PREFACE
Vachel Lindsay is the poet. He is best known as the author ofGeneral William Booth Enters Heaven,The CongoandJohnny Appleseed. He also wrote a highly comical piece calledThe Daniel Jazz. He is a wonderful reciter, and is aided by a sonorous, heaven-reaching voice. All his poems are written to be read aloud, chanted, or declaimed; in some cases they are written to be danced also, and played as games. In many of his recitations the audience is called upon to take part in choruses and refrains. Thus, in one poem, when Lindsay says, “I’ve been to Palestine,” the audience as one man has to cry back to him, “What did you see in Palestine?” This is rapturously enjoyed by the audience. When you have heard the poet you can well understand that he did not starve when he used to tramp in America and recite to the farmers for a meal and a night’s lodging. He has gained a great popularity.
He is, however, something more than an entertainer. He has a spiritual message to the world, and is deeply in earnest. In a large experience of men and women in many countries, I have rarely met such a rebel against vulgarity, materialism,and the modern artificial way of life. At the same time, despite his poetry, he is almost inarticulate. He has helped me, and here in a way I help him by giving in a new form part of the richness of his thoughts and his opinions.
Vachel Lindsay visited England in 1920, and recited his poems at Oxford and Cambridge and to several groups of friends in London. His mother, Catharine Frazee Lindsay, who accompanied him, was a notable woman in Springfield, Illinois, in religious and progressive activities. She succumbed to an attack of pneumonia this year. But those who met her in this country recognised in her a remarkable figure. At Vachel’s invitation I visited Springfield last summer, and we went to the Rockies, and tramped together to Canada, and this volume is a record of our holiday. A mutual friend of ours is Christopher Morley, who brought us together in 1919. When he heard of our projected expedition he interposed to get some letters for the New YorkEvening Post. Some thirty-two of these were written, mostly by the camp fire or sitting on the rocks in the sun, and were printed in thePost, where they attracted considerable attention. “Centurion” in theCentury Magazinefor August wrote: “Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Graham are having a glorious time. As for those of us who must spend the dog-days in stuffy cities and stuffier offices, the picture of thetwo of them by a camp fire in the Rockies waking to the freshness and glory of a mountain dawn is—well, if there are no future issues of theCentury Magazine, you may be sure that the entire staff, inspired by this example, has started vagabonding.” Another, a facetious scribe, wrote: “It is conceded by every one that Stephen Graham’sTramping with a Poetwill some day stand on the shelf of open-air literature besideTravels with a Donkey.”
My thanks are due to the representatives of the Great Northern Railway of America, at St. Paul, who gave us a wonderful collection of pictures, maps, and books, when they heard we were going, on the subject of Glacier Park, which we tramped through. In fact, the railway company would have done a great deal for us, but we eluded their kind care, as was our wish, and got out entirely on our own.
As Vachel Lindsay was an art student before he was a poet, and wrote his first verses as scrolls to be illuminated below emblematic figures, we naturally discussed emblems and emblematic art and hieroglyphics as we tramped together. The emblems in this book are an attempt to express that side of our mutual experience. They have been done by my friend, Vernon Hill, who drew once that very precious work, “The Arcadian Calendar.”
One of the poems is by “Rusticus,” who, anent our adventures, contributed it to the New YorkEvening Post.
A last point: Vachel is pronounced to rhyme with Rachel, and is spelt with one l. It does not rhyme with satchel. The poet asked me to tell you that.
Stephen Graham