the barber whose privilege it is to keep the great man’s exuberant locks within bounds.

“When he sits in the chair here and talks to me,” said George, " I get to thinking that I know a devil of a lot; but when he goes away, and I try to tell some one else about it, I find out that it ’s him that knows things, and not me.”

That expresses my situation exactly. When I am with him, I dream dreams and see visions, — but they are his dreams and his visions. By the spell of his wonderful personality he compels me to enter that arcana of thought where we are conscious of truths that can never be formulated in words. At such times I am in communion with the poet soul of the world, and apprehend beauties that no poet can ever express. From these excursions into the mystery of things I ever return confused and inarticulate, and he with the light of transfiguration on his face. And after we have parted, I find that it was he who knew and saw, and not I. Like our friend the barber, I acknowledge that it is he, and not I, who knows things; but, unlike the barber, I sometimes have sane and skeptical moods, in which I profanely wonder if he really does know them.

I was introduced to the poet at a dinner, but really met him for the first time on Brooklyn Bridge. It was on the afternoon of February 8, 1890. I am able to be precise in the matter, not because I have the habit of keeping a diary, but because of a strange theory he advanced.

“You have also come out to greet the spring?” he questioned, as he slipped his arm through mine, and turned to walk with me. I blundered some reply, which I have forgotten, for I was overcome by his unexpected affability. He was already my favorite among living poets.

“I have noticed for many years,” he continued, “that in New York we get the first touch of spring in the air on the 8th of February.”

I have carelessly failed to verify this peculiarity of the vernal season, but I now offer it to the Meteorological Department for what it is worth. The 8th of February of that momentous year was clear and balmy, and his observation was justified, on that occasion, at least.

While we walked toward New York, he talked of the return of spring, and gradually drifted into a discussion of things poetical, that presently had me floundering beyond my depth. The imaginative reach of his thought oppressed me, and then he lapsed into one of his splendid silences, which in turn became oppressive. At last, in sheer desperation, I stammered,

“Is — is this about the time of day when you take a drink?”

The pressure on my arm took on a human warmth as he inquired eagerly: —

“Where’s the nearest place?”

From that hour dates a friendship that transformed my workaday world, and opened the way to other worlds undreamed of.

As I review my associations with the poet, I recall our conversations — or rather, his talks — more than the ordinary episodes that might furnish excuses for anecdotes. Of these talks there were many, for he was always accessible, though at first I often feared that I might be intruding. He finally set my mind at rest on this point, when I apologetically expressed a fear that he might be busy.

“ Busy ! ” he protested grandly. “ Why should I be busy, when I have the rest of time, and all of Eternity, ahead of me ?”

Of the glorious talks to which I have listened I can give but an echo; but sometimes an echo is worth while.

“I often wish,” he once exclaimed, “ that I could rid the world of the tyranny of facts. What are facts but compromises ? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease. Investigate further, and your fact disappears. Under the scrutiny of thought all facts are alike, from the atom to the universe, — merely compromises or splendid guesses, — and they dissolve, even as

And it is only after facts have dissolved and vanished into the mystery of things that the poetic soul can begin to recreate, and devise forms of beauty. The soul that is trammeled with facts is a hopeless prisoner within petty limits, and for it great achievement is impossible.”

When he was in this Coleridgean mood, I did not presume to interrupt or understand, but kept my hand in my pocket to make sure that, under the stress of his logic, the few current and negotiable facts with which I hoped to effect a settlement with our host did not vanish until they had performed their function. But in time they, too, vanished, even as he had predicted.

One evening I met him on Broadway, and he was evidently laboring under excitement.

“Come,” he exclaimed, grasping me by the shoulder, and turning to walk with me. “I have just heard something wonderful, something that carried me away from the dust and noise of the city, to the green fields.”

He brought me to a halt before a great office building, and commanded me to listen.

“Can’t you hear it?” he whispered in delighted tones. “ It is a cricket, chirping here on Broadway.”

I could certainly hear it; but, alas, at that moment a heavy door swung open, and a freight elevator was seen descending. It was instantly evident that the chirping sound was due to the creaking of some defective part of its machinery. The poet looked crestfallen; I am afraid I laughed; and the world is the poorer for that partly formulated poem on “A Cricket on Broadway,” that he was, beyond doubt, shaping when I met him.

Then there were the evenings of The Commune. How shall they be justly celebrated, now that The Commune, that congenial association of borrowers and lenders, has been disrupted beyond hope ? Of its strangely assorted members, one is now a college president; one is a captain of industry, and hath land and beeves; one is a yellow journalist, full of strange oaths and impossible feats; one is a wandering knight of commerce; one, like Autolycus, is a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles; and, if ever we reassemble, for two, the brightest and the best, we must turn down an empty glass.

How well I remember him in that fourth-floor room, sprawling in the one rocker, and “mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,” while we vibrated to the rhythms of his poetry. But the Commune has passed without the meed of a melodious tear, unless he take pity on us, and embalm our joyous and irresponsible youth in fitting song. He alone is true to his ideals, and still a poet.

But he was not always intellectual. That would have tried a humble friendship too far. I remember one night when he and a lawyer, whose advice we sometimes needed, dragged me from my fireside. There was a dinner at a quiet café in a side street, and the talk chanced to turn on physical strength. To show that he was a man, he took hold of the front round of the chair on which I sat, and, with vice-like grip, raised me at arm’s length to the level of his shoulder, — a feat that would have won the admiration of any of my friends among the plug uglies. And I remember how that evening ended next morning, — how at parting we stood in a triangle on a street corner, and solemnly kicked one another for being the three unwise men.

The last time I met him was in London, where we had wandered in pursuit of our dreams. I found him puzzled, but pure-minded, among a group of driveling decadents, whom he overshadowed, as a health-breathing maple overshadows the fungi that may grow at its root. When he walked the streets, every beggar and crossing-sweeper blessed his passing, for his soul was full of pity, and his hand was open. Once, when we were walking along the Strand, I reminded him of one of his most beautiful poems, a passion of music, and he reviled me in set terms, because, in one of my periods of brief authority, I had rejected that poem with contumelious comments. But in the meantime I had heard the organ in St. Paul’s, where for the first time music became visible to me, and I saw it beating upwards and outwards as the true expression of worship.

And now that the years have passed, and the evil days have come, his poems are at my hand, and I still take delight in them. To me they are more than the greatest poems, because I know the moods that inspired many of them. Can you blame me for pride, if I am able to say to myself, when reading some of them over, “ He changed this line because I objected to it,” or “He put in this stanza because I asked for it.” Assuredly, having known a poet is the next best thing to being a poet, — or a plug ugly. Of course, I would not presume to claim any share in his achievements, but it was surely something to have been consulted. That is something to look back to, but there is something more. I knew him so intimately that I know the fairy tale on which many of his poems are based. What would you not give to know that ? Phyllis, the well-beloved, I still know, and have dandled her children on my knee, but her good husband does not know that she once inspired a beautiful poem. Jenny, — “Vengeance of Jenny’s Case,” —when last I saw the once imperious brunette, she was a blonde, pursuing her lone and midnight way down a side street. Yet Jenny once moved a poet’s soul to fine issues.

Now if you should say that no such poet as mine exists, that he has been evolved from the many minor and submajor poets I have known, I shall rest under the accusation without protest. I admit that, as he is pictured in my mind, he is altogether too great for these piping times of commercial success, but I can only defend myself by quoting one of the few epigrams I ever heard him utter: —

“The only respect in which great men differ from others is that for some reason people are willing to believe them capable of doing things that are impossible.”