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TO THE YOUNG WRITERS OF AMERICA

BY ROBERT NICHOLS

The gaily camouflaged liner listed slightly to the breeze blowing offshore. The sea glistened. In the immense clarid blue heaven not a cloud appeared; only over the masthead the sun hung like a flask of light.

Suddenly the passengers on the upper deck raised their hands and looking up I beheld a single bright butterfly fluttering toward us. For a moment it careened, hovering, one scarlet spot against the blue, then settled upon the sunny rail. I approached it cautiously and at once knew it for a species with which I was not acquainted. The flattened wings-yet wavering almost imperceptibly in the breeze were of an amber-crimson, girdered with black markings. The hardy color, the clear configuration of the grids fascinated me. watched it in silence.

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At that moment a young voice cried, "There's America!" We doffed our hats. On the horizon lay what appeared to be a line of white cliffs.

"Cliffs?" "No, sonny, buildings." Then turning from the butterfly to the buildings and from the buildings to the butterfly again, I knew that something unknown, a beauty yet inexperienced, was floating toward me; and taking a volume of modern English poetry from my pocket I read on and on until I grew assured that I also, wafted from the Old World to the marvelous New, brought with me some quality of beauty as yet perhaps unknown to those who awaited me beyond the horizon.

In the past, Britain and America have not seen eye to eye upon many international questions. Now, united in the noblest of causes, we give and take with frankness. This frankness of appreciation begins to extend to every form of activity. Before the war this mutual timidity (and even in some cases dislike) existed as much in literature as in other spheres of mental activity. It existed, but it was beginning to die. Now it is definitely dead.

The young writers of Britain, young writers who are universally acknowledged to have done well in the war, to have become the spokesmen of the anonymous ardent young thousands who fight and die in France, Macedonia, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and upon the high seas, gaze expectantly toward the New World, whose sons are engaged in the same terrible adventure. In the name of our dead-Julian Grenfell, Rupert Brooke, Charles Sorley, Edward Thomas and Alan Mackintoch-we salute the spirits of Alan Seeger and of Joyce Kilmer. In the name of our many living writers, especially the fighting poets-Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Ford Madox Hueffer, Frederick Manning, F. S. Flint, W. J. Turner-we turn to your living writers and demand of them some means of knowing their work better.

Before the war much that is best in the current literature of both countries did not succeed in winging the vast seas that separate us. Several

distinct reasons have contributed to this. It is not for me to say why some proportion of our best writing has not reached you: rather I will suggest a few reasons why some of your best has not reached us. Roughly speaking only three sorts of literature have come over to us: "best sellers" (we have them, too!)-sentimental, erotico-religious, tedious stuff; novels of commercial heroics and the dust of the superfine. The first sort we make ourselves. You can find it on any railway book-stall wrapped in flaming covers which portray the singular situations in which an ever-virginal heroine may find herself during her voyage through a world of aristocratic villains, eastern dancers, athletic heroes and parsons with the air of "juvenile leads"! Yes, they are there, both yours and ours. The transpontine variety differs only in the richer juiciness of the sentiment and the less flagrant eroticism of the situations.

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The second sort-novels of commercial adventure-we could not altogether understand. Frank Norris had some success but on the whole, since these novels dealt with a spirit of commercial adventure somewhat foreign to our temperament and in combinations of trusts, banks, deals and "boosts" the counterparts of which are recognized only by few in our life, these books did not command popularity.

Lastly there were the superfine and here I am afraid I must be personal. A certain American poet, come to live among us, antagonized the majority of those who were longing to hear what the real American poets were doing. I will not advertise his name. He does not need my help. He is an adept.

Such were the main impediments. Despite them we managed to know

something of your work and when we could get hold of the true matter it invariably enjoyed success. What is more, we were willing to give the unknown a big chance. We were the first to print the initiatory volumes of two of your best poets-Robert Frost's "A Boy's Will" (David Nutt, 1913), and T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" (The Egoist Press). In addition we have been the first to publish volumes by other American poets of reputeZoe Akins's "interpretations" (Grant Richards), Aldington's "Images" (Poetry Book Shop), Walter de la Mare's* "Songs of Childhood", John Gould Fletcher's "Fire and Wine" (Grant Richards), F. S. Flint's "In the Net of the Stars" (Elkin Matthews), and William Carlos Williams's "The Tempers" (Elkin Matthews).† That fact best demonstrates, I think, a real demand for America's poetry. It cannot be sufficiently regretted that (as far as I know) the wonderful work of Vachel Lindsay has not been published upon our side. I do not know whether Messrs. Macmillan have made any attempt to lay it before the British public. If they have done so, I have not met with it, and this despite the fact that I have made the very greatest efforts to keep abreast of all the best poetry published on the other side.

It will be observed that I have dealt chiefly with poetry. I regret that this should be so but it arises from the fact that whatever title I have to distinction arises from my connection with poetry. Though there has arisen a great wave of renewed interest in poetry, it does not yet command a

I believe that I am correct in stating that my friend, Mr. de la Mare, is an American by birth.

I have taken these additional facts from the bibliography of "The New Poetry" edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Henderson. and I presume these are correct. The matter of Frost and Eliot was already known to me.

greater audience than prose. If then there is such interest in American poetry, what proportions may not the interest in American prose now attain? I foresee the time when the work of such men as Hergesheimer will command in England as large a public as it does here. But Hergesheimer is a novelist. What of your short-story writers, by far the best short-story writers in the world? In Britain we have numerous magazines simply crying out for good shortstories. Our short-stories in popular magazines are, as a whole, execrable. In America, the land where there is hardly time for the business man and woman to read a long novel, you have built up a new form: the storyette. It is a work of great compression. The writer has in your picturesque phrase "to get away with it" in half an hour's reading.

The short-story is by far the most difficult art form in the world of letters. That art form you have mastered. Display, then, to us this mastership. The short-stories by authors of European nationality such as Maupassant, Strindberg and Tchekhov (the greatest short-story writer the world has ever seen) command a good public in Britain. In addition, we have short-story writers of our own-Conrad, Cunningham, Graham, Galsworthy, D. H. Lawrence, and others. But on the whole these reach only the "Intelligencia". We want more writers of short-stories about the people and for the peoplesuch pithy, pathetic and humorous stories as I find over here. Let us have the work for instance of such a man as Irvin Cobb. Recently I picked up an American magazine containing a description of a big hotel by this writer. I was amazed. Here was a writer whose prose style reminded me of the

popular idiomatic style of the Elizabethan Decker and we did not know him! I showed the article to several literary friends, men and women well acquainted with all that is best in contemporary literature. All agreed that this writer was a famous fellow, a writer whom not only the literary but the vast bulk of readers could enjoy, and yet, "I'm sorry, Nichols, but we've never heard of him".

Let us see then more of the work of such men as Cobb. How is this exchange to come about? How are we to get to know the true American writers?

I suggest that on each side of the Atlantic a committee of young writers be set up and that every month a bundle of books be exchanged. Each group of young writers must be young people without financial connection with any publisher; that is, they must not be publishers' readers, and that sort of thing, yet they must be in touch with publishers. I suggest to publishers on both sides that they form a little combine to finance such an arrangement, paying to each member of these committees a small fee, but that the actual names of the members remain unknown and that the committee meet in secret. Thus, we shall avoid any pressure being put upon the committees by publishers and at the same time insure that publishers only publish the best work. The British Committee will examine the bundle submitted by the Americans and choose from it such books as they think fit. These books will be then submitted to British publishers for their consideration. same will happen on this side.

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There will be associated with each committee an expert or experts in the psychology of each nation, who will advise as to the degree of popularity

the book is likely to achieve. In the event of any book securing a very great success I suggest that the publisher pay a small percentage toward the publishers' fund for maintaining these committees. The psychologist will of course also be paid, since on him depends to a large degree the success of the book-because (for instance) he will be able to point out that certain brands of American humor will not be understood by the British, just as certain dialect works of the British will not and cannot be understood by the Americans.

1 suggest that these committees be committees of true artists, of young, eager, open artists-such men as really love letters and welcome good new work. For in the long run only what is really good will tell.

Such are my views. Such are the suggestions that, with all timidity, I put forward. Were it possible, I would try to form these committees myself. Owing to the pressure of my present work, this is not possible. But I have thought fit to make these suggestions in the hope that they may meet the eye of others who in this present time wish for nothing more than a better understanding between the two nations. I have spoken frankly. I have not minced matters. hope I shall not be misunderstood.

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In Britain we have a very old, and, I think, a very wonderful tradition of authorship. We have produced some of the greatest literature in the world. We have living now many fine writers -poets, novelists and biographers. In this country you have a certain amount of tradition. Edgar Allan Poe brought

a sense of prose form to English letters it had hardly known before. Walt Whitman has a European influence. Hawthorne has taught us the full properties of subtlety and cadence inherent in English. But beyond the immense value of the tradition you have energy. From the great intermixture of races which you have welded into one uprises the voice of the American, and in this Englishspeaking voice the properties of all those nations plus something new, that is entirely your own, becomes vocal.

Of your poets, those which are most American-Whitman, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost and Vachel Lindsay command the greatest success among those of us who love letters. We wish to hear more. Once we know you we can appreciate. We are not quick, but what we have we hold with a real tenacity. This English tongue is not dead. In England we have a New Renaissance; in this country I see signs of another coming to rapid birth. What may we not do together -neither sacrificing one jot of the national characteristics but both using the same tongue-that language which is perhaps the most capable of variety, of cadence in the world?

Let the butterfly-so strange and so beautiful-which settled close to me upon the liner as I approached the New World, be not a mere happy accident. Let it be a symbol of the coming of American beauty to us as the green book of poems I took from my pocket is the symbol of the British beauty that I am about to endeavor to bring to you.

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