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Content THE POET'S GARDEN OF RUTH LE PRADE
by
Patricia H. Cherin
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
May 1992
Copyright 1992 Patricia H. Cherin
UMI Number: DP23167
All rights reserved
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
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under the direction of h..fPf. Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re
quirements fo r the degree of
P h - P -
£
)C\l-
This dissertation, written by
Patricia H. Cherin
D O C T O R O F P H ILO S O P H Y
Dean of Graduate Studies
D a te April.. 1 6* . . 1992
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
; C & W l . . ( L < U r
ii
For invaluable help on this project I'd like to
thank Jim Kincaid, Ron Gottesman, Peggy Kamuf,
Vince Cheng, Alice Gambrell, Ross Winterowd,
John Ahouse, Dacy Taub, Thanet Bronson,
Margaret Sturtevant, Gloria Reidal Franzen,
Terry Diamond, Gary Griswold, a beloved circle
of friends, and all the members of my family,
each of whom is a dear, rare, and exotic
variety of flora, and, especially, always
always, forever forever, the wonderful Frog in
my Garden, David.
1
PRELIMINARY POLEMIC
This dissertation is a recovery project. Because we
are academized as students of literature both by what we
engage and then by how we engage those texts against a
canonical rubric, we tend to forget that a great deal,
perhaps, in fact, most, literary history is forgotten.1
This is a deliberate attempt to retrieve some of that
record, one of many such efforts now taking place in the
task of beginning to remember.
The Poet's Garden, most of which has lain dormant
in the archives of the University of Southern
California2 library for several decades, represents the
effort of one woman, now dead and mostly forgotten, to
create a literary life and a literary place for herself
and, by implication and extension, for other women. I
see Ruth Le Prade's enterprise, the Poets Garden which
she creates and to which she devotes her life, as a
feminist pastoral. She creates a space that is a site
both of joy and of radical action, one that enables and
promotes a female nurturing of female texts, botanical,
biological, and literary.
The Poets Garden Collection is made up of fifty-
seven boxes donated to U.S.C. during the Fifties and
Sixties by a Los Angeles woman, Ruth Le Prade. It is a
gallimaufry of poems, journals, dramatic scenes,
2
biographies, little magazines, photographs, letters to
literary and political figures, political pamphlets,
grocery lists, announcements of poetry readings, even a
ceramic bird feeding dish.3 Le Prade at one point calls
her Collection literary souvenirs, and at this time in
literary studies when we are looking with critical
attention at items adjacent to the icons, it seems
timely to be excavating such different literary relics.
This is not a formalist appraisal. And, unlike
customary treatments of the dominant esoterica, it does
not purport to be a passive and objective dissection of
inert material. This researcher is continuously
influenced by her object of inquiry, by the Poets
Garden, which in turn, by its being dug up and stirred
about, by virtue of its being cared for, struggles for
and ultimately achieves its own subjecthood. This
reciprocal female nurturing of female texts, both this
writer's dissertation and this work of Ruth Le Prade, is
primary here.
Ruth Le Prade is familiar only to a few scholars of
radical American literature who might associate her with
Upton Sinclair. That writer, who rarely made exceptions
to his policy of not publishing any work but his own,
did publish Le Prade's Debs and the Poets, the work for
which she is primarily known, a collection of poetic
3
testimonials she solicited and edited hoping to
influence the release of Eugene Debs from the federal
penitentiary in 1920. And Cary Nelson mentions her in
his 1990 study of radical American poetry.4 But
generally Le Prade is rarely discussed, the contents of
the Poets Garden hardly ever perused, and any concept of
the Poets Garden as an entity entirely unexplored.
We can designate three Poets Gardens: the
Collection of almost five dozen cartons in the American
Literature Special Collections in Doheny Library at
U.S.C.; the real, botanical plot of earth, historically
situated for most of this century at 1622 South
Spaulding here in Los Angeles, and whose vestiges remain
today;5 and, of most interest here, the literary
construct which Le Prade summarily made up and lived out
for her lifetime. This last sense of the Poet's Garden,
the metaphor by which the collection is known, can be
gauged variously, both specifically, as that enterprise
of literariness that Le Prade herself individually
constructs, and, more expansively, as that aesthetic
which a female rendering of pastoral engenders.
Le Prade sets up a female pastoral location that is
a place of aesthetic bliss and, at the same time, of
political action. Most traditional pastoral attempts
have been retreats of sorts, sites of erasure from the
4
inscriptions of polity. But for Le Prade, the pastoral
site is, in contrast, an occasion for active and
propagating pleasure that is also an opportunity for
radical deed. She spends her life planting poems and
seeds in the construction of a literary and botanical
enterprise whose purpose can be construed as the
enactment of a female poetics. The Poets Garden
represents one woman's attempt to establish herself as
primal, not as an Eve from Adam, but as an Ur*-Eve.6 It
establishes a site of investiture, a way to seeking
through the soil a new place of female empowerment. Le
Prade realizes it is also a site of divestiture, a
location where received male literary manners may be
cast off:
I shall not be fettered by the Past, by things
outgrown and musty,
Neither shall I gaze at the Past with scorn
That within it which is outgrown and musty,
I part aside. It falls like husks from the
growing fruit.7
Le Prade husks the past in order to perform the future:
I do not come as a whirlwind, a destroyer of
things. I come as a builder, a maker of
things.8
Le Prade's "The Mighty Rebel,”9 offers further evidence
of her acknowledgement that her endeavors are not just
unilateral.
5
I am the Rebel— the mighty Rebel
Destructive and constructive— both am I. . . .1 0
She does recognize that in some sense her enterprise is
not solely innovation in a poetic schema, but
extirpation as well.
Naming and associations of named things and
location of inscription are important considerations for
Le Prade. She intuits that not biology but nomenclature
is destiny, and the Poets Garden is a gesture toward
female naming. Le Prade's very conscientious preparation
for her role as doyenne of the Poets Garden includes a
great deal of work in the areas of language study and
feminism. This recognition that her poetic crusade
involves poetics and female nurturing is well documented
in the items of her souvenirs. But many other sorts of
diverse artifacts, cultural, literary, historical, make
up part and parcel of the Poets Garden. Data and pieces
of California history and American radicalism are
especially prominent in the paraphernalia of the
Collection. It is a motley lot.
This idea of the aggregate nature of this
conglomeration and the implications that its desultory
character raises are other dynamics at play here.
Underlying all the readily identifiable discrete parts
as a sort of tone thesis, pervasive and insistent, is
6
that idea of the Collection itself, named and known and
practiced as the Poets Garden. It is my belief that Le
Prade, who, by constructing and naming and practicing
this assembly of the Poets Garden, influences and
extends the tradition of pastoral offering an
alternative and feminist response to that genre.
That is the characteristic of the Poets Garden that
can be seen as most essential and most innovative on Le
Prade's part. That pastoral tradition might be seen
historically, if not overtly misogynistic, as certainly
within the purview of males. Even though some of the
characters in and objects of pastoral expression have
been female,1 1 most practitioners of traditional
pastoral have been male. For the most part, the makers
of feminist pastoral have made their gardens their
poems. These women have not been privy, as have their
male counterparts, to those economics of privilege,
capital, time, and cultural sanction, required in order
to craft their eclogues and elegies in a medium
conventionally literary.
DEFUNCT PATRIARCHAL GARDENS
If males have been the primary purveyors of
pastoral, right around the time that Le Prade is first
writing, around World War I, their gardens are no longer
7
yielding. The male gardens of received modernism are no
longer fecund; they are in fact, in seemingly ubiquitous
instances, moribund. For example, in William Carlos
William's Paterson, roots writhe upon the surface close
to ruin.1 2 And in Wallace Stevens' Peter Quince at the
Clavier "... gardens die, their meek breath scenting/
The cowl of winter, done repenting." And T. S. Eliot
asks in vain in The Wasteland. "What are the roots that
clutch, what branches grow/ Out of this stony rubbish?"
1 3 As well, we know all too familiarly from The Hollow
Men that "This is the dead land[.]"1 4
This barren landscape seems to be the lot
particularly of white males. Poets of color often share
with white women an interest in seeds that are vital and
an understanding of the agency of the garden as a
transforming venue. Jean Toomer writes "... one seed
becomes/An everlasting song, a singing tree."1 5 And
Countee Cullen speaks poignantly of deferral, of keeping
seeds viable, perhaps until they can render in a site
that is not effete and impotent.
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds1 6
Margaret Walker in "Lineage" celebrates her grandmother
who "moved through fields sowing seeds." Le Prade is one
of many Others than white males who claim their turn at
pastoral agency.
The Poets Garden provides another, previously
unacknowledged, link in seeing women's gardening output
as women's participation in and subsequent altering of
the tradition of pastoral. Botanical texts are literary
texts; women's gardens are women's inscriptions. Le
Prade is occupied with real garden work and recounts in
many instances its drudgeries and joys, and she
certainly understands her construction of the Poets
Garden as metaphoric. But she may not have appreciated
fully her project as a radical literary event.
A BIT MORE PASTORAL PROLEGOMENON
Some markers of traditional pastoral are in
evidence in the Collection. Le Prade saves a poem from
Ovid's Metamorphoses which deals with longing for a past
that was not murderous and carnivorous :
In that past age which men "The Golden" named
The arbor fruit and herb as meat were claimed
And never lip with bloody stain was shamed.
Safely then the wild bird winged its way,
Nor fear intruded on the hare at play . . . ,1 7
In traditional studies of pastoral, the shepherd is
male. For instance, William Empson in Some Versions of
Pastoral, although devoting a chapter to Alice in
Wonderland, promotes her childhood, not her gender, as
9
salient in his discussion.1 8 In feminist gardening
stratagems, which inscribe female selves on nature in
order to render a female landscape, the staff is no
longer a mandatory prop of pastoral.
Annette Kolodny has quite capably demonstrated the
very different responses of men and women to the
landscape, especially as that relates to the American
experience. She contends that “insofar as the pastoral
impulse is shared by the culture at large, it becomes a
pattern by which a number of cultural artifacts are
shaped.1 , 1 9 Kolodny explores how that pastoral impulse
has been expressed by American women gone awestering.
Through the use of imagination, and the transforming
power of metaphor is primary to Kolodny's work, while
men clung to the forests, women claimed the prairie as
their paradise. Their unequivocal spaces were "the home
and the small cultivated gardens of their own making."2 0
Kolodny illustrates that "In the idealized
wilderness garden of what R. W. B. Lewis calls 'the
noble but illusory myth of the American as Adam'2 1 an
Eve could only be redundant." But, in the nineteenth
century, Kolodny continues, American women began to
"embrace" that very idea of becoming an Eve and
redefining the concept of their American paradise, the
garden. 2 2
10
SAY YOUR GARDEN AT DUSK
Le Prade is one of many such women who make their
own gardens, who become their own Eves. She, and they,
claim not only terrestrial space, but aesthetic and
literary space as well. In the early decades of this
century, Colette in France writes extensively of
gardens, 2 3 and in this country, Amy Lowell's garden is
a well-known source of poetic inspiration. 2 4 Less well-
known is the work of Anne Spencer of Lynchburg,
Virginia, who instructs catechistically, "Say your
garden at dusk/ Is your soul . . .M.2 5 The garden as a
metaphoric venue is one women, known and unknown, know
well. 2 6
IMAGINARY GARDENS WITH REAL TOADS IN THEM
Women poets in the early part of this century
sought a source of strength through poetic agency. This
search to find some origin of female power took Lola
Ridge as far as Babylon and Mexico. William Drake writes
of Ridge's quest:
The garden that appeared to Lola
Ridge in a vision, promising peace
and the uninhabited flowering of
imaginative beauty, is Eden
restored, the place of Eve without
blame. It is a power-giving image of
a woman's reconciliation with
femaleness ....
11
Those women who understood most
profoundly the nature of their
oppression were the most energized
by the mythic potency of that image.
Even in many women's poems on the
theme of restraint such as Amy
Lowell's "Patterns" or Sara
Teasdale's "The Garden," the garden
is an oblique metaphor of female
self-realization2 7
I believe that the garden is more than an oblique
metaphor of female self-realization, it is a forthright
one. Many women were working to extend the pastoral
tradition to include a specifically feminist response,
and that response came in the garden, both in the dirt
of real gardens and in the stuff of real visions.
Although both Marianne Moore's definition of poetry as
"imaginary gardens with real toads in them [,]"2 8 and
the work of Alice Walker fin Search of Our Mother's
Gardens) showing the powerful agency of our maternal
gardens are well known, much more of this work both by
known and unknown writers is neglected.
In one such manuscript, Californian Mary Austin
writes of the power of the garden as a source of
nurture. Here, Austin imagines prehistory:
Sow we the Word unto Life as the linden
Scatters her summer winged seeds to the
windy spaces[, ] .2 9
12
Austin sees language being worked in the earth while a
tree issues fecund possibility into what had been void.
In another, and, I believe, important, Austin
manuscript, this one unpublished, "The Lost Garden"
describes a place allied with mystery and childhood and
sweetness and dream.3 0 In this manuscript, Austin maps
the way into the Lost Garden:
There is a way also into the Garden
past the Islands of Desire,3 1 . . .
How we loved that Island . . .most
delectable of all the places we go
to in our minds when we no longer
like the place where we are. 3 2
Gardens are sites of many activities including
engendering, divestiture, and, as here, rejuvenation.
The garden that rejuvenates is a retreat from current
situation, and that retreat for Austin is fictional and
conceptual.
Women have been able to survive in patriarchal
gardens for millennia because of just such insistence on
the transforming power of metaphor.
By whatever trails, the garden is
both warm and sweet . . . Everywhere
there are flowers, all unforgotten
kinds from Old World gardens, . . .
So potent are the virtues of these
flowers . . . that one lover of them
has but to say to another, 'See how
the moss rose has topped the paling'
. . . to have as much comfort as
from a wise saying. But this is a
mystery to all who have not kept
gardens.3 3
13
So from Austin we see the garden experience as communal
but esoteric, only its practitioners know its joys. And
those practitioners are women. For Austin, "the Garden
is before everything else a place of satisfactions, the
deep bosomed end of wanting come to fulfillment."3 4
Elsewhere in her work, Austin proclaims a botanical
nurturing. "I would go out to the willow tree and let
the long leavy [sic] boughs fall over me as once my
mother's hair, softly caressing, and with the movement
of relieving tenderness my spirit would lighten and slip
away."3 5 The presence of the pastoral garden in women's
writing of this period shows consensus in an exploration
for means of nurture.
The site of the garden as a place of divestiture
can be studied in Gertrude Stein's opera in one act, In
A Garden. In that work, a duel is carried on between two
young boys with garden and kitchen implements. Both
duelists die leaving Lucy, the young woman, two crowns
which make her the queen she has dreamed to be. Here are
the tools of the kitchen and the garden, implements of
women's domain, being the means by which two young men,
one sentimental, the other self-assertive, representing
masculinity in opposite types, dispose of the presence
of their sex.
14
In the early part of this century, women of vastly
different stature in the current canon, from
acknowledged Stein to lesser-known Austin to unknown Le
Prade are experimenting with women's garden activities.
This engagement treats gardens in many manifestations,
as subject as in Stein, as source as in Ridge, and as
place of succor as in Austin. Le Prade uses this same
agency of the garden, as, in addition to these purposes,
a means of process of literary production.
LITERARY TRIAGE
Over the course of her life, Le Prade practices a
sort of literary triage. If there is such a thing as a
literary impulse, some urge to truck in language beyond
that threshold necessary for communication, how that
energy manifests itself is in great part culturally
determined. Le Prade's prioritizing of her literary
endeavors at different points in her life offers an
example of how women, even radical women, have
traditionally expressed that literary practice.
Up to 1917, the domain of Le Prade's literary
activity is primarily creative, with her energies being
channelled into her own original work, A Woman Free, in
that year. But by 1920, her primary attention in
literary matters has already undergone a shift and is
15
given to the task of collection as she solicits and
publishes poems that are political testimonials for the
purpose of securing the release of Eugene Debs from
prison. Debs and the Poets is certainly her literary
effort, but it is one in which she is editor, not
originator, of literary product. There seems to be a
dynamic in which her literary expression becomes
succeedingly less primary, less acute. By the late
Twenties, much of her literary mission becomes
preservation, the managing and keeping of the written
legacies of others.
But there is for four decades, and this cannot be
separated from her other literary endeavors, the
repetition of the garden ceremony every spring and the
perpetuation of the construct of the garden. When she
does express her literary impulse in primary ways, Le
Prade writes her own work in a variety of conventional
formal genres, including those of poetry, short story,
novel, drama, lyric, biography, and letter. But the
thematic genre of pastoral by which this literary
impulse also manifests itself, becomes the most
prominent, and the most original of Le Prade's literary
expressions. Le Prade becomes truly an innovator of
pastoral, creating a feminist pastoral that conflates
16
literary and botanical bodies transgressing the fixed
taxonomy of both those categories.
THE SOCIALIST POEM OF THE CENTURY
In the Collection itself, there is a dearth of
material about Le Prade's early years. Although the
Collection includes in biographies and journals birth
data on many literary figures, there is little such
information about herself. We do know that the Woodsons,
her mother's family, were from Louisville, Kentucky, and
that the Cowards, her father's family, had themselves
photographed at the Palace Art Gallery in Woodland,
California, near the turn of the century.3 6 Le Prade's
parents, M. L. Coward and Mollie3 7 Woodson, may have met
in that small town in Yolo County, near Sacramento.
There is a picture of "The Old Homestead/ Our old Home,"
taken there in March, 1901. Le Prade was probably born
in San Francisco in 1895.3 8 Also, a reviewer of A Woman
Free published in 1917 will describe her as having
"barely 22 summers."3 9
The Collection offers only scattered information.
In one photo, Pappa Loring is leaning on a hoe that
prefigures Le Prade's fervent devotion to Edwin Markham,
who had been catapulted to overnight fame in 189 9 for
his monumentally successful, "The Man with the Hoe."
17
Regarded by Kevin Starr as the "Socialist poem of the
century,"40 the poem depicts a worker's Everyman who has
been so brutalized he is numb even to grief. This poem
will have such impact on Le Prade her whole life that it
is truly the anthem of the Poets Garden.
Another photo, "Pappa, by his train,"4 1 presages
the second of the two men Le Prade will idolize, Eugene
Debs, whose political career started with the American
Railway Union. These two men in the photographs may have
been grandfathers or uncles, but their poses are images
Le Prade appropriates, chooses to keep, and seeks to
recapitulate throughout her life.
Other early biographical information that the
Collection apparently doesn't offer is sketched out by
Thanet Bronson, a woman born in 1903 and Ruth's playmate
as a young girl in the town of Hughson near Modesto in
the San Joaquin Valley, where young Ruth grew up. Other
historical materials from Hughson complement Bronson's
reminiscences to help piece together some of Le Prade's
early life. In 1907, the Hughson township founders,
recognizing the importance of a hotel to the development
of a town, arranged for the Gillette Hotel, which was
managed by Mr. and Mrs. M. L. Coward, Le Prade's
parents, to be moved from Ceres a few miles away to
Hughson. Forty to sixty mules pulled the hotel, which
18
was cut in half for the move. The first half of the
building was moved in three weeks, and the second half
in less than a week. Some trouble with the lease caused
the Cowards to remain inside the hotel the whole time it
was being moved. Whether or not a young Ruth was also
part of this amazing expedition is unknown.
SHE LOOKED LIKE A PORCELAIN DOLL
During the time the Cowards managed the hotel in
Hughson, Thanet Bronson would go up a back stairway to
the living quarters where she would play with Ruth. Her
playmate relates:
She looked like a porcelain doll
with a waxen complexion and dark
hair. She appeared to be frail but
whether she was in pain or otherwise
ill I do not know. I do not remember
ever seeing her outside the hotel.4 2
Bronson recalls that Le Prade had fallen from a
table when she was three years old injuring her spine.
But Gloria Reidel Franzen, who participates in the Poets
Garden ceremonies for many years, recalls that Le Prade
told her she had been dropped as a child.4 3 Le Prade
will suffer from back trouble all her life.
Ruth's father, a big handsome man with almost-white
hair usually wore a suit and tie, Bronson recalls; Mrs.
Coward was very talkative and had a pleasant
19
personality. In addition, there were two brothers,
Marvin, who was "dark and morose," and ended up in a
mental institution, and younger, fair-haired and affable
Charlie.4 4
o
Le Prade embeds what little narrative evidence of
her childhood there is in the Collection in the
biography of Edwin Markham that she writes in the
Sixties.4 5 Self revelation is possible only through the
scrim of another purpose. She reveals there about her
childhood that "I had been making poetry all my life,
even before I could write it down".4 6 It is telling that
even before she achieves proficiency in recording words,
she understands that participating in the poetic
enterprise does not necessarily involve inscribing words
on paper.
THE VERY BREATH OF MY BEING
There is a sense of mission, of vocation, conveyed
when Le Prade recalls that in spite of not being raised
in a literary atmosphere, she "could not stop making
poems." Poetry was "the very breath of my being." And
this very essential stuff, the very denominate of
herself, is written in secret and hidden under her
bed.4 7 This sequestering of poetic self and subsequent
inscriptions is a behavior that Le Prade enacts
20
throughout her life, and she provides for its further
elaboration even after her death.
The juvenilia already shows a feeling of being
stuck. In a poem at four, she and her sister climb a
tree and watch birds fly away. Even then, as she yearns
for the experience again, the assumption is that
"They'll come again some day." The birds who were free
would come back to her; she is circumstantially
stationary.4 8
But words are a way to be mobile. The critical
concept that we entertain today of being confined in
linguistic ideology was decades away when Le Prade
acknowledged that she was "in" words. But even so, she
doesn't feel bound by them the way she feels bound
otherwise:
But words cannot snare me,
I am in them, but they hold me not.4 9
And she does feel bound. In "Caged":
. . . my blood is on the bars, and my flesh
I hate the crumbs, and the water is bitter
I want the seal
And the wilds!
And the stars!5 0
Le Prade will not accept women's lot as crumbs and rank
water, and she will use those words which she inhabits
to find a way to freedom.
2 1
I WAS IN PARADISE
Ruth is a shy child.5 1 When she is nine or ten, she
meets the only poet she will know until the fateful
meeting with Edwin Markham a few years later in Los
Angeles. After a few months, whoever this poet was, he
"passed from my life."5 2 When she is in her teens and
first has access to a good library, she discovers
Shelley, Byron, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, and
Sappho, and "revelled" in these "poets of the world."5 3
Even at this point, as a reader, she associates the
poetic act, as she later will as a writer, with a
utopian space: "I was in paradise."5 4
Le Prade calls on the idea of paradise at the same
time in her youth not only when she is representing the
occasion of superlative literary experience, but also
when she describes the ideal of radical politics. Ruth's
father, the only Socialist in town, brings home all the
radicals who pass through Hughson. The rest of the
family think Socialism "very queer" and do all they can
to oppose it. But Ruth is converted to "the Cause" when
a Mr. Maynard stays with the family on a lecture trip.5 5
Mr. Maynard painted a picture of a
lovely world ... of brotherhood,
peace, and happiness, a paradise on
earth. And this paradise was
Socialism .... It was Christ's
teachings put into practice. I was
22
thrilled. How wonderful . . . to
work for such a Cause, to help build
this Paradise on earth . . . ,5 6
Le Prade is a master conflater. Already she is using the
same nomenclature to describe both literary and
political ecstasy. Later she will likewise associate
through metaphor the energies of literary and botanical
production in an effort to create through the construct
of the Poets Garden just such a lovely world.
Mr. Maynard encourages Ruth to come to Los Angeles
to have the training offered at The Cumnock School of
Expression where his wife teaches. Although Ruth doesn't
have the resources to go at that time, "he had planted a
seed in my consciousness that was to grow and
blossom."5 7 Le Prade chooses her most primal metaphor,
that of garden and seed, in order to represent that
important memory.
A SEED IN MY CONSCIOUSNESS
Two years later, when Ruth does finally get to Los
Angeles, she walks up to "the silvern orator" as he is
lecturing one night and announces, "Here I am, Mr.
Maynard".5 8 Both Mr. Maynard and Mrs. Maynard become
"friends, mentors, guardian angels, and almost
parents."5 9 Ruth joins the Young Peoples Socialist
League, a "lively group of young folks," who meet on
23
West Third near Spring where Mr. Maynard, the sponsor,
teaches a Public Speaking class.6 0
Mr. Maynard edits the California Social Democrat, a
Socialist newspaper, and always wears an "inevitable
rosebud in his lapel," probably plucked from his
backyard full of flowers.6 1 Although spending much of
her time with the Maynards, Le Prade boards with the
Rich family on "tree-shaded" East Twentieth Street.
Landscape is always salient in her perceptions.6 2
I COULD NOT MELT FORM TO MY FEELING
The deliberation that is to mark Le Prade's
character throughout her life asserts itself now as she
starts to "teach [herself] to write," very
conscientiously studying technique. At first her verses
"did not say what I wanted them to say. Language was
static, unmalleable. I could not melt form to my
feeling. . . .1 , 6 3 Not until she discovers Whitman and
starts writing free verse, does she begin to achieve
results.6 4
Le Prade's debt to Whitman is profound, but the
relationship of each to the earth is different. Whitman
at the end of Song of Mvself feels quite comfortable to
"bequeath [himself] to the dirt to grow from the grass
[he] love[s]", and if we "want [him] again" we can look
24
under our "boot-soles. "6 S But for Le Prade, who also
"loves the contact of the grass, and of the trees,"
there is not such a finished connection with the earth.
The soil is still potential, "the brown earth pregnant
with promise., | 6 6
SONGS OF LABOR AND SONGS OF WOMEN
Le Prade's social activism involves over the course
of her lifetime championing the rights of women, Native
Americans, Blacks, the poor, animals, any beings whom
she considers oppressed. An early reviewer deeming her
work "quaint," relates "that her ambition is to write
two books, compilations of stray thoughts, philosophies
and teachings, to be classified as "Songs of Labor" and
"Songs of Women."6 7 Her life's work ends up being,
although not those two titles literally, just such
concerns of class and gender.
Le Prade had conveyed her strategy well to the
reviewer. The notion here of "compilations" and
"classif[ying]" is extremely important to an
understanding of the Poets Garden. The very
conscientious sense with which Le Prade gathers and
sorts her life experience, in what I take to be a kind
of Whitmanic representative appreciation toward more
than herself, informs the whole collection. But this
25
synechdochic celebration is not one of part for entire
whole, nor is it representative of the pastiched
modernism practiced by Eliot and Pound, neoclassical and
purebred. Instead, the Poets Garden collects and sorts
and represents stray people, stray politics, and stray
literature, and so itself becomes a stray modernism.
I COULD NOT VIOLATE MY POETRY
Around 1914, Le Prade publishes a column, "In
Passing," on the Young Peoples Socialist League page of
the California Social Democrat and in the Citizen. In
her poetry there, she fuses her free verse with
lyricism, a combination that troubles her mentor, Mila
Tupper Maynard. But as much as Le Prade reveres Mrs.
Maynard, she will not rewrite her poems to please her.6 8
Already Le Prade believes in the sanctity of poetry,
that there is some matter of honor involved. Although
she "would have done almost anything to please" Mila
Tupper Maynard, Le Prade recognizes that her mentor is
"a scholar, not a poet." And "I could not violate my
poetry. I followed my Muse."6 9
Le Prade's father sends her a small stipend every
month, just barely enough for board and transportation.
When she had come to Los Angeles, she had had more money
from her father who had saved it for her when she was a
26
baby from the sale of some property. But somehow, she is
robbed of this money that she had counted on for
education.
A PECULIAR INFLUENCE ON ME POETICALLY
Le Prade thinks her schooling has come to a dead
end, but Mrs. Maynard suggests that she come to Manual
Arts High School where she is then teaching. Having
already completed a year of college work at Cumnock
School, Le Prade is older than most of the students at
Manual Arts where Mr. Chase's biology class has "a
peculiar influence on me, poetically." Le Prade wonders
if it is "the perfume of the flowers blowing in from the
garden . . . mingling with the drone of Mr. Chase's
lecture, that made me want to 'loaf and invite my soul'
and write poetry?"70
But it is not here, nor will it be throughout her
life, the occasions of loafing that invite Le Prade's
soul. "It was when I was hurrying from one class to
another that the inspiration for my Woman Free came to
me. What should I do, cut class, or go to the garden and
write? A poem cannot be postponed." And long before
Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own in the Twenties and
Tillie Olsen's Silences in the Sixties, Le Prade
understands:
27
It must be written when the Muse
descends or be forever lost. A poet
cannot refuse the Muse, or ask it to
come some other day at a more
convenient time. If he does he soon
ceases to be a poet. Once or twice
in my life I had pushed my Muse
aside. And [my Muse] went away for a
long, long time. I had a hard time
wooing it back. I had learned my
lesson. When the gods give gifts
they must be accepted with a
grateful, a responsive heart. And I
had resolved to always accept my
Muse whenever it descended.
So my decision was swift. I
rushed to the garden and wrote my
poem.7 1
So the first Poets Garden, long before Le Prade
formalizes the concept by locating it at her home on
Spaulding, can be said to be there at Manual Arts High
School. She retreats to her poetic locale, a pastoral
plot, so she can write her poems. "I called it my secret
garden, though there was nothing secret about it, except
that no one else seemed to find it . .. . This tiny,
walled-in garden gave me solitary sanctuary."7 2
The themes of Le Prade's life and work are setting
themselves up. As well as acknowledgement of the garden
as a pastoral site of poetic fruition, her concern with
social conditions also shows itself in these early
years. A sister classmate writes to "Comrade Maynard:"
. . . our little friend Ruth Coward gave
a speech on "Waste." She elaborated on
the waste of child labor (the waste of
childhood); Prostitution (the waste of
womanhood) . . . She recited Mrs.
Browning's poem on the pity of child
labor. Then she said "Do you think Mrs.
Browning would have ever become a poet if
she had to work in the mills? No! For she
had a week [sic] constitution and would
not have matured . . .7 3
Le Prade continues to articulate radical concerns.
On December 26, 1913, she wins an Oratorical contest at
the Young Peoples Socialist League,7 4 where her poems
provoke approbation from other kindred souls. Guy
Bogart, who will become a life-long friend, writes her
in June of 1915, approving her poem "It is Not Possible
to Love Too Much." "I rejoice that your soul has felt
the grief that comes from limitations of the capitalist
system to the soul that would seek free expression.1 , 7 5
Marvin Sanford, who will also remain a friend for all
their lives, writes from the office of the radical The
World in Oakland thanking her for her poem, "To My
Friends:"
Oh that we could impress that
wondrous truth and vision in the
minds and hearts of the sluggish
workers, as you have stated it, so
simply .... Yet . . . the
Capitalist chaotic might be
displaced by the Socialist mind and
its expression in Universal economic
relations ,7 6
29
JUST DESCENDED FROM MOUNT OLYMPUS
It is Mrs. Maynard who announces that Edwin
Markham, whom she had met years before "in the
Movement," is coming to Los Angeles.^When he is reading
his poems at Trinity Hall, where Ruth and Mrs. Maynard
have seats in the balcony near the railing, Le Prade
first sees the man whom she is to appropriate as mentor
and deify as poetry incarnate. "He looked like a god who
had just descended from Mount Olympus."7 8
COMRADE! I MURMURED SOFTLY
Mila Tupper Maynard takes her pupil backstage to
meet the poet. "If I was entranced by the lecture I was
in a deep trance now . . . . 1,79 Le Prade is only able to
speak one word. "Comrade! I murmured softly ....
Suddenly without warning ... I commenced to weep. The
tears gushing from my eyes were beyond my power to
control. I turned aside, vainly trying to hide my
embarrassment."8 0 She wonders why she cries. "I seldom
weep, and never in public .... Perhaps I wept for
ecstacy .... Perhaps I had a dim foreboding, and the
icy winds of Dark December were blowing on my
heart . . . ."8 1 Twenty years later in the Thirties, Le
Prade will call the period of time when Markham is
30
adjudged legally incompetent Dark December, as nostalgia
characteristically ascribes causality and makes pattern.
SOMETIMES I THINK I UNDERSTAND ALL THINGS
The next day Mrs. Maynard dismisses Ruth from
class, telling her to take her poems to show to Edwin
Markham who is staying at the Clark Hotel on Hill Street
just off of Fifth. Mrs. Rich is surprised to see Ruth,
who comes home to get her scrapbook where her poetry
column, MIn Passing,1 1 is pasted. Le Prade waits in the
lobby until she sees Markham who is accompanied by a
very severe woman, "the Sentinel" as Le Prade will
characterize her, who tries to head her off declaring,
"Mr. Markham cannot talk to you."
But Markham thunders out, "I'm going to speak to
this little girl if the whole world stops!"8 2 Le Prade
recounts that her idol had already divined her mission.
Appealing at the time to the teenage protegee is
Markham's totalitarian pronouncement, "Sometimes I think
I understand all things!" As they part, he promises to
read her poems.8 3
POETIC GENIUS IN L.A. GIRL
Shortly after that, a reporter from the Los
Angeles Evening Herald calls Le Prade and says that
31
Markham, praising her poems and declaring her a genius,
has given that paper her scrapbook. She is asked to come
down for an interview and photographs.8 4 On March 25,
1915, the article, "Edwin Markham Discovers Poetic
Genius in L.A. Girl," which appears in the Evening
Herald8 5 also goes East "over the wire." Le Prade's
father clips a condensed version from The San Francisco
Chronicle.8 6 As Le Prade relates this occasion, embedded
in her biography of her mentor, she pays homage to
". . .the Muses [who] were spinning. A pattern was
enfolding." So although Markham, a male, is Le Prade's
immediate mentor, she sees him as the practical agent of
a literary legacy of female patrons.
Le Prade does believe in a destiny. Always ready
for the opportunity of poetic cause, she writes, "And
the time would come when I could do something .... I
have never forgotten my debt to Edwin Markham!"8 7 The
something she can do will become the defense of his
mental faculties in the late Thirties when his son
Virgil will obtain guardianship. But the adoration of
Markham by Le Prade begins here.
Le Prade writes "To My Comrade Who Knows All
Things" and gives it to Markham. It begins:
32
I have a Comrade who knows all things— and
understands
Many winters have silvered his soft shining hair,
And his heart is as young as the first flower in
spring. And as old as the first sorrow in man.8 8
Shortly after the Evening Herald article, on April
3, 1915, the Y. P. S. L.8 9 page of the California Social
Democrat speaks of the "unassuming girl who was willing
to endure pain and privation that she might carry the
gospel of Socialism wherever possible."9 0 Le Prade
credits the attention generated by Markham's praise for
saving her column at the paper. "The drive to have
. . .'In Passing' crowded out to make way for more dance
news, died away."9 1
Markham comes to speak at the Y. P. S. L.9 2 with
his friend John Milton Scott, who is to become as dear
to her, relates Le Prade, as Markham.9 3
I learned much from him. I was
young, immature, intolerant. I have
sometimes thought Dr. Scott was like
a gardener who rooted from my mind
the weeds of prejudice, narrowness,
and intolerance, tossing them out so
gently and with such loving care,
they were gone with no fuss or
struggle . . . .w
The figuration of the garden with its corollary alliance
of gardener and nurturer is here invoked for a man. Le
Prade confers great privilege upon Dr. Scott; to
33
describe his influence she uses her most valued metaphor
conveyance. At his death thirteen years later he will
leave his literary issue to her, an act she will
consider "a great honor."9 5 And so will begin the
accumulations of the literary relics of poets for which
Le Prade will act as custodian.
I WAS AGREEING WITH POETRY
Le Prade goes to visit Markham and Scott again. She
is "startled" by Markham's "most amazing suggestion"
that she should gather and publish her poems. For that
task, Scott suggests his printer friend, Mr. J. F.
Rowny, who is "something of an artist in printing."9 6
After their lunch, Markham asks young Ruth what she had
thought of their discussion.
I replied that I agreed .... I
was not agreeing with what they had
said, for most of it was beyond my
spiritual comprehension. I was
agreeing with them [her emphasis],
with their spiritual light, their
divine illumination and radiation. I
was agreeing with Mount Olympus,
with Poetry, and all that is noble
in life.9 7
To believe that these two men were privy to some noble
truth beyond her "spiritual comprehension" by virtue of
their poetic stature, male and aged, tells us much about
34
the barter of poetic and cultural currency. It can be
dangerous stuff.
Le Prade's greatest interest "next to Poetry and
Socialism" is speech. Her year studying this at Cumnock
"had been paradise . . . . , , s > 8 She hopes to work with
Katherine Jewel Everts, whom she hears give a speech
recital at Manual Arts and who will teach at Berkeley in
the fall. Le Prade goes to spend the summer of 1915
closer to Berkeley, in Modesto, with her father." She
is thrilled when her father takes her to San Francisco
to the Panama Pacific Exposition. Celebrating the
completion of the Panama Canal with exotic attractions
from 2 5 foreign countries, the event conveys to those
who see it an "eerie illusion of normalcy." Half of the
exhibiting nations are already engaged in World War
I.1 0 0
Le Prade, who had thought she would not be able to
go to the Exposition, is pleased to see Markham there,
who, upon learning that she needs a job to pay for
expenses at Berkeley, introduces her to his friend,
Fremont Older, at the San Francisco Bulletin.
NO KING HAS WALKED TO CURSE AND DESOLATE
June 30, 1915, is Ina Coolbrith Day at the
Exposition. Markham and Coolbrith had both been members
35
of Joaquin Miller's Circle of the Heights in Oakland,
which included George Sterling, Jack London, and Charles
Warren Stoddard.1 0 1 Le Prade is unaware that she, too,
will someday be part of the legacy of California
literature.
Ina Coolbrith had been associated with Bret Harte
on The Overland Monthly which had been founded in 1868.
She, Bret Harte and Charles Warren Stoddard had been
known as the Golden Gate Trinity.1 0 2 Coolbrith had made
a laurel wreath from a thicket on Mt. Tamalpais north of
San Francisco, which Joaquin Miller had carried along
with the poem Coolbrith had written to accompany it to
England, and laid as a tribute on Byron's tomb.1 0 3
Coolbrith might be seen as an even earlier
antecedent than Austin of Le Prade's. Not only is she a
writer of nature poetry celebrating the beauty of
California's land, she is also a librarian, a literary
custodian in an official sense, as Le Prade is
unofficially. In Coolbrith's poem "California," written
for the University of California's commencement in July,
1871, she alludes to the virginity of the land:
Upon my fresh green sods
No king has walked to curse and desolate:
But in the valleys Freedom sits and sings,
And on the heights above;
Upon her brows the leaves of olive boughs
And in her arms a dove;
And the great hills are pure, undesecrate,
36
White with their snows untrod,
And mighty with the presence of their God I1 0 4
There have been attempts, Coolbrith suggests, to despoil
this pristine land. She has witnessed Hthe sharp clang
of steel,that came to drain/ The mountain's golden vein-
-Hl05; it has been a galvanizing sight.
Because that 'now,'! said, 'I shall be known!
I shall not sit alone;
But reach my hands unto my sister lands!
And they? Will they not turn
Old, wondering dim eyes to me, and yearn—
Aye, they will yearn, in sooth
To my glad beauty, and my glad fresh youth!'1 0 6
California soil will be the site, Coolbrith intimates,
of a rejuvenation, of a sisterly renewal. The lands she
beseeches and for which she seeks a gentler poetic
tender are female.
"Lo! I have waited long!
How longer yet must my strung harp be dumb
Ere its great master come?
Till the fair singer comes to wake the strong,
Rapt chords of it unto the new, glad song!
Him a diviner speech
My song-birds wait to teach:
The secrets of the field
My blossoms will not yield
To other hands than his;1 0 7
And, although mired in masculine pronoun convention,
Coolbrith is longing here for an aesthetic that can make
the field, both terrestrial and poetic, blossom.
A few decades later, Le Prade will be one to create
such an aesthetic rubric. She relates that "slowly the
seed that Edwin Markham and Dr. Scott had dropped into
my mind germinated and took root."1 0 8 She works at
publishing her material, first considering the title "In
Passing".1 0 9 Markham writes that he will send her
manuscript with his introductory note to Doubleday and
Page Company.1 1 0
At this point, she starts to use Le Prade rather
than Coward as her last name. Although she does not
privilege her matrilineage over her given patronymic as
a political claim, citing, in fact, other reasons, it
can be perceived, now, as just such an act.
This was shorter, plainer, more
euphonious, a better name for a
writer. None of our family had ever
liked the name, Coward— no one but
my father. He liked it, perhaps
because it was his. But none of the
rest of us did. Le Prade is not an
assumed name, or a nom de plume, as
some people have supposed. It is my
own name, given to me by my mother,
and it goes back in her family for
hundreds of years.1 1 1
She takes care to note that Edwin Markham, Ina
Coolbrith, and Joaquin Miller had all changed their
names all the while declaring that she has followed no
lead in her name change. "Lawyers may look for
precedents, but poets look forward and often create new
patterns."1 1 2 These opposing energies in motive produce
38
a contrariety that, far from being counteractive, is, in
fact, productive. What she declares as a deed poetic,
"more euphonious," is actually political, and, more
expressly, feminist.
When Le Prade returns to Los Angeles, she is
exhausted after summer school at Berkeley. She cites
overwork and exhaustion as resulting in "another attack
of my old spinal trouble."1 1 3 She becomes so seriously
ill in fact that the Maynard's friend, physician Dr. T.
Percival Gerson, holds out little hope for recovery. Dr.
Gerson, is "a liberal and an idealist," who had known
Clarence Darrow and Emma Goldman. Le Prade's parents
come to Los Angeles to be with their ill child, and they
move into Mrs. Maynard's sister's vacant house on Irolo
Street.1 1 4
I WATCHED THE MIRACLE HAPPEN
Le Prade sits in a wheelchair in the parlor on
Irolo Street and has many visitors. Miss Brooks, the
principal of Cumnock, and other teachers and friends
come, often bringing gifts.
The flower gifts I enjoyed most were
the China lilies. Bulbs, bowl, and
small rocks came in a box. I
arranged the bulbs among the rocks
in the bowl, my mother filled the
bowl with water, and day by day I
watched the miracle happen.
This miracle of botanical growth is one that Le Prade
will celebrate both in itself and transposed into
metaphor all her life.
A tiny shoot of green pushed up out
of the brown bulb, another shoot
of green . . . others appeared. The
slender shoots grew tall. And then
the blossoms came, lovely, delicate
white blossoms with golden centers
and fragile star-like petals. And oh
the heavenly fragrance! It filled my
room where the bowl stood on a stand
by my bed. I still can see those
China lilies and smell their
perfume as I relive in memory the
joy they brought to me.1 1 5
HOW TO SWALLOW THE EGGS
When Le Prade's appetite deserts her and Dr. Gerson
tells her she must eat meat, she protests that she has
been a vegetarian for years. After one of Dr. Gerson's
visits, Le Prade's mother, usually a stoic, breaks down
in tears and implores her daughter to eat crying out, "I
don't want you to die."1 1 6
In desperation, Dr. Gerson finally prescribes six
eggs a day. Their administration provides quite a comic
anecdote.
. . . if I could not eat them, I
could at least swallow them . . . my
mother, ever an angel in trying to
save me discomfort and pain,
squeezed a little orange juice over
each egg, and by opening my mouth
wide, and expanding my throat, I
soon learned how to swallow the
eggs, one at a time, without tasting
them much.1 1 7
BOOKS OF VERSE ARE A DIFFICULT MATTER
At the same time Le Prade is trying to get well,
she is also trying to get her poems published. In
November, 1916, Doubleday, Page and Company returns "In
Passing" which Markham, "who recommended it quite
highly," had given to them.
We regret . . . that we must return
this manuscript to you herewith as
hardly being in line with the
present publishing policy of this
house. Please do not think that this
means that we have any prejudice
against the modern verse because as
a matter of fact we think it very
interesting, but books of verse are
a difficult matter for sale at best,
and we do not feel that at this time
we could make a success of your
poems.1 1 8
Markham suggests to John Milton Scott that the book
come out by subscription and signs up himself for five
copies. Le Prade's friends arrange to publish the book
locally.1 1 9 As it is being prepared for the printer,
Dr. Scott encourages Le Prade to break up her prose
poems into lines and to add some poems from her
scrapbook, and together they decide to change the name
from "In Passing" to A Woman Free.1 2 0
41
Meanwhile Dr. Gerson finds a surgeon whom he
believes is her only hope in living a normal life. In
the beginning of 1917, Le Prade and her parents live in
an apartment near the hospital while she gathers
strength for the operation which will graft bone onto
her spine.
Just a day or so before the surgery, as Le Prade
meets with the surgeon to ask some questions, "he flew
into a rage, showing a lack of control that made me
know [Le Prade's emphasis] I could not entrust my life
to him."1 2 1 She cancels the operation. What is often
dismissed as female intuition is, as here, a female
knowing whose quite real precepts do not serve the
interests of prevailing, masculine culture. She never
has the operation.
TRUMPETS SHOULD HAVE SOUNDED
Le Prade only remains in the apartment near the
hospital for a short time after the operation is called
off. But while she is there, Kate Crane Gartz comes to
see her. "Trumpets should have sounded and bells should
have rung, to announce her entrance. For this was none
other than my Fairy-God-Mother who was to bring so much
joy into my life . . . . "1 2 2 Mila Tupper Maynard had
read Le Prade's poems to Gartz and asks her to sponsor
42
them. A Socialist, Gartz is heir to the Crane plumbing
fortune and uses her money to promote radical causes.
Later, she will give Le Prade the house at 1622 South
Spaulding1 2 3 in Los Angeles that will become the literal
Poets Garden, the terra firma where Le Prade will live
and construct her pastoral project. Gartz will also help
finance Debs and the Poets.1 2 4
THE SHADOW HAS DARKENED MY SOUL
Gartz tells Le Prade that she doesn't generally
care much for poetry but likes hers very much. She
especially likes "The Shadow,"1 2 5 in which the narrator
reports amidst opulent wealth, cafes and "elegantly
gowned people," the shadow of an old woman dressed in
black and seated in a doorway. This shadow of poverty
and want "looms bigger and bigger" and attaches itself
to the poet.
Oh God, I am madi— the Shadow has darkened my
soul!1 2 6
"The White Hope," a sequel, counters and finally
obliterates the Shadow. These companion poems are very
much in that tradition of American literature which is
suffused with themes of dark and light. Here, in a
finale reminiscent of Poe, Le Prade writes:
43
The White Hope shines magnetic in the night;
And when its light illuminates the souls of men—
Then shall the Shadow cease for evermore.1 2 7
Concerned with where Le Prade is going from the
apartment near the hospital, Gartz invites the poet and
her mother to live in a cottage on her estate, the
Cloisters, in the foothills of Altadena. But, instead,
Le Prade's father manages to buy a bungalow on West 78th
Street in South Central Los Angeles where they do move.
A WOMAN FREE
Early in January, 1917, Le Prade, acknowledging the
nurturing involved in literary pursuits, says her first
book "was born."1 2 8 A Woman Free by Ruth is published by
J. F. Rowny Press on Hill Street in Los Angeles in two
editions. One thousand copies, half bound in boards and
half in paper, make up this printing.1 2 9
The cover superimposes over a cross a picture of a
barefoot woman dressed in a long robe moving toward a
radiant sun. Le Prade's book announces a familiar theme,
that of a subject moving toward light and height,
proclaiming sure belief in an inhering meliorism. But
the figure's flowing garments and fluid stance also
illustrate perhaps less culturally predisposed
tendencies toward female freedom of movement. Le Prade
44
will struggle all her life with the conflict of devoting
herself to some abstract betterment, toward some vast,
mystical heaven, when in fact she may have achieved
greater satisfaction when she was digging in and
manipulating a less dictated soil.
Elaine Showalter in her study establishing the
relations of women's culture to patchwork shows that in
quiltwork this rising-sun pattern figures as evidence in
a story of the 1850's of a women's culture of
"plenitude, ripeness and harmony." But that same pattern
stitched by characters in a story at the end of the
century "now seems like a mocking allusion to the
setting of women's culture, and to the disappearance of
its sustaining aesthetic rituals."1 3 0
That Le Prade would choose, or sanction, for the
cover of A Woman Free this image of a figure walking
toward a radiant, fully-risen sun suggests that women's
culture has a survival instinct and a sustaining
interest in revitalizing and reasserting itself. If the
old channels are defunct, then new venues will have to
be sought. If needle and thread, the familiar markers
and makers of a feminist aesthetic, will no longer
render, then perhaps the more elemental earth will.
A Woman Free and Other Poems is published using
only her first name, Ruth. Le Prade acknowledges that
45
Sappho serves as precedent here. The eschewal of a last
name may also have had to do with the idea that she
thought of herself and her project in more mythic than
unique terms, as a sort of elemental woman performing an
act of female ontogenesis, generic rather than
particular.
ALL THAT I LEAVE IS UNFINISHED
A Woman Free offers 70 poems in 72 pages. The
introduction by Markham, "A Word at the Beginning,”
touts in what we see today as diminuating terms the
"eager pages of this little volume." Her mentor depicts
her as "one of the vibrant and valorous souls of the Far
West, a young woman who is yearning to help pass on to
all souls the beauty of earth, the beauty of joy."1 3 1
Several decades before the findings of Jauss and
Iser, Le Prade is espousing ideas that invite not only
reader response, but active reader participation. In the
preface to her poems she declares:
Poets have carefully carved their songs,
Toiling with words, phrases, stanzas,
Till all was finished,
But I do not carefully carve my songs,
Toiling with words, phrases, stanzas,
And all that I leave is unfinished
That you shall be a poet
Finishing each according to yourself.1 3 2
46
Le Prade provides an intention here in contrast to the
competitive and singular nature of the honed modernism
celebrated in Eliot's famous dedication to Pound, 1 1 il
miglior fabbro,"1 3 3 in "The Wasteland," published in
1922, just five years after A Woman Free.
Most of the themes that Le Prade will concern
herself with over the course of her lifetime are present
here in this book in 1917 including the rage of feeling
"Caged like the bird that could not sing,"1 3 4 and the
exposing of social injustice, remarkably poignant in
"The Shadow"1 3 5 which had so intrigued Kate Crane Gartz.
Even the fascination of seeing herself "fade into a
star"1 3 6 she will recapitulate in half a century when
she will call herself Starflower.
THROUGH ALL THE NOISE OF THINGS
The first and hallmark poem of the volume is "The
Song of a Woman Free" which proclaims a female self who
is not only emancipated, but who exults in that
emancipation.
I am a woman free. My song
Flows from my soul with pure and joyful strength.
It shall be heard through all the noise of
things—
The cacophony which could threaten her feminist
rejoicing is, of course, the hegemony of received
47
ideology made audible. And that received ideology can be
thought of as not only a pervading cultural patriarchy,
but also, its handmaiden, effete and self-absorbed
modernism.
Le Prade historicizes her rejoicing. And she does
this in more than just a representative sense, more than
just a "stand for" posture. She invests herself,
becomes, in a synecdochic sense, part of essential
Woman. She assumes a burden of chronicle, not only an
awareness of time and story and their intersection, but
her place in that scheme as subject, as she sings:
A song of joy where songs of joy were not.
My sister singers, singing in the past,
Sang songs of melody but not of joy—
For woman's name was Sorrow, and the slave
Is never joyful tho he smiles.
The refrain that she will act out all her life, "I
am a woman free," is followed by a feminist jeremiad:
Too long
I was held captive in the dust. Too long
My soul was surfeited with toil or ease
And rotted as the plaything of a slave.
In the third verse, she alludes to the image on the
cover:
I am a woman free. With face
Turned toward the sun, I am advancing
Toward love that is not lust,
Toward work that is not pain,
Toward home which is the world,
Toward motherhood which is not forced,
And toward the man who also must be free.1 3 7
48
Much of this is radical rhetoric in 1917. The notions of
meaningful labor, of political globalism, and of planned
maternity advocate beliefs that we now, seven decades
later, heartily sanction. But today we might see her
love/lust distinction as entrenched within the sexual
mores of her time, a differentiation that enforces the
suppression of female sexuality. And we might see as
well her insistence upon turning toward even a free man
as an objective that renders liberation too singularly
affiliation-driven and too singularly heterosexual.
The poem continues to elaborate the same themes,
some indeed mired in what we see now as repressive
ideology, others staunchly, even presciently, radical.
The poem is a worthwhile example of the conflux of many
of the forces in American literature and history. Le
Prade offers a version of Whitman's "Song of Myself"
that is distinctly female:
And I shall not be the mother of one child
But of all children—
For I myself am the daughter
Of all women and all men.1 3 8
Whitman's influence is obvious throughout, especially as
Le Prade professes a unity of all people:
I sit alone and gaze over the world.
And then my soul is lifted in a mighty shout
Prophetic of the unity of man.1 3 9
49
Into that American Renaissance heritage, she infuses the
concerns of radical labor and radical feminism during
the early decades of this century. And always there is
the primary metaphor of the garden. Le Prade has been
very moved by an "exquisite flower" on her teacher, Miss
Fowler's, desk, at Manual Arts. She has never seen it
before, "except at a distance.1 , 1 4 0 It is "The Purple
Wistaria" which will "help [her] upward," as she is
"seeking the stars!"1 4 1
SUCH MARVELOUS BEAUTY THAT THE LIKE OF IT HAD NEVER BEEN
SEEN
The flowers of the garden do not bloom easily. "The
Rose Bush," which "had never borne a single flower,"
doesn't bud until it has been watered more carefully and
loved more dearly than other flowers. Only after such
deliberate tending does it "burst into a flower of such
marvelous beauty that the like of it had never been seen
in all the world before."1 4 2
It is human caring that elicits such beauty. In
"The Pot that Had Been Marred," a child asks a potter
for a pot that he has cast "aside in disgust." It is
after the discard has been "asked for" that it is
"glorified by a white flower." It is the acknowledgement
of value by the child that makes possible the subsequent
50
floral glorification. Le Prade posits a value that is
not intrinsic to the thing itself but is produced by the
gardener. Not only is the marred pot changed into a
vessel for beauty, but the occasion also
"transfigure[s]" the potter.1 4 3 Le Prade advocates a
valuing whose objects in turn become agents for, render,
change. The nurturing process occasions a factory of
sorts.
In "Law," the poetic subject truly reaps what s/he
sows. On two occasions when given the opportunity to
plant her own crop, she establishes very different
plantings. "I planted what I chose." The first time,
"For each flower there was perfume and loveliness." And
the second time, "Not God himself can save me now from
my vile harvest."1 4 4 How the garden is planted, the
conscientiousness of the sowing, is of great
consequence. The gardener is even more powerful than God
in this endeavor.
But in these poems intent or will alone cannot
determine outcome. There exists quite surely a fate or
inexorable drive of some sort. Le Prade writes in "Where
the Sun Shines Always There is a Desert," that "Perhaps
the fairest Gardens have been watered with the saddest
tears!"1 4 5 There are in this early work announcements
of a requisite martyrdom that artists necessarily
51
endure. Although this is a lifelong theme it becomes
more submerged in later work, hidden in the poetry that
she hides in her notebooks and does not submit for
publication.
Here in 1917 that disposition is still topical,
still on the surface of her work. In "The Price," a
pilgrim seeks to know how to achieve the voice of a
mighty singer. As the supplicant implores:
"Oh! tell me; I will pay all; there is no
price too great."
Then the Master unloosened his garments and
showed unto the pilgrim his many wounds.
When the pilgrim beheld them he turned with a
wild shriek and hid himself among the rocks.1 4 6
Le Prade believes that the price of poetic enterprise is
great, that it does somehow wound the participant. Le
Prade herself will perform this prophecy that the user
of poetic song risks being maimed. But, this same user
in the previously mentioned "The Rose Bush" can also
become "the master of the garden," and have the joy of
knowing that its flower can live forever "in the hearts
of men!"1 4 7 Le Prade does indeed act out this
announcement, becoming, as her own preceptor, a
matriarch of the garden and enabling its flora to become
a legacy for the hearts of women.
52
IF YOUR SOUL SHOULD FALL TO THE DEEPS OF HELL
The poet's faith is so great it can reach to
foreign soil to help her lover in the "vast silence" of
"far hills" or the "pain and . . . struggle" of the
"great city." Faith, which operates for Le Prade in
direct relation to poetic gift, can redeem in even the
most quintessential of vile landscapes.
And if your soul, in blindness,
Should fall to the deeps of hell,
My faith would save you— even there.1 4 8
THE ONE ROSE THAT GROWS OVER THE FRONT DOOR
The images and poems in A Woman Free act as types
which Le Prade recasts again and again in her work and
in her life. Because the literary impulse may not be
privy to conventional hours and channels in which to
practice itself, it is less easy to separate literary
from other work in women's lives than it is in men's. So
female literary inscription must manifest itself in
different ways. "The Rose Bush" which posits aesthetic
fruition only after arduous cultivation becomes a
literary type for what is literally acted out decades
later when Le Prade plants a rose bush by her front door
on Spaulding.
Rose bushes are often talismanic in women's
writings and in women's lives. Margaret Fuller, the
53
nineteenth-century American feminist, notes in Summer on
the Lakes.in 1843. her account of a journey in the
Wisconsin territory, that she encounters "a Provence
rose, then in blossom" around the door of a cabin.1 4 9
And in the Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Pearl, at
Governor Bellingham's estate, cries for a red rose and
will not be pacified. In Catholic iconography, the
Virgin Mary is known as a "rose without thorns."1 5 0 The
rose, with its labia-like overlapping folds, is a
semiological marker of femaleness, and its presence
announces female terrain, sexual, domestic, and
political, all of those literary.
Not indigenous to California soil, the rose is one
of many plants "introduced by succeeding generations of
immigrants to California."1 5 1 Certainly, neither is
femaleness indigenous to the history and literature of
California. It too needed introduction and rooting in
the soil of the place.
Roses from the Bush of Brotherhood planted in the
Poets Garden in April, 1927, a decade after the
publication of A Woman Free, are buried with Le Prade's
dearest friends, John Milton Scott in 1927, Faith
Chevaillier in 1936, and Edwin Markham in 1940. She
sends her friend Florence Hamilton a rose from this same
bush as well. And Le Prade will name the rose bush at
54
her front door after her lifetime friend Marcelle Reber
writing to her, "Beautiful Lady of the North, the
Marcelle Reber is now in bloom; you know, the one rose
that grows over the front door."1 5 2 Le Prade needs to
mark female influence, her place on these lives, as she
struggles to establish a female mythology of her own
making.
OUT OF THE CAGE WHERE MEN HAVE BID US SING
As well as the botanical metaphor which underlies
the entire Collection, other images and themes recur
throughout Le Prade's work. One such image is that of
birds and cages. The predominance with which women, Maya
Angelow for one, have appropriated that image, render it
almost a gender-specific metaphor.
We few sad souls who stray with Love,
Out of the cage where men have bid us sing
Have learned some things while we were 'mid the
stars.1 5 3
MORE SWEET THAN THE TUMULT OF BIRDS AT DAWN
Le Prade is very conscious of the constructedness
of her project. In "To My Friends," she relates:
More sweet than the tumult of birds at dawn,
And the perfume of flowers in the moonlight,
Is the song I would build for my friends.1 5 4
But this is not an autotelic and transcendent artifact
as are the works of received modernism. The Poets Garden
55
is not to be merely adored but shared, democratically.
And its song will ultimately be more than poems, it will
be a place to grow, to engender, poems.
MY DARK BLOOD-PRINTS ON THE ROCKS
Again, the primary themes that Le Prade is to value
so dearly and continue to replicate so fervently
throughout her life are present here in A Woman Free. In
"I Cannot Linger by the Road," she presages the spoors
she will leave for other female poets:
And tho I fall and never reach the Goal,
Perhaps some other traveler will find the path
By my dark blood-prints on the rocks.1 5 5
Le Prade is speaking of female travelers who will follow
in search of a female soil. The blood-prints she speaks
of might be menstrual, and that blood is political
blood. Those who come after can follow those bloody,
female tracks Le Prade will leave.
Le Prade is writing A Woman Free only fifteen years
into this century, and it is being published before the
passage of the amendment giving women the vote. In
addition to issues of feminism, A Woman Free espouses as
well the concerns of democracy and labor. In a poem of
the same name, the single word "Solidarity," causes the
"Masters" who "feed on children's blood and women's
flesh" to hide their faces:
56
In the long night a word was spoken;
A single word— vet empires fell, and systems
turned to dust. 5 6
Le Prade will advocate all her life the radical power of
language.
In addition to the 16 page tract that Rowny Press
provides, other promotional leaflets advertise A Woman
Free. Le Prade's friend and fellow Socialist Guy Bogart
prepares a digest of reviews for a circular; however, he
quotes only the praise and deletes the attacks.1 5 7 Dr.
Robert Me Lean Cumnock of Northwestern University1 5 8
says in another advertising leaflet that the poetry is
"full of joyous enthusiasm and human sympathy.1 ' 1 5 9
POETIC SAYINGS IN PASTEL FORM
Reader responses, or at least those from readers
who wrote to respond or those which Le Prade saved, were
laudatory. Some respondents in the Collection are
characters worthy of notice in themselves. One
eccentric, the head of Camp Don't-Give-A-Durn, who
invites Le Prade to his Cranks Campfire, can see that
"your book is a young female edition of Leaves of
Grass."1 6 0
Critical responses range from approving to eccentric to
fearful. One reviewer for the Los Angeles Evening Herald
is so addled that he inverts the title of his subject's
57
work from A Woman Free to A Free Woman perhaps hoping
that normalizing the syntax will neutralize the
politics:
The poems, written in free verse,
and poetic sayings in pastel form,
contain ultra-radical philosophies
that would startle the public even
from the pen of an older writer.1 6 1
But it is the response of women that is most
poignant. A sweet note from Le Prade's cousin Mary in
Fort Worth says, "You've probably had so many laurel
wreaths extended already my little branch won't amount
to anything."1 6 2 The empowering content of A Woman Free
may belie Mary's protestation of modesty.
EACH POEM A SEED FOR FREEDOM
Luella Twining, with whom Le Prade will live later
in Berkeley, an American delegate to the Socialist
International and a congressional candidate, writes a
testimonial for A Woman Free. A decade before Le Prade
constructs the Poets Garden on Spaulding Street, Twining
announces each poem "a seed for freedom." Botanism
coalesces here with feminism in Twining's critique.
"Ruth sings of woman, who, having escaped from captivity
in the dust and enslavement of man, advances in freedom
toward the sun." Equally apt, Twining continues:
58
She has formed to herself a beau
ideal of all that is fine, high
minded and noble as many of the rest
of us do, but she, like Shelley,
acts up to this to the very
letter.1 6 3
It is indeed a literal beautiful ideal that Le Prade
conceives.
One letter of esteem comes from a woman on the East
Coast asking "Where, where did you get all the breadth
and fire and daring and ecstacy and imagery you've put
into your book?" What's vitally important here is the
questioning of the source of women's writing. The woman
goes on to suggest that it may be California, the
mountains, the seas, or the stars, but concludes
ultimately that it "is just your living soul."1 6 4 Ethel
Maguire's intuitive speculations are telling.
Relationship to landscape is a primary way of organizing
knowing, of plotting our epistemological schema, and our
"living soul" is indeed made up of how we see our place.
Our reception of various geographies if not the fact of
our literature, at least manifests itself as our
literature.
THE FINEST PAEAN OF LIBERATED WOMANHOOD IN CURRENT
LITERATURE
Responses to A Woman Free come from all political
spectra. Stalwart Theodore Roosevelt sends a thank-you
59
for "your courtesy in sending Miss Le Prade's Book."1 6 5
Radical Eugene Debs, who will shortly figure so
prominently in Le Prade's work, writes, "I commend
Ruth's book of inspiring revolutionary poems to the
reading public and the thinking world."1 6 6 Lesser-
knowns sympathetically address the poet as "Dear
Comrade." And from D. Bobspa, "Woman Free is the finest
paean of liberated womanhood in current literature."1 6 7
The "International Socialist Review" doesn't sound
especially radical as it pronounces, "This is a book of
charming verses."1 6 8
A Woman Free is reviewed on both coasts. The Boston
Evening Transcript says ". . .this lady is a legitimate
heir to old Walt's manner of striding along the heights
of Olympus, mantle and all." The Los Angeles Times says
she "throws up ideas from time to time that cause one,
figuratively at least, to catch the breath." And the San
Francisco Chronicle writes that the realities of life
"have inspired her to an expression which cares nothing
for the conventional forms of melody."1 6 9
MARTIAL POEM AFTER MARTIAL POEM
In April, 1917, when the United States enters World
War I, the Socialist Movement divides into two camps.
California war supporters include Jack London and some
60
party officials. Against the war is lifelong Le Prade
friend and well-known California radical, Robert
Whitaker, a Baptist minister who is jailed for his
resistance.1 7 0
Upton Sinclair supports the War, as do many of Le
Prade's radical acquaintances. "The Maynards were sold
on the idea that "this was a War to end war ....
Therefore all Socialists and Peace lovers should unite
to win the War."1 7 1
The last poem in A Woman Free. "Out of Chaos,"
bemoans the fact of "Europe ravaged by the Fiend of
War":
I see the harvest of the thing called Patriotism
I see the harvest of the thing called Nationalism.
Which sets the nations at each other's throats.1 7 2
Le Prade, always careful to manage her perceptions,
clips together pages of Markham's "Echoes From the World
War"1 7 3 so as to ensure that she won't see any of
Markham's work in favor of the combat. "Markham and I
never mentioned the War to each other. Our friendship
was too deep for separation and division. We disagreed
about some things, violently. But each left the other
free to follow his, or her, own Light."1 7 4 Le Prade
tolerates this complicit compact, but she remains
adamant about her stance.
NOT ENOUGH DEMOCRACY TO WARRANT EXPORTING ANY OF IT
Le Prade must have agreed with the position of
radical friend Alanson Sessions who writes that he is in
"imminent danger of being drafted." He tells Le Prade
his feelings about the War. "Mrs. Sheffington was right
when she said, 'America certainly does not have enough
democracy to warrant exporting any of it'." Sessions,
involved with the publishing of the Western Comrade.
promotes the alliance between Socialism and Christianity
which Le Prade condones. ". . .This month's WC . . .
contains a splendid article by Robert Whitaker entitled
'Jesus and War' .... I do not boast when I say that
the Western Comrade is the best Socialist magazine in
the nation today."1 7 5
THIS IS SURE SOME BOURGEOIS MINDED COMMUNITY
Throughout the Collection are wonderful artifacts
of American radicalism which developed a coterie-like
kinship among its devotees. In one item, E. B. Sanford
writes Le Prade from Atascadero, "This is sure some
Bourgeois minded community and to get letters is a great
relief in the midst of the grind .... I am yours in
the great Comradeship."1 7 6
And Ethel Brook Sanford typifies the zeal of the
revolutionary movement in America. "If ever you think I
62
am harsh or unjust to any comrade, I only hope that you
will take time to remember ... it is because the
revolutionary class movement is everything to me, the
individual, only as a drop in the ocean . . . . "1 7 7
Le Prade records some random thoughts1 7 8 believing
there is no place in the heart of a revolutionist to
hate either capitalists or institutions. "He understands
the capitalists— how he is produced and how he will be
removed . . . he knows what causes institutions."1 7 9
GOD'S KNIGHTS
The ambivalence that radicals feel about the war
creates many divisions. Some muster feminist arguments
to justify the war. One ardent debater decries Germany's
"paternalism" and believes that peace propaganda in that
conflict is wrong and antithetical to what socialism
should fight. She sends Le Prade a poem likening
soldiers to "God's knights."1 8 0
Le Prade attends a Conference of Christian
Pacifists held in Los Angeles in response to the war
hysteria. Le Prade, who throughout her life will
advocate a sort of Christian socialism, finds there the
"most sincere Christians I have ever been mixed up with
in my whole life."1 8 1 At some point the Christian
Pacifists do something to land them in jail. "Our
63
Christian Pacifist leaders were tried, promptly
convicted, [and] sent to the East side jail." 1 8 2
Eventually this case will be appealed to the United
States Supreme Court and the verdict reversed.1 8 3
Le Prade, although weak from illness, attends the
local trial and brings food to the prisoners. "I was not
physically able to make this long, hard trip. But
nothing could have kept me from ministering to our men
in their hour of need. So I got out of bed and went."1 8 4
Le Prade ministering here to imprisoned males is
behavior she will continue all her life in keeping with
her self-perceived role as liberator. Perhaps these and
other jailed men she will champion are available figures
on which to project her own cultural incarceration. The
Christian Pacifists here are not only accessible symbols
by virtue of physical availability, they are in the Los
Angeles jail, but they are also accessible by means of a
cultural logistics that allows only males to be of
sufficient stature to enjoy redress. For all that, Le
Prade's actions are, none the less, no less worthy.
A POET ZN PRISON
That Le Prade thinks herself a captive is clear
from a poem in the hidden volumes titled "A Poet in
Prison":
64
Ohi where are the songs I might have sung I
here in the pit of their 'civilization'
To rot and to die, unexpressed, unheard,
Mad with the songs that will never be sung
Ohi songs I might have sung,
Why do you torture me,
I cannot give you birth
Ohi masters, kings, and governments
Destroyers of all beauty and all art
May the curse of my unsung songs
Be upon you.1 8 5
THE HUGE, HEAVY, IRON BARRED DOOR
When Le Prade goes to visit the Christian
Pacifists, she finds the jailers at the East side jail
"hard-boiled, brutal men." Faint from having traveled
across town, she tries to sit down in the office, but a
jailer tells her that she cannot sit. When her prisoner
arrives, Le Prade has to remain standing, "I on one side
of the huge, heavy, iron barred door, and he on the
other."1 8 6 It is very likely that "her prisoner," is the
man who will become her husband, Harold Story.1 8 7 What
we know of this man comes not from Le Prade here but
from a friend. Mary Ulber writes her near the end of
1917:
Really, I didn't know Harold Story
could do it. He surely is a noble
youth. It took more than mere human
will and strength to do it. He has
the truth to back him and spiritual
strength. I want to talk this great
experience of yours and the others
over with you."1 8 8
Ulber may be speaking here of this Christian Pacifist
incident.
PERHAPS PRO-GERMANS WERE HIDING BENEATH THOSE BLUE
COVERS
When Reverend Floyd Hardin is indicted and charged
with conspiracy in this case, the FBI asks Le Prade to
relay information concerning when she had received his
anti-war literature.1 8 9 But not only are her
affiliations suspect, so is her own work. Le Prade
recounts:
I don't remember now whether it was
in 1917 or 18 that the hounds of the
law sniffed at my Woman Free and
decided it must be investigated.
Perhaps pro-Germans were hiding
beneath those blue covers or
treasonous documents were coded into
the print, the poems might be seeds
of sedition. And the author, though
masquerading as an invalid
schoolgirl, might in reality be a
German spy, a dangerous agent of the
Gestapo . . . .1 9 0
A copy of A Woman Free is demanded for inspection.1 9 1
Although Le Prade means to be sarcastic in this instance
when she suggests that her poems might be seeds of
political sedition, actually, in the sense that we are
exploring in this study, they are quite clearly just
such seeds of subversion.
YOUR KINDNESS BLOSSOMS PERENNIALLY
Eugene Debs has read of Le Prade's illness in Guy
Bogart's column in The World. He writes her at the end
of 1917, "You are the inspiration and hope of thousands
upon thousands who love you and look to you and yet may
never see you."1 9 2
Four days after the Armistice, Le Prade receives
another letter from Debs thanking her for sending him
several autographed copies of her book. She does not
allow him to pay for "the copy of your precious poems
. . . ,"1 9 * Your kindness blossoms perennially and your
generosity has no bounds."1 9 4 In his thank-you letter,
Debs employs Le Prade's metaphor of choice; the garden
and its blossoms are an integral part of A Woman Free.
Discourse habits are contagious; their reciprocity, as
here, assures their survival.
Le Prade writes of the great hopes of radicals
after the Russian Revolution of 1917. ". . .in those
67
early years I was as fooled by the Revolution as anyone.
Debs, Markham, the Maynards, Dr. Scott, Mrs. Gartz,
almost everyone I knew, we were all heart and soul for
the Revolution"1 9 5
WHILE THE COUNTRY WAS RECOVERING
Le Prade's health is sufficient for her to return
to Cumnock for her senior year, and she is given a
scholarship. Her mother and she rent a small house near
the school and she stays in bed all the time she is
home.1 9 6 Le Prade juxtaposes and allies the health of
the nation body and that of her personal body. "While
the country was recovering from the nightmare of war, I
was recovering slowly from my illness."1 9 7 Le Prade's
body bears political as well as physical debilitation.
FINISHING SCHOOL OF THE MORE INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL
TYPE
The Cumnock School is regarded by some people, Le
Prade relates, as a "young ladies finishing school of
the more intellectual and cultural type."1 9 8 Le Prade,
refusing to take the required course in Etiquette,
feels, "This course seemed foolish to me. I was trying
to save the world."1 9 9 Le Prade's eschewal of the study
in traditional manners is a valiant act no matter how
68
much of her alternative behavior is still driven by the
etiquette of the received. Trying to save the world is
an inculcated desire, a very proper— and diversionary,
from one's own primary work— female occupation.
A PLEASANT PLACE FOR YOUR DEAR LOVE NEST
In 1919, Le Prade graduates from Cumnock. By
October of that year, she has married Harold Story and
is living at 2 000 Channing Way, Berkeley.2 0 0 Much of
Ruth's relationship with Harold Story is sketchy, but it
does seem certain that at least for a time they share
political enthusiasms. We know that Harold had been
jailed in Los Angeles during the "pacifist
persecutions," and that he had spent seven months in the
Army as an "absolute C. O."2 0 1 Also,he edits an edition
of "New Justice" that concerns Debs. 2 0 2 On one occasion,
they both attend a meeting of the People's Council in
Los Angeles. And another time, Miriam Allen de Ford asks
them both to come and speak some evening at the Local
San Francisco of the Socialist Party.2 0 3 And Marguerite
Tucker writes to Le Prade wanting to help on the Debs
book and speak "with your husband about the Civil
Liberties Union."2 0 4 Ruth and Harold are involved in
the heady stuff of youth and valiancy.
69
Harold starts Berkeley in January, 1919. Ruth
writes an old friend in May of 1920 that Harold is not
studying to be a minister; rather, "He hopes to do
original work in Economics and is studying toward that
end. He will probably teach next year . . . Yes, those
surely were "hectic" days. Wish I could see all of the
old bunch again!"2 0 5
Ruth reports to Guy Bogart, her old Socialist
friend in Los Angeles, that she and Harold are
"pleasantly located in a little house in the suburbs and
get plenty of fresh air and sunshine. 1 , 2 0 6 Bogart replies
that he is glad she and Harold have a "pleasant place
for your dear love nest .... Trust that Harold is
absorbed in higher studies and Ruth is busied with the
i
Debs book."2 0 7 The verbs are telling here; good wishes
and conditioning conspire so that, even among radicals,
it is hoped that Harold is absorbed and Ruth is busied.
PLEASE DO NOT CALL ME MRS.
During this period, Ruth instructs "Comrade" Miriam
Allen de Ford, that although she is married to Storey,
"please do not call me Mrs."2 0 8 Le Prade buries her
private life of this period, sequestering it in poetry
that she does not publish. The suppression is evident by
the way she glosses over the subject of her marriage in
70
the Markham biography she will write three decades
later. "After my graduation I had married, and was now
living in Berkeley, and deep in the preparation of my
book, Debs and the Poets♦ 1 , 2 0 9 Le Prade's devotion to
Debs, to another man literally incarcerated, is, again
diversionary, a projection of trying to free herself
from received cultural restraints, this time marital as
well as literary.
Faith Chevaillier, the "Angel of the Jails" whom Le
Prade will meet and adore, and whose biography she will
also write, is another example of a rescuing woman, who,
though ostensibly fighting to free men behind bars, may
be sublimating her own rescue. Although the enterprise
of rescue is itself easy to recognize, the true object
of such deliverance is not so readily determinable.
GIVEN YOUR HEALTH AND ALL BUT YOUR LIFE
This new campaign to liberate a man behind bars is
waged with the resolve of a field commander. Le Prade's
objective is to influence the fate of Eugene Debs, five
times the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party
of America. She hopes to obtain his release from the
Atlanta Penitentiary, where he has been sentenced to ten
years imprisonment for violation of the Espionage Act
stemming from his delivery of a speech in Canton, Ohio,
71
on June 16, 1918, that railed against all war as wrong
by virtue of its class base. "The master class has
always declared the wars, the subject class has always
fought the battles."2 1 0 Although Debs did not
f specifically refer to World War I in his speech, the
national temperament was so aroused that he was
indicted.
Le Prade had written to him at once and he had
responded, "Your name is destined to be known in many
tongues and climes for the gods have placed you among
the immortals." Debs writes that Le Prade has "given
your health and all but your life to the cause of
humanity, this tribute you have paid me moves me to
tears."2 1 1 This is not unusual rhetoric for Debs who is
generally effusive. When once reviewing the praise of
fellow Socialists, Debs comments, "That in the recent
trial I stood where every comrade was in duty bound to
stand, entitles me to no such generous recognition."
Debs biographer Salvatore believes that his subject did
perhaps protest too much.2 1 2
The Supreme Court of the United States upholds
Debs' conviction on March 10, 1919, and on April 13,
1919, five months after the Armistice is signed, Debs is
sent to prison. Le Prade tells Debs that this is a
"great blow" to her. "I resolved to devote myself to his
72
freedom as soon as I was graduated."2 1 3 She enlists the
help of poet Witter Bynner, teaching there at Berkeley.
Throwing herself into securing Debs' release by
enlisting conscripts, truly in the etymological sense,
Le Prade contacts many well-known writers of the day
beseeching them to solicit their muses for poems or
"songs" to contribute to a collection of testimonials
whose purpose will be to instigate the release of Debs
from prison. Her project is to be called Debs and the
Poets.
Believing in the pragmatic applicability of
aesthetic principles, that poetry is useful for
political ends, Le Prade ardently woos suitors to her
cause. She asks for, and receives, offerings from many
in the literary community. These include such radical
luminaries as Max Eastman, editor of "The Liberator,"
and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, editor of "The
Forerunner,"2 1 4 whom she had met once at an
International Socialist dinner in Los Angeles.2 1 5
FULL OF POETRY AND DREAMS
Le Prade had sat next to Gilman at this dinner when
she was "just a kid . . . and full of poetry and
dreams." Le Prade, "very shy and timid" at that time,
is grateful that Gilman took her "to her heart," in what
73
she later relates as "one of the delightful moments of
my life.'*2 1 6 During the "little correspondence" now
between the two in relation to the Debs effort, Le Prade
mentions a tribute James Whitcomb Riley has written
about Gilman of which Gilman is unaware. After she
"wrote back very much excited," Le Prade sends her a
copy of the Riley tribute.2 1 7
Harriet Monroe2 1 8 responds to one of Le Prade' s
invitations for submissions; she hopes to have a poem
and suggests that Le Prade write H. D. To E. A.
Robinson, Le Prade declares, "It would make us indeed
happy if your Muse should bring you a song for this
great American liberator."2 1 9 And she writes to Terre
Haute to solicit a poem for "our Blessed Saint" from
Mabel Dunlap Curry,220 a prominent suffragist and the
woman whom the married Debs loves.2 2 1 And she also hopes
that Lola Ridge "might add [her] word."2 2 2
HAIL TO THE REVOLUTION!
Le Prade sends appeals all over the globe. Such
Europeans as H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Henri
Barbusse respond, and their pieces are included. Others
to whom she sends requests, Thomas Hardy, Anatole
France, John Galsworthy, are not included, and probably
74
didn't respond.2 2 3 To Rabindranath Tagore in India, Le
Prade begins, "To the East from the West, greetings
. . . . 1 , 2 2 4 To Maxim Gorky, she salutes, "Hail to the
Revolution!1 , 2 2 5
Le Prade thinks, or at least expresses herself, in
terms of grandiose epithets. She addresses Sara
Teasdale as "Dear Lady of the Lilting Lyre," asking if
she will "add a flower from your garden to the garland
we are preparing for . . . Debs."2 2 6 The metaphor of
what will characterize her salon, the garden, is
continually cropping up in her work. Her request to
Olive Schreiner, 2 2 7 whom Le Prade admires most of all
women writers, is returned "Address Unknown" from Cape
Colony, South Africa. Miriam Allen de Ford, a radical
from Mill Valley, California, married to Maynard
Collier, editor of The World and candidate for
Congress.2 2 8 informs Le Prade that Schreiner generally
pretends to be unavailable.2 2 9 When Le Prade asks Edna
St. Vincent Millay for a contribution, she tells that
poet that she is her favorite next to Schreiner.
Not all are eager to comply with Le Prade's
request. Strickland Gillian sums up the position of
several respondents. Although admiring Debs personally,
he won't do or say anything that might contribute to the
election of a radical Socialist to the presidency. "I
75
love Debs, but loathe the general interpretation of
Debs ism .... , , 2 3 °
Le Prade is shocked after approaching Vachel
Lindsay at a meeting where he speaks in Berkeley in
April, 1920. He tells her that Debs is right where he
belongs and that he should stay there.2 3 1
THE CHILDREN OF MY YOUTH
Le Prade may have appropriated and internalized the
belittling epithets ascribed to her work in A Woman
Free by Markham as she, using those same terms, now
tells Charles Erskine Scott Wood that she is preparing a
"little volume," and Louis Untermeyer, a "little
book."2 3 2 Expending her literary efforts now in editing,
she is already starting to doubt the merit of her own
artistic productions, or at least those of most primacy,
her own poems. When a friend requests a copy of A Woman
Free, she responds, "I will send you one of the children
of my youth, tho I fear it is scarcely worthy."2 3 3
Already, she is convincing herself that she should
relinquish time and effort expended toward her own her
poetry and divert those resources and energies instead
to the service of others. It is a deflexure sanctioned
by a culture that prefers women express their literacy
in subsidiary tasks.
76
At this time, as she is preparing Debs and the
Poets. she is also planning a lecture series she hopes
to deliver in the fall. She prepares three lectures,
"Two Poets of Childhood, James Whitcomb Riley and Eugene
Field," "Poets of Today," and "Two Prophets of Freedom,"
which will treat Markham and Schreiner.234 Here in 1920,
she is foremost a lecturer, critic and editor; three
years earlier she had been foremost a poet.
MUSES ARE GOING TO COME THROUGH
Although Le Prade acknowledges that it is "of
course impossible to write poetry to order,"
fundamentally she subscribes to a pragmatic, a
necessarily efficient, aesthetics. A typical
solicitation includes such assurance. "The Fates will
undoubtedly be kind and inspire you with some word for
'Gene"2 3 5
She goads those she solicits with injunctions for
their muses. To Carl Sandburg she advises, "I believe
your Muses are going to 'come through' for while Muses
are often very stubborn and unreliable they seem to love
Eugene Victor Debs as much as the rest of us . . . . , , 2 3 < s
The Chicago poet and his Muse do indeed come through
with a prose tribute:
77
The holding of Debs, caged, barred,
effectually shackled in our national
hoosegow in Georgia draws commentary
not so much on the plight of Debs—
he can stand it— as on the nation.
To a nation that speaks in a Christ
vocabulary, we might almost say, "If
the light that is in thee be
darkness, then how great is that
darkness.1 , 2 3 7
Le Prade impresses upon then radical Max Eastman
the militant means by which poems may be gotten. "I
trust you will be able to capture your Debs poem before
[the book] goes to press."2 3 8 Eastman complies citing
Debs' "warm rapier-like attention"2 3 9 as evidence of
"why it is a sacrament to meet [Debs]."2 4 0
A CERTAIN LITERARY STANDARD
Although Le Prade actively requests most of the
material for her book, some material comes to her
unsolicited. She writes to her friend Guy Bogart that
the problem is not gathering material as much as it is
selecting it. "In order that the book may be of real
service to Debs everything included will of course have
to come up to a certain literary standard."2 4 1 Although
she professes here that political efficacy is contingent
upon aesthetic means, for which she issues no criteria,
the reverse is true as well; for her, literary standards
have to do with "real service."
78
And, she is free not to act on suggestions she
doesn't approve. To one friend's suggestion, she
responds, "As to Alfred Kreymbourg I do not think he
would add to the book. Do you admire his work?"2 4 2
Bertrand Russell who "has sent a word" does not end up
in the book.2 4 3 I do not know why.
Asking Horace Liveright if his firm would be
interested in her book, Le Prade outlines the
arrangement as she conceives of it then as ten or twelve
short chapters. She plans to begin with a "Discussion of
Poets and their Vision" and proceed to chapters devoted
to the relationships of James Whitcomb Riley and Debs,
Eugene Field and Debs, and Edwin Markham and Debs.2 4 4
Boni and Liveright respond stating their belief that the
book would not have a wide appeal. But in spite of that
and the fact that "manufacturing conditions are nothing
less than chaotic and it is almost impossible to obtain
paper," they would be glad to bring out the book as a
beautiful tribute in a "deluxe format" limited edition
if Le Prade can help get a preliminary subscription list
of 1000 to 1500 names.
To choose to publish a deluxe edition of a book of
testimonials in support of the release of a Socialist
from prison is odd and Le Prade thinks the idea
ultimately unappealing. It would be hard to get enough
79
people of means to lend support to such a
proposition.2 4 5 She writes Charles P. Kerr of Chicago,
the publishing house most famous for publishing radical
literature during this period, informing them that she
wants to see the book circulated, and asking them,
toward that end, what circulation they could give it.2 4 6
The same day she writes other publishers as well to see
if they are interested in publishing the proposed tract.
"Time is very precious and I must have the book ready
for the campaign.1 , 2 4 7
A CHEAP BUT NOT DISCREDITABLE EDITION
Continuing with her inquiries, she asks Boni and
Liveright how much money it would take to publish a
cheap but not "discreditable" edition.2 4 8 And Charles
Kerr writes that their firm would like to see a copy
before August 1. Otherwise, given the state of the paper
market and the conditions of the printing trade, when it
takes three or four times as long to get out a book as
formerly, it would be impossible to get the book out in
time for the campaign. Kerr signs the letter, "Yours for
Debs and the Coming Days of Labor".2 4 9
By the beginning of August, Le Prade is wondering
how much it would cost to bring the book out privately.
Kate Crane Gartz volunteers one hundred dollars.2 5 0 By
80
the end of September, Le Prade journeys south to raise
money and she arranges at that time with Upton Sinclair
to publish her book. Le Prade is impressed that he has
just sold 100,000 copies of The Brass Check.
Sinclair has his own publishing house in Pasadena,
which has evolved from a mailing list from the days of
his newsletter, "Upton Sinclair's," in which, after
being very torn about America's entering the War, he had
urged America to enter in order to bring it to a speedy
close. He is just entering his muckraking period, and it
occurs to him that he can use to his advantage that
select mailing list that he already has. Le Prade's Debs
I
and the Poets is one of the only things he personally
publishes other than his own works. Another known
exception is an unusual gift to his wife, Mary Craig
Kimbrough, love poems called Sonnets to Craig, written
to her by George Sterling.2 5 1
Sinclair wants to publish Le Prade's book without
editorial comment as he had The Cry for Justice in 1915.
Le Prade is to furnish $600.00 and he is to furnish the
paper. Mrs. Gartz ups her contribution to $500.00 and Le
Prade writes Charles Erskine Scott Wood to mail the
hundred she can borrow from him directly to Sinclair in
Pasadena.2 5 2 She assures Wood she will pay him back, but
asks for plenty of time in which to do so. Later she
81
tells him that Kate Crane Gartz does not want Sinclair
to know of her help with the book.2 5 3
A HUSTLER AND A FINE SPIRIT
Le Prade's relations with her new found publisher
are cordial at this point:
Sinclair is a hustler and has a fine
spirit. He has made the book a
present of the paper for the first
3 000 copies. He has ordered a first
edition 6000 copies— and a special
edition of 500 copies to have Gene's
autograph. He has gladly joined in
the spirit of the book and no one is
to make a penny of profit out of
it.2 5 4
Debs and the Poets is published before the end of
1920, in time for Debs to autograph the five hundred
copies of the deluxe edition (!) in the Atlanta prison
on Christmas Eve.2 5 5 It ends up being a 99-page book
more rushed than Le Prade would have liked. Originally
she tells Witter Bynner that she wants the book ready as
a "May Day offering."2 5 6 And when that deadline passes,
she becomes determined to have it out in time for the
elections. In spite of the book not being ready by that
date either, Debs receives 919,00 votes that year, the
greatest number of any of the five times he runs for
President.2 5 7
The Table of Contents of Debs and the Poets lists
only the authors of the various encomia and not the
"Notes Concerning the writers quoted in this book" that
were initially so important to Le Prade. Ultimately,
there are 47 acknowledged tributes including her own, in
addition to two anonymous ones. The poems are presented
first without preface. The prose offerings follow
catalogued as "Tributes to Debs."
HE BADE GOODBYE TO THE SUNLIGHT AND THE STARLIGHT
In her own advocation, Le Prade writes that Debs
"entered upon his martyrdom, April thirteenth, year of
Our Lord nineteen hundred and nineteen. Fearless,
unconquered he bade goodbye to the sunlight and the
starlight, . . . [and] to the flowers . . . . 1 , 2 5 8 Le
Prade equates flowers with freedom of all sorts, social,
political, and literary. After likening her subject to
Joan of Arc, John Brown, Socrates, and Christ, Le Prade
professes:
The very people who today weep for
the sufferings of the Maid of
Orleans and the Man of Galilee would
not have risked a finger, had they
been present, to save the life of
either.2 5 9
83
Although Le Prade risks alienating advocates by such an
implication, it is probably characteristic of readers
not to include themselves among the indictable.
A standard device of the tributes is this
demonstration of Debs' likeness to admirable historical
people. Guy Bogart writes:
With Emerson, Lincoln, Whitman,
You take your place in humanity's processional of
prophets.2 6 0
Sara Bard Field continues:
You seemed to us like Jesus, and you made
Many a tale from ancient Galilee. 6 1
William Ellery Leonard likens Debs to Jeremiah2 6 2 and
Socrates.2 6 3 Miriam Allen de Ford writes:
You walk abroad with Liebknecht,
You two whom none could bind;
And Comrade Jesus walks beside;
And we— we throng behind. 2 6 4
Le Prade had envisioned that most of the inclusions
would be short; most were. However, she does include a
short play, a scene really, "Debs Has Visitors," by
Charles Erskine Scott Wood. In this scene, the prisoner
is first visited in jail by the Spirit of Walt Whitman
who, in extolling the virtues of the prisoner, relates:
You are the real Mason of Democracy;
Building true to the plumb line,2 6 5
and then by the Spirit of Lincoln, who disclaims his
honor:
84
They call me "The Emancipator."
Gene, I pass the title on to you.2 6 6
THEY CRUCIFY MY SOUL
Next, the Spirit of Christ appears, testifying:
In Jerusalem that day they crucified my body,
But today they crucify my soul.2 6 7
After subsequent visitations by the spirits of prophets
Isaiah, Hosea, and Amos, at the end of the scene Debs:
. . .lifts his arms and stretches
himself so that his arms are
outstretched as if on a cross— The
cell grows dark.[)]2 6 8
The purpose of this tract, remember, is to garner
support for Debs' release from the penitentiary. Le
Prade is especially worried that a second summer in the
Georgia heat could be fatal for the prisoner. It is her
hope that the sympathies of the Christian American
public will be alerted to the wrongful incarceration of
a Christ-like man. Publishing these proclamations of
Debs' likeness to the heros of aesthetic, political and
religious domains implicitly conflates the prerogatives
of those categories and naturalizes and extends that
yoking, so essential for her, to the reading public.
85
GENTEEL VALUES OFTEN STRUGGLE
Cary Nelson sees a conflux of refined gentility and
radicalism in these pages. In Repression and Recovery:
Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural
Memory 1910-1945. he relates, "A whole series of volumes
of poetry in which genteel values often struggle with
socialist or Marxist commitments begins to appear and
continues on into the twenties." In the same paragraph,
Nelson specifically identifies Le Prade's work as such a
volume. "Ruth Le Prade edited Debs and the Poets. a
series of poems and prose statements written in honor of
Eugene Debs while he was running for president from
federal prison."2 6 9
In another study, Nick Salvatore hints at the
origins of a similar conflux, this one a particular
strain of the American mythos that mixes religious
enthusiasms and radicalism. In his Eugene V. Debs:
Citizen and Socialist, he chronicles the life of Debs as
motivated by the religious fervor of his hometown, Terre
Haute, Indiana. One of its citizens promotes the town as
"an earthly paradise ... a sort of half station to the
skies."2 7 0 The testimonials of many of the contributors
to Debs and the Poets promulgate simultaneously, and
with no feeling of contradiction, the values of both
Christianity and radical aesthetics.
86
As she originally conceived it, Debs and the Poets
was to have included biographical sketches of all the
contributors, highlighting especially the relationship
of each poet to Debs. Ultimately, the book ends up
describing only twenty-seven, slightly more than half of
the contributors. And these "Notes/ Concerning the
writers quoted in this book" are of widely varying
length. Most are brief, a paragraph or two, but Eugene
Field has more than three pages, and James Whitcomb
Riley more than five. Le Prade had initially hoped to
offer whole chapters concerning the relationships of
these two poets to Debs. Although Debs had been great
friends with both of these men, his association with
Riley had lasted for almost forty years.
These long demonstrations of the connections of
Hoosier poet Riley and child poet Field to Debs are
interspersed with single sentence biographies such as
that of Samuel A. De Witt, who is portrayed simply as
"One of the five Socialist assemblymen who have been
expelled from the Legislature of New York State."2 7 1
CLAD IN DECOLLETE GOWNS OF SILK AND SATIN
The sorts of personalities who contribute to Debs
and the Poets are typified by the biographical sketches
87
of Sara Bard Field and John Cowper Powys. Le Prade
relates of Field:
During the Panama Pacific Exposition
she was elected envoy, by the
western women voters, to carry a
monster suffrage petition to the
President. Her spectacular
automobile trip from San Francisco
to Washington is well remembered.
When she arrived at the capital and
was received by the President with
three hundred of her co-workers, he
expressed himself favorably on women
suffrage for the first time.2 7 2
Powys, Le Prade relates, had lectured on Bolshevism in
the ballroom of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco
in the summer of 1919 to an audience of dilettante women
"clad in decollete gowns of silk and satin."2 7 3
A RED BLOODED LOVER OF LIBERTY
In an early sketch of Carl Sandburg, Le Prade
writes that he is "first of all a man'— a red blooded
lover of Liberty."2 7 4 Although such pronounced
masculinism is typical of much radical rhetoric of the
time, it doesn't as readily accord with the temperament
exhibited in A Woman Free just three years earlier. Le
Prade may have had second thoughts since this draft of
Sandburg's sketch is not published, and the version that
is contains an alternative reference equating poems and
flowers. "[Sandburg] is rugged and elemental, yet out of
88
his ruggedness spring the most exquisite flowers."2 7 5
Flora prevails over brawn!
THE BEARER OF THE SACRED FIRE
In another such biographical sketch, the foresight
of William Ellery Leonard, a professor of English at the
University of Wisconsin, is to prove almost eerily
prescient. He predicts, "Debs' speech at the Court will
some day be in the Anthologies of American
Patriotism— "2 7 6 The lauded new Heath Anthology of
American Literature, published seventy years later, in
1990, not only includes that very speech, but
highlights, in fact, showcases its presentation in
boldface type and frame.
While there is a lower class, I am in it
While there is a criminal element, I am of it
And while there is a soul in prison, I am not
free.2 7 7
Neither Leonard then, nor the editors of Heath now,
have acknowledged that Debs, although believed to be a
man of conscience and honor for his day, was only, after
all, just a man of his day and subject to the
assumptions and prejudices of that time. Salvatore tells
us that Debs supported segregationist policies both in
the Brotherhood and in society. Further, Salvatore
illustrates Debs' belief that immigrants took jobs away
89
from his "working man" and also shows Debs' use of
derogatory epithets for Italians and Jews.2 7 8
This is a man Le Prade idolizes, seeing him as a
kind of Christian Prometheus. In an unpublished draft of
a sketch she writes for her anthology, she declares, "He
is the flaming symbol of the Ideal, he is the dream made
flesh, he is the bearer of the sacred fire."2 7 9 Le Prade
revels in martyrdom, that of others and that of herself.
She believes in 1920 that those who suffer for
humanity "find a joy we cannot know .... Only they
who make the supreme surrender know the supreme
ecstacy."2 8 0 In order to surrender her own less mediated
work, her poetry, to the cause of the Debs campaign, Le
Prade must believe that task is noble, perhaps more
noble than her task had been in A Woman Free. In the
supersedure that happens at this juncture, Le Prade
suppresses her own poetic authorship and, instead,
expresses her literary practice as editor. Culturally
implanted, she may intuit that female poems are
political acts, but she cannot see them as such to the
degree that she sees her editorial advocacy of Debs. Her
literary practice here is markedly sublimation, albeit
literary, sublimation all the same. The literary triage
that she practices during her life, accomplishing tasks
with successive degrees of remove, begins here with the
90
Debs effort as she apportions her energies to letters
other than her own.
Seventy-five hundred copies of Debs and the Poets
are finally published, and Debs inscribes a copy to Le
Prade on Christinas Eve. He has sent her letters,
"pencilled bits", from prison, and she will write later
of their relationship, "We loved each other
dearly . . . "2 S 1
In December, 1920, Le Prade feels "completely
knocked out" and spends much of her time in bed. She
writes Clement Wood that she sees Sinclair has left off
two stanzas of his poem. Although she thinks that the
change improves the poem, she writes:
but to cut a poem [Le Prade's
underlining] would never in my
wildest dreams have occurred to me;
nor would I have had any moral right
to lay rude hands upon these
Children of the Soul which were so
generously trusted to my care.2 8 2
Here Le Prade is conflating poetic bodies with objects
of nurture, here, progeny of the soul.
Le Prade has promised copies of Debs and the Poets
to all the contributors. But she delays sending them
because there has been a mistake on the cloth copies and
she doesn't want to send paper copies to the authors. Le
Prade may have been unhappy at this point with Sinclair.
91
She writes William Ellery Leonard that in all the
efforts to get the book out quickly:
I did not even get to see proofs
myself; Sinclair did all the proof
reading . . . there are several
mistakes in punctuation in your poem
I see . . . Through a
misunderstanding my preface did not
get into the book. It was in the
preface that I make my
acknowledgments .... "2 8 3
To Max Eastman she apologizes for her editorial
separations of his passages being all run together. She
hopes that he has heard from Sinclair and relates that
she has written Sinclair by Special Delivery to see what
can be done in this regard. "The asterisks should be
inserted . . . ."
THE POETS OF THE DAWN
Debs writes Le Prade:
Those sweet and devoted comrades who
have so gladly and graciously
responded to your call are the Poets
of the Dawn, the inspired Prophets
of the New Day.2 8 4
Indefatigable in her efforts to obtain Debs'
release, Le Prade doesn't rest with having conceived,
solicited, gathered, and edited materials for the
project. Now she must use the book, a product in one
literary sense, as means to accomplish her next
political goal, which she also regards as within the
92
sphere of literary domain, Debs' actual release. The
testimony of the volume works actively, she believes, if
witnessed. She sends the book to politicians with
appeals for them to use their power to obtain Debs'
discharge from the penitentiary.
In some instances, her efforts may have backfired.
She sends a copy to Attorney General Mitchell Palmer at
Christmas and wonders whether her book could have
adversely influenced him to make the recommendation he
did. 2 8 5 Before Debs was imprisoned, Attorney General
Mitchell Palmer had adamantly opposed clemency for him
when cabled by President Wilson2 8 6 from the Paris Peace
Conference for advice. Further, and the source of Le
Prade's allusion, Palmer had cut off Debs' visiting and
mailing privileges in what Salvatore regards as
"vindictive punishments"2 8 7 just before the Wilson
administration was to leave office.
In March, 1921, Le Prade is visiting in Montara
Beach in San Mateo County. From there, she writes to
Hale Thompson, the Mayor of Chicago, to whom she had
sent Debs and the Poets several days previously urging
him to do "all in [his] power . . . . "2 8 8
Le Prade had included a cable from George Bernard
Shaw to the "New York Call" in the Introduction to Debs
and the Poets which alleges, "Clearly the White House is
93
the only safe place for an honest man like Debs."2 8 9 In
September, Le Prade writes Shaw in London telling him
that Debs' release, expected months previously, is being
held up. The head of the American Legion had wired
President Harding protesting Debs' being freed. "Things
look pretty black," she relates. Never timid in pursuing
the cause of others, Le Prade asks Shaw to come to the
United States where his presence would "undoubtedly
result in [Debs'] freedom . . . . "2 9 0 To Le Prade,
literary prestige is eguatable to political prestige.
GOD'S GLITTERING HERALDS BECKON HE
In her own copy of Debs and the Poets. Le Prade
inserts a copy of a poem Debs has sent her stating her
belief that a photostat of Debs' original holograph
should be the frontispiece of any future edition. Le
Prade may have believed herself to be not only the agent
but the very embodiment of "Sweet Freedom" in Debs' poem
"Walls and Wings":
Beyond these walls
Sweet Freedom calls!
In accents clear and brave she speaks,
And lo! my spirit scales the peaks.
Beyond these bars
I see the stars:
God's glittering heralds beckon me.
My soul is winged: Behold! I'm free.2 9 1
Le Prade7s devotion to a pragmatic aesthetics, the
alliance of a belletristic politics and an efficient
poetics is realized here in her Debs and the Poets
project. Such a political-poetical campaign will be
produced again on a lesser scale in the Thirties when
she fights as a matter of literary honor for Edwin's
Markham's sanity and again on a major scale three
decades later, when she will again conflate spheres to
produce another such judicial-lexical crusade to save
Robert Wesley Wells from the gas chamber in California
Le Prade believes that her efforts on behalf of
Debs do ultimately result in his release:
The response was wonderful. I knew
anything I as an individual would
say or do would have no weight, so I
gathered together the famous of the
earth and let them do the talking.
The book was the means of starting
an investigation in Washington, and
his ultimate release. They were
anxious to let him out (such a foul
blot on our country, this great man
whom the famous poets, literary men,
etc. were praising, a prisoner in a
felon's cell) but of course they
wanted him to promise not to make
any more speeches, etc. and of
course he refused. So he returned to
Atlanta, still without guard. (I had
been asked to send autographed books
to the President, his wife, and
every member of the Cabinet, which I
did. It surely stirred them up) .2 9 2
95
President Harding, "responding to a growing public
pressure," did announce on December 23, 1921, that
Debs's sentence and those of twenty-three other
prisoners would be commuted to time already served on
Christmas Day.2 9 3
HOW TO BE A PERFECT HEROINE IN ALL SELF-ABNEGATION
Debs writes Le Prade on the anniversary of his
release. "You only know how to be a perfect heroine in
all self-abnegation and how to consecrate your beautiful
soul in all completeness to the service of your
comrades." He also thanks Mrs. Gartz, who "rendered
invaluable service in that beautiful work."2 9 4
Debs continues:
Your own poems, truly inspired,
thrilled me often as I read them and
I am reading them still and thinking
what a great poet you are, what
wonderful vision and sympathy and
understanding you have, and how
certainly the gods have chosen you
for immortal achievement . . .
The foremost American Socialist of the time equates
being a great poet not with formal language facility,
but with political vision, sympathy and understanding.
He continues, wishing that she will be "blessed with all
fruitfulness in [her] household. 1 , 2 9 6 Effusively
96
adulatory toward Le Prade, Debs offers her his sincerest
wish for success, a fecund domicile.
While Le Prade's effort to liberate Debs from the
Atlanta Penitentiary, her book Debs and the Poets,
provides a clear and direct means of rescue, the means
of female emancipation are not so easily and singularly
definable.
HAROLD IS RESTING AT HOME NOW
Harold has been sick in September, 192 0,2 9 7 and he
may have been hospitalized. Guy Bogart writes he is glad
Harold "is resting at home now."2 9 8 So Le Prade is
probably nursing her husband at the same time she is
attending to the final preparation of the Debs book.
A ROMANTIC RETURN TO OREGON
In the fall of 1921 Le Prade and her husband go to
Oregon to teach at Pacific University in Forest Grove,
where Le Prade will be head of the School of Expression
there for two years.2 9 9 She does not like the Dean of
Women who had heard Markham speak in Portland and
proclaimed him a poseur. The Dean further alienates Le
Prade by declaring that she had burned Olive Schreiner's
Storv of an African Farm when she was in South
Africa.3 0 0
97
Ruth and Harold just miss seeing Markham who had
made a "romantic return to Oregon"3 0 1 on the occasion of
the publication by the Gill Company, a well-known book
store in Portland, of his mother, Elizabeth's, poems.
They had been gathered by an Oregon pioneer, J. D. Lee,
whose parents had made the "same wearisome journey
across the plains in 1847 in the same immigrant
train."3 0 2 as Markham's parents. Mr. Lee had met Markham
in the Oregon Building at the Panama Pacific Exhibition
in 1915 and discussed the idea of publishing Elizabeth
Markham's poems.
In the middle of the previous century, after
Markham's parents had settled near Willamette Falls in
Oregon City, Elizabeth had planted the trees and seeds
she had brought with her from Michigan. Kolodny speaks
at length about this practice of westering women to take
their seeds with them across the plains. Le Prade
relates that while Markham's mother opens a drygoods
store in her front room, from which she would eke a
living, "Elizabeth soon had a fine vegetable garden in
her backyard. "3 0 3
Elizabeth Markham had been "making poems (my
emphasis) for a long time, back in Michigan and on the
long trek West."3 0 4 As Le Prade relates the journey of
the wagon train on which J. D. Lee's and Markham's
98
parents had come to Oregon, she speaks of the "long
snake-like wagon trains which came winding through the
Indians' native country." Samuel Markham, whom his poet
son calls a 'herculean out-doorman,' is the leader of
his wagon train.3 0 5 Applying the parable of the Garden
of Eden here, we might see Markham's father, then, as
leading the snake into the Western Garden. Le Prade
relates that the snake curls up into a circle at night
for protection.3 0 6
LITERARY WORK DONE UNDER PECULIAR DIFFICULTIES
J. D. Lee introduces Elizabeth Markham's "literary
work, some of which was done under peculiar difficulties
during her long hegira westward."3 0 7 Surely
exaggerating, he tells of Elizabeth's being trampled, at
one point, by a herd of buffalo. Le Prade chooses to
reinvest Gill's image of Elizabeth as a "daughter of the
soil" in her biography of Markham. "But it would have
taken more than a herd of wild buffalo to kill this
hardy, unconquerable daughter of the soil."3 0 8 Elizabeth
Markham had published poems in the Oregon papers before
the birth of her little Charlie, the last of her six
children, on April 21, 1852. The baby, who was given "a
string of names," was to become Edwin Markham.3 0 9
99
BEES AND FLIES HUMMING LUSTILY AND GREEDILY
However consciously or unconsciously, Le Prade
relates Markham's childhood with overlays again of the
Eden story. She chooses to describe verdant Oregon in
terms overtly reminiscent of conditions in that first
Garden.
As he rested beneath the apple
boughs on the warm brown earth, in
his backyard, the white blossoms
were like the white spray of the
river. And when the boughs grew
heavy with ripe, red apples, how
delicious those apples tasted as he
bit into the fruit with his strong
baby teeth, devouring it to the
core. The buzz and drone of bees and
flies humming lustily and greedily
about the discarded cores and the
few fallen apples shrivelling and
rotting to a dark brown as they lay
in the dirt beneath the green
boughs.3 1 0
So, as a boy, Markham, the last child of a true
"daughter of the soil," lives in an edenic paradise
lustily eating ripe, red apples, gorging himself on the
fruits of knowledge and original sin.
DIGGING FOR SOAP-ROOT
In yet another accounting of Markham's life, Le
Prade calls her subject "in turn, [a] shepherd boy, [a]
cowboy, and [a] farmer" during his later childhood in
the Suisun Hills of California.3 1 1 She relates that once
100
as a young man " . . .he was digging for soap-root in
his backyard, and found a sack of gold, $900, ....
This lucky find helped him to go away to college and get
an education.1 , 3 1 2 That Le Prade would relate this story
makes it credible that she herself was hoping for a
"lucky find" in the soil.
BEFORE THE DISCOVERY AND RELEASE OF POETRY
Markham's youth was perhaps more than boyishly
wild. Markham had, at one point, "broken up [his] last
two schools and whipt [sic] the schoolmaster."3 1 3 As Le
Prade discusses Markham's wild youth in the biography
she will write in the Fifties and Sixties, she justifies
his attraction to and frequenting of Jack Bartlett's
Saloon as occurring "before the discovery and release of
Poetry."3 1 4 Le Prade quite obviously feels she needs to
excuse Markham's behavior in some way. Although other of
his acts are certainly more egregious than his patronage
of this bar, the fact that Le Prade feels some apology
is in order is telling. In addition, Le Prade's
acknowledgment that trafficking in the enterprise of
poetry is a release of some sort is an observation that
she could well have displaced from herself.
101
CONSIDER TAKING PUPILS IN LITERARY APPRECIATION
Le Prade sends out pamphlets announcing that she
will return to Southern California for the 1923-1924
season. She advertises her availability for a limited
number of lecture-recitals. Her topics include "Some
Poets of Today," "Some Poets of the West," and "Edwin
Markham, the Man and his Message." By special
arrangement she will give lecture-recitals from her own
published and unpublished poems. Also, she will consider
taking pupils in expression, dramatic art, and literary
appreciation.3 1 5
NO LITERARY MERIT
In an early resume, Le Prade announces her
adherence to a fixed aesthetic code, one from which she
herself migrates. As she lists herself the author of
three short stories, several anthologized poems, two
novels in progress, and three poetry awards, she appends
the disclaimer, "(No literary merit)" to her mention of
receiving three cash prizes from the San Francisco
Examiner. She issues the same parenthesized disclaimer
to her listing of an unnamed "Pot-boiler," written in
collaboration and sold for $90.00.3 1 6 While editing,
teaching, lecturing, promoting, managing and
disseminating the work of others, her own work is either
102
disparaged as devoid of literary merit or abjured as
"pot-boiler."
During this time, Le Prade formalizes her
affiliation with radical politics. In 1923, she is
admitted to the Socialist Party of America.3 1 7 Her dues
stamps cards are part of the Poets Garden Collection.
Harold and Ruth have a son, born in Hollywood on
July 20, 192 5, Le Prade's own birthday.3 1 8 Le Prade
vacillates between naming her newborn Edwin after
Markham or Eugene after Debs.3 1 9 She chooses Eugene.
Eugene Debs and his brother Theodore visit Le Prade and
her newborn at Hollywood Hospital. Debs is in California
on a lecture trip and holds a "great meeting" at the
Hollywood Bowl.3 2 0
ON YODR WAY TO THE GODS' ABODES
In April, 1927, Markham visits Le Prade at her home
on Spaulding, and for the first time a tree planting
takes place. Although the ceremony is not yet formalized
or annual, Le Prade will consider this event the
dedication of the Poets Garden. Le Prade photographs
Markham as he inscribes several copies of his books for
her. He records in The Shoes of Happiness and Other
Poems (1915) "My dear Ruth: Here is the book: my heart
is in it— both are yours!"3 2 1 And in Gates of Paradise
103
(1920) , he writes, "It is good to [?]3 2 2 your lovely and
earnest face again. God be good to you."3 2 3 And in
Lincoln and Other Poems (1913), "My dear Ruth: Joy
attend you on all the roads,/ On your way to the gods'
abodes!"3 2 4 Markham and Le Prade both recognize the
capacity of earth to serve as metaphor and as concealer.
Of "The Sower," in Lincoln, Markham writes "The grief of
the ground is in him, yet the power/ Of Earth to hide
the furrow with the flower."3 2 5
I CANNOT SAY THAT I HAVE GOTTEN VERY WET
Le Prade relates that her son is only twenty-one
months old "when he found Beauty helping Edwin Markham
plant the Song Tree, the first tree to be planted in the
Poets Garden." She will speak of the Song Tree and note
its condition for decades. When he is older, Eugene
writes "a little sketch" of himself, where he calls upon
the male metaphoric terrain of the sea, that of Melville
and Dana, in order to recount his experiences, rather
than the garden his mother has him plant. "For the
larger part of my life I have been raised in the midst
of a sea of literature, although I cannot say that I
have gotten very wet."3 2 6
1 04
WHY IS THIS ANIMAL SO DUMB AND PATIENT?
It is probably not only coincidental that the
construct of the Poets Garden and the beginning of Le
Prade's tenure as a mother are in such timely accord.
Motherhood would have allowed her little time for her
own work, and serves well as occasion of reinforcement
of her role as tender, as gardener, rather than
originator. A poignant entry concerning motherhood is
found in the Journals in which Le Prade sequesters her
private work, and whose contents are not to be read
while she is alive. This entry may have been written
about this time.
Why is this animal so dumb and patient?---
Do you not see---
She is a mother!3 2 7
Such declarations are, of course, considered maternal
heresy. Le Prade's habit of inscribing dashes between
statements offers evidence of a subtext of suppression.
In this instance, the elisions cite a more pronounced
rage than could the voiced articulations.
DRESS YOU IN YOUR BEST BIB AND TUCKER
Eugene Le Prade Story is received as a member of
the First Friends Church of Whittier in December of
1926. An invitation, addressed care of his father,
Howard Hadley story,3 2 8 instructs him to "Tell your
1 0 5
father and mother to dress you in your best bib and
tucker and bring you over.”3 2 9
Eugene Debs dies in October, 192 6, and Kate Crane
Gartz telegraphs one of Le Prade's poems to Terre
Haute.3 3 0 Mila Tupper Maynard, the teacher and mentor
who had introduced Le Prade to Markham, dies in November
of that same year.3 3 1
In 1929, Le Prade receives the literary effects of
John Milton Scott. His will, dated 4-23-28, gives all
his "literary productions" to her. The following year
she receives his poems, speeches, and articles3 3 2 So by
the late Twenties, she is already starting to be the
repository of others' literary productions, she is
already the self-appointed archivist. The literary
triage, the prioritizing of literary tasks that she
delegates herself, has shifted in turn from attention to
her own poems in 1917, to collecting and editing in Debs
and the Poets in 192 0, to teaching and archiving later
in that decade.
IN THE SPLENDOR OF MY BONDAGE
That Le Prade is feeling torn in her attentions is
evident in a poem she publishes in Stratford Magazine
in August, 1930, "While Half of Me is Gypsy and Half of
1 06
Me is Wife."3 3 3 in which she bars her shutters tight so
as to not "follow my wild lover."
O Blessed Lord and Savior,
What peace is there in life
When half of me is Gypsy
And half of me is wife!3 3 4
Her "wild lover" here may be her own work which she
cannot pursue; she is a literary as well as a marital
"wife." And marriage is confining; her literary self has
been indeed sealed with a kiss:
With pure gold you builded me— a cage.
My wings you bound with cords of silk.
My song you stopped with a kiss . . .
In the splendor of my bondage
My heart breaks!3 3 5
Le Prade reveals similar ambivalence in her poem
"Winter and Spring". The poems's speaker constructs her
perceptions in polarities. In winter she can be a
"chaste white nun" who tell[s her] beads." But in April
she "break[s her] vows." "I seek for Beauty,/ I turn my
back on prayer and duty."3 3 6 Such bifurcations, which
allow her to see Beauty as the opposite of duty,
contribute to the sense of dialectic between an
aesthetic that is pragmatic and performs obligation and
one of poetic bliss that provides succor. This conflict
is a major point of tension, I believe, for Le Prade,
who believes that she should prefer duty. "If only
winter would endure/ I could be strong, I could be
107
pure."3 3 7 But ultimately, she declares her allegiance
otherwise, "I shall be true to Beauty and my
passion.1 , 3 3 8
MY BREASTS ARE WHITE PETALS
Cached in the unpublished journals of the
Collection are pages of passionate, trusting poetry that
may have been written around this time. They profess
unequivocal love; their author cannot be loved a little:
"I must be loved utterly— or die/ Here at your feet."3 3 9
And these poems again show the alliance of love and
endurance, the urge to martyrhood: "to love is to
suffer".3 4 0 Also present in the covert poetry of this
period is the coupling of love with grandiose vocation:
"The waters of love they call to me/ With a great
madness.1 , 3 4 1
Many poems like "A Young Girl to her Lover," show a
glorious, even desperate, romanticism:
My heart is a sea of fire
That surges toward you.
My soul is a star
That calls to you forever 11 , 3 4 2
Le Prade practices an almost Renaissance conception
of ideal love. Her hair is a "wind of gold," her "lips
are a perfume," and she pronounces, associating her body
with floral budding, "My breasts are white petals."3 4 3
1 08
Another poem again rehearses a common trope of sexual
botanies as the writer urges her lover to "Pluck the
flower of my maidenhood."3 4 4
To ascribe so wholly to this sort of romanticism,
and, at the same time to adhere to a rigid concept of
actuality sets up a great deal of conflict. And Le Prade
does believe distinctly in a difference between rhetoric
and truth. "My Husband, mine from that first kiss,/
. . . You are my life . . ./ I write this not as words/
But living truth."3 4 5
IN THE DIVINE SACRAMENT OF LOVERS
Le Prade celebrates a chaste passion. "Of the
bright splendor of passion I will sing,/ For passion has
its place in the divine sacrament of lovers— / But to
lust I close the door— "3 4 6
Ah that all beauty should return to dust,
Men speak of love when all they know is lust—
And all the splendor of the world is rust!3 4 7
I am led to believe that Le Prade was perhaps unable to
appropriate and freely express her lust, not only in her
sexual practice, but in her literary practice as well.
BIND SUCH THORNS UPON MY HEAD
Le Prade's husband, Harold, leaves her for a young
student, information I found not in the Collection, not
109
from the legacy Le Prade preserves, but from an
interview with the woman who had been engaged a half a
century ago to Le Prade's son, Eugene. She had been
Gloria of the Silver Flute in many of the Poets Garden
ceremonies. Now Gloria Franzen, she believes that Le
Prade was not as attentive a wife as Story expected her
to be.3 4 8 There is much anguish in the hidden poetry
that she writes and stores during this time. I am
assuming that these hurtful words, which become the
thorns of Christ, are spoken as her marriage is ending.
Your cruel, cruel words to me
Are strung as on a rosary,
And they are bound about my head---
Ah, better had God struck me dead
Than bind such thorns upon my head.
Ah Love! Why didst thou give to me
The curse of such a rosary!3 4 9
The pain of betrayal marks much of this poetry, and it
is her physical body that bears that pain. "There is
something within me that is dying— / It is my heart!"
The poem laments that it will not die quickly.3 5 0
Another one of the stored poems probably written
around Harold's leaving her is one about Henry VIII. Le
Prade writes that when that monarch burned with lust for
the body of a new woman, he sent his queen to the block.
But her lover has instead tortured her soul to death.
"Thus men grow civilized.1 , 3 5 1
110
In one of the few allusions in the Collection other
than in the hidden poems to her divorce from Harold,
friend Eric Mayne offers Le Prade "sincere
congratulations on your escape .... You must have
suffered."3 5 2 Two weeks later, he alludes that someone
in her life has died. 3 5 3 Even thirty years later, as Le
Prade is narrating her divorce, she minimizes it. She
relates a conversation she had with Markham in November,
1933, while they are hearing a lecture at the Roman
Forum, "We had a good visit .... Of course I had to
tell him I was alone now with my little son. He was very
sorry to hear it, and his kind brown eyes clouded with
grief as he listened to my few brief words."3 5 4
THE START OF MY CELEBRATION
In 1932, there is a great birthday celebration at
Carnegie Hall for Edwin Markham's 8 0th birthday, and the
concurrent publication of his fifth book of poetry, 80
Sonas at 80. Bailey Millard, the editor who had launched
the "Man with the Hoe" in the San Francisco Examiner in
1899, is now in Los Angeles and celebrates Markham's
birthday over radio station KHJ. Le Prade commemorates
the occasion in similar fashion. "I too celebrated the
80th birthday over station KFAC. She will report thirty
years later, "This was the start of my Celebration of
Ill
Edwin Markham's birthday, and I have celebrated every
one of his birthdays since then."3 5 5
After 1933, the annual Poets Garden takes place
every spring, always on the first Sunday before the 23rd
of April.3 5 6 Although it is ostensibly to commemorate
Markham's birthday, I believe it is also in some
instinctive and metaphoric way, an acknowledgement of
kinship among women's nurturing tasks. It might even be
seen as preparing the ground for the transfer of the
recipience of female nurture from male bodies to
literary bodies. A new culture is being set up here,"3 5 7
one that celebrates poetry and pastoral, but this time
the proprietor of the rite is female.
HE HURLED LIGHTNING AND THUNDERBOLTS UPON THE TYRANTS
Markham comes again in 1933 and Le Prade calls this
the rededication of the Poets Garden. On this occasion,
as Markham "inveighed against the greed and injustice of
the world," Le Prade relates:
A nimbus shone round him as he
hurled lightning and thunderbolts
upon the tyrants and oppressors in
all lands .... And in his fierce
indictments he had not forgotten to
include white bread, and the red
lips of the ladies when they are too
red.3 5 8
112
Markham plants a Magnolia tree in the parkway dedicated
to the "Mother Principal in God," to their mothers, and
"to all mothers everywhere." The tree is to be called by
the name that Markham has given his "beloved wife, Anna
Catherine, " Madonna.3 5 9
A RED LIPPED EMPTY-HEADED FLAPPER FOR A MOTHER
Markham's concept of womanhood is severe. He
doesn't like Whitman because that poet's "idea of women
was not a high one . . . [he] was too earthy . . . .1 , 3 6 0
But the poet approves of his austere mother. In an
exercise he performs relating rules to live by, Markham
cites first the necessity of carefully choosing parents.
"If you choose a red lipped empty-headed flapper for a
mother . . . what can you expect?" Markham insists that
he chose his parents wisely. "They were both husky
pioneers, who crossed the plains in ox-drawn wagons."3 6 1
Le Prade is later to write of Elizabeth Markham, perhaps
overlaying her own projected self, "Fate had chosen her
to be the mother of one of the world's great poets."
Markham himself had described her as "a Roman matron,"
"a Napoleon of sorrows." My mother," said Markham,
"could have led armies."3 6 2
1 13
POETRY MANIFESTING HUMAN FORM
And this is the person whom Le Prade, a radical and
a feminist, chooses to emulate. Le Prade sees Markham as
Poetry displaying itself in personhood. "To me Markham
was Poetry. Poetry living, breathing, walking, talking,
manifesting human form .... That is why I loved
him."3 6 3
SOME THINGS WE ALWAYS FORGET
Le Prade ascribes to an idealist view of poetry and
to a materialist view of politics, and when she
conflates those spheres, which she often does, the site
becomes not definitive, but overlaid, uneasy. Le Prade
may have displaced some uneasiness about the ballast of
her espoused mentor onto her inability to recount
precisely the ingredients of a lunch she prepares for
Markham during the rededication of the Poets Garden.
While purportedly speaking about the salad she makes for
Markham to eat, she relates, "Memory is tricky. Some
things we remember always, and some things we always
forget."3 6 4 An always forgetting is a powerful
suppression.
As Markham is leaving for Berkeley on his first
airplane flight, he is photographed with Le Prade's son,
8 year old Eugene, in his "flying togs." "Goodbye,"
1 1 4
shouts Markham, "I'll be back in about ten years. "This
is the last time Le Prade will ever see him.3 6 5
A CONSECRATED SANCTUARY DEDICATED TO POETRY
Le Prade is now resolved to formalize her
enterprise:
I was so happy over his visit, and
over his dedication of the Poets
Garden. I had unfolded my dream to
him, and he was with me. I knew that
I must now start sharing the Garden
with others. Our meeting on the 16th
[November] was the only meeting I
had ever had there. Full of
enthusiasm and high hopes I knew I
must go ahead. To make room for the
poets in my little house, I tore out
the partitions which divided the
parlor, front bedroom, and porch,
making one large studio.3 6 6
She envisions her pastoral dream as perpetual:
I wanted to start something that
would go on forever. A consecrated
sanctuary dedicated to poetry,
beauty, and God. I visioned the
poets of the future sitting beneath
the poets' trees . . . celebrating
Markham's birthday and other great
events, in all the years ahead
367
• • • •
At the first official meeting of the Poets Garden,
April 22, 1934, the program is impromptu with speeches
limited to three minutes.3 6 8 Chairs are borrowed from
the neighbors. It is the first meeting between Le Prade
and Eric Mayne, who is to become "our most faithful"
1 1 5
member. He will speak at every meeting except one until
his death in 1947.3 6 9 The Los Angeles Times sends
"lovable” reporter James Warnack. In later years, The
Times will publish a feature story in their magazine
section about the Garden.3 7 0 As soon as that first
meeting is over, Le Prade rushes to the radio station to
celebrate on the air.
MOON CHANTED LI PO'S DRINKING SONG IN CHINESE
Le Prade wants the next tree after the Madonna tree
"to honor the poets of China." Since she does not know
any Chinese people, she feels fortunate that she becomes
acquainted with Anna May Wong and another Chinese girl
at a meeting, and that these girls suggest Moon Kwan for
the task. It is timely that that poet, then in San
Francisco, has plans to come to Los Angeles.3 7 1 On
September 29, 1934, Moon Kwan plants the Ghinko tree in
honor of the Poets of China and names it Li Po. It must
have been quite an event. Le Prade reports, "He, in his
native Chinese costume, and I in my poet dress,
exchanged poems beneath the willow .... Moon chanted
Li Po's Drinking Song in Chinese.1 , 3 7 2
1 1 6
THE GUEST OF HONOR SAT IN THE POET'S CHAIR
The ceremonies and accoutrements of the Poets
Garden are being established. According to burgeoning
protocol, poets have appropriate couture, poets'
dresses, and even distinctive furniture, poets' chairs.
"On Christmas Eve [1934] we held our second Vigil in the
Poets Garden, lighted the tree and sang carols." The
Angel of the Jails was guest of honor. She sat in the
Poet's Chair."3 7 3 This sounds like a ranking of angels
akin to that in Paradise Lost.
HE WAS A SILVER HAIRED APOLLO AND I BUT A SLIP OF A GIRL
The Angel of the Jails is another member of the
Poets Garden who is to have a great deal of impact on Le
Prade. Alzire Adrienne Chevaillier, called Faith, had
been named for a character in Voltaire. The only two
biographies Le Prade will write are those of Markham and
Chevaillier. Chevaillier has an interesting political
history. In 1891, she had delivered an address, "Woman's
Place in the Great Reform Movements of this Age," before
the New York Woman Suffrage League.3 7 4 And in 1894, she
had nominated Debs for President before the American
Railway Union.3 7 5 At Lummis House, the literary salon
of Charles Lummis, who entertained Los Angeles writers
1 17
in his Pasadena Arroyo home in the early part of the
century, her name is found on the guest list.
At one point, Chevaillier shows Le Prade a book
Walt Whitman had autographed for her. Whitman had sent
for Chevaillier, and Chevaillier tells Le Prade of their
visit.3 7 6 Another time, pointing out a picture of
Wendell Phillips to Le Prade, Chevaillier says, "He
played the same role in my life, Ruth, as Markham has
played in yours. He was a silver haired Apollo, and I
but a slip of a girl."3 7 7 Both of these strong women
adore men and choose them as models. Women have for
millennia embedded themselves in the lives of men, in
the beds of men, and in the beds of male gardens. But
there is a great deal of frustration that inevitably
occurs when the mentor is male and the protegee female.
A CONCESSION TO THE LOWBROWS
Florence Hamilton and Ruth Le Prade who will later
become close friends share as the source of their
bonding their mutual devotion to the same man, Markham.
Florence Hamilton will write a biography and adoring
sonnets to Markham, and Le Prade's literary endeavors
are in good part the ritualizing of devotion to this
man. The purported motive for celebration of the Poets
Garden, the birthday of a male poet, and, as I will
1 1 8
show, a lout to boot, seems to obscure what I believe is
a gesture to create a feminist pastoral. But Le Prade is
at least implicitly aware of some uneasiness here, some
sort of ironic association. She asserts, "Edwin Markham
teaches us that God is woman as well as man, that the
creative principle of the universe is female as well as
man."3 7 8 Perhaps hard for us to understand today, she
uses what she has at the time and makes a connection
that she can call upon, transform, and use to work for
her. Some sort of means must be sought to feminize the
already implanted. By manipulating the elemental soil,
Le Prade sets up a site of primal reworking. A
reworking of temperament is certainly in order. When
Markham comes to rededicate the Poets Garden on November
16, 1933, Le Prade promises the University Club that she
will have him on time there for dinner, but Markham does
not want to leave the Poets Garden. "I do not recognize
time. I live in eternity not in time. And my only
recognition of time is a concession to the low-brows who
live in it!"3 7 9 Couched in the accoutrements of poetic
temperament, Markham reveals himself as boorish.
Le Prade relates that during one of the plantings:
When [Markham] came to the Poets
Garden to plant trees I borrowed a
hoe from a neighbor as I did not own
one at that time. But as soon as he
saw that hoe he thundered out in his
1 1 9
big voice, "Take it away. I never
use a hoe. The hoe is a symbol of
drudgery." So we had to find a
shovel for him.3 8 0
The great man certainly adheres to his principles.
During that same planting, Le Prade's and Eugene's dog,
Baby Kirk Patrick, begins to bark furiously as Markham
is reading "The Man With the Hoe". Markham becomes
annoyed.3 8 1
HOW ARE THE LITERATS
On this trip, Markham is driven around Los Angeles
by Althea Ulber, an old chum of Le Prade's from their
Y.P.S.L. days, who has a Ford they dub Pegasus, and Le
Prade, who buys gas. Markham asks his couriers what kind
of poets the city has. "How are the literats and
litermice in Los Angeles?"3 8 2 Markham's attitudes do not
seem to express the sentiments one would expect from the
author of "The Man with the Hoe".
During this same trip when Markham is lecturing at
the Friday Morning Club, Chevaillier asks Le Prade if
Markham will write his poem "Outwitted" for her in his
own handwriting. Robert Browning had written something
for her similarly in London. 3 8 3 That same morning after
Le Prade gets the Markham autograph for her friend:
1 2 0
He looked the ladies all over, and
greeted them cordially as they
gathered about him in happy throngs.
After a few witty remarks, he
paused, then startled everyone by
suddenly shouting out this amazing
declaration: 'I wish all you ladies
were imprisoned in a tower !' The
ladies drew back, astonishment,
bewilderment, registering on many
faces. What in the world did he mean
by saying a thing like that. 'Yes,'
he reiterated with a louder roar. 'I
wish you were all imprisoned in a
tower!' 'Why?' He paused, his eyes
sparkling with merriment and fun.
'So I could rescue you!' he shouted
in high glee, laughing loudly. I'd
save you everyone! "I would fight
dragons for vou!1 , 3 8 4
The medievalism of all these damsels in distress and
subsequent rescuing being so complicitously sanctioned
by the Master and the club ladies is shocking. Markham,
who had been elected Honorary President of the Poetry
Society of America in 1917, also enjoys membership in
the American Institute of Arts and Letters, 3 8 5 and is an
accepted mainstream radical. Although considered a
principal proponent of the downtrodden, Markham's sexist
credentials are perhaps less well known.
THE DEVIL DROVE WOMAN OUT OP PARADISE
Le Prade relates a toast that Markham offers to
women: "The devil drove woman out of Paradise. But the
devil himself cannot drive Paradise out of woman."3 8 6 Le
1 2 1
Prade, in devising the Poets Garden, seeks to construct
a Paradise that belongs to women, one from which, even
through the diversionary device of humor, they cannot be
driven.
AFTER ALL HE WAS ONLY A GUEST
Another incident further reveals Markham's
character. In 1927, while in Los Angeles on the same
trip during which he first dedicates the Poets Garden in
Le Prade's backyard, Markham had been honored at a tea
given by his sister-in-law, Mary Murphy, at the Woman's
University Club on South Hoover Street. Le Prade relates
an incident in her biography of Markham that disturbs
her. After describing the loveliness of the linen and
silver, she speaks of a gate crasher, a woman with a
little boy who wants to meet Markham. Miss Murphy,
Markham's sister-in-law, her lips setting in a thin,
hard line, and looking as determined as she had in the
Clark Hotel, says the woman must be crazy.
This must be the same woman, I [Le
Prade] thought, who came to see Debs
bringing her little boy. I longed to
hear Markham protest her exclusion .
. . . But Markham did not protest.
He seemed to accept their verdict
that the woman was crazy. Perhaps he
felt he could not say anything.
After all he was only a guest there
as were we all. The situation was
1 2 2
somewhat different from what it had
been with Debs.
The woman was not allowed to
enter. The party proceeded ....
We had our tea .... It was a
lovely party. A great success. But I
have never forgotten the woman who
was turned away. I felt so sorry for
her. Who was she? Why did she seek
out Debs and Markham? I do not know.
She remains a mystery. The years
have never revealed anything more
about her. She was not a part of the
unfolding pattern of our lives.3 8 7
This excluded pair, this stray mother and her
little boy, become, of course, an integral part of the
story at play here. This woman is a new, stray, Eve, one
Le Prade can appropriate, to make hers, in order to
divest herself of the patriarchal first story. Women who
invite themselves have been excluded from the literary
party historically, sent off as gate crashers and
dismissed as crazy. If Debs behaved better than Markham
in a parallel incident, we need to temper that
remembrance with an awareness of Debs' sanctioning of
racism.
That Le Prade relays this incident, countenancing
especially her own dissatisfaction at Markham's
behavior, testifies to the idea that Le Prade's work is
not finally a biography of Markham but an autobiography
of herself. Her purported agenda, to commemorate "the
Master," is really only a scrim for her more compelling
1 2 3
motive, to explicate herself. And she is clearly not
happy with the behavior of her idol in this instance.
MY MASTERPIECE NEXT TO MY SON
Markham, in praising Le Prade's "lyrical, melodic
forms" as more her medium than her free verse,
reinforces traditional notions of women's poetic realm.
Gillian Hamscombe and Virginia Smyers believe that at
this time "women poets were not yet consciously aware
that . . . masculine precepts . . . controlled and
constrained lyric utterance."3 8 8 "He liked my Gvpsv
Ballad very much and said he thought it one of the best
things I had ever written. My masterpiece next to my
son."3 8 9 "Gypsy Ballad,390"already discussed in relation
to Le Prade's feelings of conflict in her marital and
literary practices, is a very conventionally constructed
ballad.
Edwin Markham's spouse, Anna Catherine Markham,
performing a wifely function of which her husband would
certainly approve, once writes Le Prade that Markham is
away on a lecture tour and cannot write. "I am asked to
take charge here and do first aid with correspondents."
Mrs. Markham refers Le Prade to a book they have been
reading which le Prade, "as a craftswoman" would
enjoy.3 9 1 She dubs Le Prade a craftswoman as her husband
1 2 4
has preferred Le Prade's formal Gypsy Ballad over her
free verse. Structure and form seem here to be
strictures that keep women in their place; they allow
just enough poetic expression to vent the steam from a
primal female voicing. Whitman has his barbaric yawp; a
century later, Ginsberg his howl; women have many
cultural forms to divest before an ontological utterance
of their own can be rendered, much less heard.
MY JOB WAS TO ROUND UP THE POETS
In the Thirties, Raine Bennet, calling himself the
Poet of the Air, starts a Poetry Academy in Hollywood
and asks Le Prade to be the secretary. She relates, HMy
job was to round up the poets and get them to the
meetings, and invite them to join . . . . ” 392 Le Prade
again relegates herself to the office of the scribe, the
recorder.
THE BROWNINGS OF AMERICA
The second Markham Birthday Celebration is held in
the Poets Garden on March 5, 1935, and poets Ralph
Cheyney and Lucia Trent speak on that occasion.3 9 3 The
Poets Garden Collection contains many artifacts of
Cheyney and Trent, poets of national reputation with
radical affiliations, who are prolifically involved in
1 2 5
many arenas of poetic production. As Pennsylvania State
Laureate, Cheyney tries to get money for poets from the
Recovery Administration. 3 9 4 They publish their own
works, including Dreamer's House concerned with "home,
motherhood, and nature,"3 9 5 Called the "Brownings of
America"396, the couple publish in a great many
magazines.
They run subscription poetry workshops, the
Cheyney-Trent Course in Poetry Technique. One such home
study course is $5. 00.3 9 7 In December, 1930, they are
editors and advisers for The Black Bard, "a monthly
magazine for and by colored amateurs aspiring to music
and literature. 1 , 3 9 8 Lucia Trent, dubbed "America's
Foremost Woman Poet-Critic" in one advertisement,3 9 9
pays tribute to Le Prade in "A Willow Tree" in April,
1942, which she dedicates "to a garden of lovely trees/
The Poets Garden".4 0 0
Ralph Cheyney shows in his use of garden imagery
that the female pastoral intuitionally promulgated by Le
Prade does not deal with assaulting some literal
biological gender, as much as it has to do with
assailing ascriptions of cultural gender. As a male,
Cheyney is also privy to the garden metaphor as a
transformative agency. In his poem "Except a Man Be Born
Again," he speaks of the "changing glory" of his life
126
being "Perhaps an allegory/ of pollen, bud and seed." He
also is interested in renewal, and anticipates with joy
the quiescence that will precede regeneration. "What
ecstacy waits in the hush/ That will hold you as seed in
the Sower's Palm."4 0 1 Cheyney's concern with and empathy
for the condition of laboring women is evident in his
poem "Miner's Wives".4 0 2
STAY FOR POETRY TOURNAMENT AND MUSICALE
Cheyney and Trent are living in Sierra Madre in
their "Dreamer's House." In 1936, Cheyney is publishing
a column, "Peaks and Peeks," in the Lamanda Park Herald,
"the newspaper that represents the eastern gateway of
Pasadena."4 0 3 After Cheyney's sudden death at the age
of 45 in Texas, Robert Whitaker would write that he and
Trent spent themselves "for a poetic evangelism unlike
anything attempted in America before."4 0 4 The couple are
Directing Editors of Horizons, which advertises a Poet's
Day at Sierra Madre's Wistaria Fete where the yoking of
flora and poeia has become naturalized. "Wander, then
dine, under the living lavender lace and stay for POETRY
TOURNAMENT AND MUSICALE".4 0 5
In the same Cheyney-Trent section of the Poets
Garden is a copy of The Gvosv. an "all poetry magazine,"
which contains a poem relevant here. Mabel Posegate of
1 2 7
Cincinnati writes in "Tranquil Garden," "An autumn
garden helps me to forget/ That houses hold so much of
bitterness . . .1 , 4 0 6 Whereas male pastoral such as
Virgil's Eclogues has traditionally contrasted the
sanctity of the country with the ruckus of city
politics, female gardens offer sanctuary from domestic
politics. The city for women has traditionally been the
commotion of the home.
LADIES' DAY ON PARNASSUS
Cheyney and Trent comment on received modernist
poetry in a small magazine, Contemporary Vision.4 0 7 In
"Ladies' Day on Parnassus," Trent decries their "age of
self-conscious intellectual poets, whose labyrinthine
diction we vainly explore for a luminous ray of poetic
ecstacy."4 0 8 Cheyney discusses the economics of poetics
in "The Muse in the Market." "Most poets get into most
anthologies and critiques by virtue more of what's in
their pockets than what's in their poems."4 0 9 In marked
contrast to the tenets of received modernism, Cheyney
professes belief that poetry comes from the poet, not
from the subject. He, as Le Prade, believes in the
poetic calling.
A poetic evangelist in her own right, Le Prade,
when Program Chairman for the Southern California
1 2 8
Women's Press Club, invites Ralph Cheyney and Lucia
Trent to speak to that organization and they do on March
5, 1935, just a few weeks before they speak again in the
Poets Garden. Three days after that last meeting, Faith
Chevaillier, The Angel of the Jails, "pulled anchor and
sailed forth in the seas of mystery." She is 84.41 0
AN OAK FOR CHAUCER
A friend lets Le Prade know that John Masefield is
in America. Le Prade calls Masefield's Los Angeles
manager, meets with him, and agrees to be secretary of a
Sponsoring and Welcoming Committee and to "round out the
poets and literary groups in Los Angeles." Le Prade is
once again the organizer, the agent, the recorder. All
groups contacted are happy to sponsor the Poet Laureate
of England except for the head of the Ebell Poetry Group
who doesn't approve of Masefield because he had once
worked in a bar in New York City.4 1 1
Masefield calls Le Prade and tells her he would
like to plant a fruit tree, but Le Prade has "visioned
an oak tree" for the Poet Laureate. In fact, she has
already bought an oak tree, so she suggests that he
plant two trees, an oak for Chaucer, and a fruit tree
for himself. Since Masefield is under contract for
$1000.00 per lecture, he cannot give his lecture, but he
1 2 9
can read a few poems. The only time he can come is 9:00
a.m. on the morning following his lecture at the
Philharmonic Auditorium. After his visit to the Poets
Garden, he will have to leave immediately for San
Diego.4 1 2
Le Prade asks Markham to send a message for the
occasion. She receives nothing at the time, but years
later Florence Hamilton will show her a holographic
response hailing Masefield on the back of the telegram
which was never sent. Markham had been pleased when
Masefield had been announced Poet Laureate in 1930.
"Masefield is far better than Kipling, because Kipling
is an imperialist, while Masefield is a democrat
.1 , 4 1 3
Just before Masefield's lecture at the
Philharmonic, he receives word of the death of his
friend, Rudyard Kipling. In spite of that news, the
program proceeds, but the reception is called off. Le
Prade is afraid that Masefield will also call off the
tree planting, but at exactly 9:00 the next morning, Mr.
and Mrs. Masefield are driven into Le Prade's
driveway.4 1 4
The Poets Garden is constructing itself and
practicing itself at a rapid pace. One week after the
Masefield planting, Seumas Mac Manus of Donegal plants a
1 3 0
holly in honor of the Poets of Ireland and names it for
his first wife, Ethna Carberry, the poet.4 1 5
BERTHA CAROLYN STOCKWELL GIVES BIRD CALLS
Le Prade relates that "Every celebration of
Markham's Birthday in the Poets Garden was lovelier than
the last." On Markham's 84th birthday, Karl Klun, a
"noted Vienese [sic] composer," presents two Markham
songs. Karl Klun lives in the same apartment house as
Mary Murphy, Markham's sister-in-law, the woman whom Le
Prade had initially dubbed the Sentinel at the Clark
Hotel. Floris Hudnall composes symphonic musical for
"The Man with the Hoe," and Moon Kwan's "Little Bird" is
set to music. That occasion is quite a treat for the
ears. Bertha Carolyn Stockwell also gives bird calls.4 1 6
At the April, 1936, meeting, Le Prade first meets
poet Angela Morgan.4 1 7 Ella Bacon Balsley, the
President of the Poetry and Music Club, has heard that
Morgan is in town and starts out in her car to find
Morgan and bring her to "our Circle." A pink rose tree
is planted as children gather round.4 1 8 Le Prade and
Morgan will become very close in 1953 when they are
"drawn into a very close spiritual bond" by their mutual
efforts on behalf of condemned Robert Wesley Wells.4 1 9
1 3 1
HIGGINS ETERNAL INK
Le Prade is always interested in the preservation
of poetic documents, an act which is, for her, a fixing
or stabilizing of icons. Around this time Le Prade
conceives "the idea of having poetry manuscripts written
on parchment such as the ancients used . . . [which]
endures for thousands of years." She finds some
parchment at a leather store and sends it along with a
bottle of Higgins Eternal Ink to Markham asking him to
"join me in my starry plot"42 0 by copying his Hoe poem
onto her special parchment with the perennial fluid she
sends. For Le Prade, this would be the sine qua non of
sacred texts. For her to be the caretaker of this
document would be a considerable privilege.
HOLY VESSELS TO FEED THE SWINE
Markham is away lecturing, and his son, Virgil,
answers stating that the "Hoe" should be paid for; the
price is to be $100. 00.4 2 1 Le Prade feels:
If the "Hoe" Was not to be a gift of
love, if it had to be bought like a
piece of merchandise in the market,
I did not want it . . . . The
copying by Markham of his
masterpiece for the Poets of the
Future was to me sacred. A gift of
love. One does not buy or sell love;
one does not use holy vessels to
feed the swine.4 2 2
132
Le Prade protests to Raine Bennett, "This effort to
commercialize him, this drive to reduce everything about
him to a money basis, does not root in Markham, but
stems from others."4 2 3 Again, Le Prade uses her most
heartfelt imagery, that of botanical growth, when she is
passionate about her communication. Markham's friend
Florence Hamilton does send the "Hoe" parchment that Le
Prade requests, even though she, too, believes Markham
should be remunerated. Le Prade cannot accept on those
terms, but as a gift from the Master, it would become a
a "source of joy" to all.4 2 4 When it does arrive, Le
Prade has a frame made for it and hangs it in the Poets
Garden studio.4 2 5
POETIC PLACE
The 1937 Celebration is the first that displays
this Hoe parchment.4 2 6 For this 85th birthday
celebration, Le Prade describes the garden and the
studio's pale sea green furniture and bright Indian
rugs. On the walls are several autographed pictures of
Markham and pictures of other poets. "The dominant
pictures in the room were Faith Chevaillier's 'Angels'
. . . Faith had cherished these reproductions from
Raphael's "Sistine Madonna." A portrait of Markham by
Kahlil Gibran complements the Hoe parchment. An old A.
1 3 3
B. Chase piano, which Le Prade had played when she was a
girl, is by the side door leading to the Garden.427 The
layout of poetic reception is in place.
IF YOU WRITE BEFORE THE FIRST WEEK I HAVE TO STAND WITH
A DIRTY MOP
When he has the chickenpox in the first grade,
young Eugene, Le Prade's son, writes Theodore Debs,
brother of his namesake, that he is not in bed. He
relates that his mother is helping him spell on the
typewriter. His mother may also be composing his
thoughts as he reports, "I am in the garden."4 2 8 Le
Prade inculcates her son with her own metaphor episteme.
Le Prade preserves some of the artifacts of
Eugene's youth in the Poets Garden Collection. For her,
personal life and literary life are inextricable. A
letter to Santa when he is eleven asking for
rollerskates,4 2 9 a postcard from his Grandmother Mimo
when he has broken his arm, and letters from YMCA Camp,
attest to the usual occasions of childhood. At YMCA
summer camp in Seven Oaks, he is elected editor of the
camp paper. His request, "I am looking for news. Send me
all you can find," is tempered in the postscript. Eugene
asks his mother not to write "more than possible" for
the next week. The kids whose mothers write before the
1 3 4
first week is up are called sissies and have to stand
with a dirty mop for 45 minutes.4 3 0
HIS MEMORY OF LITERATURE IS EXCELLENT BUT HE HAS NO
COMPREHENSION OF THE PRESENT
In the mid-Thirties, once again the incarceration
of a man she admires, albeit this time not in prison but
in family guardianship that she regards as coercive,
goads Le Prade into poetic campaign. She goes to the
rescue of her beloved mentor, Edwin Markham. The old
poet, now in his eighties, is thought by two doctors who
testify at a competency hearing on February 9, 1937, to
have encephalitis. They attest that Markham's memory of
the distant past and of literature is excellent, but
that he cannot recall the immediate past and he has no
comprehension of the present.4 3 1 It sounds as if
Markham was suffering from what we would diagnose today
as Alzheimer's disease.
It is probable that his family, his son, Virgil,
and his sister-in-law, Mary Murphy, were concerned that
Markham would leave his estate to his longtime
secretary, Florence Hamilton. He had talked, it seems,
to Florence Hamilton about mortgaging his home on Long
Island in order to pay off her home in Wellesley,
Massachusetts. It is understandable that there would be
1 3 5
friction between the Markham family and what appears to
be the classic other woman.
On October 9, 1934, Markham had made his Literary
Will. In November, 1934, Markham's son Virgil had asked
Florence Hamilton and Mrs. Judd, who had served as
trustees of the money donated at Markham's 80th
birthday, to release this fund. It was originally to
have been used for a European trip for Mr. and Mrs.
Markham, but Anna Catherine Markham had had a stroke,
and Virgil wanted to use the money for his mother's
care.4 3 2
On December 1, 1935, Markham had written Florence
Hamilton that he had received an offer to teach a summer
school of Poetry at the University of World Travel in
Mexico. He wants Hamilton to go and be the Dean of
Women.4 3 3 Markham and Hamilton, his secretary twenty
years younger than he, take the "newly opened Larado
Highway" to Mexico City in the summer of 193 6. They are
entertained by Diego Rivera and his wife, who have
luncheon for them, and they see Rivera's murals in the
public buildings.4 3 4 Although Rivera is married at this
time to Frida Kahlo, in her Markham biography Le Prade
makes no mention of her by name.
1 3 6
EACH DAY RADIANT WITH POETRY AND ROMANCE
Le Prade, ever ready to romanticize the situations
of those whom she believes true poets, relates the
happiness of Markham and Hamilton during their Mexican
idyll. "In this paradise of natural beauty each day was
radiant with poetry and romance." But also, having been
j a left wife herself, she interjects in parentheses,
"(But what of the other poet, stricken Madonna, in the
lonely house at 92 Waters Avenue, Staten Island? She had
never recovered from her first stroke years before.
Would she ever recover?)"4 3 5 Le Prade doesn't carry
through the implications of her inquiry. Perhaps she is
incapable of delving too surely into what would be a
direct conflict between her blind admiration of Markham
coupled with the deep friendship she feels for Hamilton
and her knowledge of Markham's wife. Although she never
meets Markham's wife, she has corresponded with her and
planted the Madonna tree in her name in the Poets
Garden.
SHE COULD HAVE BEEN THE FAMOUS ONE
At one point, Mrs. Markham's sister, Mary Sheila
Murphy, lets it be known that Mrs. Markham is very
bitter over having sacrificed her own career as a poet
to that of her husband.4 3 6 Mary Sheila Murphy had in the
1 3 7
past always called Le Prade when her brother-in-law was
in town. Le Prade relates that she would "exclaim
happily, 'A great man is here'." Then, there had been a
complete change in attitude, as she declared Markham a
very selfish man. "My sister is a poet, too
. . . . She devoted her whole life to him. She could
have been the famous one." Le Prade admits to being
stunned and bewildered by Murphy's outburst. "It would
be a long time before I would find answers to these
questions. "4 3 7
Le Prade, dealing herself an incumbency of sorts
where all matters poetic are concerned, feels it her
duty to determine right and wrong in the dispute between
the Markham family and Florence Hamilton over Edwin
Markham. She writes to both Mary Murphy4 3 8 and Florence
Hamilton, asking specific and pointed questions trying
to get at some sort of truth about the Markham insanity
hearing and the subsequent impact that proceeding would
have on his will. Hamilton writes that she has not been
permitted to see Markham since their return from Mexico
on August 27. Further, she says that Markham had wanted
to leave his estate "to be made into an Edwin Markham
Foundation," with her having charge of the Library and
the poet's unfinished work. According to Hamilton, this
will had not been witnessed.4 3 9
138
ONE MIGHT MAKE A MISTAKE
Le Prade7s campaign becomes a reiteration of the
Debs effort to free a wronged man. In New York, The
Advance had published a poem called "Staten Island" that
was supposedly Markham's. When the poem appeared, it was
recognized as Ina Coolbrith7s "A Memory." Bailey
Millard, who had originally printed Markham7s Hoe poem
in the San Francisco Examiner is now at the Los Angeles
Times. He believes that this mistaken authorship proves
Markham7s insanity, that Markham had sent it to the
paper as his own.440 When Le Prade goes to visit him in
order to enlist his support for the overturn of Virgil
Markham7s guardianship of his father, he is rude and
furious toward her.4 4 1 Le Prade explains the Advance
mix-up thusly:
Markham was not only a poet, he was
also an anthologist, with hundreds,
nay, thousands of poems about him,
his own, and others. Many poets have
had the experience when sorting
manuscripts written in faraway years
of picking up a poem and wondering,
'Did I write that?7 of not being
quite sure. I know I have. And if
the name of the author is not on
every page, one might make a
mistake. This would in no way be
proof of a failing mind. The
Coolbrith poem had been included in
Markham7s Anthology of World
Poems.4 4 2
1 3 9
DEFEND HIM IF NECESSARY AGAINST THE WHOLE WORLD
Le Prade writes Hamilton that Markham is "dearer
. . .than a father," and she will "defend him if
necessary against the whole world."4 4 3 Le Prade is not
the only woman who promotes Markham. Ida B. Judd, who
had been in charge of finances for Markham's 80th
birthday party, writes, "Each year since then I have
arranged a birthday celebration for Mr. Markham— last
year at Princeton University, the year before that at
Columbia University, the year before that at the College
of the City of New York."4 4 4 Judd is currently treasurer
of a Committee to pay for proceedings in order that
Markham be adjudged competent.4 4 3 So Le Prade is only
one of a whole coterie of women who revolve around
Markham.
Hamilton has written The Intellectual Biography of
Edwin Markham, certainly a safe approach to the subject
for the "other" woman to take. Unwisely perhaps, she has
given the Markham family her biography and they will not
return it. They have told her that the poet is "blind,
imbecile, and "would not know [her] if [she] did see
him." The family tells Markham, according to Hamilton,
that his secretary had gone away on a long journey.4 4 6
1 4 0
BOTH A BLESSING AND A CURSE
While Le Prade is trying to get the facts, she
continues to defend the family to the public. "I do not
remember the actual date when I looked out my side door,
which leads into the garden, and saw that the Song Tree
was dead." This was the tree that Markham had planted
the day he first dedicated the Garden in 1927. "Our
ceremonies [had] circled around it."4 4 7 She tells
herself she is just imagining things. "A poet's
imagination is both a blessing and a curse. Mine has
always been."4 4 8 But Le Prade does not deem the tree's
dying a chance happenstance.
NOT APT IN LEARNING WHAT I DID NOT WISH TO BELIEVE
She is aware of her propensity to dismiss what she
does not wish to consider. When discussing her
reluctance to knock Virgil Markham off his pedestal, her
agony in having to believe in the lessons of "Dark
December," she does acknowledge, "... I was not to
prove an apt pupil in learning what I did not wish to
believe. 1 , 4 4 9 Perhaps she is wise in identifying her
inclination to suspend credibility based on warrant, but
unwise in applying that disposition so singularly
against Markham's family.
1 4 1
Le Prade believes she is on a mission, that she has
poetic power sufficient "to really accomplish
something." She asks Virgil to allow Florence Hamilton
to visit Markham. "I believe Virgil will have to allow
the interview. I have asked it in the name of the Poets
Garden. The spiritual force in the Poets Garden is
strong enough, I believe to win for the Master, now."4 5 0
TRUST GOD, THE POETS GARDEN, AND ME
This belief in her moral invincibility by reason of
the aegis of poetry leads her to exclaim, "God is not
dead! Remember this— the Poets Garden is dedicated to
God. God is working. Perhaps I am his humble instrument
. . . . No one in the world can intimidate me and the
Poets Garden . . . ." And then, in an instruction that
issues a new poetic pantheon, she dictates this
catechism to Hamilton, "Trust God, the Poets Garden, and
me, Florence."4 5 1
Hamilton is rewriting the Markham biography that
Virgil will not return. She tells Le Prade, "And I have
found out that women have been so splendid and so true
and loving that I shall never again allow anyone to say
that women are weak and traitors to one another."4 5 2
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OTHERWISE THIS BOOK WOULD BE JUST A STORY
As Le Prade is reconstituting this episode, as she
is writing, through the guise of Markham's biography,
her own memoirs, she is pleased that so many letters
remain.
I am glad that my story does not
depend upon the frailty of human
memory. The best memory in the best
mind retains little more than
highlights after thirty years. I
have neither the best mind or the
best memory . . . Every word in this
story that is stated as fact . . .
must be literally true. Otherwise
this book would be just a
story . . . ,4 5 3
Le Prade seems to be denigrating anything other than
literal truth as only story. "But Truth, however long
concealed, has a way of popping out in time like a Jack
in the box."4 5 4 But at the same time that Le Prade is
verbally testifying to a literal and fundamentalist
aesthetic, she is practicing, through the construct and
promulgation of the Poets Garden, a metaphorical and
tropological one.
Le Prade implores Virgil to let Markham see his
friends. She tells him she will not be intimidated.
"Beneath the trees that he planted, beneath the Song-
Tree, which is now dead. beside the Christ-Tree that we
call Edwin Markham, I am praying for you."4 5 5 Le Prade
names her chapter figuratively for the situation. The
143
Wall is Markham's purported imprisonment. Again, Le
Prade is helping a male prisoner, championing an
available incarcerated figure when the real emancipation
she may be seeking is her own. "The Wall must be
broken.1 , 4 5 6
The intrigue continues. On August 18, 1937, William
L. Schantz, a young friend of poet Genevieve Farnell who
knows Markham, comes to visit Le Prade "in the Poets
Garden Studio." He brings an affidavit from Farnell
testifying that during her visit with Markham before the
incompetency trial, Markham had told her that he was
being told that Florence Hamilton had run away with
another man.4 5 7 Bill Schantz agrees to talk to Ralph
Cheyney and Lucia Trent in Sierra Madre to promote
Markham's cause.4 5 8
What Le Prade sees as her poetic obligation causes
her to act zealously. She advises Hamilton just to march
up to Markham during a public celebration. "I do not
understand why you care so much for appearances."459 In
addition to being so officious, Le Prade also seems
terribly naive. Virgil Markham has written Le Prade
about the matter. She reacts, "I don't see why he should
want to stress the fact to me that you are a married
woman. What possible difference could it make to me
whether you are married or single."4 6 0
144
THE BEAUTY OF COBWEBS AND DEW CANNOT BE DISSECTED
Le Prade wonders whether Markham's love poems,
"Virgilia" and "The Crowning Hour" are:
impersonal, vicarious, spun form the
web of dreams and imagination? Or .
. . had [he] loved and lost some
beautiful lady whom he believed God
had given him to be his mate? Was
Virgilia a dream lady, or had there
been a real Virgilia? A poet dreams
and suffers. And when the Muse casts
its spell upon him — he writes. And
who can separate the drama from what
men call reality. The beauty of
cobwebs and dew cannot be dissected
and analyzed in any man's
laboratory. Even the poet himself is
not always fully aware of the roots
and meanings of his song.4 6 1
Bill Schantz finally has to tell Le Prade on
October 18, 1937, that Florence Hamilton is Virgilia and
the inspiration for the love poems and sonnets in
Markham's 8 0 Songs. Le Prade relates, "I was stunned at
this surprising news. As I look back now I wonder why I
had not suspected this."4 6 2 She had believed that "the
Markhams had an ideal marriage." And here is a great
clue to Le Prade's belief that those who practice poetry
are themselves ideal sorts of beings, necessarily, just
by virtue of that practice. She had thought that
Hamilton's love for Markham was "poet-love,
Platonic" .463
145
YOU MUST PAY WITH A LIFE IN THE SHADE
When Le Prade receives confirmation from Hamilton
that what Schantz has told her is true, she thinks, "The
beauty of such a great love thrilled me."4 6 4 Le Prade
invokes an aesthetic ethic steeped in Platonism. Keeping
in mind that Le Prade is aware of "the other poet,
stricken Madonna," Markham's wife, and that both
Catherine Markham and Florence Hamilton are poets, it
must have been difficult for Le Prade to determine
loyalties. Her call is determined by the knowledge that
Markham had written the love poems to Hamilton, for whom
the Master had cast his vote in the poetic polls by
which Le Prade adjudges not only works but behaviors.
Florence Hamilton had met Markham when his son Virgil
was two or three; ". . .they had renounced each other
when their respective mates would not consider divorce
»l 465
• • • •
Le Prade writes Hamilton, "If those sonnets are
yours, Florence, then you are the most fortunate and
most honored of women."4 6 6 Le Prade assures her, "It is
foolish to say you must pay with a 'life in the shade'
. . . You have had God's greatest gift, touched with
sorrow perhaps, but still great . . . .1 , 4 6 7
146
ON THE POETS GARDEN PLATES
On Christinas Eve, Bill Schantz is the guest of
honor at the annual Vigil in the Poets Garden. Gene, now
12 years old, lights the tree. Le Prade serves her
special tea flavored with orange juice and spices and
cookies "on the big colored Poets Garden plates." The
three plates, one pink, one green, and one blue, each
stand for bread, beauty, and brotherhood.4 6 8 Again, the
paraphernalia of the Poets Garden construct, the
trappings of poeticism as an institution, sustain Le
Prade.
I was dampened, discouraged, and
worn out— but I refused to give up.
I was determined to battle on in
spite of all. As long as there was
breath in Markham's body and in
mine, I would continue to fight for
him, his freedom, and for
justice.4 6 9
Le Prade continues to relate, through the biography
of Markham that she dutifully composes, her own memoirs.
Interspersed between paragraphs concerning Farnell's
writing to the Governor regarding Markham's competency
and a paragraph relating Hamilton's news that Joseph
Auslander had received permission for his class to visit
Markham, is a paragraph of solely personal stuff about
Eugene falling off a neighbor's porch and breaking his
arm. Le Prade and her son had to visit the doctor at
147
least three times a week. "This took up almost all our
time."4 7 0 It is crucial that Le Prade, through the guise
of male biography, manages to register the routines and
consequences and exasperations of maternal duty. Such
classic female voicing seems to function as apologia,
but actually, more militantly, it serves as interruption
of male narrative and, therefore, disruption of
(his)story.
Le Prade will organize the biography she writes of
Edwin Markham into two parts, "Bright Aprils," which
treats his life up until the time of 193 6 and his having
a guardian appointed, and "Dark December," which
explicates the period after his son Virgil is appointed
as his guardian. Le Prade embeds her autobiography
within the frame of reporting her subject's biography.
Several of the thirteen chapters of Book 1 concern her
explicitly, Chapter III, "Edwin Markham Discovers a
Poet," "Chapter VIII, "Edwin Markham Dedicates the Poets
Garden," and Chapter X, "Edwin Markham Rededicates the
Poets Garden".4 7 1
I WOULD NOT TAKE THIS FROM REPORT
Le Prade's disposition to martyrhood, the need to
feel that she has tragic dimensions, comes out in the
epigraph she chooses for Book II of Markham's biography.
148
She likens herself or Markham or both of them to Lear.
"I would not take this from report:-it is,/ And my heart
breaks at it." Le Prade's purpose in Book II of
Markham's biography is ostensibly to try to justify
Markham's sanity. "Little has been known of the
motivations and events that led up to, and followed,
that tragic scene in Judge Brower's courtroom of
Tuesday, February 9, 193 7, when Edwin Markham was
declared incompetent."4 7 2 But, because it becomes
ultimately a record of the exchange between her and
Virgil Markham, it is actually a justification of her
own actions and beliefs. "This book will answer many
questions."4 7 3 At the end, she and Markham's son,
Virgil, are threatening each other with law suits.
THE CAUSE OF POETRY
Le Prade's crusade for the Cause of Poetry leads
her to conflate her notions of aesthetics and received
religion. On Christmas Eve, she lights her tree and
says, "We light this tree in the name of that great Poet
of the Social Passion, Jesus of Nazareth, and in the
name of his modern prophet, Edwin Markham . . . . 1 , 4 7 4 To
Le Prade poetry is a sacred activity engaged in by
hieratic practitioners who produce holy products.
149
A STRANGE AND DIFFICULT PLACE FOR POETS AND DREAMERS
Female friendships whose basis is the service of
males has been historically sanctioned. That bonding is
even further approved when common business is the
adoration of males. Hamilton's and Le Prade's friendship
is based on such mutual devotion to "our Beloved
Poet".4 7 5 As Le Prade's and Hamilton's friendship grows
over the years, they frequently turn to the subject of
their gardens. This is, I believe, a subversion of the
interest that originally brought them together. Seeds
are the weapons of female guerilla tactics. Interspersed
between comments on the Markham affair, Le Prade muses
in her letter to Hamilton, "How lovely your garden must
be . . . ." Hamilton continues to inform Le Prade of
Markham's condition. Again, Le Prade recruits her most
intimate metaphor when she must communicate urgently or
passionately. "Your letters simply tear me up by the
roots!"4 7 6
Hamilton's biography of Markham is returned to her
by Mac MilIan's and Putnam's. Le Prade commiserates,
"This is a funny world and a hard one. A strange and
difficult place for poets and dreamers."4 7 7 At the end
of 1938, Florence finally receives a letter from "our
beloved Master".4 7 8
150
Both women are active in poetry organizations.
Florence Hamilton is to be the President of the New York
PEN women. Le Prade hopes to go to the Poetry Congress
in Sierra Madre under the Wistaria Vine. This will be a
rare outing. "I really go about very little. I have been
a hermit for this last thirteen years."4 7 9 Le Prade's
professed seclusion coincides with the year of Eugene's
birth. She has been cloistered since her maternity.
SHE HAS PRAYED WITH HER HANDS UPON THE CHRIST TREE
As Florence Hamilton believes her Christian Science
will help her bear up,4 8 0 Le Prade assures Hamilton that
she has "prayed with [her] hands upon the Christ
tree."4 8 1 But Le Prade, as well as calling on standard
religion in this crisis over what she believes is
Markham's incarceration, writes his son, Virgil, for an
interview "in the name of the Poets Garden."4 8 2 So by
1937, Le Prade invokes her own made-up construct as
something greater than itself. The Poets Garden becomes
now for Le Prade the object of not only literary
apostrophe, but of religious entreaty. The
self-righteousness which Le Prade parades at this time
is perhaps an attempt to commodify the poetic enterprise
in a kind of power commerce. Sure that she has the
market in poeticalness cornered, she traffics in not
1 5 1
just poetic license, but, dangerously, a kind of poetic
immunity.
Appropriating the phrase "Bread, Beauty,
Brotherhood" from Markham, Le Prade pronounces "the new
Trinity".4 8 3 For the rest of her life she will sign
letters with the "BBB" endorsement, which serves as the
motto of the Poets Garden. Generally, she then encloses
these sacred initials in a circle.
Le Prade is privy to more than one set of Markham's
glib slogans. On the 1933 trip to Los Angeles, Markham
had announced, "I've got more than B.B.B. up my sleeve."
He goes on to tell Le Prade about his "L.L.L. and H.H.H;
Love, Labor, Loyalty, and To Heroize, to Harmoize, to
Humanize".4 84 Markham uses the idiom of tricksterism
professing that his alliterative creeds are come by
through sleight of hand.
IN A FEVER OF SONNETS
Le Prade writes "in a fever of sonnets" with her
"heart's blood" the only poems she has written about
Markham since "To My Comrade Who Knows All Things" more
than two decades previously in A Woman Free.4 8 5 Le Prade
applauds Hamilton's idea of getting together an
anthology of tributes to Markham and tells her about her
similar efforts in Debs and the Poets.4 8 6
152
WE NEED ABOUT TEN ACRES
Already, by 1937, Le Prade plans "to make the Poets
Garden safe for the future." (Le Prade's
underlining) .4 8 7 She hopes to hallow claimed poetic
ground.
It is not just for today that I am
building but for the years ahead. As
soon as I can I am going to take the
legal steps necessary, give this
property and start the Poets Garden
Foundation. We need about ten acres
in some beautiful spot with
suitable landscaping, buildings,
etc. (all of which I have long
planned), but we have made a start
here . . . ,4 8 8
This idea of particular aesthetic sites belonging
to those who practice poetry is illustrated by one of
the artifacts of the Collection, a cloth "Poetry Map of
California," published by the Western Poetry League in
1937 in place of its official organ Horizons. Among
those poets represented in the Collection who are
assigned particular locales on the map are Los Angeles
poet Jack Greenburg,4 8 9 suffragist Sara Bard Field,
Robert Whitaker, Miriam Allen de Ford, and Yvor Winters.
The Poetry League stakes out other poetic territory on
its map. Among the named poetic places are Ralph Cheyney
and Lucia Trent's "Dreamer's House" in Sierra Madre,
153
Robinson Jeffers' "Tor House" in Carmel, and, in Los
Angeles, Ruth Le Prade's "Poets Garden".4 9 0
In the Collection but not on this map are many
references to Florence Hamilton's House in Wellesley,
Massachusetts, where Markham spends time with her,
called "The House with the Smiling Face",4 9 1 and Kate
Crane Gartz' "The Cloisters" in Altadena. Naming of
poetic and political domain shows a widespread concern
for associating activity and place, for acknowledging
ground.
I HAD EXPECTED TOO MUCH
Le Prade goes to see the original painting of the
HoeMan which is on display in Los Angeles4 9 2 at the Town
House4 9 3 Painted by Millet in Barbizon, France, in 1862,
this is the work that had inspired Markham to write his
famous poem.4 9 4 Le Prade's initial reaction is:
Breathless, almost unbelieving . . .
And yet, and yet .... Well,
frankly, I was disappointed. I felt
let down. I had expected too much.
Markham's poem was greater than this
painting. He had seen more than
Millet had put into his
canvas .... Markham's poem is
Millet's painting plus the mind and
the soul and the passion of a great
poet . . . ,4 9 5
154
Le Prade's reaction to the Hoe painting is in
keeping with her general conception of poetry as greater
than its theme, as transcendent.
During 193 7, Le Prade's hair has turned almost
white. She confides to Hamilton that she gets "fearfully
down" sometimes. She is living "on the hope of hearing
good news from Bill [Schatz]." Le Prade goes to visit
Ralph Trent and Lucia Cheyney in Sierra Madre to make
plans for "our Beloved Friend . . . Ralph and Lucia have
a lot of power. "4 9 6
PEOPLE ARE NOT SO GOOD IN ACTION AS THEY ARE IN WORDS
A large audience attends the 193 9 Poets Garden
meeting. Le Prade reads a telegram from Florence
Hamilton and does not "mince words" when informing her
guests of Markham's situation. Samuel J. Banks, a friend
of Markham's, says he would see his friend even if he
had to knock Virgil down. But Le Prade responds, " . . .
sometimes people are not so good in action as they are
in words."4 9 7
One week after Tom Mooney is released from San
Quentin on January 7, 1939, Le Prade hears him speak at
the Los Angeles Coliseum and writes a poem.4 9 8 Mooney, a
Socialist, had been imprisoned for 23 years on probably
framed charges for a bomb explosion during a
155
Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco in 1916.4 9 9 Le
Prade is an occasional poet, but the occasions she marks
are not coronations, but incarcerations.
THE SHAKESPEARIAN SEASON
The Poets Garden Collection, as each of the Poets
Garden occasions, is peopled with figures who appear
again and again over the years. We might call them
regulars of the enterprise. One such person is Eric
Mayne, who writes to Le Prade in 193 4 from the Hotel
Rector "where Hollywood Blvd. meets Western Ave." A
devotee and promoter of Shakespeare as Le Prade is of
Markham, Mayne creates his own moveable salon. For more
than a dozen years, beginning in 1930, Mayne gives an
annual series of Shakespearian lectures during the
"Shakespearian Season"5 0 0 in the Central Library Lecture
Room.5 0 1 In addition, he puts on other programs such as
"Shakespeare in the Shakespeare Garden" at Lafayette
Park near 6th and Hoover complete with Shakespearean
music, songs and scenes.
IN YOUR OWN UNIQUE AND POETIC GARDEN
Sharing her belief in an almost militant sense of
poetry, Mayne writes of "Poetic power." He accepts an
invitation for September 29, 1934, to "be with you in
156
your own unique and poetic garden"5 0 2 to meet her and
Moon Kwan. On one occasion, Mayne wishes it were
possible to advise Le Prade about agents, but:
This is not a poetic age. The
raucous voice of the millionaire
mechanic is heard in the Crowd: and
it drowns the tones of the sweet
singer. The clanging in the Market
Place attracts the multitude, and
but few gather in the Poets
Garden.5 0 3
CONTRIBUTING TO THE GENERAL GOOD
In 193 5, when Le Prade is working with the Press
Club, Eric Mayne writes her, "I am sure you are giving
them excellent programs .... You are doing your own
special and useful work and contributing to the general
good."5 0 4 He sends her a greeting card that pictures a
gathering of girls gardening on a cloud which he
captions, "Here is a fairy rosebud Garden of Girls."5 0 5
THANK YOU FOR VISIONING ME IN THE POETIC DREAMLAND
Mayne and Le Prade correspond regularly. He is
"sure [she] has started a circle that will go on
increasing, a circle of great and beautiful thoughts
inspiring those who speak and hear."5 0 6 In implicit
concession, he buys right in to her poetic construct.
"Thank you for visioning me in the Poetic Dreamland. It
157
is very beautiful that one can create one's own kingdom,
rejoice in an imaginary land of love and high
idealism. 5 0 7 This is a poetic geography that serves as
refuge, and, at times, escape.
The Mayne-Le Prade friendship continues for the
rest of their lives. He writes her from the Rector in
1943 thanking her for sending him her book Song Tree
from San Francisco. 5 0 8 And as late as 1964, Mayne will
send Le Prade a telegram from himself and Dolores to
tell her that they have moved to Santa Cruz.5 0 9
A WINTER SEASON OP FORTNIGHTLY SALONS
The Poets Garden offers many relics from the
cultural history of Los Angeles. During the mid-Thirties
there was a proliferation of literary enterprises in
this city. On one occasion Mayne issues Le Prade a guest
card for the Frederick Warde Chapter of the Shakespeare
Study and Dramatic Club. Miss Diane Van D. Tennyson
"presents a winter season of Fortnightly Salons for the
discussion of New York and London plays and books by
distinguished speakers." Eric Mayne reads scenes at the
"March Salon" from Maxwell Anderson's "Valley Forge".5 1 0
158
LOVE OF CULTURE THEIR COMMON BOND
In an article in the Los Angeles Herald and Express
there is a picture of Eric Mayne at an Opera and Fine
Arts Club Tea. Another picture shows three hatted
ladies, captioned "Love of Culture their Common Bond."
Included is the Founder President of the Cameo Salon of
Chicago. In 194 3, Le Prade will be one of the
"distinguished guests" at a tea of the Book and Play
Salon, where she will be introduced as a "California
Poetess.1 , 5 1 1
WITH THE GRAVEDIGGERS UNTIL THE LAST CLOD WAS SHOVELLED
IN
In 194 0, Edwin Markham dies and is buried in
Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles, where Le Prade stays
longer than anyone else at the funeral, "remain[ing]
with the gravediggers until the last clod was shovelled
in."5 1 2 That year the Poets Garden meets on April 21,
Sunday, at 2:00 in order to celebrate Edwin Markham's
88th birthday. The invitations assure guests that "All
poetry lovers [are] welcome. As usual, there is "No
admission".5 1 3 Le Prade's mother has also died this
year. "I am still stunned from this storm of death that
has blown around my life since Dec 22 . . . had I known
159
my mother was to go as she did I would not have had the
courage to announce this meeting.1 , 5 1 4
MOTHER'S HOME LIFE AND THE HOUSEHOLD GUEST
In the late Thirties, Le Prade is publishing
fairly genteel stuff. In the magazine "Poet Lore" she
publishes "When April Comes"5 1 5 along side more well
known writers Stanley Kauffman and the Russian symbolist
Alexander Blok. Very staid is a short story of Le
Prade's which serves as the cover article in "Mother's
Home Life and the Household Guest".5 1 6 "Ginger's
Report," to be serialized in two issues, is told from
the perspective of a first grader who is apprehensive
about her first report card. The story is never fully
reported; the next issue of the magazine is not in the
Collection. Because these are labor intensive mothering
years for Le Prade, it is not surprising that her
literary practice manifests itself in juvenile themes,
narrated from a child's perspective, and that her
organizing patterns, so efficient during most of her
life, but which take a great deal of rote time, slack
off here. She is otherwise engaged.
160
BETWEEN ALUMNI AND ALUMNAE
Le Prade had written back in 1917 in A Woman Free
at a time when education was not very removed from rote
recitation:
I said to the dry professor . . . Oh those exalters
of reason, of the cold intellect . . . with dead
languages, dead philosophies, dead thoughts . . .
They are but ghouls
Feasting on the dead.5 1 7
She is always an autodidact, but in the early
Thirties, she begins an even more deliberate course of
study recording her findings quite formally in black
composition notebooks. These "Poetry Notes" and "Poetry
Technique" journals record biographies of poets,
exhaustive bibliographies of poets, material on poetic
forms, and grammar notations. For instance, Le Prade
notes the distinction between can and may and between
alumni and alumnae. But the knowledge she is really
seeking is not available from the university professors
whose information she solicits. She quotes George Philip
Krysp,5 1 8 an Adjunct Professor of English from Columbia.
"One may speak of a female writer of verse as an author,
but hardly of a female writer of verse as a poet".51 9 Le
Prade does not record this in order to dutifully
acknowledge the distinction, but, quite the opposite; in
order to serve as a concrete reminder of exactly what
1 6 1
she is trying to counter. She officially registers her
displeasure at this prevailing assumption.
THE POETESS HAS GONE OUT WITH HOOP SKIRTS
Elsewhere, she lists women poets continuing her
rhetorical interrogation. "Has there ever been in the
history of the world as many fine women poets writing at
one time as there are today?" And then she responds
reflexively, her own student.
When we speak of women poets today
we can speak with pride. And when we
speak of women poets of the future
our hearts are full of great hopes.
The future will bring us women poets
who are as great as Shakespeare,
Milton, Dante, Shelley, as great as
any of the poets who have appeared
in this world.5 2 0
And in retort to the professor from Columbia:
There is no sex in brains, and
poetry should not be divided into
man poets and women poets, but into
good poets and bad poets, great
poets and mediocre poets. We no
longer call a woman a poetess except
in the grammars. Either she is a
poet or she isn't a poet. The
poetess has gone out with hoop
skirts . . . and an intellectual
woman is no longer looked on as a
freak.5 2 1
The archaic idea of choosing between a home or
career is passing. The normal woman [who] choose[s]
162
both, [encounters] obstacles today, but women of [the]
future will find no conflicts.
Although this is prescient stuff, Le Prade is not
just a prognosticator. She is not just keenly interested
in the great hopes of which she speaks. More, she truly
acts, she gets her hands in the literal dirt to plow and
till to make new poetic venues a reality. Although today
we might not sanction such neat bifurcations, either
sexual or aesthetic, Le Prade does intuit that our ways
of knowing are contingent upon the epistemological
landscapes that we inhabit.
I PREFER THE MESS
Le Prade is always interested in biographies of
poets, how poets become poets, how they are made, or,
more appropriately, how they make themselves. She notes
Amy Lowell's "eight years in careful preparation"
recording Lowell's environs, the place and conditions of
poet-making, as she records, "Park around her mansions,
wild fruit trees, tremendous library." Lowell's
association of poetry with craft is quoted directly in
Le Prade's "Poetry Technique" journals. "The poet must
learn his trade in the same manner and with the same
painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker." And she notes
that Millay's preparation for the poetic vocation
163
included "gardens, walks, swims." Le Prade records
Millay's attitude toward household. "If I had to live in
a mess or live in a neat room and give up writing, I
prefer the mess."5 2 2
Le Prade does not confine her interest in women
poets to American or even British practitioners. She
takes notes from the New York Times about an Indian
woman involved with Gandhi and the Salt Raid Crisis. She
records information from Woman's Journal and Pan
American Magazine about Gabriella Mistral, the Chilean
poet. Her journals include lists of women's poetry
anthologies culled from library catalogues.5 2 3
Well aware of what is going on in conventional
modernism, Le Prade studies Pound, H. D., and William
Carlos Williams. She notes Babette Deutsch's This Modern
Poetrv. From Sydney Lanier's Science of English Verse
she meticulously studies rime schemes and registers the
mechanics of the rondel, villanelle, and rondeau. This
is a very conscientious course of study marked by
assiduous attention. She jots down vocabulary to "look
up." There is, of course, much stuff on Markham in these
"Poetry Notes". Le Prade copies published criticism and
intersperses her own comments.
164
A TREE IN THE POETS GARDEN FOR THE WOMEN POETS OF
TOMORROW
Le Prade is driven by her quest to determine why
the gender distribution of practicing artists and
writers and, in particular, poets, is so historically
askew. "Why is it that the great creative artists of the
world have been men? Will the new era bring great
creative artists who are women who will match men in the
greatness of their creative genius?"5 2 4
And then, this interjection, in the form of a toast
or wish or prayer, directly correlates Le Prade7s
botanical/literary construct with female nurturing: "A
tree in the Poets Garden for the Women Poets of
Tomorrow". 5 2 5 Le Prade intends quite clearly for her
project to be a means of engendering female poetry that
she hopes to plant and nurture and produce. These are
not neuter or sexless trees she is planting. They are
engendered by female seeds that will, in turn, engender
a female poetics. We could call them gynospores.
HE HAS TAKEN HER BODY
Le Prade speaks of male appropriation, not only of
female literary texts, but of the female body. "Man has
always been the one to take, woman the one to give. He
has taken her body, her . . . [This is undecipherable]
165
genius, her very soul."5 2 6 Le Prade's seeds are active
potentials not only for ownership of our own literature,
but also of ownership of our own bodies.
LET HIS NAME BE WRIT IN ASHES
Le Prade's "Poetry Notes" consist of reams of
material, for the most part pedagogic transcriptions of
received poetic techniques. They are, as cited above,
journal-like in character, of intent, but still
temperate and critical, tone. But near the back of one
of these journals, for the most part rote exercise, for
some part critical performance, intrudes a singular
expressive poem cushioned by several blank pages,
furtive, apart from the main:
Let the name of my false lover
Never with my name be written
Let his name be writ in ashes
And be scattered to the whirlwind!5 2 7
Much of Le Prade's verse is characterized by this tone
of imperative decree, of ordering wishes to come true.
It is a fairy tale power ploy, attractive to one who
feels she has no power. The poem's very location in this
didactic journal attests to its declaration of an untrue
lover, it is surely Harold and his leaving her, as a
difficult precept of Le Prade's education. Other poems
whose theme is betrayal are found in the poetry volumes
166
that Le Prade gathers later in her life. She is hiding
her anguish in poems that she sequesters. Her pain is
acute.
OLD GREED WITH SLIMY SNOUT CAN NEVER ROOT THE WONDER
In 1943, Rowny Press, which has since moved to
Santa Barbara, publishes a 79 page collection of Le
Prade's poems, Song Tree. 2 6 years after it has
published A Woman Free. Still reminiscent of Whitman,
Sona Tree is made up of sections called "April Leaves,"
"Leaves of Storm and Fire," "Leaves at Prayer," "Star
Leaves," and "Sonnet Music." Opposite the title page is
a picture of "The Blossoming Tree"5 2 8 that represents
for Le Prade the fruition of the Poets Garden.
They said the tree was bare and dead,
I looked and then I saw— instead
There was a bird on every bough!
And every bird commenced to sing,
The tree of Song was blossoming!
Le Prade believes here in the materiality of the
ideal:
The dreams are true, my Friend, 0 never doubt
That dreams are true. All else may dim and fade
And in the darkness of the earth be laid,
But dreams remain. Only the dreams can flout
The bitter years. Old Greed with slimy snout
Can never root the wonder they have made.
The dreamers have known Gods, they have obeyed
The starry dare that wakes men with a shout.5 2 9
167
X DIP MY PEN IN MY OWN HEART
In this volume, in contrast to the exoticism and
expatriatism of her contemporary James Joyce,5 3 0 Le Prade
[does] not sing of Araby
And the streets of far Cathay,
I sing of my land,
And the streets of today.5 3 1
Expatriatism, that behavior of much modernism which
concerns itself with geographical dislocation, manifests
itself for Le Prade more with political, and more
specifically, patriarchal dislocation. Hers, as much
women's poetry, is marked by interest in the region of
her body and with exploring and claiming that territory
as her own:
I dip my pen in my own heart,
And write my songs on my own page.5 3 2
Her body is the source of inscription, the procedure of
inscription, and the repository of inscription.
In Sona Tree she rehearses again the old alliance
she had pronounced a quarter century earlier between
Eugene Debs and Christ:
And face to face two comrades now embrace—
The gentle Jesus and the gentle 'Gene.5 3 3
Elsewhere in this volume, the associations are more
sophisticated. In "Frail Words," the linguistic delicacy
which she first professes becomes complicated:
168
Fragile are these words, the words that I have
spoken
Yet I see them go, a lyrical token,
Down years unknown, to speak with souls
unborn . . .
Frail are my words as starlight I5 3 4
Here, simultaneously the fragility is enforced and
transformed, but never just mitigated. If starlight had
been steel, for instance, the simple opposition would
have assuaged the image and too neatly tied it up.
And again the tone of imperative decree, of
pronouncing moral credos from the dais of poetry:
And even as a wine glass
Is blown by the wind and shattered
to the sound of trumpets
So shall all tyranny and greed
be blown and shattered!5 3 5
Much of Song Tree concerns itself with the power of
poetry to prevail. Declaring the power of the poet
"Stronger than the Dictator," Le Prade asks:
Who can shoot a sonnet
Who can gas a dream?5 3 6
Although Le Prade's sonnets cannot be shot or gassed,
her poetry, and the poetry of many women, has been more
insidiously eradicated. I found my copy of Song Tree at
Acres of Books Used Bookstore in Long Beach stamped in
red "Discard."
169
NOT TOO DIFFICULT TO ENDURE FOR VICTORY
At Los Angeles High School, Eugene edits a flyer
for Metal Shop and dates Gloria Reidel. Needing to get
away form his mother, he moves out of the house on
Spaulding, the Poets Garden, and into an apartment5 3 7
before he graduates from high school in June, 1943.
After the middle of July, he is already in the Army and
subject to 24 hour call. 5 3 8 He finds the Army processing
long and weary. 5 3 9 Selman Stone, another Poets Garden
regular, writes that "You will find the life hard, but
not too difficult to endure for victory."5 4 0
While Eugene is at Fort Benning in Georgia, he
meets someone in the Army from Staten Island whose
family is friends with the Markhams. They have a heated
debate over Markham's right to the title of Poet
laureate.
This fellow is a student of poetry
and according to him, Eastern
universities are teaching that
Robert Frost is the greatest of
contemporary poets and that Markham
was mearly [sic] a popularized
American poet with two enduring
works to his credit . . . the
universities teach Markham as a man
with a reactionary style of writing
that will not live long on the
American scene . . . . ,|541
In the middle of April, 1944, Eugene is stationed
at Camp Mary, Texas. 5 4 2 On December 18, 1944, he is
170
first reported missing in action. 5 4 3 Serving in the
394th Infantry Regiment, he is captured by the Germans
in the Battle of the Bulge. 5 4 4 One of the most poignant
remains in the Poets Garden Collection is the
telegram5 4 5 Le Prade receives notifying her that her son
had died on March 19 at Hammelburg,5 46 while a prisoner
of the German government. Eugene was 19 years old. Now
impotent, just an inert piece of dusty paper disheveled
in its academic archive, it has lost the searing and
awful power it must have unleashed when it was delivered
to Spaulding Avenue.
Le Prade saves, next to the telegram, a newspaper
clipping stating that "over 99% of American prisoners
captured by Germany are now returning home." That her
son was not among this majority may have fueled her
sense of being singled out or cursed with a literary-
historical burden, of being fated. The article pictures
the horribly emaciated condition of German Prisoners of
War.5 4 7
THIS FLOWER WAS THE SYMBOL OF OUR LOVE
Le Prade turns to writing to try to grapple with
her only child's death calling on the construct she has
erected for aesthetic delight now to sustain her
1 7 1
emotionally. Conflating her biological and literary
maternity, her tribute begins, "A boy grew in a garden
. . . . " She recites the eulogy of Gloria Reidel,
Gene's high school sweetheart, when planting a bush of
red hibiscus in the Poets Garden.
The red hibiscus is the only flower
I ever wore in my hair. Gene loved
it. He pressed some of the blossoms
and wore them next his heart when he
went overseas. This flower was the
symbol of our love.5 4 8
From this point on, Le Prade displays the flag from
Eugene's coffin every April during the Poets Garden
ceremony.5 4 9
Eric Mayne sends Le Prade a sympathy card when her
son is killed. Mayne writes that his son had also been
killed in the service, "but he wanted to go. He
volunteered."5 5 0 His son had died in World War I on the
march to Marne.5 5 1
Dale Sheets, a friend of Eugene from prison camp,
writes Le Prade that he has "sort of a diary" that he
and Eugene had hoped to use to write up their story some
day. Sheets tells Le Prade that they had done the same
things until March of 1945.5 5 2
172
THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES IN SHAKESPEAREAN
SONNETS
The friendships that seem to last over the decades,
that are secure enough to be preserved in the relics Le
Prade caches in the archives, to be exhumed and
prospectively told, are the correspondences and relics
of those friends who share with Le Prade the myth of her
poetic enterprise and what that enterprise hopes to
promote. Eric Mayne sends Le Prade an article in the
Christian Science Monitor5 5 3 providing information about
Markham's being honored in New York that week on his
eighty-third birthday.
And Selman Stone, promoting his own poetic
enterprise5 5 4 as the "Founder of American Tower of
Poetry," we might see as envisioning himself some
phallic pollinator of the Garden. Advertisement cards
hawk his "Los Angeles Sonnets," which are twenty-two
Shakespearean sonnets "containing the Entire history of
Los Angeles," and his "Poems that Echo," one hundred
poems written at Echo Park. 5 5 5 Sounds like marvelous
stuff to this researcher.
YOURS IN CONSECRATION TO POETRY
Selman Warren Stone's friendship is also maintained
for decades. He writes poetic tributes to Le Prade as
17 3
the very embodiment of the Muse, and she closes her
letters to him, "Yours in Consecration to Poetry."5 5 6
But Stone's and Le Prade's relationship is uneven.
Although they correspond for years, there are a series
of misunderstandings beginning at least as early as
1934. Le Prade once writes Stone, "It was a
disappointment that you broke your word in regard to the
Edwin Markham Celebration. I depended on you."5 5 7 There
is also some misunderstanding in El Centro over some
property. It seems that Le Prade has some water rights
that Stone wants to lease. Stone has gone to San Diego
to find that officials had voted to bring water from the
San Diego River and not to build the dam which would
have affected Le Prade's land adversely.5 5 8
In 1946, Stone advises Le Prade to keep her land
there until she gets the right price. There is now
water in the creek because of a recent snow storm.5 5 9
Of the misunderstanding, Stone writes, "Our friendship
has always been on a Devine (sic) Plane of Understanding
and I adore you as the Devine woman."5 6 0
At one point Stone's draft board cannot find him
because he is in and out of jail. One Christmas Day
that he is in jail, Le Prade writes, "Well, cheer up
Warren, many good men have been in jail, Bunyan . . .
Ghandi . . . and of course our Lord . . . . "5 6 1 In 1952,
1 7 4
Stone is in jail at the Rancho. "As the biographer of
the Angel of the Jails," Le Prade is interested in how
they are treating him there.5 6 2 Le Prade is always
interested in the conditions of incarcerated men.
HRS. REUSS DANCES IN CHINESE COSTUME
In 1943, Le Prade had written Stone of that year's
Poets Garden meeting celebrating Markham's ninety-first
birthday. In spite of war and gas rationing, many people
had come to see Mrs. Reuss dance in Chinese costume, and
Sunflower, in her Indian costume, read "The Man with the
Hoe." Ruth notes as she narrates what has been "in many
ways the loveliest" of meetings to Selman, that she is
"writing beneath the Keats tree."5 6 3 In sort of a
literary double indemnity, by making the past aesthetic
and making the present aesthetic simultaneously, she
reinforces the literariness of both occasions.
WALKING IN THE RAIN AT DAWN ON THE SLOPES OF PARNASSUS
At one point she promotes some of Stone's poems,
"sponsor[s]" them. She had sent a copy of his "Pale
Princess" to a friend who responded, "I felt while
reading it as if I were walking in the rain at dawn on
the slopes of Parnassus."5 6 4 Le Prade, acting here as a
1 7 5
patron in sponsoring Stone's poems, is again promoting
literary work that is not her own.
By 1944, there has been such a falling-out with
Stone that Le Prade forbids him to use her name or that
of the Poets Garden in connection with any more of his
poems. She tells him, "Of course you know I am
disappointed in you, both personally and
artistically."5 6 5 For Le Prade, individual and poetic
worth are inextricably contingent.
THE LOVELY ACACIA TREE, BYRON
But Stone must be considered a major player in the
Poets Garden. He accepts and promulgates the catechism.
He writes to Le Prade from El Centro after hearing of
Edwin Markham's death on the radio, "never has tragedy
greater befallen this nation and the Entire World."5 6 6
He writes adoring odes addressed to her. In "Ode to Ruth
Le Prade: Who Made the Poets Garden":
Spirit of Ruth thou art the Modern Muse
Of ageless beauty and deathless art
The Poets Garden out from thy own heart.5 6 7
Stone speaks of her "Garden of Eternal Themes," and
decrees, "Bloom on, 0 Garden of the Sacred Grove." In
another tribute, he calls her "The pristine Muse in her
majestic pride."5 6 8 Le Prade probably doesn't do much to
dispel this notion of herself as an unsullied muse.
1 7 6
Occasionally, Selman Stone works in the garden. In
194 3, a storm had uprooted "the Lovely acacia tree,
Byron." Le Prade wishes he were there to cut it up.5 6 9
In 1952 she writes that she has been saving work for him
to do.5 7 0
THE WEEDS ARE RIOTING
On one occasion in 1952, he comes to Le Prade
looking for work. She reports that although "the gift of
poetry has not been extinguished, . . . [Stone] is very
absent minded. Will pull up the flowers instead of the
weeds."5 7 1 The garden is a constant concern for Le
Prade. As early as 1943, she can only work on the ivy
for an hour at a time. "It is exhausting work, too hard
for a woman. The weeds are rioting in the back yard."5 7 2
WOMEN POETS OF TODAY
In the spring of 1947, Le Prade invites South
American poet Gabriella Mistral to read at the Poets
Garden . She writes to Mistral, who is staying in Sierra
Madre, that years before Berta Singermann had told her
that Mistral was the greatest woman poet of South
America. Since then, Le Prade has used her material in
her lecture-recital, "Women Poets of Today."5 7 3 Mistral
declines, replying that she must leave for New York.
1 7 7
I'M TIRED OP BEING JUST A MODEL WIFE
In 1947, B. N. Robertson of Los Angeles publishes
Le Prade's Gypsy Love Songs. a forty-seven page book
which seems more artificially unified than her previous
collections. Although the poems are not new, with two
exceptions they had not been published previously. In
most of these poems, a gypsy comes to tempt and take the
wife away from routine. The conflict is easily
discerned, and the gypsy is perhaps a ready image in
which to store yearning that is too tender for all but
quickly available images. The grief from her son
Eugene's death may be too acute to deal with in any but
a diversionary way, and this is a good time to call upon
this comfortable theme. The state of the garden in
"Gypsy Ballad" in this volume's "Gypsy Ballad" reflects
the poet's temperament of the moment.
The flowers in my garden
Are planted in neat rows,
They never paint their faces
Nor wear improper clothes.5 7 4
Le Prade's disposition is to hide her pain, to keep
it ordered and contained. But some of the poems admit
bitterness more explicitly. In "Gypsy Sequence":
The old women sit around and drink their tea and
chatter
But they can't read my mind so what does it
matter . . .
178
There once was a Gypsy,
His eyes were so black;
I'm faithful because
He never came back!
If he should return
And call me from the clover
I'd go to him and follow him
The wide world over.
My heart's the same now
As it was in the beginning;
If he asked me again
I'd take a chance at sinning.
(They call it sinning
But I call it life,
I'm tired of being
Just a model wife.)5 7 5
Perhaps the wifehood that Le Prade is referring to here
is the state of literary subordination that she
practices by being the promoter of Markham, the extoller
of Debs, the archivist of Scott— the maintenance
gardener, rather than the creator and planter.
THE SWEETEST WORD IN EVERY LAND
Her own self-appointed poetical/political
ambassador. Le Prade coovricrhts her own Poems of Licrht
in 1948 and sends fifty copies of that along with "The
Goddess of Liberty Speaks" to UNESCO and to the
Philippine Ambassador to the United Nations among
others.5 7 6 This is a pamphlet with some perfectly
179
dreadful, very kitschy poems, scenarios of cultural
ideals concerning the universality of
motherhood and love. One such poem declares:
A Mother is a lovely thing
Of Mothers everywhere I sing
The sweetest word in every land
The word all children understand [.]
It's important to remember that this is three years
after the brutal death of her only child. Even so, this
saccharine "Mother Song"5 7 7 which she publishes is a
marked contrast to a radical poem she writes and
clandestinely routs to the hidden poetry about her
mother being the finest man she's ever known. [See page
183]
BACK AT GREEN GLORY
Le Prade has been friends with Marcelle Reber since
their days in Montara Beach back in the early Twenties.
When older, Le Prade reminisces about that time spent
"back at Green Glory, among the trees, with that great
soul John Milton Scott .... And we were sitting
before your big fire, talking poetry . . . . 1 , 5 7 8 She and
Reber remain friends all their lives.
1 8 0
DRESDEN LADIES IN BIRD HAVEN
Corresponding at intervals, perhaps when both are
needy for the succor of metaphor in their lives, they
perform for each other the mutual service of reinforcing
figuration.
Marcele Reber describes her garden in detail and
relates, "I have a regular Bird Haven here." Reber takes
in "dresden china" ladies from the Multnomak County
Welfare Commission and cares for them.5 7 9
In early 1949 Le Prade goes to visit Reber in
Oregon. Reber sends her, perhaps as a token of this
visit, the "golden bird bath with the white doves."5 8 0
In the early Fifties, when Reber becomes involved
with pottery, she speaks poignantly of "heart-hurt" in
her claywork. That pain is mitigated perhaps by the
ability to transform and name. As Reber plants roses in
her garden, she relates, "Let us not call it Portland
nor Oregon, but Rose City where Marcelle lives."5 8 1 She
heads her letters "Bird Haven"5 8 2 as Le Prade heads hers
"The Poets Garden." In further enforcing the mutual
sustenance of metaphor in their lives, Le Prade
addresses her as "Lady Sun-Gold.1 , 5 8 3
1 8 1
FAIRLY CLOSE TO THE BIRD CAFE
There are reciprocal honorings in each other's
gardens. Reber sends Le Prade a picture of her garden in
Portland with an arrow pointing to a huge pine tree,
"the Ruth Le Prade tree," which she notes is fairly
close to the "bird cafe."5 8 4 After decades of
friendship, Le Prade will still assure Reber, "Your Rose
in the Poets Garden has been blooming profusely," as it
always does about this time of year.5 8 5
LITERARY SEIZURES
In 1949, Juanita Miller, daughter of Joaquin
Miller, is the "big thrill of our Edwin Markham meeting
. . ." She reads her father's poem, "Columbus," and
speaks of his friendship with Markham. In that year, Le
Prade is getting up early to work on the biographical
story which has been on her "slate" for so long.
"Everything I have is going into the story. But my Muse,
like the hound of heaven, still pursues, and I never
know when it is going to interrupt— quite a few sonnet
seizures these last weeks."5 8 6 These literary spasms
show that her impulse to perform her own poetry is so
strong that it interrupts the other work she is doing,
the biography of someone else. In 1950, Le Prade is
1 8 2
"dizzy" from working so hard on a book, probably "The
Angel of the Jails," the biography of Faith Chevaillier.
CINQUAINS OF THE GARDEN
Much work by Ruth Clay Price of Pasadena is in the
Collection. Many of her poems have flower, garden, and
woods imagery "Cinquains of the Garden" which she writes
in 1919. Price's work sheets are here and someone,
presumably either she or Le Prade, has organized all her
poems alphabetically. The figures in the Poets Garden
include both those who attended the annual rites and
also those whose work has been gathered in the
Collection.
WORDS WERE ALREADY MINE TO USE
Some of Price's poems are such is "Always/ A woman
senses/ Children not conceived:/ A sycamore feels young
buds when sap/ is still." Perhaps Price was unable to
have children. The theme recurs in another poem,
"Snap-Shot," which we might see as markedly
anti-feminist today in its portrayal of "an arid unused
womanhood" of a single woman who desperately berates
herself for not having children. But for the time, that
mere act of writing about women's concerns, poetically
183
inscribing that anguish with which she has been
culturally inscribed, might be arguably a feminist deed.
Price is also concerned with the issue of the
proprietorship of language. In "Muse Misjudged:"
There seemed no courtesy in the Muse:
Whenever I asked for a word or phrase,
She would definitely [sic] refuse
and leave me wandering in a daze
To think, to hunt, to feel, to work,
Until I learned, by some strange quirk
That words did not belong to the Muse,
But were already mine to use.5 8 7
This discovery attests primarily to the poet's own
empowerment. But, also, it acknowledges malleability of
the means of language that more well-known poets such as
Gertrude Stein were professing. The Price artifacts are
another example of the dialogism, the plurality of
voices, in the Poets Garden.
A GARDEN OF SNOW
Le Prade saves Christmas cards, many of which seem
to have been chosen for their relation to the theme of
the garden. Enid Jones sends a card with "Picture of the
Flute, a poem inspired in your Garden."5 8 8 Another card
is annotated, "Here is a garden of snow."5 8 9 The Poets
Garden is commemorated by Eva A. Parslsow as "a hallowed
shrine."5 9 0
184
PENETRATION OP DARK PLACES A SPECIALTY
Marvin Sanford attests to the tenacity of some of
the early proponents of American radicalism. Sanford had
written to Le Prade when both were young about the
"great Comradeship" in which they were engaged. Now he
is the editor and publisher of The Searchlight, a San
Francisco paper originally established in 1910 and
reestablished in 194 6, whose motto, "Penetration of Dark
Places A Specialty,"5 9 1 is enough to give any neophyte
Freudian a laugh. The Searchlight•s credo:
Let those who produce, possess.
Let those who possess, produce.
Let all produce, in order that all may
592
possess.
Sanford, nicknamed Kiddo, marries Velta Myrle, who
will help him with The Searchlight and Le Prade writes
that she is pleased. But in the middle of her
congratulations, she berates him for not having told her
about his girlfriend. "You should have told me about
her. I thought she was only one of your contributors. I
would have told you had anything like that been going on
in my life."5 9 3 Le Prade believes that the coterie of
those who believe in the trinity of BBB should all be
privy to each other's lives.
1 8 5
FROM BENEATH THE TREE OF HEAVEN IN THE EAST
After a correspondence and friendship of many
years, Le Prade and Florence Hamilton finally meet. In
1952, the Markham Centennial year, Florence Hamilton
plants the Tree of Heaven which will not bloom for seven
years.5 9 4 Now during the middle Fifties, the Poets
Garden annual rites list both Le Prade and Florence
Hamilton as hosts.
From beneath the Tree of Heaven in the East
From beneath the Tree of Heaven in the West
From Linn Lilia, and the Poets Garden
Florence Hamilton, and Ruth le Prade, send Love
and Invite You to Celebrate the 102nd Birthday
of Edwin Markham 2:00 Sunday Afternoon April 25,
1954.5 9 5
Linn Lilia is what Markham calls Hamilton's home in
Wellesley.5 9 6
YOU SHOULD INVESTIGATE DOWN TO THE VERY ROOT
The major campaigns that Le Prade wages are the
Debs effort in 1920, the Markham family matter in the
Thirties, and, in the Fifties, her endeavor to save a
condemned black man from the gas chamber at San Quentin.
Robert Wesley Wells has been sentenced to death for
throwing a cuspidor at a guard at Folsom Prison in 1947.
Le Prade and poet Angela Morgan, who had first met
at the Poets Garden meeting in 193 6, are "drawn into a
very close spiritual bond" over this "remarkable
1 8 6
crusade."5 9 7 Morgan had had an early poem published in
Colliers Magazine on the recommendation of Mark Twain.
After her death, her papers are sold at auction and do
not become, to Le Prade's dismay, a permanent part of
the Poets Garden.5 9 8
With the letterhead "The Poet's Garden" that marks
most of her correspondence of this period, Le Prade
writes Governor Goodwin J. Knight that "this strange,
amazing, and incredible case ... is something you
should investigate down to the very root."5 9 9 She knows
by now to use her most personal metaphor, that of the
garden, when her need to communicate is most vehement.
Knight's office responds that Wells had killed one
inmate at Folsom and injured another.6 0 0 Associating
Wells with Markham's Hoe-Man, Le Prade continues to
implore the Governor:
Edwin Markham looked into the face
of a French peasant, the Man with
the Hoe, and saw a great tragedy. I
have looked into the face of this
black man in San Quentin and I see a
far greater tragedy. Markham was
moved to write a poem, I have been
moved to write a number of poems.6 0 1
In "Power", a response to an Edwin Markham poem of
the same name, 6 0 2 she writes of Wells:
I stood there startled, dazed with a wild surprise
Seeing that Power within that Black Man's eyes.6 0 3
1 87
She is again a radical occasional poet. She writes a
poem for the editorial page of The California Eagle.
"Salute to Wesley Wells on His 4 6th Birthday" by Ruth Le
Prade (Starflower) .6 0 4 Other poems Le Prade writes
during this effort include "The Friend,"6 0 5 in which
Wells after his death and Jesus have a conversation
reminiscent of the conversations of Debs and Christ more
than three decades earlier in Debs and the Poets. She
signs her poem "Defeated" as "Starflower," a nom de
plume attached to much of this later poetry, as if she
needs to transcend, finally, a poetic eden that is all
too earthbound.
Le Prade once again rallies support from all over
in support of Robert Wesley Wells. She solicits help
from Carl Sandburg in a January 23, 1954, letter, that,
strangely, doesn't bear the "Poet's Garden" letterhead.
She is certain of her status when addressing Goodwin J.
Knight and soliciting Dwight D. Eisenhower in her
campaign, but perhaps less sure here:
You may recall me as the poet-friend
of Eugene V. Debs; editor of Debs
and the Poets. Few are still living
who responded to my appeal; you are
one .... I believe that when you
understand this case the Muse will
move you as it has . . . me. But
that of course is in the hands of
the gods.6 0 6
1 8 8
At first the Muse follows understanding, serves reason
it seems, but then fatalism, that steamroller of
conditioned circumstance, undercuts, kind of pre-empts,
that precarious allegiance to reason.
X-RAYED WITH A VISITOSCOPE
After Le Prade first visits Wells at Terminal
Island in January of 1955, she writes a long letter to
her friend Angela Morgan recounting the experience.6 0 7
She relates her ferry trip from San Pedro, and, in a
fascinating look at the protocol of confinement, the
visitor check-in procedure. She is appalled that a
married woman must have her husband's consent before she
may visit an inmate. Le Prade is x-rayed with a
"visitoscope " before her "great meeting."
IT WOULD KILL THE PLOW OP TALKING ON PAPER
The report of this prison visit is itself
fascinating as a narrative document of cultural
interest. But what it intimates about the institution of
literariness is even more valuable here:
Excuse the mistakes and
typographical errors, there is no
time to revise this, to write you a
literary letter correctly typed. To
try to do it would kill the flow of
talking on paper. And a literary
18 9
letter is not what you want I am
sure, (emphasis mine)
Here, Le Prade is deferring to a sense of the
literary that is correct, artificial, and constructed,
but simultaneously she understands that that is in some
way destructive, even murderous. She vacillates between
seeing herself as a nurturer: "Wesley has never known a
mother's love. We could be his mother," and seeing
herself as a vatic poet:
A poet needs no visitoscope machine
to look into people and situations,
and it is not the flesh and bones of
the individual, nor the outer
appearances of any situation, that
the poet looks into, he looks
straight into the spirit, the
inner reality of individuals,
situations, and things. He sees
everything as Markham would put it,
"In the Light of Eternity."6 0 ®
GREAT GOOD WILL COME OF ALL THIS
Le Prade falls prey to the idea of the true poet as
somehow immune to the intellectual and moral frailties
that befall other mortals, and she allows poetic license
in herself and others to be a corollary to self-
righteousness. "Great good will come of all this, I know
it," she tells Robert Wesley Wells. 6 0 9 This same sense
of mission, of a natural meliorism, motivates much of
the activity of the Poet's Garden. But it is Le Prade
1 9 0
herself, of course, only using the agency of poetry, who
works the good, not the venue of poetry itself.
TO YOU WHOEVER YOU ARE AND ALL POETS EVERYWHERE
Continuing her crusade to save Wells, Le Prade
composes a sheet of "Poems of Protest" that includes
poems "The Death House" and "Black." On the other side
of the flyer is a "Letter of Appeal":
To You, whoever you are,
Especially all Citizens of California and America
And all Poets everywhere
[asking for action for Robert Wesley Wells]
In the name of Justice and Humanity, and in the
name of the great Angel of the Jails, Miss Faith
Chevaillier (1850-1935) who worked in California
prisons for 4 0 years. Walt Whitman, Edwin Markham,
Abraham Lincoln and many others [would speak if
they could]
As one of America's living poets I now make this
appeal
Yours in the Edwin Markham Circle of Love[.]6 1 0
I do not know how this flyer was distributed, but on a
piece of paper fairly near to it in the same box is a
list of addresses including those of Einstein in
Princeton, Mrs. Roosevelt in Hyde Park, Carl Sandburg,
Walter Winchell, Upton Sinclair, and Bertrand Russell.
Eventually, Robert Wesley Wells' sentence is commuted to
life by Governor Knight.6 1 1
1 9 1
PIN A ROSE ON YOUR ASSASSIN
Le Prade and Wells co beautiful,"6 1 2 she tells him
in 1955. In another letter to Wells, Le Prade reacts to
some incident that has happened in prison:
You always get the blame for
everything. If you were murdered
some people would want to pin a rose
on your assassin, and dig you out of
your grave so you could be locked up
and punished.6 1 4
One time, she tells Wells she is getting ready for her
annual Markham celebration relating that "The Garden is
lovely this year" and telling him about the "California
poppies in the Poets Garden."6 1 4
The political poetry she publishes now has some
degree of remove, but is more raw, less "literary" than
the ostensibly more personal poems that she published in
the forties in Song Tree and Gypsy Love Songs. But in
all the published pieces a managed poetic persona is
seemingly at work.
But in some of the unpublished political poetry of
this period, there is a desperate, almost wailing
quality, which results in pretty bad poetry as we
generally conceive of the stuff, but pretty good history
if, as investigators, we're concerned with human
responses to situations and institutions before we're
concerned with whether they meet some arbitrary
1 92
belletristic criteria. The vehemence of "The
Constitution" shows the degree of frustration Le Prade
feels over Robert Wesley Wells' incarceration:
The Constitution isn't just words on paper.
The Constitution is real.
It means something.
It is our way of life!
How can they go against the Constitution?6 1 5
Le Prade believes that words assembled become
sacrosanct by virtue of their environment. As she has
always maintained that the poetic vessel renders words
sacred, so she also believes that the mode of political
documents does the same.
STRAY MODERNISM
Le Prade believes in words which become more than
themselves, that are rendered sacrosanct and poetically
create a transcendent and inviolable truth, a conviction
that is modernist in its sensibility. But Le Prade does
not author conventional modernist poems; her works are
not autotelic icons. Cary Nelson can help here in his
belief that those poets we deem radical are not
necessarily not modern, but rather that modernism is
constituted differently within them.
Some of Le Prade's poems are works yanked
uncultivated out of a tortured consciousness. But that
very lack of affect, that absence of guile, makes some
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of these pleas all the more powerful. Perhaps those of
us who have spent years refining our sense of what
constitutes true literature feel cheated; we are not
being afforded the aesthetic titillation we feel is our
due. But however naked and uncomfortable some of these
less maneuvered poems are, we cannot dismiss them. Let
us engage other criteria. We can gauge them in terms,
rather than of fashioning and craft, of movement and
energy.
VERTIGINOUS VITRIOL
There is a great deal of energy in poems. Using one
of our traditional means of measuring the movement of
poems, scansion, seems to me a bit like assessing the
actions of people by using a tapemeasure. Determining
how energy is managed, how it expends itself, is far
more important, it seems to me, than counting accented
syllables.
The disparate assemblages that become the icons of
High Modernism6 1 6 are packed tight, patted into hard
units that once made are finished and unassailable. The
degree of energy in such a dense unit makes that thing
volatile, but the direction of all that energy is
inward, centripetal, and is greedily hoarded by the poem
1 9 4
itself. Traditionally celebrated modernist poems become
quickly spent from all that entropy.
Socially conscious poems written by those like Le
Prade also avail themselves of the energy of modernism,
but in these poems, that energy is impellent and
transitive. The fields of action within the poem are not
only aesthetic, but social and political, so meaning is
not intrinsic, but differential and relational. Whereas
received modernism might be said to be characterized by
a residential praxis, where the movement is internal and
agitates or masturbates itself, in what I'm calling
stray modernism, the movement is impellent, directed
toward a source, toward specific change. In this case,
the poem charges its recipients; the poem is not to be
caressed, but directed.
But so much critical attention is used up by
mainstream modernism, which demands for itself a great
deal of indoctrination and rigor, that stray modernism
hasn't had a chance to be led away from the Pound, bad
pun intended.
EACH FLAMING WORD, EACH QUIVERING LINE
The Chinese eggs of the Poet's Garden are those
poems never published, which have lain buried for
decades in storage. Neatly catalogued, testifying to a
1 9 5
painstaking concern with the survival of her words, Le
Prade prefaces these volumes with this caveat: "Not to
be read during the lifetime of Ruth Le Prade." This same
woman who so unabashedly assails the legal system,
grandly champions the poetic enterprise in many
manifestations, and promotes the work of others,
circumspectly culls her own products before releasing
some and sequestering others. Presumably such covert
material would be safe to unearth only when she is dead.
These poems are combustible and volatile. The first of
these private journals begins with this dedication:
With a ribbon woven of my blood
I bind these fragile songs of mine,
Each flaming word, each quivering line,
And lay them here, the better part of me,
Upon thy sacred altar, Poetry,
These songs that are my essence and my life!
(my emphasis)6 1 7
Helene Cixous is to say decades later that during
the process of writing, sometimes one more word would
burst into flame.6 1 8 Le Prade's most concealed work is
preceded by the pronouncement that this threshold has
already been achieved. The poems in these journals are
meticulously arranged and counted, yet their author only
feels comfortable approximating specificity as she
relates, "This is Volume I. 3 27 pages. 2 92 poems
approximately." Le Prade intuits that the parameters of
poems are not definitively bounded.
1 9 6
She does not start binding her poems until 1942,
and then she sequences them only by "guessing.” She
relates that after the publication of A Woman Free she
had burned the poems she had written prior to the year
1914. For poems from the years 1914, 1915, and 1916, she
urges her future researcher to "see In Passing, my
column in The Social Democrat and Citizen.” In January
of 1955, she gathers her poems into three volumes, I—
Prior to 1942, II— 1942 through 1947, and III— 1948
through 1954. The poems are "Sealed until released by
Miss Le Prade" and dated February 18, 1955.6 1 9
But it is clear that Le Prade did intend the poetry
volumes to be looked at someday. After the "End of
Volume One," are these instructions: "See Volume two and
Volume Three." Although the introductory caveat orders
that there be no readers until her death, it is quite
clear that she did intend a post-mortem audience. She is
* t
quite consciously building a prospective narrative.
I HAVE NOT WEEDED THESE VOLUMES
Continually for Le Prade, one organizational
behavior supersedes another. She binds the volumes in
dime store folders and numbers the pages in this new
cataloguing, which includes paginating over some already
numbered, unpublished books, called Fiiean. Theodell,
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and Taurus. Part One. The Red Hibiscus is titled with
what for Le Prade symbolizes the love affair between her
son Eugene and Gloria Reidel. Again, likening the
writing act to botanical enterprise, her apologia calls
on the most ingrained image in her metaphor system. "I
have not weeded these volumes, the poor writing, the
rimes, have not been deleted."6 2 0
I AM CURSED WITH A GREAT CURSE
Many of these poems deal with the impossibility of
happiness. She speaks of being forever driven by an
"unknown urge" in "Ah Well I Know I Will Never Find What
I Seek."6 2 1 It is a futile Romanticism that is driven
not by an uncertain destination, but by the necessary
certainty that there is no destination. Le Prade
relishes her poetic burden; her curse is "great." It
would be more difficult to carry on, perhaps, if she had
only the burden of a small curse.
Others dwell by the roadsides
They are happy and content,
No unknown urge forever drives them on,
But I am cursed with a great curse—
Ah well I know I will never find what I
seek!6 2 2
In "The Urge", 6 2 3 Le Prade remembers that as a
child she had been unsure of what she wanted musing that
perhaps it was flowers or butterflies or stars she
1 9 8
couldn't reach. As she grew older, she entertained
various candidates as objects of desire, in turn,
motherhood, fame, and work. She laments that although
all those things have been hers, she is still
unsatisfied. "But still I surge with temptestuous [sic]
yearnings. Still the unknown fires lure me on! Still I
hunger! Still I struggle! For What!!1 1 This last question
is underscored by a vehement question mark.
THE STAINS OF STRUGGLE
Other poems here in the stored volumes deal with
unrequited love and express a yearning that is actually
quite exquisite. In "Unfulfillment," "I crush my empty
hands unto my breast and cry out with the wildness of my
grief!"6 2 4 But this poetry is hidden, the anguish,
bordering on the delicious, is recondite. "Tomorrow I
will braid up my hair. And wash the stains of struggle
from my face. I will smile at those who pass. They will
say, "She is happy in her work!"6 2 5 Le Prade sees her
strength as quite real, but isn't sure whether she wants
those who perceive her to be aware of that strength. In
one poem, she is visibly strong and able to sustain the
struggle.
1 9 9
I shall not meet life like a beaten cur,
Cowering in terror at its feet.
But strong and defiant— yea, even in the hour of
my defeat
I shall stand upright
And give it back blow for blow!6 2 6
But in other behaviors, the public persona is quite
distinct from the private reality. Le Prade writes in
the sequestered poetry of an attempt to "wash the stains
of struggle , 1 , 6 2 7 perhaps a female legacy from Lady
Macbeth. This concern with performing oblations of some
sort might be tied to a story that Gloria Franzen, who
had been Eugene's high school girlfriend, relates. On a
trip to Escondido in the Fifties, Franzen and her
husband Orval take Le Prade on a weekend trip to
Escondido. Le Prade writes of this trip that "Gloria,
Orval and I had a nice trip in her car not long ago. We
stayed over in a drive in that had a pool."6 2 8 Franzen
relates that on this trip Le Prade was very concerned
with the state of sanitation of the motel room.6 2 9
THAT WILD FLAME OF POETRY
In another poem, Le Prade acknowledges in speaking
of "the maddening city," in contrast to "the dew of
morning"6 3 0 what Kolodny calls the pastoral impulse, an
urge to seek peace away from the chaos of the
metropolis. But instead of resorting to male
200
pastoralism, traditionally an exurbation, Le Prade
creates her Poets Garden in the city, providing an
overlay of pastoral on the metropolis. We might see this
radical palimpsest as an inverse of the way Leo Marx
construes pastoralism in his Machine in the Garden,
where a noise such as a train whistle in Hawthorne or
Thoreau6 3 1 intrudes on the revery of the recipient of
the pastoral experience, creating what Marx calls a
complex pastoral. In the Poets Garden, and perhaps for
female pastoral in general, rather than the noise
intruding in the country, the country intrudes on the
noise, the pastoral soothes the city. Contemporary poet
Paula Gunn Allen speaks of looking for the earth under
the pavement.6 3 2
For Le Prade, love of Poetry supersedes love of
specific human beings. "It is not you I love/ But that
wild flame/ of Poetry that burns thru all your veins/
And calls me to adventures/ strange and wild!"6 3 3 The
poet desires the object not for any intrinsic quality
but for what she can construct that he represents for
her. We could call this, crassly, a user mentality, a
behavior that Le Prade inherits culturally and, as well,
a defense against just that inheritance. We see she
constructs her desire so that, because it is unknowable,
it is unhaveable. Not only does it behave so that it
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cannot be fulfilled, but it absolutely must not be
fulfilled. Fulfillment would mandate closure.
MY MOTHER IS THE BRAVEST MAN I EVER KNEW
Le Prade writes a poem of passionate mother.
We are told that men are brave— for men have
written the histories of the world.
But what of the bravery of women?
Of the women who have fought their battles without
banner or drum
And gone down at the last in obscurity?
Women braver than Napoleon, more courageous than
Socrates, more unselfish than St Francis?
They are unknown! Unsung!6 3 4
Surely this is another seed of subversion to lay beneath
the Markham commemoration of the Poets Garden. And in a
radical switch of gender attribution:
If someone should ask me:
"Who is the bravest man you ever knew?"
"My mother."
"Who is the noblest hero you ever knew?"
"My mother."
Yet she pass[es] unnoticed on the city street
No music plays, no flags are unfurled— 6 3 5
YOUR CULTURE MAKES ME SICK
Several poems in the Collection have animal themes.
Buried in "The Baby Elephant," ostensibly childish
verse, is this quatrain:
Why should I be so modish,
Why should I be so chic,
I'm just a baby elephant,
Your culture makes me sick.6 3 6
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This seems to me a plaintive and sophisticated critique
made all the more so by the guise of its genre.
IN MY GARDEN OF MEMORY
Le Prade7s relat is the very pulse of pastoral, is
troubled, murky, and opaque. The vested interest of
reminiscence as a motivating force in Le Prade7s and
other women7s poetry may involve the necessity of
salvaging and charging with worth some item from the
past.
In my garden of memory
There7s a flower most dear to me
Precious flower through many years
Have I watered thee with my tears[.]
And thy beauty still calls to me
With eternal witchery6 3 7
THE PAIN OF MY DEFEAT
Several times in the hidden poems, the persona
wears a crimson dress. It becomes for her, as she dons
the color of blood and passion, a symbol of flaunted
oppression. In "April After Love," she will sit
underneath a barren tree in her "dress of crimson".6 3 8
In the poem titled "Crimson Dress," her whole attire is
203
a mask, perhaps a burlesque of Hester Prynne's scarlet
letter.
Who should know the heart of me.
Who could ever guess!
From the pain of my defeat
I shall weave a crimson dress.6 3 9
How often have women, offering a masked content,
parodied happiness in order to know quite surely
themselves that they have not been mastered?
From the pain of my defeat
I shall weave no winding sheet
But a lovely crimson dress—
None shall know, and none shall guess!6 4 0
It is a delicious and smug, and true, defiance. But it
can become self-destructive when the secret burlesque
which affirms non-compliance becomes confused with some
construct of honor.
Tho the wild and lonely years
Tear my tortured life apart,
None shall guess my bitter pain—
None shall know my broken heart!6 4 1
In this instance, anguish is not transformed into a
flaunting and hale parody, but languishes internalized,
untransformed, lonely and sad.
Le Prade deals with themes of mastery and
domination. In one poem, "Power," is "Mounted upon a
steed foaming with blood,/ You ride upon the carcasses
of men,/ And grind them down into the bloody mire."6 4 2
Committed to the metaphors and allusions of
204
Christianity, Le Prade concludes that Power is really in
those who "put their faith in stronger things than
swords," such as "The power of the gentle Nazarene/
[who] Endures while countless armies are but dust."6 4 3
I HAVE CRUMBLED MY HEART INTO SEED
"Seed" is usually antecedent, but here in the
hidden poetry it is a manufactured production from a
prior cause— a female heart. "I have crumbled my heart
into seed. I have sown it in many a furrow."
All day long I work in the burning sun. My body
aches, sweat pours from my face.
I will never sit in the shade of the trees I have
planted. I will never eat of their fruit.
Perhaps the seed will not come up— but I have
faith to believe it will.
Perhaps I will never know the joy of the first
green leaf.6 4 4
Le Prade believes that she will not be the direct
recipient of the nurturing pastoral site she is setting
up.
FERTILIZED THEM WITH THEIR BODIES
In "Harvest," Le Prade acknowledges that:
In future years they will sit in the
shade of the trees that were
planted. They will gather their
children around them and joyfully
eat of the fruit. They will not
think of those who planted the
trees, who were broken in digging
the ground and lifting the stones.
205
They will not know of those who
watered them with their tears,
sprayed them with their heart's
blood, fertilized them with their
bodies— who loved them into life,
giving their all.6 4 5
The trees of the Poets Garden have been fertilized with
the bodies and the bodily fluids of women.
THIS POEM IS CANCELLED
Le Prade believes that individual poems are
contingent, subject to change, if circumstances warrant
that their declarations become untrue to some
transcendent standard. The poem "Franklin D. Roosevelt"
is X'ed over with ink and in the margins is written,
"This poem is cancelled, Franklin D. Roosevelt did not
live up to my high ideal of him."6 4 6 Le Prade registers
her decree with a full signature. Poems are liable to
erasure and may be repealed by their creator.
On a similar occasion, Le Prade writes a kind of
prospective fill-in-the-blanks ode. During her Robert
Wesley Wells campaign, she writes in a poem "Be It Sol"
about the brave governor who "stood up, strong, brave."
The last lines
And this is the name that the Angel wrote,
i
are followed by an addendum, "P.S. Note by Author: The
line remained blank. I had hoped it would be Goodwin J.
206
Knight— but he was not worthy. 1 , 6 4 7 So Le Prade punishes
Knight by omitting to fill his name in the poetic niche
she has apportioned for him.
THE POWER OF THE RIGHT WORDS
Le Prade has an able sense of irony. A radical poem
is "Profit Pact (An Understanding Between Gentlemen),"
where she characterizes words as "mighty things," "black
magic," and "Bugle calls."
With the incantation of mighty words
We will protect ourselves
We will protect our profits
"We will back our words with bayonets and
guns."
Patriotism is always a good word, in any
nation,
Brother, "Patriotism," "honor," "duty,"
In your country the best word is, "Liberty,"—
"Americanism."
"God" is a good word in any country, Brother,
The herd is befuddled and helpless.
By the power of the right words/ We are
invincible!6 4 8
But elsewhere the bravado of irony loses its
swagger.
"O futile human love " results in her being "Alone
within the dust [where] I weep and break my heart!/
207
While the Moon, calm and passionless, moves distantly
across the sky."6 4 9 Although the poet rails at uncaring
fate, she will work to transform this dust which she is
"within". Ultimately it is not cosmic bodies like the
moon that will be her salvation, but the very elemental
soil. The place of dust where her heart has broken is
the site of transformation.
I SCREAMED FOR AN ANAESTHETIC
The poem "Madness" shows the searing pain of a
severed heart:
There was a man . . . once . . .
A clever surgeon. . . .
The night he cut my heart out
I screamed for an anaesthetic ....
Upon a wild and lonely hill ....
I buried it in the moonlight . . . beneath a
cypress tree. . .
That is why my dress is so red ....
And why I am so full of laughter . . . .6 5 °
This is pretty graphic pain, quite an amalgamation of
real, wrenching distress with/and the finesse of a
delicate Romantic agony. This must be about the night
Harold left Le Prade. This time the crimson dress does
not bespeak parody; it is drenched in blood.
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OUR HEARTS ARE PREGNANT
Le Prade sees the poet as transcendent— beyond the
fetters and exigencies of time, an attitude she
appropriates in order to make her life bearable.
The Poet took her golden lyre
And played a song of golden light—
The centuries have come and gone
But that song is bright.6 5 1
But this is not yet a new female pastoral, but the old
male one with the substitution of a female flutist, a
simple variation on the most traditional of male
pastoral; Vergil's Eclogues begins with Tityrus playing
a flute as Meliboeus walks by.6 5 2 Le Prade innovates a
truly feminist pastoral not only when the makers are
themselves female, but when those female makers also
create in new ways.
In "The Harp of Poets:"
The Spirit of God walks in the garden—
And the poets sing and play upon their harps
Of what do you sing O Poets,
There in your garden,
"We sing of Beauty," say the Poets
"Our hearts are pregnant with new words."6 5 3
In this pastoral the poets are female and they are
pregnant with hearts serving as wombs. Nurtured from
these poets' bodies are literary texts, poems. Here are
209
the markers of Le Prade's feminist pastoral— female
hearts rather than wombs are locations of fecundity, the
concepts are literary rather than biological, the place
of developing the pregnancies is the garden, and the
carriers of the literary fetuses are the poets. And all
the while, something sacred is being sanctioned.
FLUTE NOTES ARE HEARD TOWARD THE ARCH OF POETRY
As late as 1957 Le Prade is still hoping that the
Poets Garden can become a state or national monument.6 5 4
She records the events at that year's ceremony in a
letter to Florence Hamilton:
Well, now about the program. We
started, as we have been doing, with
Gloria playing the flute. Flute
notes are heard, and slowly she
walks up the path toward the Arch of
Poetry, fluting. I am in Seat of
Love, directly back of A. of P.
(where we sat when you were here). I
come forward and welcome guests, say
a brief word about Poets Garden,
announce that Gloria will salute
Edwin Markham, A.C. Markham, and all
the poets who have planted trees in
the Poets Garden, with a flute solo,
and that I will then salute Edwin
Markham with a poem, one of Florence
Hamilton's great sonnets, Son of the
Morning.
Flute Salute
Poem Salute
Then I go over to the Bird bath,
and say a poem on Bread, Beauty, and
Brotherhood, the Circle. I have
210
three roses in my hand, each tied
with pink ribbon, and each with fern
is a little boqet [sic]. On Bird
Bath a golden dish is floating. (I
guess this dish has come since you
were here. I often use it in
ceremonies now at the bird bath) I
lay a rose in the golden dish for
Bread, and one for Beauty, and one
for Brotherhood. (I will send you
this poem later as you may want to
see it. Last year, you may remember
I wrote one too, and Gloria, Stuart,
and Susi participated in the
ceremony, and lifted the large
Circle of Ivy and flowers, into the
Song Tree)
Then we had the messages.
Miss Rea announced the Edwin
Markham Exhibit at the University. I
announced my forthcoming lectures.
Dorothy Salisbury read a selection
from Shakespeare.
We formed the Circle. Said E.M's
Circle as we always do, and my
Circle.
We planted a Purple Lilac in
honor of Angela Morgan. I announced
this, and said a short poem I had
written for the occasion, this was
accompanied by the flute, the
children came from the rear, up the
path, and handed me a large golden
box, (This contained soil for the
planting and a silver ladle which
served as a spade. I opened the box,
and as I saluted A.M. I lifted the
top (I should have said this box is
a large circle box) the golden
circle, toward the sky and tossed it
up to fall directly in front of the
211
bird bath. Then the close friends of
Angela's who were in the garden,
gathered in a Circle about the Bird
bath. Each recited two lines from
one of her poems, or said a word
about her. And each dropped a spade
full of earth upon the Lilac. It was
a beautiful and moving ceremony.6 5 5
It was indeed.
DO NOT LEAVE SEEDS AROUND
Le Prade writes Hamilton a series of letters in
1957 that are quite paranoid in tone. She advises
Hamilton, "Do not leave seeds around, but plant them as
soon as received. Keep the High Heart, but be on guard.
Something is blowing in the wind." She signs one such
letter from Star flower/ The Faithful. 6 5 6 During this
correspondence, Le Prade writes in a sort of cryptogram,
with private code words. It appears that someone else
may be interested in their Markham biography, "We cannot
have our materials become stale before it appears in our
books." Stale here means, of course, stolen. "Let those
writers dig their own fields and not expect to harvest
yours and mine."6 5 7
Always poor, Le Prade receives help in 1957 from
Kate Crane Gartz' daughter, Gloria Gartz, who sends her
a check to repair termite damage on Spaulding after Le
Prade's foot falls through the living room floor.6 5 8
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MOST OF THEM UNHORSED
Le Prade continues to record the lives of other
writers, and in that direction she gathers notes toward
a biography of Joaquin Miller. One anecdote relates that
when that Californian was in London, Anthony Trollope
hinted that Joaquin's riding skill was attributable only
to the big Western saddle he used. To that charge,
Miller threw the saddle on the ground and "without even
a blanket rode his horse so fast and well the rest of
the party were left far behind, most of them
unhorsed. "6 5 9
A SPLENDID INTERPRETATION OF THE INDIAN'S SPIRITUAL
EXPRESSION
In the late Fifties, Le Prade spends her time
putting together and presenting programs for
entertainment. In 1958, Le Prade with her friend Dr.
Warcaziwin as Starflower and Sunflower, respectively,
create a drama called Amerindian complete with native
costumes, drums, rattles and flutes. The President of
Creative Arts, Inc. writes that "it was a splendid
interpretation of the Indian's spiritual expression
1)660
• • • •
Calling herself his protege and colleague,
Warcaziwin donates Chief Standing Bear's scrapbook to
213
the Poets Garden Collection. Here's one more woman who
offers tribute to a male mentor.
FOR THE PROTECTION AND THE DETECTION OF IMPOSTORS
The donated Chief Standing Bear's scrapbook is
another example of the cultural treasures to be found in
the Poets Garden Collection. Standing Bear's father had
led the Sioux in their charge against Custer's troops at
the Little Big Horn.6 6 1 And, according to one article in
the scrapbook, Standing Bear was the "first Indian to
be admitted to American citizenship. 1 , 6 6 2 In what amounts
to an early affirmative action stand, Chief Standing
Bear had organized a bureau for "the protection and the
detection" of impostors so that genuine Indians would
get available motion picture and stage work.6 6 3
Other information in the scrapbook shows that, as
President of the Indian Actors Association, Chief
Standing Bear is a good friend of actor Bill Hart.6 6 4
Kathryn Leighton's picture of Chief Standing Bear, at
one point on exhibition at the Biltmore Hotel in
downtown Los Angeles, is purchased by Rufus von
Kleinsmid to be hung in the Doheney Library at U.S.C.6 6 5
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MY DRAMATIC INTERPRETATION FOR QUEEN ESTHER MIGHT
INTEREST YOU
Le Prade continues in the commerce of inspiration.
She performs, in addition to her Native American work
with Warciziwin, also by herself. Alone, she does
"Freedom's Daughter," her three act monologue based on
the life of Harriet Tubman at the Wilshire Fine Arts
Studio.6 6 6 The President of Creative Arts, Incorporated
tells Starf lower that she is "magnificent".6 6 7
Actively marketing and soliciting for her programs,
she writes Ebell Clubs and Womens Clubs all over the
area and asks the Jewish Centers Association to keep her
in mind when making up "Programs for the coming Season.
I am now booking .... My dramatic interpretation for
Queen Esther might interest you."6 6 8 She plugs
Amerindian now to the Woman's University Club where she
had once talked on the Poets Garden when asked to "pinch
hit for Ethelean Tyson Gaw."6 6 9 Her business card from
this time identifies her as Starflower and her business
as "Programs of Inspiration". Le Prade trucks in the
commodity of invention and imagination.
During this period, Le Prade affixes three gold
stars at the top of her correspondence on top of her
Poets Garden logo. She is not just trying to save the
215
content of her undertaking, but to insure the
preservation of its affect as well.
NOT EVEN A WEE CORNER OF THEIR OWN
Le Prade plans, here in the Fifties, a story in
three parts with a prelude. Just thirteen pages of
prelude are found, but that shows with perhaps more
conviction than would an elaborated product what was of
basic concern to her. In the plan, a young Irish couple,
Molly and Patrick, immigrate to the United States, but
are not happy on the East Side of New York "with not
even a wee corner of their own to make green things grow
in." So they come to Los Angeles where Patrick builds a
wee hut in Boyle Heights where his bride, who "planted
her roots deep in the soil" is happy.6 7 0 It is also
necessary for Le Prade, as well as her fictional
construct, to be able to root in the soil, to claim some
green place of her own.
THESE WORDS ARE SEED
In 1957, Le Prade types a five page pamphlet she
copyrights herself, calling it Songs of Love and
Freedom. These are rallying poems about the necessity of
black and white integration, which include "Starflower's
Marching Song."
216
Come! Let's all march together,
There's no time for delay,
We're marching on to freedom
And we're going all the way!6 7 1
In her poem, "B.B.B.” she urges:
Bread for Man's Body, Beauty for his soul,
and Brotherhood to make him whole
With these three words of glorious power
God's kingdom can grow upon earth like a
flower
B.B.B. These words are seed
And man must plant them by his deed
If man would live— 0 circle of good
Blossom with Bread, Beauty, Brotherhood6 7 2
TRANSPLANT THE POETS TREES TO THIS SITE
On March 16, 1954, Le Prade contracts to give
U.S.C. all her materials on condition that the
University commemorate Edwin Markham's birthday on April
23 every year and display for not less than two weeks
"in the best and most prominent public exhibit cases of
the University Library . . . each and every year for the
lifetime of the University, appropriate materials from
the Poets Garden Collection. 1 , 6 7 3 This gift involves the
literary Poets Garden.
But not only does Le Prade will the literary
Collection, the scripted Poets Garden to the University,
but, in an attempt to encrypt as many manifestations of
217
the enterprise as she can, she wills the botanical Poets
Garden to University of Southern California as well. So
the literal Poets Garden is to become, alas, academized.
I give the Poets Garden subject to
the following conditions ....
The University shall provide
suitable site on its Los Angeles
campus and shall maintain the Poets
Garden . . . for the lifetime of the
University . . . transplant the
Poets' trees to this site and give
them maintenance and care, and
replace them with new trees when
they die. Each new tree (preferably
of the same species) shall be
dedicated to the Poet who planted
the original. Thus a new tree shall
always live in memory of Edwin
Markham, Jon[sic] Masefield, Moon
Kwan, Suemas Mac Manus, etc ....
If site is landscaped and trees
transplanted within days after
signing of this instrument, Ruth Le
Prade will hand $1000.00 to the
University .... The Poets Garden
shall always be known as the Poets
Garden/ Dedicated by Edwin Markham/
Founded by Ruth L Prade.6 7 4
This attempt to perpetuate the Poets Garden by
ensuring its botanical reiteration is Le Prade's attempt
at literary canonization. She stipulates that the patio
in back of Doheney Library is to be the site of this new
Poets Garden until a more permanent place is available.
President Topping accepts. Le Prade receives news that
"The University will begin moving the small trees soon
and the large tree as soon as it is safe to do so."6 7 5
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She is concerned about immortalizing the ideal as
she perceives it. Using the botanical metaphor by which
she envisions herself and her world, she "reserve[s] the
right to weed, revise, and rewrite any or all of my
writings, and perhaps destroy some of them." Believing
in some set aesthetic criteria, she continues, "Only my
writing that is of good quality shall ever be
published.1 , 6 7 6 It is just this caveat, this inculcated
pretense to an aesthetic rubric dictated and prescribed
by others, that has so successfully limited women's
literary output by self-censure.
At some point, the deal goes awry. Written across
the top of the entire Instrument of Gift is the line
"Refused by Administration." But Gloria Reidel Franzen
states that some of the trees actually were transplanted
from the Poets Garden on Spaulding to the University.6 7 7
WHITE MEN STUFF MORE BILLS IN THEIR WALLET
In the mid Fifties, Le Prade writes a great many
political pieces. In several of these, Le Prade animates
the Jim Crow laws into an evil bird. She publishes
several poems in local papers about racial injustices,
including "Jim Crow" in the California Eagle.6 7 8 In "Foe
of Jim Crow" she specifically mentions Robert Wesley
Wells. Extending the analogy, in "Wings in Swift
219
Motion," Uncle Sam has sent the great Eagle to stand up
to Jim Crow and racism. 6 7 9 And using the familiar
metaphor of botanies, "Seed for Jim Crow," acknowledges
the relationship between racism and economic power.
The Roots of Greed
Grow many a weed
And Old Jim Crow
Knows where they grow
The Weeds of Greed
Grow many a seed
And Jim Crow feeds
Upon the seeds
He feeds and feeds, stuffing his gullet
While white men stuff
More bills in their wallet[.]6 8 0
Very vocal in her reproval of McCarthyism, Le Prade
also lambastes the antisemitism of a man, Smith, who
holds several rallies in the Fifties here in Los
Angeles.6 8 1 Le Prade asks, "Are the concentration camps
already in blueprints?"6 8 2 She writes "Hitler's Stew"
which bubbles "with hate and swastikas and goo/It's
peppered with Smithism and Me Carthyism too .... "6 8 3
WELCOME YOUR BRIDE IN HER GREEN ROBE OF GRASS
Le Prade at sixty years old still yearns for a lover:
"Beneath the green boughs
I am dreaming and waiting . . .
The garden grows hushed . . .
Two bright butterflies pass . . .
Beloved, will I find you . . .
Still waiting . . . and eager
220
To welcome your bride
In her green robe of grass?6 8 4
Death is very much on her mind. In one poem on that
subject, she writes that when her life is over and her
pain ended, she will be carried away by the birds of the
Poets Garden who will have "Bright wings of fire."6 8 S
THE CHORES OF MATERIAL EXISTENCE DO NOT COUNT IN THE
STARFLOWER CALENDAR
Le Prade separates her literary life from material
routines. "The chores of material existence, which have
been so engulfing of late, do not count in the
Starf lower calendar."6 8 6 Perhaps remembering Markham's
boorish remark about time, she tries to assume a
masculine relationship to temporality. Adrienne Rich has
observed that time is male. If that is so, then perhaps
Le Prade must arrange her Starflower calendar in terms
not of masculine time, but of a more female space,
preferring those terrestrial and literary plots which
she is appropriating as female.
MY POEMS BURN ME
Le Prade writes fervently during this period, often
several poems a day. At the bottom of a political poem,
"Brotherhood," she appends:
. . , ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
221
My thoughts flow like lava.
My poems burn me.6 8 7
She is dealing in the primordial, elemental earth and
fire as a female Adam, a female Prometheus.
Alternately, she feels her project has been
worthwhile and futile. In one poem, although
With tears of blood have I watered
The arid acres.
Now in the rich soil
Seeds are growing . . .[.]6 8 8
But in another poem, her endeavor is useless:
If you would make tea, You must have tea
leaves
To put in the water.
If you would make bread, You must have flour.
Why do you try to make poems
Out of nothing?6 8 9
During this time Le Prade is struggling against the
prevailing cultural assumption that topical and local
issues are not worthy subjects for poetic vessels. "My
verses need to be separated from my poems, and the
verses dealing with current events and propaganda are
Rimes of the Times and can be published under that
title." 6 9 0 I think this is a probative declaration. Le
Prade declares that poetry is a hieratic genre, but she
acts to show that it is instead a political and
elemental one.
222
GLORIA OF THE SILVER FLUTE
In the late Fifties, some of U.S.C.'s librarians
start to attend the Poets Garden meetings while they are
still being held in Le Prade's backyard on Spaulding.
The same names appear year after year in the Poets
Garden guestbooks, a loyal coterie. In the 1957
guestbook, Gloria Reidel is listed as "Gloria of the
Silver Flute."6 9 1
ROOTED IN HERE LIKE THE TREES
In 1960, Le Prade feels "rooted in here like the
trees." 6 9 2 She continues to write a great deal during
this decade that will be her last. She devotes much
time to her biography of Edwin Markham; it is as if she
is justifying the poetic mission itself. Also in the
Sixties, Le Prade submits several pieces to the Southern
California Women's Press Club literary contests using
pseudonyms. She wins a second place ribbon for "Rose
Sonnet" submitted by Teresita. And in 1965, she submits
a play Tinaleanqle using the psedonym Mila. The Press
Club writes that although it was the most original play
received, its form was so difficult that the score was
lessened.6 9 3
223
INTERPRETER OP POETRY AND DREAMER OF THE POETS GARDEN
In an advertising brochure from this time Le Prade
hawks herself as "Starflower, Interpreter of Poetry and
dreamer of the Poets Garden." In accompanying
testimonials, others praise her ability to "understand
and interpret for us the truth and beauty of other
poets."6 9 4 An earlier flyer had advertised her
"Expression Studio (In Your Own Neighborhood)" at the
"Le Prade Studio between Pico and Venice."6 9 5 Le Prade
promotes herself as an entrepreneur of aesthetics.
VOICES IN THE GARDEN
In 1963, the 36th annual celebration of the Poets
Garden takes place at the University of Southern
California for the first time. The welcome is delivered
by Lewis F. Stieg, the University Librarian.6 9 6 At the
Poets Garden celebration in 1965, the University's
Speaking Choir recites poetry in Mudd Hall.6 9 7 The next
year, for the 114th anniversary of Edwin Markham's
birthday, James Durbin of the English Department speaks
on "Directions in Contemporary American Poetry", after
which refreshments are served in the Mudd Hall patio.6 9 8
In 1967, Le Prade herself signs the guestbook. But
by 1968, not many of the old crew attend; and of those
who do, nineteen out of thirty-two list U.S.C as their
224
address. I can find no guestbook for 1969, but
preparations are made for the 1970 meeting. April 26 of
that year is written out in the guestbook, and
invitations are issued now 1 1 in honor of the memory of
Ruth Le Prade." The program is called "Voices in the
Garden" and is to include the "Traditional Reading of
the Man with the Hoe by the Poet Laureate of California,
Charles B. Garrigus, "The Poems of Ruth Le Prade," and
"Childhood Memories of the Garden/Told by Stuart
Beal."6 9 9 The purpose of the Garden's observance has
changed from honoring Markham to honoring the creator of
the Poets Garden. I do not know whether or not this
program occurred; there are no signatures in the
guestbook.7 0 0
Neither do I know about the early Seventies, but
from 1976 through 1985, every spring there is a poetry
reading on campus. Handwritten invitations on U.S.C.
imprinted stationery invite the latest guests of the
Poets Garden to the "Le Prade— Markham Poetry Program"
at Heritage Hall or Hancock Auditorium or rooms in
Founders Hall, Doheny Library, or the Student Activities
Center. Readers are Howard McCord, Diane di Prima,
David Antin, Ann Stanford, Charles Wright, Clayton
Eshelman, Jerome Rothenberg, Robert Peters, Carol Muske,
and James Ragan.7 0 1 And in 199 0, I began my acquaintance
225
with the Poets Garden; it refuses to let itself be
ignored for very long.
CONTINUE TO SHOW THIS COURTESY
Once the Poets Garden Collection starts to be
delivered to U.S.C., various librarians use their own
cataloguing methods to begin to organize the material.
So their notes become, in turn, part of the text of the
Poets Garden. One such note is addressed to Hedy and
reads, "Many more boxes on the way. We are sorting.
Ready to add to collection."7 0 2
In 1955, Le Prade gives to USC "all of my letters
from Florence Hamilton subject to the following
conditions: All of these letters, unread, are to be
deposited in the library vault, and remain there,
unread, for 25 years after the date of my death."7 0 3
That the Collection is so diverse and so garrulous
is complicated by the fact that, also, so much is
missing. That Le Prade considers withholding data a
loving act is evident by the instruction she issues to
the Library of Congress in regard to the Edwin Markham
Collection of Florence Hamilton that she, at one point,
catalogues for that institution.
During the lifetime of Florence
Hamilton, the Library will of course
use great discretion in showing
226
material to the public, research
workers, etc........Mr. Keller
understood this .... Though Mr.
Keller has passed on into the
Mystery, I am sure the Library will
not fail to continue to show this
courtesy to Florence Hamilton during
her lifetime. (She herself has never
requested that any of the materials
be restricted.) 1 , 7
So, sequestering information that may be hurtful,
unideal, as in the correspondence between married
Markham and Hamilton, is a "courtesy." Such self
incumbency makes Le Prade a literary courtesan.
The system of distribution by which we propagate
literary products, by which we promulgate and expurgate,
makes, in a very real sense, all literary yield
propaganda. As such, Le Prade is a self-professed
propagandist. As she enumerates the holdings in the
Cheyney-Trent scrapbooks, she relates that she ”(. . .
promised Lucia to return any material that was
unacceptable .... I removed from the scrapbooks one
letter and six clippings. This I did with great care
. . .) , , 7 ° 5 We are reminded quite clearly that the
souvenirs which make up the Poets Garden have been quite
deliberately censored. Perhaps this is a more honest way
in which to encounter a literary assembly than one that
purports to be somehow complete or whole.
227
I AM LANGUAGE THAT IMAGES THOUGHT
The variety of data that makes up the congeries of
the Poets Garden has throughout been inadequately
represented. The Collection is a taxonomer's horror, but
allows, because of that, wonderful occasions for
serendipity. A few more promiscuous items follow.
In the fall of 1958, Le Prade writes to a Mr.
Gaddis who is doing "noble work in behalf of Robert
Stroud" telling him of her and Angela Morgan's work on
behalf of Robert Wesley Wells. 7 0 6 Robert Stroud is, of
course, better known as the Birdman of Alcatraz.
And Faith Chevaillier's notebooks from Paris in
19 02 are wonderful gleanings of the quite prescient
thoughts of an independent American woman expatriate in
Paris. In her journals she writes, "Our present changes
our past . . . ,l | 7 0 7 and "Concepts are symbols of things
. . . . Precepts are always interpretations."7 0 8 As in
the effects of many women, philosophical thoughts, "I am
language that images thought"7 0 9 are mixed in with
housekeeping notes, here a reminder to purchase a "Sofa
Pillow Cover like Mrs. Wells[']" and a "Recipe for Mrs.
Johnson's Cough Syrup."7 1 0
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TABLETS FROM THE BASIC REMEDIES COMPANY
In addition, there are many inspirational pamphlets
in the Collection. One such is "Joy and the Way of
Attainment" by Jennie H. Croft.7 1 1 Such tracts with
devotional and meditative instructions, the equivalent
of contemporary self-help pop-psych books, offer insight
into even mainstream women's implicit dissatisfaction
with the status quo.
Ethel Brooke Sanford sends Ruth "The Book of Health
and Self-Vigor" and advises her to study it
"religiously" and to take tablets from the "Basic
Remedies Company."7 1 2 Again is reflected this need for a
primal reworking.
Ethel Brooke Sanford's husband, De Forest Sanford,
Marvin Sanford's brother, is running the Llano
Cooperative Colony in Newllano, Louisiana. He writes Le
Prade that he still misses his wife Ethel three years
after she's died of a fast following one of her "food
hobbies." This is another cultural gem. Obviously, Ethel
Brooke Sanford died of what we would diagnose today as
anorexia. Her husband writes Le Prade, "She carried the
experiment too far."7 1 3
There are purported treasures in the Poets Garden I
have not seen. In the Cheyney-Trent memorabilia is
reportedly a letter to Cheyney from Countee Cullen,7 1 4
229
and in the Luella Twining section is allegedly an old
autograph album with Susan B. Anthony's signature.7 1 5
The aggregate of this project makes it a feminist
Collection not in the end because pieces do belong to
it, but because so much can belong to it. Women's
literary constructs are collections that admit; they are
accessible and enterable. It is the very nonlinearity of
this enterprise, its diffusions, its interruptions, that
enable it. The Poets Garden is a feminist pastoral not
in spite of, but because of, the shopping lists.
A BIT OP THE RIBBON I USED IN MAKING THE GOLDEN COSTUME
David Wyatt talks about the notion of a collection
as an adequate structure,7 1 6 and although he is talking
about prose pieces in Mary Austin, the term serves the
less conventionally discursive components of the Poets
Garden. Le Prade includes in her Poets Garden collection
"a bit of the ribbon I used in making the golden costume
Florence Hamilton wore when she spoke to the poets at
the Markham Centennial in the Poets Garden, April,
1952."7 1 7 The discourse of the Collection is
characterized by such items which we are not habituated
to considering as inscription, but habit cannot obviate
their status as literary. This Collection is not
230
aesthetic residue. The Poets Garden is a legitimate
discourse assembly; it is an adequate structure.
A SCIENTIFIC BASIS DIGNIFIES OUR PROFESSION
I make no pretense here to any sort of objectivity.
This dissertation has only sampled, and randomly at
that, a few of the holdings in the Poets Garden. The
Professor of German who stated at the first convention
of the MLA in 1883 that "a scientific basis dignifies
our profession"7 1 8 would not be pleased with this
polyglot notion of discourse assembly. He would not
acknowledge the oppression that results from the sort of
adherence to what, though entrenched as methodologically
objective, are still ontologically arbitrary categories.
We believe today that there is no such thing as a
metaphysical transfusion of meaning, but that there is a
cultural one, made up, that we implicitly, and perhaps
complicitly, deign metaphysical. I stand indicted on the
same charge with which I accuse Le Prade. She makes the
Poets Garden stand for "Bread, Beauty, and Brotherhood."
I reorganize my Metaphysical Infuser and command that
the Poets Garden serve a purpose I deem. But any of
these establishments are relational and moving and
tentative. Le Prade's and ray concerns conflate. We both
hope to see a place where there is freedom from cultural
231
constraints, where there is loveliness, and where there
is cooperation. As well, we see this as a site both, and
this simultaneity is very important here, of joy and
political doing.
WHOSE MINDS HAVE BEEN THOROUGHLY COLONIZED BY FLOWER AND
GARDEN CONSCIOUSNESS
Michael Waters offers us the idea that
horticultural representations during Victorian times
reinforce a singular code:
This struggle for the mastery of
plant meanings was not the cultural
expression of a class struggle so
much as a tussle between those who
occupied different ideological
positions within the dominant value
system.7 1 9
I believe that Le Prade just a few decades later is
struggling valiantly with just that issue of trying to
make for herself and others not privy to conventional,
that is white and patriarchal, pastoral sources, just
such a site of different cultural expression. I do
believe that Le Prade made up and practiced her
construct of the Poets Garden as a place of refuge, as a
source of solace from the dominant value system but also
as a militant site of action to counter the effects of
that same system.
232
But I want to make sure that my reader not be left
with any certain position, or, really, any fix at all in
regard to the Poets Garden. Let me explain my fear.
Michael Waters talks very convincingly about gardening
concerns as a means of colonization of women and the
working class. Attention as we know is always
diversionary. Waters treats the "ideological aspects of
flower-oriented discourse specifically concerned with
women"7 2 0 citing Thomas Hood's Mrs. Gardiner as an
example of "fictional heroines whose minds have been
thoroughly colonized by flower and garden
consciousness."7 2 1 I do not want to leave my readers so
colonized.
There can be no definitive ideological idiom in
which to place the Poets Garden. There is no male
assurance such as Markham pronounces when he declares in
the Poets' Garden, "When I plant a tree, I plant it."7 2 2
The Poets Garden is not so vainly final.
HE HAD UNSADDLED PEGASUS AND STRADDLED THE FLYING
JACKASS OF THE SANDLOT
The last piece of Le Prade's writing that I find is
a paper she delivers to the Southern California Women's
Press Club at the Women's University Club in 1968. It
233
discusses the poem that has been so important to her all
her life, Markham's "The Man With the Hoe." She relates:
Probably no single poem in the
history of the world has ever
stirred up so much controversy. 9
barrels of clippings were collected
about this one poem. It was
discussed pro and con with vigor and
some venom. It was called the
greatest poem ever written in
America. Joaquin Miller pronounced
it, "The whole Yosemite— the
thunder, the might, the majesty."7 2 3
. . . Ambrose Bierce his friend
until the "Hoe" cut their friendship
asunder, said "Markham should be
shot for writing such a poem. He had
unsaddled Pegasus and straddled the
flying jackass of the sandlot.1 , 7 2 4
Mrs. Crocker had brought the Hoe
painting from Paris in 1891 and
exhibited it at her home in San
Francisco .... To [Markham] the
figure in the picture was not just a
weary French peasant leaning on an
implement of agriculture, but a
symbol ... of all men and women
who are deadened and degraded by
toil, robbed of human dignity,
opportunity and hope, denied their
God-given human rights.7 2 5
Le Prade can't remember a time when she didn't know and
love that poem. "I may have been born reciting "The Man
With the Hoe."7 2 6 But unlike Markham, she has no
antecedent image of her own to reference and transpose
into the medium of words. And so she establishes a
working site of conflict where she both appropriates
male metaphors, Markham's hoe man and Whitman's leaves,
and at the same time divests herself of those borrowed
234
{
tropes and starts from scratch, making her metaphor out
of herself, willing and tilling from her body a sort of
primal hoe-woman and self-constructed Eve.
WHY WAS I BORN A WOMAN— TO WHAT END?
In April, 1969, Le Prade is in the Guardian
Convalescent Hospital on Fairfax.7 2 7 While there, she
has a falling-out with Gloria Reidel Franzen, her son's
old girlfriend, who is loyal to her for many years and
performs many kindnesses. Franzen has allowed herself to
be Gloria of the Silver Flute in the garden ceremony for
many years after Eugene's death. Franzen admits to
taking part in the Poets Garden ceremonies because Le
Prade wanted her to, not because she herself chose
to.7 2 8 While Le Prade is in the rest home, she asks
Franzen to bring her a bedpan from Spaulding Street;
Franzen feels she cannot do this and Le Prade becomes
angry with her.7 2 9 When Le Prade dies in 1969, she may
have felt that she and her project were not rightfully
appreciated and acclaimed.
She leaves, and this is a wonderful gift, wonderful
questions. The Poets Garden is interrogative as a whole
and in many of its parts. She asks, "Why was I born a
woman— to what end!"7 3 0 And she repeats the question,
"Why was my womanhood betrayed to this?"7 3 1 I cannot
235
answer for sure, but I can suggest that she has done a
great deal with her womanhood and that any betrayal that
has occurred has to do with the subversion of
patriarchal gardens. Because of that accomplishment, she
has prevailed:
Out of this grief
Out of her pain
She has arizen
Broken the prison.7 3 2
ALL FLOWERS SHALL BLOOM
A friend writes a tribute:
Dear Ruth, you've sung your biography;
'Twill live though others atrophy. 3 3
Le Prade's real biography is indeed the Poets Garden, a
legacy of feminist pastoral. As early as 1917 in A Woman
Free she had intimated that hers was not a project to be
finished in her lifetime.
You buds who have not blossomed;
You flowers who have not bloomed;
I salute you.
Gently I press my lips upon your lips;
Softly I clasp your hands;
And we walk toward the sunrise together
For I know that all buds shall blossom
And all flowers shall bloom.
What matters a few years or a few centuries?
In the end all shall attain.7 3 4
236
The excavation of the Poet's Garden's has just
begun. Of the geographical Poets Garden, a huge tree
still looms today in the backyard at 1622 South
Spaulding, perhaps the Tree of Heaven which Florence
Hamilton planted in 1952 while wearing the Golden
Costume. Of the Collection, the Poets Garden is not just
an inert assembly of data to be subjected to clinical
scholarship, its pieces to be relegated to such specious
categories as "historical interest" or "literary
heritage." It is instead present and vital, a site of
engendering and nurture. The Poets Garden still renders.
Although its creator has "pulled anchor and sailed forth
in the seas of mystery," her project is still a working
site of delight and action.
The pastoral, always nostalgic, becomes complicated
for white women, people of color, and working class
people because what have become naturalized as the
objects of longing are in fact mired in the values of
oppression. The pastoral site cannot serve so readily as
a place of tranquility as it does for white males of
privilege; this is not an easy hankering. What Le Prade
sets up as a place of feminist pastoral is a tangled
site, awkward, cumbersome, almost unwieldy. The yearning
is for a locale that is not only a site of repose but
237
also a site of ferment, a place which elides
distinctions between the aesthetic and the political.
But this alterity, this different pastoral, still
positions itself against a fixed center and will until
the ground on which the canon sits quakes and those
pertinacious golden texts and nostalgic pedagogies are
tipped and dishevelled, or, depending on the Richter
reading, buried and destroyed. Otherwise, the idea of a
feminist pastoral might situate itself in soil already
entrenched in Arcadian habits. In order for a feminist
pastoral to claim its own ontogenesis, its own unsullied
soil, it must work militantly, in the dirt, to
sufficiently extirpate the existing pastoral canon. Only
then perhaps in our dealings with literature can we
oblige a fulcrum not only of physics, but one of
affinities as well.
THIS (THEREFORE) WILL NOT HAVE BEEN A DISSERTATION7 3 5
I am vehement about, if anything, not covering over
the Poets Garden, though it is an elegant deceit even to
think I could. But indulge my arrogance, I indulge
myself. Let us not pretend a fake aporia. Let us, you,
me, and our gardener here, Ruth Le Prade, agree to leave
it only for the moment, unearthed, stirred about,
238
vulnerable, and let us all listen intently for Bertha
Stockwell's bird calls.
I have been gulled for much too much of this into
thinking I was writing a real dissertation. Vainly
hoping that this would have been a more intransitive
literary excursion, I had wanted less form rather than
more form, fewer projects of my own, fewer academized
pronouncements over the stuff of the Poets Garden, whose
stuffs have been during the course of this exercise much
too scavenged for what we call meaning. The items in the
Garden are, if anything, parataxic, discrete phenonema,
each with its own, and (if I have only these words to
say it), history, present, future, associations,
multivalent integrity, on which I have imposed,
imperialistically, my requirement to write a
dissertation. I owe them an apology.
I have been a two-year guest in the Garden, where I
have as I tend to do overstayed my welcome. I had
fancied myself an uninvited guest, but I was more truly
a crasher to begin with and a crasher I remain; the last
say belongs indeed to the boxes on the shelves. I wore
out long before they, who have still infinitely more
energy, more tenacity, more secrets. This project has
been a brash incursion into the Poets Garden, a
presumptuous pretense at best, a foray of folly at
239
worst. And of course you'll please disregard the
bifurcations; I insist (I am the dissertator after all!)
that they not prevail. You go down too far to get a
squint at the forms in the deep and you get the bends
coming up. I know I'm guilty there of mixing the sea and
the garden, but I believe we all need to mix it all up
all the more all the time. But just so you know I'm
where I'm supposed to be, I'm going out to get my hoe to
bend over my own plot of literary georgic, to dig, to
sow, to treat for Thrips the rose bush by the door. Le
Prade writes, "Life feeds on life, the worm is in the
rose, . . . 1 , 7 3 6 The Thrips are on the page already.
240
Selective Bibliography
Aaron/ Daniel. Writers on the Left. New York: Avon,
1965.
Abrams, M. H., et al., eds. Norton Anthology of English
Literature. New York: Norton, 1962.
American Poetry. Eds. Gay Wilson Allen, Walter B.
Rideout, and James K. Robinson. New York: Harper &
Row, 1965.
Austin, Mary. Earth Horizon. New York: Literary Guild,
1932 .
. The Land of Little Rain. Albuquerque: U of New
Mexico P, 1974.
. The Lost Garden, unpublished manuscript. Huntington
Library.
Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: U of
Texas P, 1981.
Bartkowski, Frances. Feminist Utopias. Lincoln: U of
Nebraska P, 1989.
Bassoff, Evelyn S. Mothering Ourselves: Help and Healing
for Adult Daughters. New York: Dutton, 1991.
Britt, David. Modern Art: Impressionism to Post-
Modernism. Boston,
Little, Brown, 1989.
Brown, Jane. Vita/s Other World: A Gardening Biography
of V. Sackville-West. New York: Viking, 1985.
Buhle, Mari Jo. Women and American Socialism. 1870-1920.
Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1981.
• Encyclopedia of the American Left. New York:
Garland, 1990.
Burke, Carolyn. "Supposed Persons: Modernist Poetry and
the Female Subject" Feminist Studies 11:1 (Spring
1985).
241
Carpenter, Humphrey, Secret Gardens. Boston: Houghton,
1985.
Caughey, John and Laree. California Heritage: An
Anthology of History and Literature. Los Angeles:
Ward Ritchie P, 1962.
Cixous, Helene. Wellek lecture. University of California
at Irvine. April, 1990.
Colette. Mv Mother's House and Sido. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1953.
Coolbrith, Ina. Perfect Day and Other Poems. San
Francisco: John H. Carmany, 1881.
. Wings of Sunset. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929.
Currie, Harold W. Eugene V. Debs. Boston: G. K. Hall,
1976.
Dearborn, Mary V. Pocahontas's Daughters: Gender and
Ethnicity in American Culture. NY: Oxford UP, 1986.
Derrida, Jacques, Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981.
Drake, William. The First Wave: Women Poets in America
1915-1945. New York: Macmillan, 1987.
Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary Criticism. London:
Methuen, 1976.
Eliot, T. S., "What is Minor Poetry," 1944. Rpt. in
Eliot's On Poetry and Poets. NY: Farrar, 1957.
Empson, William. Some Versions of Pastoral. New York:
New Directions, 1968.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of
the Prison. New York: Pantheon, 1977.
Franklin, H. Bruce, Prison Literature in America: The
Victim as Criminal and Artist. New York: Oxford UP,
1988.
242
Fryer, Judith. The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth
Century American Novel. New York: Oxford UP, 1976.
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes. New York:
Haskell, 1970.
A Garland of Perennials: Verse and Prose about Gardens.
London: Medici Society, 1929.
Gallop, Jane. Thinking Through the Body. New York:
Columbia UP, 1988.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory
of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York:
Oxford UP, 1988.
Gelpi, Albert. A Coherent Splendor: The American Poetic
Renaissance. 1910-1950. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1987 .
Giamatti, A. Bartlett. The Earthly Paradise and the
Renaissance Epic. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966.
. Take Time for Paradise. New York: Summit, 1989.
Gilbert, James Burkhart. Writers and Partisans: A
History of Literary Radicalism in America. New
York: John Wiley and Sons, 1968.
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. No Man's Land: The
Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century.
2 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988.
Ginzberg, Louis. The Legends of the Jews. Voll
Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1968.
Graff, Gerald. Professing Literature: An Institutional
History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.
Graham, Martha. Blood Memory. New York: Doublday, 1991.
Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre Reader. Austin: U of
Texas P, 1986.
Greene, J. Lee. Time's Unfading Garden: Anne Spencer's
Life and Poetry. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP,
1977.
243
Hall, James. Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art.
New York: Harper and Row, 1979.
Hanscombe, Gillian, and Virginia L. Smyers. Writing for
Their Lives: The Modernist Women 1910-1940. Boston:
Northeastern, 1987.
Harrison, Thomas Perrin, Jr. and Harry Joshua Leon. The
Pastoral Elegy: An Anthology. Austin: U of Texas P,
1939.
Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter,
et al. Vol 2. Lexington, MA, 1990.
Heilbrun, Carolyn G., Writing a Woman's Life. New York:
Ballantine, 1988.
Hesse, Hermann, Hours in the Garden and Other Poems.
Trans. Rika Lesser. New York: Farrar, Straus,
Giroux, 1979.
Hicks, Granville, et al., eds. Proletarian Literature in
the United States. New York: International, 1935.
Hooks, Bell. Yearning: Race. Gender, and Cultural
Politics. Boston: South End, 199 0.
Johnson, Paul C. Pictorial History of California. USA:
Paul C. Johnson, 1970.
Kenner, Hugh, The Pound Era. Berkeley: U of California
P, 1971.
Kolodny, Annette. The Land Before Her: Fantasy and
Experience of the American Frontiers. 1630-1860.
Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1984.
.The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and
History in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill:
U of North Carolina P, 1975.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live Bv.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.
Lee, M. Owen. Death and Rebirth in Virgil/s Arcadia.
Albany: State University of New York P, 1989.
244
Leider, Emily Wortis. California’s Daughter; Gertrude
Atherton and Her Times. Stanford: Stanford UP,
1991.
Le Prade, Ruth, Ed. Debs and the Poets. Pasadena: Upton
Sinclair, 1920.
. Gypsy Love Songs. Los Angeles: B. N. Robertson,
1947.
. Song Tree. Santa Barbara: J. F. Rowny, 1943.
. [first name only] A Woman Free. Los Angeles: J. F.
Rowny, 1917.
Lottman, Herbert. Colette: A Life. Boston: Little,
Brown, 1991.
Markham, Edwin. Poems. Ed. Charles L. Wallis. New York:
Harper, 1950.
. Ed. Poetry of Youth. New York: Wm. H. Wise, 1935.
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the
Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford UP,
1964.
Miller, Nancy K., Ed. Poetics of Gender. New York:
Columbia, 1986.
Nelson, Cary. Repression and Recovery: Modern American
Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory. 1910-
1945. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989.
New American Poetry. Ed. Donald M. Allen. New York:
Grove, 1960.
Newton, Judith, and Deborah Rosenfelt, eds. Feminist
Criticism and Social Change: Sex. Class, and Race
in Literature. New York: Methuen, 1985.
Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym,
et al. 3rd ed. Vol 2. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.
Olsen, Tillie. Silences. New York: Delta, 1965.
Perloff, Marjorie. The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud
to Cage. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981.
245
Putnam, Michael C. J. Virgil's Pastoral Art: Studies in
the Eclogues. Princeton: Princton UP, 1970.
Randall, John H. Ill, The Landscape and the Looking
Glass: Willa Cather/s Search for Value. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1960.
Reed, Alma. M. The Mexican Muralists. New Youk: Crown,
1960.
Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience
and Institution. New York: Norton, 1976.
Richards, Mrs. Waldo, Ed. The Melody of Earth: An
Anthology of Garden and Nature Poems From Present-
Day Poets. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.
Rideout, Walter. The Radical Novel in the United States:
Some Interrelationships of Literature and Society.
Cambridge:_Harvard UP, 195 6.
Rolfe, Lionel. In Search of Literary L.A. Los Angeles:
California Classics, 1991.
. Literary L.A. San Francisco: Chronicle, 1981.
Rudnick, Lois Palken. Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman. New
Worlds. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1984.
Salvatore, Nick. Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist.
Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1982.
Schulz, Max F. Paradise Preserved: Recreations of Eden
in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Centurv England.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985.
Seelye, John. "Some Green Thoughts on a Green Theme."
TriOuarterly. [get doc] 576-638.
Simpson, Lewis P. The Dispossessed Garden: Pastoral and
History in Southern Literature. Athens: U of
Georgia P, 1975.
Sinclair, Upton, Ed. The Cry for Justice: An Anthology
of the Literature of Social Protest. New York: Lyle
Stuart, 1963.
Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: the American West as
Symbol and Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1950.
246
Smith, Sarah Bixby. Adobe Days. Lincoln: U of Nebraska
P, 1987.
Spacks, Patricia Meyer. The Female Imagination. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.
Starr, Kevin. Americans and the California Dream 1850—
1915. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.
. Inventing the Dream: California through the
Progressive Era. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.
. Material Dreams: Southern California through the
192 0's. New York: Oxford UP, 1990.
Stein, Gertrude. In A Garden: An Opera in One Act. Music
by Meyer Kupferman. New York: Mercury Music
Corporation, 1951.
Stidger, William L. Edwin Markham. New York: Abingdon,
1933
Stineman, Esther Lanigan. Mary Austin: Song of a
Maverick. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989.
Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mother's Gardens. New
York: Harcourt, 1983.
Walker, Franklin, A Literary History of Southern
California. Berkeley: U of California P, 1950.
Waters, Michael. The Garden in Victorian Literature.
Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1988.
Watson, Steven. Strange Bedfellows: The First American
Avant-Garde. New York: Abbeville, 1991.
Westling, Louise. Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens: The
Fiction of Eudora Weltv. Carson McCullers. and
Flannery O'Connor.
U of Georgia P, 1985.
White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative
Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins, 1987.
247
Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York:
Oxford UP, 1973.
• Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977.
Writing Red: An Anthology of Women Writers 193 0-194 0.
Eds. Charlotte Nekola and Paula Rabinowitz. New
York: Feminist P, 1987.
248 !
1
ENDNOTES
1. Cary Nelson. Repression and Recovery: American
Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory 1910-
1945. 4.
2. Hereafter U.S.C.
3. Box 5 (gold box).
i 4. Nelson, 135.
I
!5. A placard on the house today announces the "Familia
| Salazar" as the current residents. Given the
changing demographics of Los Angeles and its
! literature, it is certainly fitting that the
current occupants of the Poets Garden should be
Latina/Latino. What I assume to be the "Tree of
Heaven" still looms in that backyard where Le Prade
so diligently cultivated her literary enterprise.
6. In the Hebrew Alphabet of Ben Sira 23a-23b and 33a-
3 3b, there is an accounting of Eve being formed not
from Adam but at the same time. Ginzberg, 65-6.
7. A Woman Free. "The Past," 38.
8. A Woman Free. "The Past," 38.
9. Note: published on the overleaf of the magazine
"Everyman" whose motto is "Against all that limits
Man for the Great Adventure."
10. Box 6 n.d.
11. For instance, Boccaccio mourns his daughter in
"Olympia" Harrison, 77.
12. 1 Park.
13. Part I, The Burial of the Dead.
14. Part III.
115. "Song of the Son."
I
116. From "From the Dark Tower".
249 i
17. Box 47, XV.
18. "The Child as Swain."
Il9. LBH 93.
I
20. LBH 6.
|21. From The American Adam: Innocence. Tragedy, and
Tradition in the Nineteenth Century. (Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1955) 89.
22. LBH 5.
23. See especially My Mother's House and Sido.
24. See "Amy Lowells's Garden," in Hanscombe and
Smyers, 63-75.
25. In "He Said:" Greene, 183.
26. I refer you to any used bookstore's poetry section
to peruse volumes of unknown women's poetry,
especially those produced by women during the early
decades of this century.
J27. page 211.
I
J28. "Poetry" in American Poetry. 804.
29. Huntington Library, Austin Collection "Woman"
American Rhythm 1923.
30. Austin wrote the original manuscript in 1906. My
quotations are from one of 2 variant versions
written later at Casa Querida in Santa Fe, New
Mexico. Now at the Huntington Library, Austin
Collection.
31. page 15.
32. page 16.
33. "The Lost Garden" Variant A, 16-17.
34. "The Lost Garden" Variant A, 17.
35. Land of Little Rain, 6.
250
3 6. Box 2 .
37. Her name may be Mary.
38. "Ruth Le Prade Scrapbook," Los Angeles Evening
Herald. 3-25-15.
39. Box 2.
40. Starr, Inventing the Dream. 215.
41. Box 2.
42. Letter from Thanet Bronson 8-22-91 Hughson,
California.
43. Interview, 3-14-91.
44. Letter from
California.
Thanet Bronson 8-22-
45. Box 48.
46. Box 48, Edwin Markham Biography
"EMbio"), Bkl, ch2, 4.
47. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 4.
48. Box 13, Vol 1, X.
49. Box 13, Vol 1.
•
o
in
Box 13, Vol 1.
51. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, Ch2, 4.
52. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 4.
53 . Box 48, EMbio, Bk 1, Ch2, 4.
54. Box 8, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 4.
55. Box 48, Bkl, ch2, 10.
56. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 11.
57. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 11.
58. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 12.
59. BOX
0 0
EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 13
60. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch3, 2.
61. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, C h 2 , 14
62. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 2.
63 . Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 5.
64 . Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 5.
65. stanza 52, 1339I-134Ci .
66. A Woman Free. "I Have Loved— " 14.
67. Ruth Le Prade Scrapbook, Los Angeles Evening
Herald. 3-25-15.
68. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 5.
69. Box 48, EMbio, Bk 1, ch2, 6.
70. Box 00
EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 6.
71. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 8.
72 . Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 3.
73. Box 6, Mary Ulber to R. A. Maynard, 1-19-13
74. Lists 89.
75. Box
6,
6-17-15 •
76. 12-29-15.
77. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 10.
•
CO
BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 16.
79. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 17.
•
o
00
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 18.
81. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 18.
•
CM
00
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 22.
83. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 23.
84. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 24.
85. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 26.
86. ch2, 27•
87. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch2, 30.
88. A Woman Free. 20.
89. Young Peoples Socialist League
90. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch3, 11.
91. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch3, 11.
92. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch3, 2 .
93. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch3, 9.
94. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch3, 10.
95. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch3, 10.
96. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch3, 12.
97. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch3, 14.
98. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch4, 1.
99. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch4, 1.
100. Johnson, 193.
101. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch4, 3.
102. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch4, 6 •
103. ch4, 6.
104. Perfect Day, 54.
105. Perfect Day, 56.
106. Perfect Day, 56.
107. 58.
253
108.
|
Box
0 0
EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 1.
109. ch5 1.
110. Box
CO
EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 2.
111. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 2.
112. BOX 0 0
%
EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 2.
113. ch5, 3 .
114. Box 0 0
EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 4.
115. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 5.
116. Box
CO
EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 5.
117. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 7.
118. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 12.
119. Box
0 0
EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 13.
120. Box
0 0
EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 14.
121. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 15.
122. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 16.
123. Box 2, RLP to FH, 10-20-57.
124. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 16.
125. A Woman Free. 17.
126. A Woman Free. 51.
127. A Woman Free. 53
128. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5,
•
0 0
rH
129. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, H
0 0
•
130. "Piecing and Writing" in Nancy
Poetics of Gender. 238-9.
131. A Woman Free. 9.
254
132. A Woman Free. 9.
i
1133. "the better craftsman"
134. page 45.
135. page 51.
13 6. page 30.
137. A Woman Free.
•
H
H
138. A Woman Free. 13.
139. A Woman Free. 72 .
140. BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl,
141. A Woman Free. 25.
142. A Woman Free. 63 .
143. A Woman Free. 65.
144. A Woman Free . 67.
145. A Woman Free. 69.
146. page 67.
147. A Woman Free. 63 .
148. A Woman Free. 69.
149. Kolodny, LBH, 115.
150. Hall, 268.
151. Sarah Bixby Smith, x.
152. Box 7, RLP to Marcelle Reber, 4-12-53.
153. A Woman Free. "It Is Not Possible to Love Too
Much," 28.
154. A Woman Free. 18.
155. A Woman Free. 36.
255
156. A Woman Free. 39.
157. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 19.
158. Gerald Graff mentions Robert Me Lean Cumnock's
influence on American education in Professing
Literature. 49.
159. Box 6.
160. Box 6, Leroy Henry, M. D. (And another admirer
writes that he was born in 1834 and lives currently
in a Soldier's Home, Box 6 William C. Gibbons, 8-
16-19).
161. LOS Anaeles Evening Herald. 1-13-17. Part 2. 1.
162. BOX 6,
2-14-17.
163. BOX 6.
164. BOX 6,
Ethel Maguire, 2-4-17.
165. BOX
6,
3-4-17.
166. BOX 6.
167. BOX 6,
D. Bobspa, "The Peoples' College News."
168. Box 6.
169. Box 6,
pamphlet announcing RLP's return to Southern
California in '23-'24.
170. Buhle, EAL, 121.
171. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 21. Especially
disturbing to Le Prade, Markham supports the War.
"Martial poem after martial poem poured from his
pen. I did not read them." (21)
172. A Woman Free. 71.
173. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 1.
174. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 36.
175. BOX 6, 12-10-18.
256
176. BOX 6, 1-22-21.
(177. BOX 6.
i
178. I do not know whether these are her own thoughts or
whether she is noting someone else's.
179. Box 6.
180. Box 6, Margaret Widdemer to RLP, 9-10-17.
181. BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl, Ch5, 27.
182. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 28.
183. BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 28.
184. BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl, Ch5, 29.
185. Box 13.
186. BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 30.
187. There are variant spellings of Le Prade's husband's
name. Sometimes it is Storey and other times Story.
His first name is usually Harold, but occasionally
j Howard as well..
j188. Box 6, Mary Ulber, 10-16-17.
J189. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 32.
j190. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 28.
191. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 28.
192. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 28, letter, 12-13-17.
193. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 34.
194. ch5, 34, letter, 11-15-18.
195. BOX 48 EMbio, Bkl, Ch5, 24.
196. Ch5, 34.
197. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 35.
198. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch7, 13.
257 I
i
I
199. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch7, 13.
200. Box 6, envelope, 10-7-19.
201. Box 6, RLP to Comrade, 1-19-20.
202. Box 6, RLP to Guy Bogart, 3-1-20.
203. BOX 6, 7-31-20.
204. BOX 6, 8-25-20.
205. Box 6 to B. Marie, 5-11-20.
206. Box 6, RLP to Guy Bogart, 1-8-19.
207. Box 6, 2-22-20.
208. BOX 6, 3-29-20.
209. BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl Ch5, 36.
210. Currie, 89.
211. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 31.
212. Salvatore, 296.
213. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 35.
214. Note: copies of this magazine are in the Poets
Garden Collection.
215. Box 6, RLP to Gilman, 1-19-20.
216. Box 47, "Poetry Notes."
217. Box 47.
218. Box 6, 6-8-20.
219. Box 6, 6-20-20.
220. Box 6, 6-2-20.
221. Salvatore, 277.
222. BOX 6.
258
223. Box
6#
4-13-20.
224. Box 6, 1-8-20.
225. Box 6,
3-10-20.
226. Box 6, 4-22-20.
227. BOX 6, 2-5-20.
228. Box 6,
Miriam Allen De Ford to RLP, 7-31-20.
229. BOX 6,
5-31-20.
230. Box 6, 6-7-20.
231. Box
6,
RLP to Louis Untermeyer, 4-19-20.
232. BOX 6,
letters c/o "The Liberator," 1-6-2 0.
233. Box 6,
to "Brother of Song," 3-1-20.
234. BOX 6, RLP to "Fairy," 3-3-20.
235. BOX 6, letter to Dear Comrade, 1-19-20.
236. BOX 6,
3-10-20.
237. Debs and the Poets. 40.
238. Box 6, 3-10-20.
239. Debs
i
and the Poets. 43.
240. Debs and the Poets. 43.
241. BOX 6,
5-14-20.
242. BOX
6,
to "Comrade," 6-27-20.
i
243. Box
6/
letter to "Comrade," RLP, 8-3-20.
244. Box 6, letter, 5-8-20.
245. Box 6,
RLP to Charles Erskine Scott Wood, 6-7-20.
246. Box
6,
6-8-20.
247. Box
6,
6-8-20.
»
|248. BOX 6, 6-12-20.
249. Box 6, 6-15-20.
250. anon, to "Comrade," 8-3-20.
251. Conversations with John Ahouse, 3-26-91 and 2-28-
92 .
252. BOX 6, 9-25-20.
253. John Ahouse speculates that perhaps she has already
helped Sinclair with this project and doesn't want
Sinclair to know she is helping again.
254. Box 6, to CES Wood, 10-27-20.
255. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 2.
256. Box 6, 3-3-20.
257. This was not, however, the greatest percentage of
! votes, which was garnered in 1912, Currie, 14.
j
j258. Debs and the Poets. 50.
j259. Debs and the Poets 51.
i
260. Debs and the Poets. 35.
261. Debs and the Poets. 34.
262. Debs and the Poets. 26.
263. Debs and the Poets. 27.
264. Debs and the Poets. 25.
265. Debs and the Poets. 82.
i
266. Debs and the Poets. 87.
267. Debs and the Poets. 90.
268. Debs and the Poets. 93.
269. Nelson, 135.
270. page 5.
271. Debs & the Poets. 62.
272. Debs and the Poets. 72.
273. Debs & the Poets. 64.
274. Box 6.
275. Debs and the Poets. 79.
276. Debs and the Poets. 70.
277. Heath, 950.
278. Salvatore, 104.
279. Box 6.
280. Box 6.
281. Box 6, RLP to Florence Hamilton, 7-10-37.
282 . Box 6, 1-6-20, [sic 21?].
283 .
j
Box 6, 1-2-20, [sic 21?].
1
1284.
i
I
Box 6,
21?] .
letter, RLP to Clement Wood, 1-6-20
!
285. BOX 6, RLP to Sara Bard Filed, 2-14-21.
286. Salvatore, 3 00.
287. Salvatore, 3 00.
288. Box 6, 3-15-21.
289. page 6.
290. Box 6, 9-1-21.
291. Box 45.
292. Box 6, RLP to Florence Hamilton, 6-17-37.
293. Salvatore, 327.
294. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 18, letter, 12-21-22
295. BOX
0 0
• 0 *
EMbio, ch6,
CO
letter 12-21-22.
296. BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 18.
297. BOX 6, RLP to CES Wood, 9-25-20•
298. BOX 6, Guy Bogart to RLP, 10-13-20.
299. Box 6.
300. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 11.
301. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 2.
302. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6 6.
303. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 10.
304. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 10.
305. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 7.
306. Box 48, Embio, Bkl, ch6, 7.
307. In his forward to Poems bv Mrs. Elizabeth
An Oregon Pioneer of 1847-1857 (Portland: J. K.
Gill, 1921) Quoted in Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 6.
308. Ch6, 8.
309. BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 10.
310. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 3.
311. Box 44, "Edwin Markham by Ruth Le Prade," 6-page
paper given to the Southern California Women's
Press Club at the Women's University Club, Los
Angeles, June 4, 1968, 2.
312. Box 44, "Edwin Markham by Ruth Le Prade" 6-page
paper given to the Southern California Women's
Press Club at the Women's University Club, Los
Angeles, June 4, 1968, 2.
313. RLP inserts this information in her EMbio, Bkl,
before ch8, page 1, a chapter from a book by one of
Markham's teachers, Samuel D. Woods, who writes
Light and Shadows of Life of the Pacific Coast Funk
& Wagnalls, 1910.
314.
<
| 315.
I
j 3 1 6 .
I
| 317.
I
I
I
I
318.
319.
320.
321.
322.
323.
324.
325.
326.
327.
328.
i
j 329.
i
330.
i
331.
332 .
I 333 .
334.
262
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch8, 14.
Box 6.
BOX 5.
Box 2, letter from O. E. Lawrence, Secretary of the
Socialist Party of America, California Branch
Central, 10-23-23.
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 22.
Interview with Gloria Reidel Franzen, 3-14-91.
BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl, Ch6, 22.
Box 45.
Markham's handwriting, although less difficult
generally than Le Prade's, is hard to decipher
here.
Box 45.
Box 45.
Box 45, 5.
BOX 6.
Box 13, Vol 1, 247.
I have already noted the occasional variant first
name of Le Prade's husband.
Box 6, letter to Eugene from First Friends Church
Whittier, 12-9-26.
Box 6.
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch6, 22.
Box 6, document, 5-20-29.
The title of this poem is changed to "Gypsy Ballad"
in Song Tree.
Box 13, Vol 1, 103.
263
335. Box 13, Vol 1, Fijean, 57.
336. Box
I
13, Vol 1, 281-2.
337. Box 13, Vol 1, 282.
338. Box 13, Vol 1, 285.
339. Box 13, Vol 1, 202.
340. Box 13, Vol 1, 203.
341. Box 13, Vol 1, 203.
342. Box 13, Vol 1, 44.
343. Box 13, Vol 1, 44.
344. Box 13, Vol 1, 197.
345. Box 13, Vol 1, 154.
346. Box 13, Vol 1, 229.
347. Box 13, Vol 1, 230.
348. Personal interview with Gloria Reidel
91.
349. Box 13, Vol
1,
215.
350. Box 13, Voll
f
222.
351. Box 13, Vol
1,
236.
352. Box 6,
4-17-35 •
353. Box
6, Mayne to RLP, 5-4-35.
354. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch9, before page
355. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch8, 10.
;356. Box 6, RLP to FH, 3-31-37.
357. The common Indo-European roots of
cult/cultivate/culture are "all derived from Latin,
colo (p.p. cultum. which means to till the soil.
From Richard Waswo. "The History That Literature
264
358.
359.
360.
361.
362.
1363.
!
364.
365.
366.
367.
368.
369.
370.
371.
372.
373.
374.
375.
1376.
J
■377.
J
378.
Makes." The New Literary History. 19 (1988): 541-64
p550 as quoted in Andrew Wiget. "Reading Against
the Grain: Origin Stories and American Literary
History". American Literary History.Summer 1991 v3
n2 209-231 p 218.
Box 0 0
EMbio, Bkl, ch9, 30.
Box
00
" 3 *
EMbio, Bkl, ch9, 35.
Box
00
EMbio, Bkl, ch8, 6.
Box 48, Embio, Bkl, ch9 16.
Box 0 0
EMbio, Bkl, ch9, 16.
Box
0 0
EMbio, Bkl, chlO, 5.
Box > J 5 »
0 0
EMbio, Bkl, chlO, 10
Box 0 0
EMbio, Bkl, chlO, 14
Box **
0 0
EMbio, Bkl, chlO, 15
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chll, 2.
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chll, 3.
Box
0 0
* 3 *
EMbio, chll, p3.
This is written by John Moore , Box 48, EMbio, BKl,
chll, 4.
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chll, 5.
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chll, 7.
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chll, 10.
Lists 92.
Lists 96.
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chlO, 16.
Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chlO, 17.
Box 47.
265
379. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch9, 38.
380. Box 44, "Edwin Markham by Ruth Le Prade," 6-page
paper given to SCWPC, 6-4-68, 3.
381. BOX
C O
EMbio, Bkl, ch9, 29
382. BOX
C O
EMbio, Bkl, ch9, 14
383. BOX
C O
* *
EMbio, Bkl, ch9, 9.
384. BOX 0 0
Embio, Bkl, ch9, 14
385. BOX
C O
EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 24
386. Box
C O
EMbio, Bkl, ch5, 24
387. BOX
C O
EMbio, ch7,
•
C O
H
388. page 70 •
389. BOX
**
C O
EMbio, Bkl, ch7, 19
390. Sona Tree. 14.
391. Box 0 0
EMbio, Bkl, ch8, 3.
392. BOX 0 0
EMbio, Bkl, chll
, 9
393. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chll, 13.
394. Box 45, article "Cheyney Seeks Aid for Poets,"
Philadelphia Record. 5-27-34.
395. Box 45, Lamanda Park Herald. 3-13-36.
396. Box 45, Lloyd Frank Merrill, "Tribute to Dr. Ralph
Cheyney."
397. Box 45, green Box 1.
398. Box 45, green box 1.
399. Box 45.
400. Box 45, green box 1.
401. Box 45, green box 1.
266
402. Box 45, green box 1.
403. Box 45.
1404. Box 45, Ralph Cheyney's column scrapbook.
t
!405. Box 45, green box 2.
,406. Box 45, green box 2.
407. Trent, Cheyney, and William Sawyer, eds.
Philadelphia: Spring, 1930, Vol 1, No2 in Box 45,
green box 2.
408. Contemporary Vision. 14.
409. Contemporary Vision. 15.
410. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chll, 13.
411. BOX 48, EMbio, BK1, chll, 14.
412. Box 48, EMbio, BK1, chll, 1.
413. RLP quotes the Pontiac Daily Press. 5-23-30, Box 48
EMbio, Bkl, chl2, 1.
414. Box
K
0 0
■ < #
EMbio Bkl, chl2, 3.
415. BOX 48, Embio, Bkl, chl2, 3.
416. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chl2, 5.
417. Box 47, RLP to Dr. Curtis
C O
I T )
1
0 0
r H
1
0 1
k .
418. BOX
C O
EMbio, Bkl, chl2, 7.
419. BOX 47, RLP to Dr. Curtis
•
0 0
in
I
C O
H
1
< n
420. Box 48 EMbio, Bkl, chll,
421. BOX 48, EMbio, Bkl, chll, 15.
422. Box 0 0
EMbio, Bkl, chl2, 8.
423. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chl2, 8.
424. Box
6/
FH to RLP, 6-4-36.
t
I
j 425. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chl2
, 9.
426. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch2 , 29.
!
! 427. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2 , ch2, the
428. Box 6.
429. Box 6, 12-7-36 •
430. Box 6, Eugene Storey to RLP
431. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, chi, 3 .
432 . Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chll, 8.
433 . Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chll, 16
434. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chi 2
, 14
435. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chl2
, 14
436. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chl2, 10
437. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, chl2, 10
438. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, chi,
11,
439. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2 , chi, 12.
440. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch6, 2 .
441. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch6, 7.
442. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch6, 12.
443. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2 , chi, 14,
444. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, chi, 18,
445. Box 48 EMbio Bk2, chi, 18.
446. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, chi, 20.
447. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, chi, 21.
448. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, chi, 21.
449. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch7, 20.
Wall, 31.
-18-36.
2-15-37.
2-23-37.
2-27-37.
268
450. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch2, "The Wall," letter RLP to
j FH, 4-10-37.
j 451. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, RLP to FH, 4-10-37.
|452. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, FH to RLP, 4-10-37.
{453. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch2, "the Wall" 17.
I
|454. BOX 48, EMbio, Bk2, "The Wall" pl7.
1455. EMbio, Bk2, ch2, "The Wall" 21.
i
|456. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch2, 2.
1457. Box ,48 EMbio, Bk2, "The Deadly Jest" ch4, 4.
I
458. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch2, 19.
459. BOX 6, RLP to FH, 5-5-37.
460. Box 6, RLP to FH, 5-5-37.
461. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, Ch5, 4.
462. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch6, 13.
463. EMbio, Bk2, ch6, 14.
464. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch6, 14.
465. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch6, 15.
466. BOX 6, 9-13-37.
467. BOX 6, 11-1-37.
468. BOX 48, EMbio, Bk2, Ch6, 19.
469. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch6, 20.
470. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, "Deadly Jest" 12.
471. Box 48.
472. BOX 48, EMbio, Bk2, chi, 7.
473. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, chi, 8.
474. Box 6, RLP to FH, 1-6-38.
475. Box 6, Le Prade to Hamilton, 7-14-36.
476. BOX 6, RLP to FH, 3-10-37.
477. Box 6, RLP to Hamilton, 8-8-38.
478. BOX 6, RLP to FH, 10-3-38.
479. Box 6, letter to FH, 3-4-38.
480. Box 6, RLP to FH, 3-31-37.
481. BOX 6, 4-6-37.
482. BOX 6, RLP to FH 4-10-37.
483. BOX 6, RLP to FH, 1-6-38.
484. Box 48, EMbio, Bkl, ch9, 15.
485. Box 6 RLP to FH, 5-24-37.
486. Box 6 RLP to FH, 6-17-37.
487. BOX 6, RLP to FH, 1-15-3.
488. BOX 6, RLP to FH, 1-15-37.
489. Later Jack Greenhill.
490. Box 45, green Box 1.
491. Box 2.
492. Box 6, RLP to FH, 11-22-37.
493. BOX 6, to FH, 1-6-38.
494. The painting is now at the Getty Museum in Malibu.
495. Box 48, EMbio, Bk2, ch6, 1.
496. BOX 6, RLP to FH, 9-1-37.
497. Box 6, to FH, 4-25-39.
498. Box 13, Voll, 320.
270
499. Starr Inventincr the Dream 275.
500. Box
6/
letter, Eric Mayne to PLP, 10-12-35.
501. Box 6,
Announcements.
502. Box 6, 9-3-34.
503. Box
6,
letter, Eric Mayne to RLP, 9-3-34.
504. Box 6, 3-13-35.
505. Box 6.
506. Box
6,
9-3-34.
507. Box 6 , 12-13-34.
508. Box 6,
9-20-43.
509. Box
6,
4-25-64.
510. Box 6.
511. RLP to Eugene Storey, 11-6-43.
512. Box 2, RLP to FH, 7-22-56.
513. Box 6.
514. Box
6/
to Eric Mayne.
515. Box 6, 1938 Vol xliv number 1 80.
516. Box 6,
January, 1937.
517. A Woman Free. 38.
518. Note: I am not sure of this professor's last
Le Prade's handwriting is difficult for me to
519. Box 47 •
520. Box 47 •
521. Box 47•
522. Box 47, article by Elizabeth Brewer.
271 j
I
523. BOX 47.
]
524. BOX 47.
I
525. BOX 47.
I
526. Box 47. !
j
527. Box 47.
528. note: illustrated by Anna Brooks Wyckoff from the
Cumnock Creative Group.
i
529. Sona Tree. "Only the Dreams are True" 67. j
530. note: I am thinking specifically of "Araby," the !
first story in The Dubliners!
!
531. Song Tree. "Songs for Today," 11
532. Song Tree. "Songs for Today," 11. |
!
533. Song Tree. " 'Gene' Debs" 48. .
534. Song Tree. 64. j
535. Song Tree. "The Wind and the Voice," 35. j
536. "The Poet," 32.
537. Personal interview with Gloria Franzen, 3-14-91.
538. Box 6, letter to Selman Stone, 6-28-43.
539. Eugene Storey to RLP, 8-3-43.
540. BOX 6, 7-5-43.
541. Box 6, Eugene Storey to RLP, 4-7-44.
542. Box 6, Eugene Storey to RLP, 4-16-44.
543. Box 6, RLP to Veteran's Administration, 1-11-45.
544. Box 6, clipping "Fire Commission Aide Learns of j
Son's Death."
545. Box 6, War Department telegram, 5-28-45. i
546.
547.
548.
549.
550.
551.
552.
553.
554.
555.
556.
557.
558.
559.
560.
561.
562 .
563.
564.
565.
566.
567.
568.
569.
Box 1.
Los Anaeles Evening Herald Express. 6-6-45.
Box 6.
BOX 2, RLP to FH, 1-5-57.
BOX 6, 6—12—45.
Box 6, Dolores to RLP, 12-28-61.
Box 6, Dale Sheets to RLP on Pomona College
stationery, 3-24-46.
Box 6
note:
Box 6
Box 6
Box 6
Box 6
BOX 6
Box 6
Box 6
BOX 6
Box 6
Box 6
Box 6
Box 6
Box 6
BOX 6
BOX 6
4-25-35.
at 1617 Park Avenue in Los Angeles.
2-27-43.
6-18-34.
Barbara Fritchie to RLP, 5-25-39.
telegram Warren Stone to RLP, 9-12-46.
Stone to RLP, 5-17-39.
5-8-52.
5-2-43.
This may be Mrs. Gaw. 1-19-43.
3-18-44.
2-8-40.
printed cards.
1-26-43.
570. BOX 6, 10-8-52.
571. Box 7, RLP to Marcelle Reber, 11-1-52.
572. Box 6, RLP to Stone, 6-28-43.
573. RLP to Mistral, 3-27-47.
574. Sono Tree. ’ ’ Gypsy Ballad” 45.
575. G v p s v Love Sonas. 18-19.
576. Box 6.
577. BOX 7.
578. Box 7, RLP to Marcelle Reber, 5-24-55.
579. Box 7, Marcelle Reber to RLP, 2-6-47.
580. Box 7, RLP to Marcelle Reber, 2-27-49.
581. Box 7, Marcelle Reber to RLP, 2-24-47.
582. Box 7, letter, Marcelle Reber to RLP, 2-3-52.
583. Box 7, 3-9-49.
584. Box 7.
585. Box 7, RLP to Marcelle Reber, 5-31-60.
586. Box 7, RLP to Marcelle Reber, 7-24-49.
587. Box 6. This poem is signed Ruth Simpson [maiden
name?].
588. Box 5
589. Box 5.
590. Box 5.
591. Box 6, business card.
592. Box 45, green box 1.
593. Box 6, 10-28-51.
274
594. Box 7, RLP to Marcelle Reber, 4-12-53.
595. Box 1.
I
I
'596. Markham gets this name from Thomas Lake Harris'
! California utopian community. i
1
I I
;597. Box 47, letter RLP to Dr. Curtis, 9-18-58.
I
598. Box 45, green box 1. I
i
599. Box 1, 10-20-53.
i
600. Box 1, 8-25-53. ,
601. Box 1, 11-11-53. 1
602. Box 1. |
603. BOX 1.
I
604. BOX 1, 5-19-55.
1
605. BOX 1.
I
606. BOX 1. j
607. Box 1, 1-3-55.
608. same letter, 1-3-55. j
i
609. BOX 1. !
I
610. Box 1. I
611. Box 1, newspaper clipping.
612. Box 1, RLP to Angela Morgan 1-3-55.
613. BOX 1, 1-30-62.
614. BOX 1, 4-18-62.
615. Box 48.
616. For instance, Ezra Pound's Cantos or T. S. Eliot's
The Wasteland.
617. Box 13, Vol 1.
I
618. Wellek lecture, University of California at Irvine,
4-90l .
619. BOX 13, Vol 1.
620. BOX 13, Vol
1/
5.
621. BOX 13, Vol
1#
18.
622. BOX 13, Vol
If
18.
623. Box 13, Voll
624. BOX 13, Vol
If
43 .
625. BOX 13, Voll
9
43.
626. BOX 13, Vol
1,
49.
627. Box 13, Vol 1.
628. BOX 47, RLP to Jerry,
629. Personal interview, 3-14-91.
630. Box 13, Voll, 84.
631. pages 227, 250.
632. Reading, University of Southern California, 2-6-91.
633. Box 13, Vol
1,
88.
634. BOX 13, Voll
• /
92.
635. BOX 13, Vol
If
92.
636. Box 13, Vol
If
121.
637. Box 13, Vol
If
137.
638. BOX 13, Vol
If
257.
639. BOX 13, Vol
If
265.
640. Box 13, Vol
1,
265.
641. BOX 13, Vol
If
266.
276 ;
t
642. Box 13, Vol 1, 279.
643. BOX 13, Vol 1, 279.
644. BOX 13, Vol 1, 50.
645. Box 13, Vol 1, 51?
646. BOX 13, Vol 1, 295.
647. Box 1.
648. BOX13 Voll 297.
649. BOX 13, Vol 1, 303.
i
!650. BOX 13, Voll, 304.
|651. BOX 13, Voll.
I
652. Eclogue I.
I
653. BOX 13, Vol 1.
654. Box 2, RLP to FH, 1-5-57.
655. Box 2, 5—26—57.
656. BOX 2, 7-24-57.
657. BOX 2, 6-17-57.
658. Box 2, RLP to FH, 10-20-57. Gloria Gartz, now
living in Monarch Bay, near Laguna, California,
could not or chose not to remember Ruth Le Prade
when X spoke to her on the phone, summer 1991.
659. Box 7, Trollope notes, 6.
i
660. Box 47, letter, Annie Laurie Leech to RLP.
661. Box 48, Standing Bear scrapbook, 16.
662. Box 48, Standing Bear scrapbook, 16.
663. Box 48, Standing Bear scrapbook, 1.
i
(664. Box 48, Standing Bear scrapbook 3. j
665. Box 48 Standing Bear scrapbook, 47.
666. Box 47. L. A. Sentinel. 2-14-58.
667. Box 47, Annie Laurie Leech to RLP, 3-13-58.
668. Box 47, 6-14-58.
669. Box 47, 6-14-58.
670. Box 47.
671. Box 44.
672. Box 44.
673 . Box 5, Instruments of Gift.
674. Box 5.
675. Box 5, Carl M. Franklin V.P., Financial Affairs
University of Southern California to RLP.
676. Box 5.
677. Personal interview, 3-14-91.
678 . California Eacrle. 5-19-55.
679. Box 13, Vol 4, 74.
680. Box 13, Vol 4, 6, 3-4-55.
681. Box 2, Vol 4, 57.
682 . Box 13, Vol 4, 98, "Prejudice in America Today."
683. Box 2, Vol 4, 57.
684. Box 13, Vol 4, 104, 6-8-59.
685. Box 13, Vol 4, 29, 1-26-56.
686. Box 2, RLP to FH, 1-13-58.
687. Box 13, Vol 4, 99, 11-29-58.
688. Box 13, Vol 4, 96, 11-27-58.
277 ~|
i
278
689. BOX 13, Vol 4, 99, 11-29-58.
690. BOX 13, Vol 4, 67.
691. BOX 45.
j692. Box 7, Florence Kirkpatrick folder, letter to
| Mary, 6-3-6?.
693. Box 7.
j 694 . Box 1.
695. Box 48
•
1696. Box 45
•
697. Box 44, Invitation.
698. BOX 44, Invitation.
699. BOX 44, Invitation.
700. BOX 45 •
701. BOX 46 •
702. BOX 6.
703. BOX 5, Instruments of Gift.
704. Lists Index 46.
705. Lists Index.
706. Box 47, 9-18-58.
707. Box
1,
Cheva i i1ier's small turquoise notebook, 7.
708. Box
1,
Cheva i11ier's small turquoise notebook, 7.
709. Box
1,
Chevaillier's small turquoise notebook, 13.
710. Box
1,
Cheva i11ier's small turquoise notebook.
711. Box 6.
712. Box 6, nd.
713. Box 6, letter, DeForest Sanford to RLP, 5-25-34.
714. Lists, 79.
715. Lists, 83.
716. page 82.
717. Lists, 101.
718. Graff, 68.
719. page 122.
720. page 134.
721. page 141.
722. Box 2, Lillian Williamson's notes on Edwin Markham
in the Poets Garden, 1933.
723. Box 44, 6-page paper, 2.
724. Box 44, 6-page paper, 3.
725. Box 44, 6-page paper, 4.
726. BOX 44.
727. Box 46.
728. Personal Interview, 3-14-91.
729. Interview with Gloria Franzen, 3-14-91.
730. BOX 13, Vol 1, 286.
731. Box 13, Vol 1, 43.
732. Box 48, "Dirge for Delight."
733. Box 48, green notebook, Arthur E. Briggs, 6-3-65.
734. A Woman Free. "In the End," 37.
735. After Derrida, Dissemination. 3.
736. Box 13, Vol 4, "Too Deep for Tears," 35, 5-22-56.

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Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC11257810

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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses