Essays of E. B. White (37 page)

Friends

I. He

I've sat here all the afternoon, watching her busy fingers send

That needle in and out. How soon, I wonder, will she reach the end?

Embroidery! I can't see how a girl of Molly's common sense

Can spend her time like that. Why, now
—
just look at that! I may be dense
,

But, somehow, I don't see the fun in punching lots of holes down through

A piece of cloth; and, one by one, sewing them up. But Molly'll do

A dozen of them, right around

That shapeless bit of stuff she's found.

A dozen of them! Just like that!

And think it's sense she's working at.

But then, she's just a girl (although she's quite the best one of the lot)

And I'll just have to let her sew, whether it's foolishness or not.

II. She

He's sat here all the afternoon, talking about an awful game;

One boy will not be out till June, and then he may be always lame.

Foot-ball! I'm sure I can't see why a boy like Bob
—
so good and kind
—

Wishes to see poor fellows lie hurt on the ground. I may be blind
,

But somehow, I don't see the fun. Some one calls, “14-16-9”;

You kick the ball, and then you run and try to reach a white chalk-line.

And Bob would sit right there all day

And talk like that, and never say

A single word of sense; or so

It seems to me. I may not know.

But Bob's a faithful friend to me. So let him talk that game detested, And I will smile and seem to be most wonderfully interested.

I suppose there exist a few adults who never even heard of the St. Nicholas League—people whose childhood was spent on the other side of the railroad tracks reading the
Youth's Companion;
whose fathers didn't give them a subscription to
St. Nick
and who consequently never knew what it was to stand, as we League members stood, “for intelligent patriotism, and for protection of the oppressed, whether human beings, dumb animals or birds.” I well remember how vital to one's progress in the League was kindness-to-animals. Without kindness-to-animals, you didn't get far in the St. Nicholas League, unless, like Edna Millay, you were really talented. (A lot of us boys had no perceptible talent, but were just sissies who stayed indoors and read magazines while normal kids were out playing I Spy.) It was a buddy of mine two houses up the block, an observant child named E. Barrett Brady, wise in the ways of the world, who put me on to kindness-to-animals in its relation to winning a silver or a gold badge. Barrett said it was worth while to put plenty of it in. As I look through the back numbers and examine my own published works, I detect running through them an amazing note of friendliness toward dumb creatures, an almost virulent sympathy for dogs, cats, horses, bears, toads, and robins. I was kind to animals in all sorts of weather almost every month for three or four years. The results were satisfactory. I won both the silver and the gold badge, and was honorably mentioned several times. This precocious anticipation of an editor's needs is a sad and revealing chapter in my life; I was after results, apparently, and was not writing, or drawing, for Art's own sake. Still, the League motto was “Live to learn and learn to live.”

Membership in the League was anyone's for the asking. The first thing that happened when you joined was that they sent you a copper button, engraved with the League's name and the League emblem (the stars and stripes) in colors (red, white, and blue). This button was, as advertised, “beautiful in design and workmanship.” Sweet as it was, it was just a starter, just a taste of what life was to be like. That was the beauty of the League—it came through handsomely every so often with some tangible reward. Each month six silver badges and six gold badges were distributed among the twelve successful adolescents of the month, for the best two drawings, the best two poems, the best two stories or essays, the best two amateur photographs, the best two puzzles, and the best two sets of answers to the puzzles in the previous issue. These puzzles, let me say, were sons of guns. It was a never-failing source of wonder that anybody ever managed to get all the answers. Someone always did, though. A child named Ringgold W. Lardner was on the honor roll for puzzles in April 1900; and Stephen Benét, John C. Farrar, Alan Dunn, Wilella Waldorf, and Louis Kronenberger all made the puzzle award in their time. Each month subjects were suggested for drawings and poems (or you could choose your own subject). In the drawing group there was always the chance to try a “Heading for January” or a “Heading for September” or whatever the forthcoming month happened to be. There were no dues of any sort, which perhaps accounts for the League's piling up some two-hundred thousand members in its thirty-five years of existence.

We Leaguers were busy youngsters. Many of us had two or three strings to our bows and were not content till we had shone in every department, including wild-life photography. Little Robert Benchley was an exception. He was elevated to the roll of honor in September 1903, for a drawing called ‘The Dollies' Lesson,” the same month that Newman Levy won distinction in drawing and Conrad P. Aiken was mentioned for a poem called “A Lullaby.” But although Benchley got in near the start of the League (it was organized in 1899), he showed no perseverance. “The Dollies' Lesson” was his only appearance. He dropped out early and was never heard from again, reminding one forcibly of one of the tenets of the League, that “book study alone is not followed by the best results. Direct friendship with the woods and fields and healthful play are necessary to the proper development of both mind and body.” Benchley, knowing little of the woods and fields, and nothing about kindness to animals, was an ephemeral member.

Most of us were stayers. Aiken appeared in print four times in 1903 and once in 1904. E. Babette Deutsch rang the bell no fewer than nineteen times during her childhood; John C. Farrar twenty-two; E. Vincent Millay twenty; Susan Warren Wilbur twenty-one. Joseph Auslander made ten successful appearances in two years, and was twice publicly reprimanded by having his name published on the “Careless Roll”—once for no address, once for sending in a contribution without the proper endorsement. (All League contributors had to get a parent or guardian to write on the back “This is Joseph's own work” and sign it. If you forgot to, your name was published among the Careless.) Morris Ryskind was careless twice in the spring of 1913, but later redeemed himself with a poem, “Dawn,” and a prose piece, “A Family Tradition,” both of which would have been published had space permitted.

It would have been unsafe to predict the professional future of the Leaguers from the type of work they turned in. Viola Beer-bohm Tree drew pictures for the League and turned out to be an actress. Laura Benét wrote several prose pieces and turned into a poet. Elinor Wylie (Elinor M. Hoyt) distinguished herself twice, both times for drawing; and that young comer Ringgold W. Lardner gained double honors—in verse and in puzzles. (Note: his poem was not considered good enough to publish, and was merely mentioned.) Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote a poem J. Deems Taylor and Janet Flanner, in a mad May of 1901, rose to fame together, each with a drawing called “Household Joys,” a suggested subject. Master Taylor scored again later, copping a silver badge in December 1901, for his photograph “Moonrise in December,” a snapshot of an extremely peaceful snow scene. Alan Seeger succeeded with a photograph “From My Best Negative.” Sigmund G. Spaeth, with his eye on timely topics, wrote a poem about the first springtime of the twentieth century. John C. Mosher took signal honors with his camera in 1906, and, had space permitted, would have enlivened the January 1906 issue with his pleasing photograph “The View from My Home.” Norman Geddes was mentioned in 1909 for a drawing, “My Best Friend's Favorite Occupation.” And so it went. They were happy days.

Contributions came even from across the sea. A little English girl named Vita V. Sackville-West, bursting with an ancient pride, wrote in 1902 from Knole, Sevenoaks, Kent, England:

And another little English girl, Stella Benson, was taking cash prizes for her verses, and writing thank-you letters to the editor telling him she didn't really deserve any money.

We Leaguers even grew up and married one another. I married a League girl (silver badge for prose); and I see by the files that William R. Benét did, too. His girl was Elinor M. Hoyt, who received honorable mention for “A Heading for March” in 1901, three months before William received honorable mention for a poem “When School Is Done.” My girl's sister was a gold-badge holder: she won it in wild-life photography by sneaking up with her camera on an affable duck in a public park in Worcester, Mass. And speaking of photography, one of the most unflinching of the League's camera enthusiasts, judging from published results, was a tot named Lois B. Long. Apparently she was banging away with her Brownie from morning till night, and as a result we have, credited to her, a picture of a girl standing in a wheat field, a picture called “Face to Face,” another called “At the Corner,” and another called “Where I Spent My Vacation.”

We were a hardy and a versatile lot, all right. There were William Faulkner, Alice Hughes, Normal Klein, John Macy, Corey Ford, Frances Frost, Ward Greene, John S. Martin, Margaret E. Sangster, Niven Busch, Jr., Robert Garland, Peggy Bacon, Faith Baldwin, Margaret Kennedy, Clarence C. Little, Reginald Marsh, Bennett Cerf, Kay Boyle, Alice Harvey, Frieda Inescort, Weare Holbrook, Horatio Winslow, Lee Simonson, Marjorie Allen Seiffert, Richard Whorf, Anne Parrish, Leane Zugsmith, Clement Wood, Edmund Wilson, Lyle Saxon, Marion Strobel, Mary F. Watkins, all the Benéts, Jeanne de Lamarter, Henry Dreyfuss, Susan Ertz, Elizabeth Hawes, and how many others I'll never know.

For ten years (from 1899 to 1909) the League was edited by Albert Bigelow Paine. I bought a copy of
St. Nicholas
the other day to see what changes time had wrought. The magazine is now grown tall and limp, like
Collier's
—strange to the touch. The format is changed, but the League goes on, in its fashion. The proprietors have, it seems eased the bitter problem of silver, gold, and cash awards by tying up, in the approved American manner, with manufacturers of the indispensable tools of the arts, fountain pens and drawing materials. I noted, uneasily, that a current minor named Ruth Blaesing, 13, was receiving for her “Ode to the Earth” not the silver badge of courage but the Waterman Pen Company's award of a fountain pen. And that Rose Doyle, 13, was receiving, for her drawing, the “First Higgins' Ink Award.”

But the cheering thing was that the contributions in the current issue showed the same tenderness for life, the same reverent preoccupation with Nature, the same earnest morality that we early Leaguers showed in the days of our glory. No graduate can read over the old copies without a lump in the throat; for beneath the callow phrase and the young solemnity, the roots of beauty sometimes throve. Listen to the Miss Millay of November 1908, and you can hear already the singer singing:

And hark to the William R. Benét, of Watervliet Arsenal, West Troy, N. Y., examining the harvest at the age of fifteen:

Yon lie the fields all golden with grain

(Oh, come, ye Harvesters, reap!)

The dead leaves are falling with autumn's brown stain

(Oh, come, ye Harvesters, reap!)

For soon sinks the sun to his bed in the west
,

And cawing the crows fly each one to his nest;

The grain will soon wither, so harvest your best.

(Oh, come, ye Harvesters, reap!)

Hear young Briton Niven Busch, Jr., before he had discovered the cinema, finding peace in August 1919, in a calm sonnet beginning:

And search the heart of youth with fourteen-year-old Stella Benson:

                           
Borne upwards on its gold and silver wings
    
                              
Rises the Heart of Youth
,