Exploring the Past on Courthouse Hill

My path to retrieving a timely document from long ago took an unexpected detour and I discovered more than I expected:

But first, some background is needed.



The old Jackson County Courthouse in Sylva, North Carolina is touted as the most photographed courthouse in North Carolina. And I can believe that.

I’ve photographed it many times myself. And I’ve gathered vintage postcards featuring the structure.

Having resided in the Cullowhee Valley and Cowee Mountains for “several” decades I suppose I’ve SEEN the courthouse thousands of times, though mostly in my rear-view mirror. And it will continue that way until the highway engineers finally devise a plan to have the one-way stretch of Main Street run TOWARD, rather than AWAY FROM, the attractive historical building.

The star of the scene, however, must be the long, long stairway ascending from the fountain on Main Street. I remember driving , and even walking, to the top of the hill to find the courtroom, or Clerk of Court, Register of Deeds, Sheriff’s Department, County Jail, Employment Security and several other government departments as I recall.

Local government back then looked a little dilapidated and penurious, especially compared to today’s burgeoning facilities.





When first I came to Sylva, the stairway on that hill brought to mind the Laurel and Hardy movie where the duo struggles to moving a crated piano up a precipitous flight of stairs, at great peril to themselves, innocent bystanders and the musical instrument itself.

That is not what I intended to write about although I have more to add on the subject...eventually.

What I intended to write about was a speech delivered atop the courthouse stairway on Sept 18, 1915.




On that date, General Theodore F. Davidson addressed those who had gathered for the dedication of the Confederate Soldiers Monument near the top of the courthouse stairs.

Why bring up that event now?

Because the monument at the center of that 1915 ceremony, returned to the top of the local news this week. To recap as succinctly as possible:

1915 - The monument, topped with a statue of a Confederate soldier, was installed and dedicated

2020 – Activists mobilized to demand the removal of the Confederate Soldiers Monument

2021 – After deliberation by the Jackson County Board of Commissioners, the monument and statue remained. New bronze plaques were attached to the sides of the monument, covering the original inscriptions.

2025 – The current Jackson Commissioners ordered removal of the bronze plaques, restoring the monument to its original appearance. In response, activists have renewed their calls to remove the monument.

That is where we are as of this week.

A lot of ink has been spilled on the controversy, on the origins of the monument and the intent of its builders. So, I will limit myself to adding just ONE obscure document to flesh out the story.

Several years ago, knowing that the dedication of the monument was such a Big Deal in 1915, I suspected and hoped that the text of the keynote speech had survived somewhere. And, EUREKA!, much of the speech is included in an article published the following day in the Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper, reprinted in its entirety herein.

But, let’s return for a moment to my distracted musings over mental images of Laurel and Hardy on the steps of Courthouse Hill.

It is no wonder that “The Music Box” released in 1932, was etched in my memory. It earned the first Academy Award ever presented for Best Live Action Short (Comedy) and it is included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. And some critics suggest it is the most iconic of Laurel and Hardy’s movies.  Click here to watch the complete movie.

No, it wasn’t filmed in Sylva. The actual filming location, including the stairway, remains intact in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles. The famous stairway consisted of 133 steps, 26 more than 197 steps connecting Sylva’s Main Street and Old Courthouse. Tourists still delight in finding the stairs made famous in a classic comedy, marked now by a commemorative plaque.

Onward, at last, to the original point of this mission. General Theodore F. Davidson delivered the speech. He was a leader in business, politics and other civic endeavors in Western North Carolina and his comments came 50 years after the end of the War. I wish I could have been there to hear General Davidson’s lofty oratory. I wished I could have joined in their picnic. And I wonder if they brought plenty of fried chicken, potato salad and banana puddin’.


General Theodore F. Davidson

For the rest of this installment let’s turn the spotlight to the General and his eloquent remarks at the monument dedication:

Asheville Citizen-Times, September 19, 1915

Jackson County’s Monument to Confederates is Unveiled – Impressive Ceremonies Mark the Unveiling of Beautiful Memorial at Sylva – General T. F. Davidson of Asheville, Speaker of the Day

Speaking to the large audience which filled every seat of the big auditorium, General Davidson paid a splendid tribute to the North Carolina mountaineer solder, who with little or no interest in negro slavery, fought, the speaker declared, for the great foundational principle of the God-given right of every people to regulate the form of government under which they are to live. He spoke in part as follows:

Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Love of country, veneration for the memory and pride in the valor and achievements of ancestors, have ever been the distinguishing characteristic of great peoples, and have been the inspiration of their statesmen and warriors, their painters and sculptors, and the themes of their historians, poets and orators.

All history is the record of the possession and exercise, or the lack of these virtues; civilization has no monopoly of them; the painted savage, chanting the weird death song over the body of his dead chieftain, obeys and expressed the same impulse and emotions that tuned the harps of Homer and Scott, and inspired the pens of Herodotus, Tacitus, Hume and Macauley.

Unhappy must be the lot and contemptible the character of that people, if such there be, in whose souls these sentiments have no place. We feel their inspiration today as we come together, not to recall, for that would assume we had forgotten, or were in danger of forgetting, but to dedicate this beautiful monument and consecrate this spot to the memory of the men and the events of fifty years ago, when our fathers and brothers and comrades, the flower of the manhood of the age, made the most heroic struggle and exhibited the most illustrious qualities, courage, endurance, fidelity, devotion, for which history has no parallel. Most of them have crossed over the river, and “sleep the sleep that knows no breaking,” but thank God, their memories shall never perish from the face of the earth.

How the Confederate soldier fought is known to all men. In every capital, and every city of the south there stand beautiful and costly monuments with eloquent tributes to the valor of the Confederate soldier: in hundreds of cemeteries from the Potomac to the Rio Grande there are countless tombstones and tablets – many, many with the sad word, “unknown,” the only epitaph, with tender inscriptions voicing the love and loyalty of the southern people.

In every public library and museum, and in a great many private collections, there are stored hundreds and thousands of books, pamphlets and manuscripts collected, prepared, edited, preserved and printed, solely with the purpose of transmitting to future ages a true history of the exploits and renown of the Confederate soldier. The record is made; upon it we take our stand; and with heads erect, look in the face of the future, and like our first parents in their original purity in the Garden of Eden, we are not ashamed.

But why they fought, it is vital should be kept constantly prominent. In our natural anxiety to preserve stainless the conduct of the Confederate soldier on the field and the southern people under the varying conditions, civil and military, of that long struggle. I have sometimes thought it might be we would overlook, or not sufficiently appreciate the great principles which lay at the foundation of the contest, and which were so closely involved.

It is a painful reflection that there is among our people, of all classes, especially among that portion which must soon assume the political and social duties and responsibilities of the country, so little inclination to acquire knowledge of the fundamental principles, or even of the practical workings of our system of government, state and national.

This general indifference, or ignorance of these vital questions is most deplorable and dangerous. May I venture to suggest to the excellent and devoted men and women in charge of the education, public and private, of our youth, that much of responsibility for this state of things might be brought to their doors, or rather to the doors of the modern systems of education they have adopted in their solicitude to keep abreast with what some call the “advanced methods” of the day?

It may be all right to teach the boy who is soon to be a man and citizen, and as such a factor of more or less influence in governing the state, where his liver is located, and what food and drink will best suit it; and perhaps the art of reading before learning the alphabet, or how to spell may be desirable, but it surely would not detract from the intellectual or utilitarian value of our schools should they give a small portion of each day to instruction upon the simple principles of government. These principles teach us in every hour of our lives, our happiness and prosperity depend upon them, and yet, I doubt if there are half a dozen schools, including our higher institutions, where the constitution of our state, of our republic, finds a place in the curriculum.

Let us hope that there will be some improvement in this direction. And I venture to take the liberty of urging upon all my fellow-citizens the importance, nay the solemn duty of giving greater consideration to these topics, for if they sincerely desire to be useful citizens, such knowledge is absolutely essential; and if they desire, as I have no doubt they do, to preserve untarnished the record of the Confederate soldier, they will find his greatest vindication in a true understanding of the great natural and constitutional questions for which he went to war.

A Troubadour Tramps Through the Mountains (Part 3 of 3)

 XIII

Croquet on the garden terrace, Biltmore Estate, May 1906

Vachel Lindsay departed from the House of the Magic Loom and crossed Mount Toxaway en route to Asheville. In his diary, he recorded:

If I cannot beat the system I can die protesting, I can give things away and keep ragged. Count that day wasted in which you are not giving away the work of your hands.

In A Handy Guide for Beggars, Vachel Lindsay recalled that same morning in early May 1906:

All through the country there had been that night what is called a black frost. By the roadside it was deep and white as the wool on a sheep. But it left things blighted and black, and destroyed the chances of the fruit-bearing trees. All the way to Mount Toxaway I met scattered mourners of the ill-timed visitation.

After he arrived in Asheville, Lindsay visited the Biltmore Estate, where his studies in architecture and gardening came into play. As was his style, he described the spring verdure of Biltmore as being “like the Dutch Gardens, like Lord Bacon’s garden, like the Italian terraces.”

Vachel remembered one Asheville encounter as “A Not Very Tragic Relapse into the Toils of the World, and of Finance.” I don’t know the identity of the potential benefactor, (perhaps it was Asheville YMCA General Secretary Mr. O.B. Van Horn) but Vachel’s account of the meeting is hilarious:

Having been properly treated as a bunco man by systematic piety in a certain city further south, I had double-barrelled special recommendations sent to a lofty benevolence in Asheville, from a religious leader of New York, the before-mentioned Charles F. Powlison.*

It was with confidence that I bade good-by to the chicken-merchant who drove me into the city. I entered the office of the blackcoated, semi-clerical gentleman who had received the Powlison indorsements. My stick pounded his floor. The heels of my brogans made the place resound. But he gave all official privileges. He received me with the fine manly handclasp, the glitter of teeth, the pat on the back. He insisted I use the shower bath, writing room, reading table. Then I suggested a conference among a dozen of his devouter workers on the relation of the sense of Beauty to their present notion of Christianity or, if he preferred, a talk on some aspect of art to a larger group.


Biltmore Farm Village, 1906

He took me into his office. He shut the door. He was haughty. He made me haughty. I give the conversation as it struck me. He probably said some smart things I do not recall. But I remember all the smart things I said.

He denounced labor agitators in plain words. I agreed. I belonged to the brotherhood of those who loaf and invite their souls.

He spoke of anarchy. I maintained that I loved the law.

He very clearly, and at length, assaulted Single Tax. I knew nothing then of Single Tax, and thanked him for light.

He denounced Socialism. Knowing little about Socialism at that time, I denounced it also, having just been converted to individualism by a man in Highlands.

The religious leader spoke of his long experience with bunco men. I insisted I wanted not a cent from him, I was there to do him good.

I had letters of introduction to two men in the city; one of them, an active worker in the organization, had already been in to identify me. A third man was coming to climb Mount Mitchell with me.

Edith Vanderbilt on the French Broad ferry, 1906

He doubted that I was a bona fide worker in his organization. Then came my only long speech. We will omit the speech. But he began to see light. He took a fresh grip on his argument.

He said: "There is a man here in Asheville I see snooping around with a tin box and a butterfly net. They call him the state something-ologist. He goes around and — and — hunts bugs. But do you want to know what I think of a crank like that?" I wanted to know. He told me.

"But," I objected, "I am not a scientist. I am an art student."

He expressed an interest in art. He gave a pious and proper view of the nude in art. It took some time. It was the sort of chilly, cautious talk that could not possibly bring a blush to the cheek of ignorance. I assured him his decorous concessions were unnecessary. I was not expounding the nude.

There was an artist here, and Asheville needed no further instruction of the kind, he maintained. The gentleman had won some blue ribbons in Europe. He painted a big picture (dimensions were given) and sold it for thousands (price was given).

"He is holding the next one, two feet longer each way, for double the money."

I told him if he felt there was enough art in Asheville, we might do something to popularize the poets.

In reply he talked about literary cranks. He spoke of how Thoreau, with his long hair and ugly looks, frightened strangers who suddenly met him in the woods. I thanked him for light on Thoreau. . . . But he had to admit that my hair was short.

Biltmore Village, 1906

He suspected I was neither artist nor literary man. I assured him my friends were often of the same opinion.

"But," he said bitterly, "do you know sir, by the tone of letters I received from Mr. Powlison I expected to assemble the wealth and fashion of Asheville to hear you. I expected to see you first in your private car, wearing a dress-suit."

I answered sternly, "Art, my friend, does not travel in a Pullman."

He threw off all restraint. "Old shoes," he said, " old shoes." He pointed at them.

"I have walked two hundred miles among the moonshiners. They wear brogans like these." But his manner plainly said that his organization did not need cranks climbing over the mountains to tell them things.

"Your New York letter did not say you were walking. It said you ' would arrive.'"

He began to point again. "Frayed trousers! And the lining of your coat in rags!"

"I took the lining of the coat for necessary patches."

"A blue bandanna round your neck!"

"To protect me from sunburn."

He rose and hit the table. "And no collar!"

"Oh yes, I have a collar." I drew it from my hip pocket. It had had a two hundred mile ride, and needed a bath.

"I should like to have it laundered, but I haven't the money."

"Get the money."

"No," I said, "but I will get a collar."

- - -

*Charles F. Powlison was, at that time, with the Young Men’s Christian Association, and eventually went on to become General Secretary of the National Child Welfare Association. Powlison’s name popped up in a New York Times story, published just two months prior to Vachel Lindsay’s Asheville visit. Apparently, an incident amidst a crowd lined up for a Mark Twain lecture at the West Side YMCA ended with charges of police brutality. There’s a great line in the story:

Mark Twain was introduced as a man "well worth being clubbed to hear."


Mark Twain, ca. 1906

What the heck, here’s the whole thing:

The New York Times, March 5, 1906
POLICE HUSTLE CROWD AWAITING MARK TWAIN
Bungle at the Majestic Theatre Angers Y. M. C. A. Men.
WOULDN'T OPEN THE DOORS
Mr. Clemens Gives Some Advice About the Treatment of Corporations and Talks About Gentlemen.

Members of he West Side Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association found that entering the Majestic Theatre yesterday afternoon to hear an address by Mark Twain had a close resemblance to a football match. No one was injured, but for a few minutes the police were hustling the crowd backward and forward by sheer force, a mounted man was sent to push his way through the thickest of the press and the jam was perilous.

The doors of the theatre should have been opened at 3 o'clock, and about three hundred persons were there at that time. It was an orderly crowd of young men with a sprinkling of elderly ones, but Capt. Daly of the West Forty-seventy Street Station would not allow them to be admitted until he has summoned the reserves. It took twenty minutes for these to arrive and every moment the crush grew greater. Still there was no disorder and the police as they formed into line had to face nothing more dangerous than a little good-humored chaff.

The crowd was ranged in a rough column facing the main doors of the lobby. The Young Men's Christian Association authorities came out several times and asked the Captain to allow the doors to be opened.

"If you do it, I'll take away my men and there'll be a lot of people hurt or killed," he replied. "I know how to handle crowds."

Then he proceeded to handle the crowds. He tried to swing the long solid line up against the southwestern side of Columbus Circle and force them in by the side entrance of the lobby, instead of the one they faced. First he sent a mounted man right through the column. The patrolmen followed and in a moment the orderly gathering was hustled and thrust in all directions.

Capt. Daly's next maneuver was to open the side door. The crowd surged up, but he had them pushed back, and closed the door again. The crowd was utterly bewildered. Then the Young Men's Christian Association authorities opened one-half of the door on their own responsibility. Through this narrow passage the crowd squeezed. The plate glass in the half that was closed was shattered to atoms, and the men surged forward. A few coats were torn, but in spite of the way in which they had been handled everybody kept his temper. If there had been any disorderly element present nothing could have avoided serious accidents. In the end all but 500 gained admission.

Hold Police Responsible.

At the opening of the meeting, the Rev. Dr. Charles P. Fagnani, the Chairman, said: "The management desires to disclaim all responsibility for what has happened. [Cheers.] The matter was taken out of their hands by the police. [Hisses.] You have been accustomed long enough to being brutally treated by the police, and I do not see why you should mind it. [A voice: "You're right."] Some day you will take matters into your own hands and will decide that the police shall be the servants of the citizens."

At the end of the meeting, Charles F. Powlison, Secretary of the West Side Branch, stated he had been asked to submit a resolution condemning the action of the police, but it had been decided it was better not to do so.

Mark Twain was introduced as a man "well worth being clubbed to hear." He was greeted with a storm of applause that lasted over a minute.

"I thank you for this signal recognition of merit," he said. "I have been listening to what has been said about citizenship. You complain of the police. You created the police. You are responsible for the police. They must reflect you, their masters. Consider that before you blame them.

"Citizenship is of the first importance in a land where a body of citizens can change the whole atmosphere of politics, as has been done in Philadelphia. There is less graft there than there used to be. I was going to move to Philadelphia, but it is no place for enterprise now.

"Dr. Russell spoke of organization. I was an organization myself once for twelve hours, and accomplished things I could never have done otherwise. When they say 'Step lively,' remember it is not an insult from a conductor to you personally, but from the President of the road to you, an embodiment of American citizenship. When the insult is flung at your old mother and father, it shows the meanness of the omnipotent President, who could stop it if he would.

Mark Twain Got the Stateroom.

"I was an organization once. I was traveling from Chicago with my publisher and stenographer - I always travel with a bodyguard - and engaged a stateroom on a certain train. For above all its other conveniences, the stateroom gives the privilege of smoking. When we arrived at the station the conductor told us he was sorry the car with our stateroom was left off. I said: 'You are under contract to furnish a stateroom on this train. I am in no hurry. I can stay here a week at the road's expense. It'll have to pay my expenses and a little over.'

"Then the conductor called a grandee, and, after some argument, he went and bundled some meek people out of the stateroom, told them something not strictly true, and gave it to me. About 11 o'clock the conductor looked in on me, and was very kind and winning. He told me he knew my father-in-law - it was much more respectable to know my father-in-law than me in those days. Then he developed his game. He was very sorry the car was only going to Harrisburg. They had telegraphed to Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and couldn't get another car. He threw himself on my mercy. But to him I only replied:

“Then you had better buy the car.'

"I had forgotten all about this, when some time after Mr. Thomson of the Pennsylvania heard I was going to Chicago again and wired:

" 'I am sending my private car. Clemens cannot ride on an ordinary car. He costs too much.' "

Definition of a Gentleman.

Mark Twain went on to speak of the man who left $10,000 to disseminate his definition of a gentleman. He denied that he had ever defined one, but said if he did he would include the mercifulness, fidelity, and justice the Scripture read at the meeting spoke of. He produced a letter from William Dean Howells, and said:

"He writes he is just 69, but I have known him longer than that. 'I was born to be afraid of dying, not of getting old,' he says. Well, I'm the other way. It's terrible getting old. You gradually lose things, and become troublesome. People try to make you think you are not. But I know I'm troublesome.

"Then he says no part of life is so enjoyable as the eighth decade. That's true. I've just turned into it, and I enjoy it very much. 'If old men were not so ridiculous,' why didn't he speak for himself? 'But,' he goes on, 'they are ridiculous, and they are ugly.' I never saw a letter with so many errors in it. Ugly! I was never ugly in my life! Forty years ago I was not so good-looking. A looking glass then lasted me three months. Now I can wear it out in two days.

" 'You've been up in Hartford burying poor old Patrick. I suppose he was old, too,' says Howells. No, he was not old. Patrick came to us thirty-six years ago - a brisk, lithe young Irishman. He was as beautiful in his graces as he was in his spirit, and he was as honest a man as ever lived. For twenty-five years he was our coachman, and if I were going to describe a gentleman in detail I would describe Patrick.

"At my own request I was his pall bearer with our old gardener. He drove me and my bride so long ago. As the little children came along he drove them, too. He was all the world to them, and for all in my house he had the same feelings of honor, honesty, and affection.

"He was 60 years old, ten years younger than I. Howells suggests he was old. He was not so old. He had the same gracious and winning ways to the end. Patrick was a gentleman, and to him I would apply the lines:

So may I be courteous to men, faithful to friends, True to my God, a fragrance to the path I trod.

When inquiries were made last night at the West Side Branch as to whether a complaint of the action of the police would be made by the association to Commissioner Bingham, it was said to be improbably that any official action would be taken.

XIV

I liked the concept of Chautauqua as soon as I heard about it many years ago. What’s not to like about a festival of the arts, sciences, philosophy and public affairs…from low-brow to high-brow and everything in between? President Theodore Roosevelt called Chautauqua "the most American thing in America."

The original summer assembly of adult education and recreation began in the little town of Chautauqua, New York in 1874. In 1904, traveling “Circuit Chautauquas” spun off from the assembly format, featuring many of the same lecturers and orators. Chautauqua, both itinerant and at fixed locations, remained popular for several decades.

Vachel Lindsay crossed paths with one Chautauqua lecturer during his brief time in Asheville:

I looked up a scholar from Yale, Yutaka Minakuchi, friend of old friends, student of philosophy, in which he instructed me much, first lending me a collar. He became my host in Asheville. It needs no words of mine to enhance the fame of Japanese hospitality. . . .

Three years earlier, the Cincinnati Post reported on Minakuchi’s wedding to a Kentucky socialite:

As the bride of Yutaka Minakuchi, one of Kentucky’s belles will be borne away across the blue Pacific to the tea gardens and rice fields of quaint Japan. An American girl of wealth, rare beauty and accomplishments, will bid adieu to a reign among Blue Grass belles and beaux to go far across the water, where jinricksha men, sandaled and straw-clad, replace the fast lythe trotter, and where tea gardens and Buddhist temples line the roads instead of tobacco barns and little red brick churches.

But this does not mean that Miss Olivia Buckner is going to live in a new religion, as well as a new environment, for her husband-to-be is a minister of the gospel, although he is a wealthy Japanese of partly royal blood. Yataka Minakuchi needs only the title of Ph. D. to make him satisfied with his studies in America, and he is going to get that at Harvard after his honeymoon trip. Then he and his fair-skinned bride are going to visit Japan and give the Oriental girls something to gossip about behind their fans, just as the young bloods around Lexington and Paris, Ky., are now discussing the success of their Japanese rival.

He has traveled extensively and before coming to this country to enter college he spent two years at St. Petersburg with his uncle, who was a Japanese minister to Russia. He speaks fluently in five languages, but most effectively, it seems, the language of love.

Journalism ain't what it used to be, eh?

Yutaka and Olivia resided at 77 Montford while he served a congregation in Asheville and maintained a busy schedule as a traveling lecturer. One evangelist endorsed Minakuchi as a stirring orator and philosopher:

He is a clean, strong, magnetic young chap of great intellectual power, and a speaker of tremendous ability. He captures the people wherever he goes. Though a Japanese, he has spent most of his life in America. If you want a “hummer,” get the American Jap. He is in a class all by himself.



One of Minakuchi's popular lectures was “The Border Land,” in which he discussed:

...certain contributions which the eastern and western civilizations have made toward world progress. An effort will be made to find the “border land” – the place of reconciliation between these two seemingly opposed civilizations.

Minakuchi’s career came crashing to an end during World War II. On March 24, 1942, the Associated Press reported:

Held for investigation to determine whether, as an enemy alien, he was "dangerous to the peace and security of the United States," the Rev. Yutaka Minakuchi, 63-year-old Congregational minister and former Chautauqua lecturer, was accused today of being in the pay of the Japanese Consulate.

A recent radio program on wartime internments of Japanese residents mentioned Minakuchi:

The fact that he was getting a stipend from Japan and had been ever since he had left his job in Peacham as the minister where he had been for ten years - people really latched onto that as proof that he must be a spy. And there had been a lot of talk that he was sending coded messages from a radio and there was an antenna up in back of their home in Glover. And it was true that there was a radio, but they searched for the antenna and never found anything like that.

After the war Minakuchi found work in New York and Pennsylvania as a butler, with [his second wife] Nellie as housekeeper. When it was finally legal for him to do so, he became a naturalized citizen. After Nellie's death, he returned to Vermont, where he died one year before President Gerald Ford apologized and rescinded Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, calling for wartime internments.

.

Much more on the life of Yutaka Minakuchi and his experiences during World War II:
http://www.vpr.net/community/vermont_reads/files/minakuchinewsletter.pdf

XV

Just this time, I'm jumping ahead to Vachel Lindsay's travels in Tennessee. This is why I like him. From A Handy Guide for Beggars:

The Tailor And The Florist

Now the story begins all over again with the episode of the well-known tailor and the unknown florist. Just off the main street of Greenville, Tennessee, there is a log cabin with the century old inscription, Andrew Johnson, Tailor. That sign is the fittest monument to the indomitable but dubious man who could not cut the mantle of the railsplitter to fit him.

I was told by the citizens of Greenville that there was a monument to their hero on the hill. So I climbed up. It was indeed wonderful — a weird straddling archway, supporting an obelisk. The archway also upheld two flaming funeral urns with buzzard contours, and a stone eagle preparing to screech. There was a dog-eared scroll inscribed, "His faith in the people never wavered." Around all was, most appropriately, a spiked fence.

But I was glad I came, because near the Tailor's resting-place was a Florist's grave, on which depends the rest of this adventure, and which reaches back to the beginning of it. It had a wooden headstone, marked "John Kenton of Flagpond, Florist. 1870-1900." And in testimony to his occupation, a great rosebush almost hid the inscription. Any man who could undertake to sell flowers in Flagpond might have it said of him also, "His faith in the people never wavered."

XVI

This virtual walk through the southern mountains with Vachel Lindsay has taken several weeks longer than his actual walk in the spring of 1906. So be it.



There's more to go. Two more (?) installments after this one, including a PERFORMANCE by the troubadour himself.

From Vachel Lindsay, A Poet in America, by Edgar Lee Masters:

The first day out of Asheville he made twenty miles. He was now penniless. A man was willing to give him lodging for the night for thirty cents. Lindsay substituted his shirt and collar for the money, much to the host’s disgust, who was a silent man ruling a grim household. He was partially deaf and could not read. Lindsay was bedded with a crippled child. That evening Lindsay read “The Tree of Laughing Bells,” being compelled to trumpet into the ear of this dour North Carolinian. The diary now reads, “Hospitality now wanes, and I am far from home. I do not seem to have any fight in me today. Five dollars in my pocket would give me all the nerve in the world.” Where was the soul of Johnny Appleseed at this hour? Were there not the stars to sleep under in this May of North Carolina?

The diary now shows how far he was from the full philosophy of the road: “My book must have a few dreadfully cynical poems about money, dedicated to the merchants of the world. I must say, Brothers, though I have rebelled, I must acknowledge sometimes that there are a few things more honest than a trade. The soul is so seldom its high self in extremity that it cannot emanate enough spiritual glory to give a fair exchange, even for a night’s lodging, and we must get back to a money basis…

He now encountered a Negro preacher with whom he walked for many miles. Coming to Little Creek, Madison County, North Carolina, he was a quarter of a mile from the ridge of Ball Mountain. Here he received hospitality from a generous woman who gave him corn bread, beans, and buttermilk. She looked like the cartoon of a peasant in Simplicissimus, and played the banjo famously; while a sister naemd Diana danced in plough-shoes and red stockings, with her waist half open at the throat, around which was tied a blue handkerchief. This hostess was managing the little farm alone, her husband being in prison for moonshining.

She glad to have “The Tree of the Laughing Bells.” Look how quickly the temperamental spirits of Lindsay were raised! “As far as the raw material of womanhood in concerned I could love her forever,” was his tribute to Diana. “The hills have done wonders for me.” And he set forth again with “visions of brown-eyed womanhood to make me forget the perils of the way. Farewell to the fairest of all North Carolina. Biltmore and all its glories is not arrayed like the tigress who toils with the hoe because her husband is in state’s prison”; misdefended, the tigress had confided to the poet, by a lawyer named Lindsay...

XVII

I came along several years too late to know my great-grandfather. He lived among fellow descendants of German immigrants whose neatly-kept farms added beauty to the rolling hills of the Southern Piedmont. He worked as a miller until the day the gypsies came.



They robbed him, beat him, and left him for dead by the millrace. Somehow, he survived the attack, but he never fully recovered. To be precise, the "gypsies" were likely “Irish Travelers” from a group that had settled in the South fifty years earlier. They would fan out across the countryside every spring, trading horses and mules and finding other, often questionable, ways to make a living.

In May of 1906, after he had crossed the mountains from North Carolina into Tennessee, Vachel Lindsay crossed paths with gypsies, but his meeting had a more satisfactory outcome.



According to his biographer Edgar Lee Masters, Lindsay neared Greenville, Tennesee and was received into a store in the midst of wheat fields where he spent the night:

Across the way from the store was a camp of gypsies, “Who live better and cleaner than any people since Asheville.” The gypsies asked many questions and told him that he was entering the land of hospitality. Along the way now through the valleys were numerous snakes; but there were many rose bushes in luxuriant bloom in the pretty yards of the farmers.



Though he declined an offer to join the gypsies, the encounter inspired Lindsay to compose a bit of verse:

THE TRAMP'S REFUSAL
On Being Asked by a Beautiful Gipsy
to Join her Group of Strolling Players.

Lady, I cannot act, though I admire
God's great chameleons, Booth-Barret men.
But when the trees are green, my thoughts may be
October-red. December comes again
And snowy Christmas there within my breast
Though I be walking in the August dust.


Often my lone contrary sword is bright
When every other soldier's sword is rust.
Sometimes, while churchly friends go up to God
On wings of prayer to altars of delight
I walk and talk with Satan, call him friend,
And greet the imps with converse most polite.


When hunger nips me, then at once I knock
At the near farmer's door and ask for bread.
I must, when I have wrought a curious song
Pin down some stranger till the thing is read.
When weeds choke up within, then look to me
To show the world the manners of a weed.


I cannot change my cloak except my heart
Has changed and set the fashion for the deed.
When love betrays me I go forth to tell
The first kind gossip that too-patent fact.
I cannot pose at hunger, love or shame.
It plagues me not to say: "I cannot act."


I only mourn that this unharnessed me
Walks with the devil far too much each day.
I would be chained to angel-kings of fire.
And whipped and driven up the heavenly way.

XVIII

In 1931, the makers of Lysol promoted its effectiveness as a douche.



Some Lysol customers had already discovered its usefulness as a contraceptive.

On December 5, 1931, Vachel Lindsay found one more use for Lysol. Declaring victory, “They tried to get me - I got them first!” he drank a bottle of the disinfectant and died.

His longtime friend, Sara Teasdale, remembered him in verse:

In Memory of Vachel Lindsay

“Deep in the ages”, you said, “deep in the ages,”
And, “To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name.”
You are deep in the ages, now, deep in the ages,
You whom the world could not break, nor the years tame.

Fly out, fly on, eagle that is not forgotten,
Fly straight to the innermost light, you who loved sun in your eyes,
Free of the fret, free of the weight of living,
Bravest among the brave, gayest among the wise.

Fourteen months after Vachel’s death, Sara herself committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills.

Weeks ago, I mentioned Vachel Lindsay’s “chanted” or “sung” poetry. I knew there wasn’t much point in my attempting to describe his unique style. But hearing is believing and I have managed to piece together some actual recordings of his performance of “The Congo.” This was recorded shortly before his death:



Many years later, Robert Frost reflected on Vachel Lindsay:

I was as happy about Vachel as we jealous poets, artists can be, you know. He was one I could be happy about. . . . Vachel was one of these disarming people, very good boy, and one of the real kind of genius, you can call it, you can say there was [something] a little strange about him, lofty, and he did some very crazy things and he knew how to do them without trying. Some of these poets seem to get in a corner and gnaw their fingernails and try to get a dark corner, you know, and try to go crazy so they will qualify. There's none of that in Vachel. He was just crazy in his own right; he did some of the strangest things.

During the Beat Era, Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem inspired by the troubadour:

TO LINDSAY

Vachel, the stars are out
dusk has fallen on the Colorado road
a car crawls slowly across the plain
in the dim light the radio blares its jazz
the heartbroken salesman lights another cigarette
In another city 27 years ago
I see your shadow on the wall
you're sitting in your suspenders on the bed
the shadow hand lifts up a Lysol bottle to your head
your shade falls over on the floor

I don’t know any clever or profound way to sum up this series about Vachel Lindsay and the spring days he spent wandering the mountains of Western North Carolina. Wallace Stevens said, “Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.”

Regardless of the literary merit of the verse left by Vachel Lindsay (or the lack thereof), his walk through the mountains was a valiant effort by one brave soul to “get the world right.”

And that is reason enough to remember Vachel Lindsay.

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I already posted this video, but it bears repeating. One of Sara Teasdale's last poems has been adapted as an a cappella choral composition by Frank Ticheli (b. 1958):

THERE WILL BE REST
by Sara Teasdale

There will be rest, and sure stars shining
Over the roof-tops crowned with snow,
A reign of rest, serene forgetting,
The music of stillness holy and low.
I will make this world of my devising
Out of a dream in my lonely mind.
I shall find the crystal of peace, – above me
Stars I shall find.


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A Troubadour Tramps Through the Mountains (Part 2 of 3)

 VII

Vachel Lindsay continued his long walk toward Highlands. He was thinking about the folks at Mud Creek Flats, who had listened attentively to his recitation of The Tree of Laughing Bells.


Sara Teasdale, ca. 1913.

In his pocket, he carried a letter of introduction to the Highlands naturalist who would shelter the troubadour for a night.

Before following him any further along the path, though, let's fast-forward seven years. After other long-distance hikes across America, and many more poems to his credit, Vachel Lindsay met fellow poet Sara Teasdale. Fittingly, the two were introduced to each other by the editor of Poetry Magazine.


Vachel Lindsay

Vachel was one of several men courting Sara. He proposed, and she declined. The next year, she married Ernst Filsinger, a wealthy businessman, and presumably less eccentric than the troubadour.

Vachel and Sara reamained friends for the remainder of their complicated lives. Some people would call their relationship a tragic romance.



They had one thing in common - the world failed to measure up to their lofty romantic fantasies.



Two weeks before her wedding to Filsinger, Sara expressed her misgivings in verse:

I AM NOT YOURS

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

I wonder what attributes made the sickly Sara Teasdale so attractive to men. The Kiss constitutes "ample warning."

THE KISS

I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.

For though I know he loves me,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.

Predictably, Sara Teasdale's marriage to Ernst Filsinger was a disappointment and ended in divorce.

Meanwhile, Vachel Lindsay scored a "hit" with The Chinese Nightingale, a poem he dedicated to "Sara Teasdale Filsinger." Here's the conclusion:

Then sang the bird, so strangely gay,
Fluttering, fluttering, ghostly and gray,
A vague, unravelling, final tune,
Like a long unwinding silk cocoon;
Sang as though for the soul of him
Who ironed away in that bower dim: --
"I have forgotten
Your dragons great,
Merry and mad and friendly and bold.
Dim is your proud lost palace-gate.
I vaguely know
There were heroes of old,
Troubles more than the heart could hold,
There were wolves in the woods
Yet lambs in the fold,
Nests in the top of the almond tree. . . .
The evergreen tree . . . and the mulberry tree . . .
Life and hurry and joy forgotten,
Years on years I but half-remember . . .
Man is a torch, then ashes soon,
May and June, then dead December,
Dead December, then again June.
Who shall end my dream's confusion?
Life is a loom, weaving illusion . . .
I remember, I remember
There were ghostly veils and laces . . .
In the shadowy bowery places . . .
With lovers' ardent faces
Bending to one another,
Speaking each his part.
They infinitely echo
In the red cave of my heart.
`Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart.'
They said to one another.
They spoke, I think, of perils past.
They spoke, I think, of peace at last.
One thing I remember:
Spring came on forever,
Spring came on forever,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.

One of Sara Teasdale's last poems has been adapted as an a cappella choral work by Frank Ticheli (b. 1958). Beautiful words, gorgeous voices...and a sort of tribute to Vachel Lindsay.

THERE WILL BE REST

There will be rest, and sure stars shining
Over the roof-tops crowned with snow,
A reign of rest, serene forgetting,
The music of stillness holy and low.
I will make this world of my devising
Out of a dream in my lonely mind.
I shall find the crystal of peace, – above me
Stars I shall find.
.

But all those poems came long, long after the spring of 1906, when Vachel Lindsay wandered these mountains under the evergreen trees and the starry skies.
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VIII

Vachel Lindsay reached the Highlands plateau at last.


Main Street, Highlands, 1910 (Henry Scadin photograph)

Ten years after his 1906 hike, Lindsay wrote about it in A Handy Guide for Beggars. When Edgar Lee Masters prepared Lindsay’s biography in the 1930s he had access to Lindsay’s many diaries, including those kept on the Southern trip. So, we now have the luxury of two parallel versions of the long journey.

Here’s how Masters related the poet’s approach to Highlands:

It was Sunday and he met a boy going to Baptist Sunday school. The teachers there were a man and his wife, who took Lindsay home with them to dinner. At Sunday school there was a promising student, who had a minute knowledge of Christ and the alabaster box woman. His face “and little body were those of a cherub.” Lindsay gave him “The Tree of Laughing Bells.”

He arrived in Highlands in the evening of this day and went to the house of some people to whom he had been directed by a friend. The woman of the house cooked him an excellent omelet, gave him brown bread and sweet milk, and a couch for the night. The host was a Pennsylvania Dutchman, “earnest, scholarly, and a botanist, superintendent of the nursery at Highlands.”

In A Handy Guide, Lindsay reflected on his short stay as he departed from Highlands:

With no sorrow in my heart, with no money in my pocket, with no baggage but a lunch, the most dazzling feature of which was a piece of gingerbread, I walked away from a windswept North Carolina village…the gingerbread was given me by a civilized man, to whom John Collier had written for me a letter of introduction: Mr. Thomas G. Harbison, Botanical Collector; American tree seeds a specialty.

Back there by the village he was improving the breed of mountain apples by running a nursery. He was improving the children with a school he taught without salary, and was using the most modern pedagogy.

Something in his manner made me say, "You are like a doctor out of one of Ibsen's plays, only you are optimistic." Then we talked of Ibsen. He debated art versus science, he being a science-fanatic, I an art-fanatic. He concluded the argument with these words: "You are bound to be wrong. I am bound to be wrong. What is the use of either of us judging the other?" That is not the mountain way of ending a discussion.

For the purposes of the tale, as well as for his own merits, we must praise this civilized man who entertained me a day and a half so well.


Professor Thomas and Jessie Cobb Harbison and their daughters Gertrude and Margaret, ca. 1905

Thomas Grant Harbison (1862-1936) walked with friend Elmer Magee from their home state of Pennsylvania all the way to Highlands in the spring of 1886. Since Thomas and Elmer shared a love of botany, Highlands was a natural destination. They had survived the hike with rations consisting of a bag of ground wheat and a tin of brown sugar.

Harbison was a largely self-taught scholar who assembled a sizable library at a young age and earned his college degrees through correspondence courses. The people of Highlands were so impressed with the intellect of the ragged hiker that they convinced him to serve as principal of the new Highlands Academy.

Later, George Vanderbilt hired Harbison to collect plants for the Biltmore herbarium. And for two decades while in Highlands, he was a field botanist for Harvard. He conducted plant experiments in conjunction with the Clemson faculty. He also helped to establish the herbarium for the University of North Carolina. And in recent years, his name has been connected with a rather controversial botanical conservation project (that is a story for another day).

In addition to all that, Harbison taught poor mountain children in the Highlands vicinity, and said of that time: ”Those were the happiest and most satisfactory years of my life.”



If you drive through Highlands today, you’ll see the historical marker honoring Professor Harbison.

Although Vachel Lindsay couldn’t fault the hospitality extended by the Harbison family, he was likely rather relieved to get back on the road.

I’ll explain why, later.

IX

During his evening spent with the Thomas Harbison family in Highlands, Vachel Lindsay observed that the professor “was full of Spencer and Huxley, an anti-socialist willing to die fighting socialism.”


Professor Harbison

I suspect that Lindsay recoiled upon this discovery. Let’s introduce into evidence a poem written long after 1906, but written by Lindsay nonetheless:

WHY I VOTED THE SOCIALIST TICKET

I AM unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.

Man is a curious brute—he pets his fancies—
Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury.
So he will be, tho' law be clear as crystal,
Tho' all men plan to live in harmony.

Come, let us vote against our human nature,
Crying to God in all the polling places
To heal our everlasting sinfulness
And make us sages with transfigured faces.

Just two years before Lindsay’s great tramp across the south. Eugene V. Debs was the candidate of the Socialist Party of America, drawing 402,810 votes, or almost 3% of the popular vote in the 1904 Presidential election. Debs remained a highly visible figure in American life into the 1920s, working for social and political change.

Debs proclaimed his philosophy:

While there is a lower class, I am in it;
While there is a criminal element, I am of it;
While there is a soul in prison, I am not free!




Here’s how Debs summarized his efforts:

My purpose was to have the people understand something about the social system in which we live and to prepare them to change this system by perfectly peaceable and orderly means into what I, as a Socialist, conceive to be a real democracy. . . . I am doing what little I can, and have been for many years, to bring about a change that shall do away with the rule of the great body of the people by a relatively small class and establish in this country an industrial and social democracy.

At the time they met, Lindsay and Harbison would have had fresh memories of the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, which became a milestone in the history of the labor movement. And, during the long strike, talk of socialism entered the debate. Mine owners were determined to wait out the workers, rather than conceding to any of their demands. Meanwhile, many people were calling on federal intervention to end the strike and relieve the hardships resulting from the shutdown. One letter writer to the New York Times urged a laissez faire approach lest “socialism” gain a foothold:

As the settlement of the coal strike is not yet in sight, the people of New York can look forward to very dear coal next Winter…Lord only knows what will become of the poor in cheap tenements who buy their coal by the bucketful.

But it will be very much better to have this condition than to infringe on “the sacred rights of property,” which constitute the basis and bulwark of society: better far to suffer the pangs of cold and hunger and death than disturb the existing order of things.

All this talk of compelling the coal barons to operate their mines is the rankest socialism, communism, and anarchy. The coal lands are the property of these men, just as their pocket knives are their property, and to demand the operation of the mines is as socialistic and dangerous to property rights as to demand than they operate their pocket knives. They have just as much right to hold their lands idle as any other class of landowners throughout the world….

Why single out the owners of coal lands for special attack? Logically the only people who should have votes are the landowners of the country, for they own America. It is wrong that the rest of us, who own no land, should have any voice in the making of laws or government in a country of which we do not own one square foot.

None but stockholders have a voice in the management of a business concern, and none but the owners of this country should have a voice in it.

Disenfranchisement of the masses who own no property would put an end to the dangerous doctrines we now hear so much of, and the “sacred rights of property” would be fully safeguarded.

Leonard Tuttle, August 9, 1902

One month later, a socialist group went beyond pressuring owners to reopen the mines. They urged state ownership of the mines. Again, from the New York Times:

The meeting in Boston on Monday evening, called to urge the settlement of the anthracite coal strike by “mediation, arbitration, or conciliation,” was captured by the Socialists, who turned the discussion into unexpected channels and passed the following resolution:

Resolved, That we, the people of Massachusetts, in mass meeting assembled in Faneuil Hall, the historic Cradle of Liberty, on this Sept. 8, 1902, demand the Government ownership and operation of the coal mines as the best means of ending the strike in the anthracite coal regions, and of securing justice and liberty to the mine workers and of preventing the occurrence of all such deplorable and unhappy conditions.

President Theodore Roosevelt did not go that far, but he did break from previous presidents who would have sided with the mine owners, and attempted to level the field for labor and management in seeking an end to the strike.

Today, we might frame things differently, but the basic issues remain the same. What are the consequences of the imbalance of power between capital and labor? What is the proper role of the government in correcting those imbalances?

Whether they did or not, Vachel Lindsay and Thomas Harbison could have had a spirited after-dinner discussion on this subject.

Like they say, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

X

Vachel Lindsay wandered, lost, into Jackson County, the dramatic terrain helping to clear his mind of political disagreements and debates between Science and Art.


Wagon road from Highlands to Whiteside Mountain, ca. 1897, Henry Scadin photograph

From A Handy Guide for Beggars:

I turned to the right once too often, and climbed Mount Whiteside. There was a drop of millions of miles, and a Lilliputian valley below like a landscape by Charlotte B. Coman.

I heard some days later that once a man tied a dog to an umbrella and threw him over. Dog landed safely, barking still. Dog was able to eat, walk, and wag as before. But the fate of the master was horrible. Dog never spoke to him again.

Having no umbrella, I retraced my way. I stepped into the highway that circumscribes the tremendous amphitheatre of Cashier's Valley.

I met not a soul till eight o'clock that night. The mountain laurel, the sardis bloom, the violet, and the apple blossom made glad the margins of the splendidly built road; and, as long as the gingerbread lasted, I looked upon these things in a sort of sophisticated wonder.

R. Henry Scadin (1861-1923)

The first time I read this passage, I half expected Vachel to encounter a local photographer and fruit grower by the name of Henry Scadin. I even consulted Scadin’s own voluminous diaries, but found no mention of Lindsay among the entries in April and May of 1906.

Henry Scadin created what is (as far as I know) the most significant photographic record of southern Macon, Jackson and Transylvania counties at the turn of the twentieth century.

Dry Falls

Waterfalls were a specialty for Scadin and he photographed them with considerable artistic and technical ability.

Tea at Grimshawes

I knew that Scadin spent many days walking the roads between Highlands and Toxaway, which fueled my hope that he had crossed paths with Vachel Lindsay. Even if that meeting never occurred, the photographer has provided a window on the same world that the troubadour viewed while tramping through these mountains.

Horse Cove Falls

Photographs by Henry Scadin. From Henry Scadin Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville.
http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/photo/scadin/default_scadin.html

Lake Toxaway

XI

I wonder about the identity of the family that hosted Vachel Lindsay after he left Highlands and reached Jackson County in the spring of 1906. Who knows? Maybe the incident remains alive as a small piece of family lore for some local family, the memory of a story told about the night that an eccentric young man appeared, needing a place to stay, and going on to write about it years later. And then again, maybe not.


Sapphire, North Carolina, circa 1902. "View from the Lodge on Mount Toxaway." Glass negative by William Henry Jackson, Detroit Publishing Co.

From A Handy Guide for Beggars, by Vachel Lindsay:

Musing these matters, I munched my gingerbread, walking past sweet waterfalls, groves of enormous cedars, many springs, and one deserted cabin. I was homesick for that great civilized camp, New York, and the soberminded pursuit of knowledge there.

But civilization lost her battle at twilight, when I swallowed my last gingerbread crumb. Immediately I was in the land beyond the nowhere place, willing to sleep twelve hours by a waterfall, or let the fairies wake me before day. The road went deeper into savagery. I blundered on, rejoicing in the fever of weariness. In the piercing light of the young stars, the house that came at last before me seemed even more deeply rooted in the ground than the oaks around it. What new revelation lies here? Knock, knock, knock, O my soul, and may Heaven open a mystery that will give the traveller a contrite heart.

Let us tell a secret, even before we enter. If, with the proper magic in our minds, we were guests here, a year or a day, we might write the world's one unwritten epic. All day, in one of these tiny rooms, amid appointments that fill the spirit with the elation of simple things, we would write. At evening we would dream the next event by the fire. The epic would begin with the opening of the door.

There appeared a military figure, with a face like Henry Irving's in contour, like Whistler's in sharpness, fantasy, and pride.

"May I have a night's lodging? I have no money."

"Come in. ... We never turn a man away."

We were inside. He asked: "What might be your name?" I gave it. He gave his. The circle by the fire did not turn their heads, but presumably I was introduced. One child ran into the kitchen. My host gave me her chair. All looked silently into the great soapkettle in the midst of the snapping logs.

I have a high opinion of the fine people of the South, and gratefully remember the scattering of gentlefolk so good as to entertain me in their mansions. But in this cottage, with one glance at those fixed, flushed faces, I said: "This is the best blood I have met in this United States." The five children were nightblooming flowers. There were hints of Dore in the shadow of the father, cast against the log walls of the cabin. He sat on the little stairway. He was a better Don Quixote than Dore ever drew.

Dore's Don Quixote

I said, "Every middle-aged man I have met in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina has been a soldier, and I suppose you were."

He looked at me long, as though the obligation of hospitality did not involve conversation. He spoke at last:

"I fought, but I could not help it. It was for home, or against home. I fought for this cabin."

"It is a beautiful cabin."

He relented a bit. "We have kept it just so, ever since my great-grandfather came here with his pack-mule and made his own trail. I — I hated the war. We did not care anything about the cotton and niggers of the fire-eaters. The niggers never climbed this high."

I changed the subject. "This is the largest fireplace I have seen in the South. A man could stand up in it."

He stiffened again. "This is not the South. This is the Blue Ridge."

An inner door opened. It was plain the woman who stood there was his wife. She had the austere mouth a wife's passion gives. She had the sweet white throat of her youth, that made even the candle-flame rejoice.

She looked straight at me, with inkblack eyes. She was dumb, like some one struggling to awake.

"Everything is ready," she said at length to her husband.

He turned to me: " Your supper is now in the kitchen, 'if what we have is good enough.'" It was the usual formula for hospitality.

I turned to the wife. "My dear woman, I did not know that this was going on. It is not right for you to set a new supper at this hour. I had enough on the road."

"But you have walked a long way." Then she uttered the ancient proverb of the Blue Ridge. "'A stranger needs takin' care of.'"

In the kitchen there was a cook-stove. Otherwise there was nothing to remind one of the world this side of Beowulf. I felt myself in a stronghold of barbarian royalty.

"Do you do your own spinning and weaving?"

She lifted the candle, lighting a corner. "Here are the cards and the wools." She held it higher. "There is the spinning wheel."

"Where is the loom?"

"Up stairs, just by where you will sleep."

I knew that if there was a loom, it was a magic one, for she was a witch of the better sort, a fine, serious witch, and a princess withal. Her ancestors wore their black hair that simple way when their lords won them by fighting dragons. She was prouder than the pyramids. If the epic is ever written, let it tell how the spinner of the wizard wools did stand to serve the stranger, that being the custom of her house.


Whitewater Falls, William Henry Jackson photograph

This was a primitive camp indeed. There was no gingerbread. There was not one thing to remind me of the last table at which I had eaten. But every gesture said, "Good prince, you are far from your court. Therefore, this, our royal trencher, is yours. May you find your way to your own kingdom in peace."

But for a long time her lips were still. She had the spareness of a fertile, toiling mother. And, ah, the motherhood in her voice when she said at last, "My son, you are tired."

XII

"I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.”
-Robert Henri, 1865-1929

Robert Henri self portrait, 1903

In the years before his walking tour of the South, Vachel Lindsay had studied art in Chicago and New York. One of his teachers was the renowned painter Robert Henri, credited as “an immensely significant force behind the change from 19-century academicism to 20-century self-expression.”

Besides Vachel Lindsay, Henri’s roster of students included Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Man Ray, Leon Trotsky and Ariel Durant. Henri himself admired free-thinker Emma Goldman who founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth in 1906.


Emma Goldman

Lindsay had tried combining illustration and poetry in a style somewhere between William Blake and Kenneth Patchen. At one point, though, Henri urged Lindsay to concentrate on poetry rather than painting or drawing.

As he started his great hike in 1906, Lindsay intended to swap drawings as well as poetry for his lodgings. I have no idea if he left any such sketches behind when he traveled through the mountains. In his descriptions of people and places he encountered, he did make frequent allusions to popular paintings and illustrations.

Vachel Lindsay illuminated poem

Henri’s own words suggest how he might have influenced Vachel Lindsay:

The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such moments activity is inevitable, and whether this activity is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state.

When the artist is alive in any person... he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for better understanding.

An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.

Through art, mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them.

The artist should be intoxicated with the idea of the thing he wants to express.

All education must be self-education.


Vachel Lindsay illustration

Self-education only produces expressions of self.

Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong.

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it.

Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see today? How shall I use what I know, and how shall I avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition.


Salome, Robert Henri, 1909

The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.

Art tends toward balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living – very good things for anyone to be interested in.

All the past up to a moment ago is your legacy. You have a right to it.

There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.

What we need is more sense of the wonder of life, and less of the business of making a picture.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

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