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far very congenial. The place has the atmosphere that I "get along"
with in and that is all I ask.

By the way, how do you pronounce your name? If I say "Sirjent", they
say *Sirjent* with "Oh, you mean Miss Sarjent", and if I say "Sarjent", th
they say "I think they call it Sirjent." Another thunder shower
is coming. Gerald Thayer ascribes the the weather to the cannonading
in Europe.

Sincerely,

Randolph Bourne

7.

E.S.S. Medfield

Dublin, N.H.

17 Aug. 1915

I must send you another bulletin, and try to anticipate your reply to my last letter. The warm weather, I imagine, is all gone, with a rousing wind today and an autumnal-looking sky. We still have our dail deluge, and Fergus was caughtoon Sunday with Gerald Thayer on the first ridge of Monadnock. I started with them for the "high pasturex", but some intuition warned me, and I came back to spend the afternoon with "The Tragic Comedians" of Meredith. I liked it very much too, though it is far too simple, and not sticky and fishy and pretentious enough for the true Meredithean, I believe. The Thayers have been too good to us: they will be tired of seeing us again. Saturday, an afternoon of music on Mrs. Gerald's piano, in deference to my modest but probably noticeable reluctance at the relic of 1848. I'm afraid there were sundry subterranean interfamily complications in consequence, but not very dangerous, I guess. The music was flanked on both sides by a meal, and the Geralds had us up Sunday again. We reall should decline some of these, but I tell them the peril is theirs. Other social adventures last week were a call on Miss Eugenica Forthingham, whom I liked, and dinner with Miss Amy Lowell who seems to share with the Germans the faculty of setting off dynamite bombs in peaceful social groups. Mrs. Gerald came home from Miss Lowell's talk at the club Saturday quite beside herself with fury, and a mild Harvard professor was stirred to warmth in recounting her atrocities on ship board. I went to her house in considerable trepidation expecting to be pummelled and overawed. Instead I spent a wholly delightful evening. She walked right at me as one of the oldest of friends, and we had a truly grand gossip. I found her immensely witty and keen, and willing to spread out the contents of her mind before you. Surprisingly fair and a friendly lover of all sorts of queer and little people, whom she touches off inimitably. She has a delightful zest of life, and would be a much greater person without her money and position, which apparently give people these extraordinary reactions and breed unpopularity for her. She seems quite innocent of this, however. I also had tea with Miss Putnam and her sister, with both of whom I'm sure I should disagree on almost every subject. But we found much to talk about that didn't involve agreements and got along very pleasantly. Mr. Brush stopped yesterday morning, probably astounded to see me up so early, and talked long and charmingly on violins and violinists. Mr. Thayer took us out in his boat one peculiarly heavenly morning, and, having got us to the middle of the lake, discoursed on Art and Religion. He is a very charming friendly harbor to have, and his house grows so on me. That jumble of studios, and that study of Gerald's with the wide view of the mountains, where one would have to be inspired if one were not overcome with loneliness! We amuse ourselves already with building a house in Dublin and coming here always to live, so you see how much captivated we are.

Your own summer sounds a little disconsolate, in spite of so delicious a house. Do your varied consciences hound you along like mine do? So that nothing is ever a real vacation, and nothing ever a real normal drudge of work? My only solution is to get so somehow proud of myself that I cannot bear to have the world deprived of what I could tell them. Unfortunately, I am still far from that condition, and I suppose you are too. I wish we might

8. E.S.S. Medfield

Dublin,
August 30, 1915

I began to think I would have to be cold and miserable, or have you think we were uncomfortable in Dublin before you would write to me again. I can assure that to-day is most unpleasant, cold and so damp that we can scarcely light our matches and papers and books are limp and moist. The good days have been delicious, however, and I'm sure they will come again. The climate must have been queer this summer, for I have been very sleepy, and not at all exhilarated, except for one or two bouncing days when it seemed a crime to work, and I had to drown in a drink my disappointment that I couldn't climb mountains or fly. One day -- did I tell you? -- we drove to Peter-bore to the Macdowell colony, which I very much wanted to see. Ridgely Torrence and his wife were there, and after a long search which took us all over the woods and fields, we found them in their studio about lunch time. I wanted to stay and roam around, but my friends -- rural Marthas -- had the burden of the unfed horse on their minds, and we had to make for the tavern in the village. While the horse was being tenderly cared for, we met Torrence again, and took him home, he telling us his usual marvellous tales all along the way. He showed us Macdowell's grave, and the log-cabin, and for me it was a real pilgrimage, though my friends -- Carl and Fergus -- seemed strangely nored. The log-cabin looking out over the pines "towards the westering sun" has all the atmosphere of a holy place, silent and undisturbed. In it was composed the noblest music yet thought in this country. Very noble too is the great rock in the little hedge-close that marks the grave. There is a high plateau with meadows that reminds me of Switzerland, and a background of forest with a great sweep of mountains. It is all quite different from Dublin, but very distinctive. The artists are few, but real ones, working in the semi-solitude that seems to me the high, heroic test of personality a. My friend Carl with whom I live in New York, has been here, and we have lived for ten days on his culinary art. Now it seems harder than ever to cook and as Fergus has acquired prejudices against canned things and meats I am facing a starvation which can only be allayed by some merciful boarding-house, I fear. My enticements are not sufficient to bring other friends from New York. I shall want to stay several weeks, however, if I find that the "New Republic" does not forget my existence.

We still live half our time at the Thayers though we have gradually shifted to the Geralds'. Mr. T's head is so full of piebald warships and the conversion of college presidents to protective coloration that he cannot any longer let his emotional nature be stirred by our Schubert and Bach. But Mrs. Gerald and Gladys and Dorothea Taber, who has beenthere, and a neighbor or two, provide an audience, and, as we are always ready for endless music we play there several times a week. Mrs. Gerald is very charming, with a strangely colored life, and their literary ambitions among the moil of two constantly demanding babies are rather touching. G.mreads me snatches of his book on the West Indies, and talks vaguely about publishers, though several have rejected him. His father, for all his charm, is, I 18m afraid, a choice parental tyrant, and used up his children's youth in his hobby. The great book seems to have taken a lot of grudging but uncomplaining starch out of G and he doesn't know just where

2

he is now, except that he hates painting. Warfare is now raging about Gladys's going to New York the coming winter alone, with her flying tragically to the upper house from her father's cloudy remonstrances, and me feeling very wise as the champion of the younger generation. She seems so very genuine and serious and obscure and repressed, and says startling things sometimes that seem to come up from a hidden life. She has evidently been minimized always by both father and brother, and is now ripe for some intolerant burst of freedom. Her savageries seem to be rather enforced than desired.

We had a glorious picnic one cold moonlit evening on a knoll back through the woods. The Geralds, Gladys, Miss T., Miss Redfield, an artist here, Carl, Fergus, and myself. Supper, and then a fine skir-mishing quarrel about a fire, Gladys in almost a priestly attitude of insistence against her brother. Finally he went and telephoned for permission, while the lusty ones did heroic feats of birch-springing and swinging, and we watched the great moon. We had our fire, and stayed till eleven, coming back through the woods without a lantern, the pine floor splashed with white moonlight and the trunks standing solemnly around.

There have been so many delightful hours that I cannot tell of them all. The people you and Mr. Greendet recommended me to, with their friends, still remain the congenial. I have ruined my reputation by going three times to the club. Very thin pabulum indeed. Professor Richard Burton, a monologist, and Major Putnam were the speakers. The Dublin you know certainly has an MM unpardonable fringe of fashionables. Miss Lowell jumped up and walloped Mr. Burton after his speech. This was one of her unfavourable manifestations. If you don't know her, I'm sure you wouldn't like her. My introduction was under the hap-piest auspices, and my impressions most favorable. Perhaps she has had two phases, the Lowell-arrogant one, and the Imagist-kindly MM Shaivian one. I got her only in the last without any memories of the other. She even looked almost handsome at dinner in her own charming house, and reminded me strangely of a gay and heroic young woman friend of mine who has just died. Thanks for the offer of French. You haven't any of the Unanimistes to loan, have you? or the novels of de Regnier, or Peguy's "Eve"? I'm reading Emerson and Nietzsche.

R. S. B.

9.
E.S.S. Medfield

Dublin N.H.
7 Sept. (1914)

I do hope you did not decide last night on your plans, for I should
like very much to persuade you to come to Dublin. I write in great
haste, wondering if it would make just the deciding difference if I
telegraphed you. The boarding-house is Mrs. Preston's, and it is
situated next to the Library not far from the stores and the church
(towards the lake). The situation is not ideal, but you will remember
it is not far to the lake, and her rooms look very clean and pleasant
to me. A couple of friends of Gladys Thayer, Miss Taber and Miss
Redfield, have been there for several weeks, and speak very well of
it, good table they say. Mrs. Taber told me last week that all her
people were going by the 15th, so there would be plenty of room. She
has a room for 8, or 10, or 12 according to size. When I talked with
her last week, I was playing with the idea of staying many weeks there.
My friend leaves Monday or Tuesday next, and then I intend to move
there probably, unless Mrs. Thayer discovered another house she had
hinted at. Since then Dublin has given me too much society, but that
will rapidly pass. It would be delightful to have you here in Dublin,
and you would quite clinch my decision to stay. The big front room
here would give you an admirable place to write. Of course Mr. Greene
would lend it to you. Mr. Brush is in the barn, and is living only a
short distance away. We went to see him the other evening and had
a delightful talk. What can I do to induce you to come to Dublin?
Remind you of the gorgeous foliage and the lake and Monadnock, which
my friend Carl, a connoisseur in mountains, calls "a most delightful
mountain"? Mr. Brush, unusually available just now. The Thayers,
mellowed and familiar from our music, and open for many delightful
talks and suppers and before their great fireplace. Can't you think
of the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains as pale and dreary like
your house-cleaning Brookline, and so come to Dublin? Can I get
any more information for you? The Russo-German lady runs only a tea-
room, I believe, and is very expansive. Has made an ultra-fashionable
sensation.

Excuse my haste and unconnectedness.

R.S. Bourne

10.
E.S.S. Medfield

Dublin,
14 Sept. (1914)

You are a gay deceiver, deciding against Dublin before I had even read your letter, and making all my persuasiveness vain. And now you must, in compensation, make the October trip, for longer than four days, I hope. I shall probably be here, and would surely wait if there were a certainty of your coming. Mr. Brush has just finished a portrait of his daughter Nancy, Titian-like, with rich draperies and classic calm, and all the world comes to see it, filling our meadows with motors and chatter. Everybody says it is the best thing he has done. How amazing that so radical a mind should make his art so imitative! He seems completely untouched by the art-tendencies of the day, living only with the Italian masters and working devotedly after their principles.

I read your dialogue with pleasure and some unexpected reactions. I haven't read the stories, but you made it unnecessary, and have probably saved me much irritation. If these people, like Mrs. Gerald (?), prefer the decencies of academic life and all the harmony of a life that reduces emotion and personality and robust irony to the minimum, why aren't they willing to pay the price, and not be always wistfully looking over the hedge at passion and freedom and frankness? They are not really protesting prisoners, nor are their characters, but they like to appear as if they could really live in the open air, at the same time that they would not think of surrendering their luxurious jails. I am a little mixed perhaps, and I haven't read Mrs. Gerould, but I seem to detect harm the same note here that one finds in Galsworthy, that of people cultivated outside of the humanly animal sphere, yet in no genuinely new angelic sphere. Much good art is wasted in trying to touch you with the infinite pathos of such lives, when they are merely dull. The theme is usually the renunciation of individual desire in obedience to some higher immemorial social law which transcends the petty wilfulness of the one person. But such a law ought to transfigure those who obey it, and the hollowness of it all is shown by the fact that it never does, at least in English fiction and in the Puritan life I see around me. These great laws of obligation which constrain people to loyalties ought to make their lives epic, and it seems never to do anything but make them dull. Won't you write up the New England conscience sometime all by itself? I don't get a chance to read you on anybody but these fearfully sophisticated writers who don't seem a bit like you as a friendly, human person. But then you usually sit heavily on them, so that is all right. Why were you so cowardly about the French family? And with my impudent example before you? You make me feel very impudent indeed.

R.S. Bourne

11.
E.S.S. Medfield

Dublin,
23 September (1914)

I hope you will tell me you are coming to Dublin next week. Otherwise I shall probably find myself driven away. Things seem to be disintegrating rapidly, and I do not want to be left with ashes in my hands. Fergus has gone, and now my old Mr. Chase who has been keeping

house for me since with such skill and companionly charm is called back
to New York just as I had begun to contemplate long October weeks liv-
ing along in this house. I chafe at my bad luck. Gladys Thayer sud-
denly goes away for two weeks. I quarrel with the Geralds over Merddith
Various people drift away. The boarding-house does not seem inviting
for loneliness. Do come and save Dublin for me. These are glorious
cool days. We got up to the high pastures yesterday but could not
stay for the wind.

I meant to answer your kind inquiries about the Gary manuscript. I finished it in a wild burst of speed on Saturday, and had to pay with a lame back which has kept me sitting around with pillows ever since, and a cleaned-out vacuum at the New Republic staring me in the face. It is an awful thing to be told that there are no more things of yours down there and you not feeling at all like sitting up and writing, and without an idea in your head. Each day makes the delay worse. I do not want to be chidden, and if I am not I shall think they do not miss me.

The Gary work is a fearful thing. I tried to be official and des-
criptive and to quench all unqualified enthusiasm, with the result
that I am duller than the most cautious schoolman. And now an agent
has, by some miracle, put over a Gary article of mine on Scribner's,
which is utterly characterless. Can one do these things without
blushing. I shall never touch Gary again, Mrs. A.B.F. -- who summons
me back to the New York fray notwithstanding. I am rather a precarious
aid to her, anyway, in her Napoleonic campaign, for I usually get my
facts wrong and put my foot in it. She seems to like the explosions,
however, that I sometimes set off, and believes in publicity, good or
bad. I hope she gets some reward for her supernatural energy in this
enterprize. She has put in enough to stand any ordinary school-system
on its head. She is a great general and could scardely have a better
cause.
I hope you manage to come to Dublin. Is not
life long enough to crowd it in also in?

R.S. Bourne