Troubadour : an autobiography

Front matter

ALFRED KREYMBORG

BY THE AUTHOR OF

ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN POETRY "HISTORY OF AMERICAN POETRY”

Part I Ollie

PAGE

Prelude. Knuckles on the Door . n

CHAPTER

I. Playing with Chemicals . 18

II. Ollie Goes to Church . 24

IV. A Zither and a Mandolin . 37

V. The Kitchen Stove . 46

VI. Playmates and Grown-Ups . S3

VII. Emma and Laura . 61

VIII. Long Trousers . 68

IX. The Latest Improvements . 78

X. New Contacts . 85

XI. Tommy and Lance . 95

Part II Krimmie

I. Don Juan . I03

II. Fame . 112

III. An Editorial Dream . 122

IV. Tobogganing . I32

V. Intermezzo . 140

VI. Cosmic Considerations . *45

VII. Old Forms and New . x54

VIII. Housing the Moderns . 162

IX. The Mandolute . 169

X. A Descent into Vaudeville . *77

XI. A Serenade .

vii

Vlll

CONTENTS

Part III Others Chapter Pace

I. The Glebe . 197

II. Greenwich Village . 207

III. Intricately Webbed . 214

IV. Others . 218

V. Silvermine . 224

VI. Still Another Venture . 232

VII. Poets and Packages . 238

VIII. Bank Street . 246

IX. Munchausen . 254

X. A Strange Anniversary . 263

XI. Dorothy . 269

XII. Chicago . 279

XIII. Transcontinental . 292

Part IV Dawn

I. The Provincetown Players . 303

II. The Other Players . 312

III. Alone and Together . 322

IV. Milestones . 330

V. Puppet People . 338

VI. Touring Main Street . , 343

VII. The Tour Continued . 351

VIII. Broom . 359

IX. America in Europe . 364

X. The Eternal Past . 374

XI. Rapallo and Pallanza . 382

XII. Crossing the Channel . 389

XIII. From London to Liberty . 395

XIV. The Latest New York . 403

Coda. Folk Song . 4x2

Part I Ollie Prelude

KNUCKLES ON THE DOOR

I have seen them look tired, very tired, weary, very weary, and almost as pale, starved and haggard as old beggars in streets where the passerby is insensible to all but himself. I have known them to speak hopefully, gesticulate excitedly, move with an unpremeditated suddenness, only to relapse into a sing-song hopelessness, a reiterate silence, in which all but the heart lay quiescent. I have found gods in their eyes when ecstasies came; devils and trolls with the return of disenchant¬ ment and terror; but most of the time, human beings, and often the whole human race. I discovered the whole human race whenever I felt they craved liberation. Liberation from the cell they lived in and brooded in, from the dark, mysterious self, flesh and spirit, solitude, loneliness. Liberation through communication with some kindred self, flesh and spirit, soli¬ tude, loneliness. I have heard them come up the stairs of a dismal, rickety building, somewhere at the top of which, in¬ side a monastic room, I happened to be living; heard their knuckles on the door, familiar, friendly knuckles, tapping the shy question: “Are you in?” And I have gone to their rooms with a similar step and shyness, similar knuckles and noises, similar hopes and hopelessness.

These are not ghosts I try to recall, nor dead people, not even old people; but young, very young people, in pursuit of some vision or other, in the days when Manhattan Island had not yet progressed to the height of the Woolworth Tower or the depth of the Interborough Subway. Most of the street car lines, trucks, carriages and cabs were run by horses; and a man, nervously driving his first gasoline car, was greeted by

ii scrambling, sceptical children with the derisive cry: “Get a horse!”

To the knuckles I try to recall, my door opened, or their door to me — whenever I or they happened to be in. If we were out, or too busy to answer, the caller went elsewhere, tried another door among the few he knew; and failing there as well, tried the streets, perhaps, or some haunt among the few he knew. One was rarely reckless in those days. If one hap¬ pened to be in, one did not call out briskly, “Come in.” One affected a preliminary caution, not because the city was full of strangers mostly, or that it is, even now, full of strangers mostly. Although the knuckles sounded familiar, one could never be quite positive as to the face outside the door. Of all characters, the most protean are, and doubtless always have been and will be, creditors. Assuming some histrionic disguise, even in this Masonic trait of knuckles on the door, the landlord, gas man or tax inspector might lure one into a careless welcome at an hour in one’s worldly condition when those gentry were, for this or that evasive reason, not as welcome as they might be a little later in the week, or the month, or the year.

Nevertheless, some idiosyncrasy on the part of the visitor usually betrayed his identity. Surely, that shuffling irregu¬ larity and tapping hesitancy could belong to no other feet and hand than those which dangled from the awkward extremities of the diffident Albert Teller — the self-conscious son of a tailor whose chief claim to the affection of a group to which we belonged in our teens reposed in the circumstance that, no matter how steadily one lost at chess to other people, one could turn to him, defeat him and recover one’s pride. Surely, that gaiety of approach and confident attack could be the habitual expression of no other imp of whimsicality than Alanson Hartpence; or that slow, measured ascent, aristocratic cough, measured stride in the hall, second aristocratic cough, and austere rhythm on the pane of opaque glass unmistakably

PRELUDE announced the arrival of no less a person, even in those days, than the long lean eagle from the hills of Maine — Marsden Hartley. Or that staccato movement — must the fellow always hurry? — was certain to bring Ernest Roth, the blue-eyed etcher we all called Louis, because he called us all Louis, whose pet epithet, after one of us played a bit of music, popped out: “Louis, jetzt spiel a mat a Walzer!”

And so, one left what one was doing at the moment, or at¬ tempting, or thinking. Very likely, one felt particularly lonely — and poignantly glad of the step and the knock. And one had a safe instinct he must be lonely too — in his way — other¬ wise, why did he come? There were so few of you then, and so many of the others, the stranger and the passerby. Loneli¬ ness had grown as much a part of you as your body a thing to escape if you could. So you left your window, if it was day¬ time, or your lamp, if it was night, went over to the door, un¬ consciously opened your hand, laid the fingers round the knob and opened the door. Invariably, the figure at the door would call out, “Hello,” and you would call out, “Hello,” and without further hesitation, “Come in.” Your hands would greet each other as well — sometimes for the last time — though you never knew it then. It would be hard to recall the precise variation of that pressure; the temperature of it; the mood of the mo¬ ment which dictated it; and the immediate effect, or the effect long after, the effect right now, of the contact. Except to state that it drew you out of yourself for a while, and draws you out now, in the attempted re-creation of a past, almost the whole of which is out of sight, out of sound; and the residue, the wistful residue, a vague, though radiant recollection, which has in it, however, somehow, somewhere, the intrinsic power to help you along whenever you need it. You may not acknow¬ ledge this; it may not be necessary to do so; it is hardly a question of debits and credits. You may not be aware of it;

this isn’t necessary either. The contact continues; has become a part of you; you are a multiple being.

Minus the intrusion of such a parenthesis, you would hold the door wide for him. Invariably, if he was the right sort, he would hem and haw: “But I’m disturbing you?” Invariably, you would retort: “Not at all, not at all, come in, come in.” And he would. And you shut the door gently and followed him. Very likely, you did not have to invite him to take off his coat, throw it over your extra chair and drop himself in his favorite nook on the couch. Such formalities had passed with the shutting of the door on former occasions. There were other questions now, familiar inquiries, as you seated yourself in your chair at the table, helped him light what he was fond of smoking, lit what you were fond of, and as host ventured the proverbial introduction: “Well— how are things?”

Usually, he answered: “So so.”

In those days, “So so” was always to be interpreted as “Not so good.” But you caught the courageous smile which deco¬ rated the response — one you would have assumed had he fired the question — and continued cheerfully: “You mean to say you’ve sold that story of yours?” (Or that “poem,” “draw¬ ing,” “etching,” “sculpture,” “painting,” “novel,” “play.”)

He would wag his head in a fashion you had seen it wag be¬ fore, in a fashion you had often wagged your own.

“You don’t mean to say that swine of a sheet had the nerve - ”

“I do— they did — but - ”

“Yes, yes?”

“The editor said - ”

“The editor himself?”

“Yes, the editor himself — said he liked the story - ”

“That’s simply wonderful, isn’t it? — it’s never happened before?” -

5?

“Not to me

PRELUDE

“Nor to me.”

You both stopped. Rolled this miracle on your tongues. Let it glide down sensuously, dreamily, drowsily. Would it ever happen to you that some editor — no matter who, how, why -

“Did he sign the letter himself?”

“He did.”

“What else did he say?”

“That he liked it — but it didn’t quite fit in with their pres¬ ent policy - ”

“I see - ”

“But that he’d be glad — to read other things of mine — if I’d favor him again - ”

“Favor him?”

“That’s the word he used.”

“Wonderful, isn’t it?”

“Considering it’s never happened before — yes - ”

“Did you bring the letter?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s have a look at it.”

As he drew closer, trying to put on a casual air, and you waited for him to unfold the famous document, a host of slen¬ der slips of printed paper, oblong parallelograms, pink, blue, gray, green, brown, began a slow, mocking dance in your brain, while you sat in a corner and watched them, dully wondering how many more would join the dance, how many more would the postman bring, how many more would you walk to the bottom of four flights of stairs to remove from your black tin box in the vestibule and climb to the top of four flights of stairs to slit open and release, along with the rejected manu¬ script, the sheets you had typed so neatly, folded so neatly, sent so neatly, the white thing you had spent so many hours on, days on, weeks on, so much energy, blood, hope, doubt, despair, trying to make it speak, to fill it with you, cajoling it, imploring it, revising it, only to have it return, speechless, helpless, inanimate, folded where you had folded it, with the iden¬ tical creases, and no sign to betray the thing had been touched at all, not even a smudge or a thumb print to prove the thing had ever left you, no clue but another dancer, quite like the last, pink, blue, gray, green -

“Here it is!”

“What — oh — let me see.”

The dervishes vanished. Your friend returned from afar. Or you returned to him. Leaned over the table with him, shoulder to shoulder. And examined the document together — you for the first time, he for the twentieth, thirtieth, fortieth.

Anyone looking in at the window, anyone crawling up the fire-escape from the backyard below — (why should he come up that way — what should prompt such buffoonery? But there was once such a man, such a madman. Did I not come back on a certain summer morning, with a sorely needed new suit, a light-weight, pearl-gray combination, nice and cool without lining, I bought at a Siegel-Cooper sale — aided by the friendly Hartpence — for the sum of seven dollars? And did we not spread the suit on the couch, decide it wasn’t bad, though he snickered a little — not at the suit but at the thought of me inside — my embarrassment in new clothes — always so obvious? Did we not go out, leave it behind because I didn’t dare wear it at once, lock the door, trail off to our bakery for lunch — and then hurry back with others who wanted to eye the bargain? We unlocked the door. The nudging sight¬ seers entered. They helped me look about — searched under the couch as well. The suit had disappeared — the window was still open — and Hartpence was the first to congratulate the late owner: “You would have looked like the devil — especially after the first rain - ”)

Anyone, I say, looking in at that window, might have asked many plausible questions as to those fellows in there — examin¬ ing a mere piece of paper. What did they find or expect to

PRELUDE find? Does it take so long to read such a thing? Maybe it’s a chart, a map, a plan? Are they architects? But they look too young and frail to be building things? And so impractical, unbusiness-like — where do they come in, how do they belong? They’re so pale, serious, foreign, if they belong anywhere at all, they’ve surely picked out the right hole? There’s nothing in them worth worrying about.

Hello — one of them is nodding now — so is the other? What makes him raise his head — and the other one too? And why do they smile at each other— is the paper amusing? What’s the dark fellow saying— and the blond one replying?

"It’s encouraging, isn’t it?”

"It certainly is!”

What makes them shake hands?

I

PLAYING WITH CHEMICALS

Re-creating people is a process subject to tenacious resist¬ ance when you have less than dust to reanimate and only words for the chemicals. Notwithstanding the most superhuman skill, brought to the service of the most passionate longing to give life to the past, images, composed of a few salient outlines and a modicum of harmonious tones, will be the sole semblance art is able to snatch from nature. After one has eyed the sun a number of years and felt it methodically carry a parcel of oneself to the west, one is everlastingly tempted to sigh: If I had the same life to live over again, I would have done this and not have done that, paid more attention to this and less to that, been more careful here and not so careful there, and I would have, should have, might have, possibly, probably . . . until one is stopped by a shorter sigh, a much more sensible riposte: What’s the use of wondering that?

Nevertheless, the longer sigh persists, especially if one is considering the people who gave one life, whose hands and mouths and bodies uniting started one going and keep one going, despite the fact that they separated many years ago, joined and mingled with the chemicals of the earth about twenty years ago and fell to dust and to less than dust, who can say when . . . leaving nothing more tangible than varied hypotheses, gigantic or infinitesimal queries one asks of the silence, and only the silence can answer. One begins a varia¬ tion of the same theme; bargains with echoes at the depths of solitude, no matter how foolhardy the address to the past one employs :

If I had the same life to live over again — if only with re¬ spect to what those two did with regard to myself — let alone

PLAYING WITH CHEMICALS what they did with regard to each other and the four children born before me. And their surroundings, the background they moved about in, their means and methods of keeping them¬ selves alive. And their dream, so much larger than them¬ selves, but not large enough to encompass much of the world they lived in. And their defeats, tragedies, disillusionment — and their courage, their courage. If I could go back — steal away to the cot in the room where she lay — struggling — re¬ peating one phrase until she could repeat it no longer — I don’t want to leave you. If I could go back to that sound and say what I wanted to say then — and couldn’t — and add to it all I’ve wanted to say since — and want to say now — and can’t. . . .

And the other — who followed her — and was very silent about it. Who held the knowledge of the ages in his eyes — turned them slowly to each of us standing near — with no more fiction in their depths — a fact each of us tried to avoid. If I could steal back to that silence — and divert that knowledge of his, not by trying to say something — but by laying his old chess¬ board between us, letting him take the white pieces and open with a gambit. Not with the Queen’s, with its modern devices of safety first — but with one of the King’s — like Paul Morphy before him — the meteoric master he idolized and emulated. I should have boldly grabbed the pawn and accepted the gambit I always declined — to his utter scorn and disgust if only to give him the pleasure, just once, of converting me to his ways — and of nodding and imagining a future, at least with my¬ self an exact replica of himself — instead of the queer, frail, incomprehensible, self-centred child he had had to greet so often with his favorite phrase: Noch so alt und dock so dumm. . . .

In the spring of 1921, one was invited to participate in the unveiling of an international magazine of the arts, to be called

Broom and to be published in Rome. As one had never crossed an ocean and anticipated an enticing opportunity to introduce lesser known American artists abroad, the invitation was accepted. In view of the surveillance under which Amer¬ icans were held and are still held in their own country, one had to sign several governmental papers, present oneself at various departments of inquisition, effect an income tax clearance (no serious obstacle), and show beyond peradventure that, if one had not been born in the United States, one had proof positive of a required citizenship somewhere. A photograph of one’s birth certificate, in case such a paper existed, would be obtain¬ able, I was assured, at the Department of Health of the City of New York. Among the documents I have carried from place to place, the photograph I was given in response to a decidedly anxious inquiry enjoys a high station. First of all, I had never known the address of my birth; and secondly, I soon discovered the record had been entered by a person obviously careless or unwittingly inaccurate in the announce¬ ment of my arrival.

The record is headed: State of New York, County of New York, City of New York, Birth Return 384313. Opposite the title, Name of Child, two errors in spelling occur: Alfried F . Kreymburg. There is no mistaking the vigorously dotted i, nor the u, instead of o. The middle initial stands for Francis: after an eccentric uncle who pursued his livelihood as a sign-painter, bill-poster and engraver of names on show-windows and whose greatest claim to fame in the family was achieved through the resplendent manipulation of his brushes one portentous day when the Indian with the raised hatchet in front of my father’s cigar store needed a fresh coat of im¬ pressionistic paint. As to the pedigree of the Alfred, I have been told a dubious debate had ensued at the christening, and, after a number of family names had been eliminated, my father seized the business directory and soon came upon

PLAYING WITH CHEMICALS

Alfred — who, he asseverated, was the first king of England, and who, my mother added, “let the loaves burn.” There were few quarrels in the family; this was not one of them; and so the name was affixed.

The next three entries are beyond dispute: Sex, Male; Color or Race, White; Date of Birth, Dec. io, 1883. Then comes the place of birth: 200 East 56th Street. What the building looked like — what it looks like now — whether it is still there — or whether it has been supplanted, as all things are even¬ tually supplanted, here in New York — I don’t know. I have never had the requisite curiosity to retrace my steps in that direction.

Then follows the Christian name of the Father, which is misspelled or Anglicized, Herman; and the Maiden Name of the Mother, Louisa Nascher (the German for sweet-tooth). Then the birthplace and age of the Mother, America— 33 years; and the birthplace, age and occupation of the Father, Germany — 43 — Segar-packer. The last line is devoted to the signature of the Medical Attendant, Katie Miller. The hand¬ writing throughout is hers. I do not venture this aside in a spirit of criticism. On the contrary, I am grateful the lady was present on that far-off occasion, and if ever I meet her again, I shall thank her, Wahrheit und Dichtung, for being the first person to write about me.

There have been others since, others beside myself, who have said things about me on paper. Only a few days ago, I picked up a volume of American stories, in which there is a tale about horses— the book is called Horses and Men— and in this tale, a certain minor character appears. I happen to know the author, Sherwood Anderson — a fine, handsome fellow and a poetic realist— but I don’t know the minor character. Nat¬ urally not. The work is a work of fiction. This character, a tall man with a black mustache, is a wealthy horse-dealer und only appears at the beginning of the tale — “standing there, pulling his mustache and looking as sad as a sick crane.” Now, it happens that I know nothing about horses and horsedealers. I have only been in the saddle, by actual count, once in forty years. And that was not on a horse, but on the back of a mule, who carried me, sight-seeing, from the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top of the Grand Canyon of Arizona — a marvellous trip all human beings who go there take at least once — and one human being will never take twice. Well, the name of the horse-dealer in the tale by Sherwood Anderson is, letter for letter and word for word, Alfred Kreymborg — thus proving that authors are better spellers than med¬ ical attendants.

My brother (the other surviving member of the family) and I used to claim, doubtless with an air of pardonable pride: We’re the only Kreymborgs on earth. The name, assuredly, is unique enough to be the only one of its kind extant. Cer¬ tainly, it has caused us the most acute embarrassment in answering questions concerning its origin — whether Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Flemish or what not — and the utmost dis¬ comfiture in spelling and pronouncing it on every occasion we were introduced to strangers, only to have them mispronounce it and ask us kindly to spell and pronounce it once more. Most people, especially boys, for the sake of greater ease, converted it into nicknames — like Krimmie, Kramie, Crumb, Cranberry — or into puns, the most glaring of which was perpetrated by a grown-up, the late William Marion Reedy, on one’s first visit to Chicago and one’s first meeting, not alone with the Solon of St. Louis, but with Edgar Lee Masters of Spoon River and Carl Sandburg of Galesburg, who sat on either side of the founder of the Mirror at a lunch table to which one had been invited and from which one was hailed: “Here comes the man who put the crime in Kreymborg.” We used to, I say, claim that we were the only folk of that name on earth; but

PLAYING WITH CHEMICALS events have a curious habit of contradicting one’s illusions about the truth, even in this, I doubt not, trivial matter.

Some years ago, I received a postal card from Amsterdam, Holland, with a drawing of a huge building, obviously belong¬ ing to a prosperous Dutch clothing concern. Right across the fagade, in bold, high letters, stood my own name.

Gordon Craig, who sent the card, is no writer of fiction, but a man of the theatre and a playboy. Therefore, when I re¬ ceived it, examined the drawing and read and re-read the head¬ ing, I had every reason for suspecting he was indulging in a hoax at my expense. However, as I have said, I went to Italy nearly three years ago. Later on, I travelled north grad¬ ually — and before leaving the continent, stopped in Amster¬ dam. I visited some of the customary sights: the canals, the Ghetto, Rembrandt’s museum; only to be led away by a per¬ sistent, a more personal whim. So I searched for and found the building. And studied the heading — letter for letter, word for word.

I did not enter the store, introduce myself, compare pedi¬ grees. I simply paced back and forth, with that huge place in my eye and my father’s last shop in my memory. I can recall that a squirrel ran round my head, and the tiny devil chat¬ tered: If you had your life to live over again — had you been born here in Amsterdam, along these canals, among these old scenes and Dutch burghers, perhaps in that very house; had you grown up under the influence of these affluent cultural surroundings — instead of over there, in New York, among her dizzy streets, in some obscure house, room, cell, or whatever it was. . . .

II Ollie Goes To Church

There was still another nickname, the sound of which never delighted me, the more so as it had managed to fasten itself onto one’s Christian name, clung there throughout one’s baby¬ hood, childhood, boyhood and, thanks to a few intimate num¬ skulls, most of them sentimental relatives, continued in use long after Ollie had graduated from the grammar school on Ninety-sixth Street, and from short pants into long trousers. Ollie first entered the latter on the morning of his confirmation in the church on Ninety-first Street. No less a prelate than Arch¬ bishop Corrigan presided; the mysterious scent of whose hands, held over Ollie’s head, has not entirely evaporated from mem¬ ory. His parents were not Roman Catholics — not both of them. His father was a Roman Catholic, of sorts, and his mother a Lutheran, of sorts. His brother Carl, seven years older than himself, had been baptized a Lutheran. In Ollie’s case, there¬ fore, a balance had been attained in the family.

I am afraid neither of the parents could have been con¬ sidered a devout sectarian. Where the other three children were born and what their names, I haven’t the slightest idea. They passed out of the family before Ollie was conscious of them or could combine a series of coherent syllables on his own account. Nor am I aware how those three died, although I’ve heard one relative claim: Through medical incompetence; your parents couldn’t call in the right doctors; couldn’t quite afford them and so on; and another one sigh: Two of them were boys, the other a girl. The other a sister — that thought has haunted me often. Nor am I certain as to the place where the parents were wedded — in what church, if any — whether

OLLIE GOES TO CHURCH

Roman Catholic or Lutheran — and how they effected a com¬ promise. One relative has stated — in St. Mark’s in the Bouwerie — an assertion I have never tried to prove or disprove.

There was an opportunity to comer the truth or fiction last spring, but something in me demurred — a chronic dislike or evasion of facts, a romantic fondness for dramatic situations, an habitual reticence. I had been invited by Mr. George Jay Smith, of the Board of Education, to read aloud a group of my poems in St. Mark’s — now Dr. Norman Guthrie’s church. When my turn in the program came, after several other poets had concluded their numbers, I was powerless to compete with the fancy that I was standing under a roof where, about a half century before, they might have stood: she in white and he in black; she a little over five, he a little under six feet tall; she with her gentleness, he with his dignity; and both of them radiant, eager, visionary — with “tomorrow and tomorrow” just ahead. A curious incongruity between that past and pres¬ ent urged a still more poignant whim to dictate the particular selection of poems to be read. Those two had never had the smallest suspicion that the idiosyncrasies of Ollie would ever develop or degenerate, as the case may be, into a profession so weird, so hopelessly impractical and completely remote from the shop on Third Avenue and Ninety-fourth Street — as poetry. And so, after one or two casual numbers, I inserted one or two with a not too obvious reference to the parents of Ollie. . . .