The Modern Troubadour

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Empire Club,--It gives me a great deal of pleasure to be with you all today. I have seen assemblies like this, more of them in England than in the United States; more of them in the Western Provinces of Canada than in the United States. They imply good-will. I suppose that citizens of the British Empire and of the United States will never be at the end of comparing cuts and bruises and other peculiarities, because when one has a sore left finger the other has a sore right finger, or something of that kind-so different and yet the same. (Laughter)

My friend Robert Nicholls, one of the most promising young poets of the Anglo-Saxon world, I found about three years ago in Los Angeles, after a Japanese career; I found him there in the Fox studio trying to write a scenario; and like all bullheaded Englishmen, he knew more about the United States than I did. (Laughter) Of all places to bury himself that was the worst, if he wanted to get hold of the United States or anything in this world worth

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Vachel Lindsay is well known as a lecturer on art, a prolific contributor to magazines, an author and his "Collected Poems" form a considerable body of popular poetry of real artistic merit. He has humor and is described as "the spiritual descendant of Mark Twain and James Whitcomb Riley-as American as Riley's pumpkins or the whitewash on Tom Sawyer's fence."

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while. I say it plainly, if Fox ever produced a film I have never seen it. (Laughter) In Los Angeles last summer we found that Robert had graduated; he had learned something; he was in the studio of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. (Laughter) While there is a great deal for Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford to learn, there is certainly a great deal they could teach Robert Nicholls; and I am very glad he is there at last, reporting and writing for the London Times, the point of view of the furthest west of the United States, a very worthy and dignified situation for one who wants to learn. That is a sample of how slowly we come to learn and really learn one another. I am sure that every hour of my life in this city I have said things unBritish of which I was utterly unconscious.

I remember, when my mother and I were in London in 1920, we had a very beautiful welcome from all the British poets, including Robert Nicholls, and he had a great deal to do with our going to England and our welcome there. So much for preliminary to this disgraceful story, which I have never before made public, and which I hope you will set right by cable, if necessary.

We must have hands across the sea. (Hear, hear) All citizens of the British Empire chew gum (laughter); but they do it behind closed doors. Americans are more open about it; they chew their gum on the street without shame (laughter); they seem all to be citizens of that sacred Indian city called Moose Jaw. (Laughter) We know that we chew gum and we don't even deplore it. I might add that Mr. Wrigley told me, confidentially, that he sells more chewing gum in the British Empire than on American soil, and therefore he has built that wonderful tower, all white, on Michigan Boulevard, Chicago, with British money (laughter); nevertheless, the folk of the British Empire prefer to imagine that only Americans chew gum. When my mother and I first landed in England--to get back to where I began--we were waited on by very many worthwhile and charming reporters. I had heard that all British reporters told the truth, and that all British newspapers were Conservative, and so we just opened our hearts. We leaned on their shoulders. We cried down their backs. We told them everything. We showed them the old family album. We were perfectly confidential. All went well; these simple-hearted Americans were not betrayed; but a very sweet young reporter, representing the most Conservative newspaper, called upon us and interviewed me for an hour and a half about everything, from my ancestors forward. I told him everything without stint, and when he reached the door, just as he put on his hat he said, "Is there anything you have missed?" I said, "I have not missed a thing"; but my mother piped out, "The coffee is rather bad," and I said "Yes, and I tried to get some chewing gum yesterday, and had a hard time finding it; they brought it out from under the counter, from a place I had not expected them to conceal it, and I had to go two streets for it, and they brought it out as if it was a disgrace for me, but they took my money just the same." The next day when we opened the paper we found great headlines--"Poet wants his Chewing Gum; goes wildly from Store to Store looking for Chewing Gum, wishing and seeking for it in vain in the streets of London." (Laughter) For the moral of the tale I refer you to Wrigley's Tower, built with British money.

But to be serious, now that that story is told; one of the elements of good-will and understanding in the whole Anglo-Saxon world is the magnificent statue of Lincoln set up at the close of the war near Westminster Abbey among the very great statues of Cromwell and others who have made British history. Further all the great men of England went to the Lyric Theatre to see what, up to that time, had been a struggling play--John Drinkwater's "Lincoln." They went there until that theatre was the most popular and famous in London. Then the Americans began to flock there. Drinkwater's "Lincoln" was peculiar; John Drinkwater had a general idea that Lincoln was a kind of Thomas Carlyle in a tall hat, and he was so advertised. I saw the British poster; there he was, leaning on his staff, a sort of variation of Whistler's portrait of Carlyle. That is all very well; it is better than the idea of Lincoln that goes on the American dollar bill; they have an engraved portrait of him there that is almost as bad in an entirely different direction. Nevertheless, that "Lincoln" came to America, and it was even a greater success upon United States soil. One of the refrains was this:

"The stars of the heavens are looking kindly down on the grave of old John Brown;

John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, But his soul goes marching on."

That old story of John Brown was behind this story of "Lincoln," which was a success in both hemispheres.

I am going to sing for you, and with you, too, my song about John Brown. Imagine him as the great Liberator of the African race; the man who, from that standpaint at least, was a great man, who seemed to set them free. Imagine John Brown haunting the imagination of some simple negro preacher until he is one of the saints of the Bible. So this negro preacher addresses his congregation on an imaginary trip to Palestine; and after describing all the other wonders in that semi-serious vein which these negro preachers always employ--that high spirit, and that slow roll of eloquence-he at last describes John Brown in Palestine, sitting on the rim of the throne he has painted. There is his gracious wife at his side, and there his seven heroic sons as his personal body-guard, he sits in judgment upon the world, with his shot-gun across his knee, looking out upon all mankind and judging them as to whether their leaders are true liberators or no. For a hundred years the war-cry was "Liberty and Freedom and Free Speech, and a Free Press." Now--today--I should say the war-cry is, "Peace, and again Peace, and once again Peace"; and the same idea of Freedom in those days, around 1865, have been fought for and bled for and died for; and now we are thinking, day and night, as to how international peace may be secured as the first goal of mankind. But please step backward into the days when Liberty and Free Speech and Free Press were the first ideas, when men like John Brown were willing to die for the liberty of the most degraded and the most depressed of mankind.

(The speaker then chanted the following poem, employing the peculiar cadences in imitation of the negro preacher's style, the audience joining in the question, "What did you see in Palestine?" After each statement of the preacher, "Aw've bin in Palestine." Then, after each verse, the audience joined in the refrain, "Old John Brown.")

I have been asked to read for you a song of my own writing in August, 1914, on the day war was declared. I think it was the day the Russian army was set in motion-the last great European army plunged into the cauldron. It was like this; my father and mother were in China; the streets of Springfield were deserted; it was one of the very Hottest days Springfield ever knew, and most of the citizens had hied away from the heat to summer resorts. I remember the empty streets; I remember going to the post office to mail a letter, and coming across a street I noticed on a window of the Illinois Journal a telegram stating that the last army in E:urope had been set in motion, and the continent of Europe, which had been the playground, the toy hop, the fairy-land of America, the place of dreams, hadd suddenly become a slaughter-house and a shambles--a thing incredible to the ordinary citizen of the United States. I walked two or three doors north and saw what was also incredible--that the New York Stock Exchange was closed and every bank in America was closed, and the people were utterly astounded by the news. It was a thing beyond all human credibility; the leading citizens of our town could not understand any of it. I had a book coming but, and it ended with a poem on the moon--just a moon poem, the kind of moon poems that poets write. I would not have that book come out with that thing in it; so I telegraphed to my publisher, and he replied that if I sent him within twenty-four hours a new section it would go in. So if you see that book you will find it headed August 14th-"Abraham Lincoln walks at Midnight in Springfield, Ohio."

It is portentious and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town, A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old courthouse, pacing up and down.

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards He lingers where his children used to play, Or through the market, on the well-worn stones He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black, A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl Make him the quaint great figure that men love, The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now. He is among us:-as in times before! And we who toss and lie awake for long Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.

His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings, Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep? Too many peasants fight, they know not why, Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. He sees the dreadnaughts scouring the main. He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now The bitterness, the folly and the pain. He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn Shall come; the shining hope of Europe free: The league of sober folk, the Worker's Earth, Bringing long peace to cornland, alp and sea.

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, That all his hours of travail here for men Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace That he may sleep upon his hill again?

(The speaker resumed his seat amid loud applause.) PRESIDENT BURNS: I am not going to be satisfied, on your behalf, unless, just following this poem, Mr. Lindsay will recite for us that wonderful poem How General Booth entered heaven. (Applause)

MR. LINDSAY: My dear friends, if I am to recite that poem I must be indulged unless I refresh my memory, though I have recited it a million times.

There is a wonderful book which I would recommend to you--Sabatini's "Life of St. Francis," which reproduces Matthew Arnold's wonderful translation of St. Francis' Hymn to the Sun. It is the most passionate tribute to a real Christian that I have ever read; it equals one of the tributes of William Dean Howells to Tolstoy and a few of the most passionate tributes to Lord Buddha, Prince of Abkar, who broke the heart of Asia with his beautiful doctrine. The doctrine of Renunciation is not easy; it is a very difficult doctrine, and I would not profess it or hold any man to it; yet there have been certain great sinners who have set themselves to understand this matter. But what has this to do with William Booth? Well, I should say that after St. Francis and Tolstoy he is the first man who gave the impression, the world around, of renunciation. In him the world once more saw that picture. It was of deliberate intent that he went into the lowest slums of London, and he made famous the phrase, "The Submerged Tenth." He took all so low that there were none lower. He enquired of the police and physicians as to who were the lowest, the most degraded, the most poverty-stricken, and he found them among the notorious names on the police list. They were the people he wanted, the people given up by expert religionists, and he haid, "They are the people to be saved; we are going to lift society up from the very bottom; we are going to begin in the sub-cellar"; well, he and his followers went into the lowest slums of London. He put costumes on those people, put them under military discipline, put into their withering back-bone the ramrod of military order, put them in command over one another and sent them marching around the world shouting for King Jesus, under all the banners of the world. But there was one banner they all had--that of Blood and Fire and Salvation. Well, there has been a certain irony in the history of this institution, as in the history of all of them; it has now become middle-class, respectable, Y.M.C.A. The only possible way for another General Booth to do a similar work is to begin again in the holy name of St. Francis or John the Baptist. These things have to be begun again evermore. But when you and I were children we heard only shocking stories of the terrible songs sung by the Salvation Army. We heard of the meeting on the main square, of these people being mobbed because of those terrible songs. They were degraded songs, made over a little bit into religion, but still ungrammatical and grotesque, and as we or our fathers thought, supremely irreverent.

But there was one song they sang:

(To be sung to the tune of "The Blood of the Lamb" with

indicated instruments.)

(Loud and continued applause)

PRESIDENT BURNS: I want to pay Mr. Lindsay this compliment; when we saw John Drinkwater's "Lincoln," my experience, and the experience of a great many, was that we just went quietly out; we did not want to talk to anybody, nor we did not want anybody to say anything. That is just the way we feel today. Thank you, Mr. Lindsay.