Part 18 (1/2)
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY
(1869-1910)
William Vaughn Moody was throughout his life regarded as the most promising of the younger American poets. And when he died in 1810 most critics mourned for the unwritten lyrics and poetic dramas of which American literature had thus been robbed; they mentioned the author as a gifted youth, whom fate had removed at the beginning of a splendid career.
To a certain extent this att.i.tude was a tribute to the youthful spirit of William Vaughn Moody, to his vivacity, energy and cheerfulness. But it was chiefly a new ill.u.s.tration of the fact that nowadays poets flower late in the season. Moody was forty-one years old when he died--and there was a time when the poet of forty was considered well past the meridian of his genius. Most of the great poets established their fame before they were thirty years old--Keats and Sh.e.l.ley died at twenty-five and twenty-nine respectively. But nowadays the poet of forty-five is still called young and the poet of thirty our kind critics consider a precocious infant.
As a matter of stern fact, it is doubtful that American literature has really lost much by Moody's death. He wrote ”Gloucester Moors” and the ”Ode in Time of Hesitation” and ”The Faith Healer.” The conscientious student of his work cannot escape the conviction that in these he gave the world all that he really had to give. Of course he would have written more--nature lyrics, poems on political and sociological questions, poetical dramas dealing with philosophical themes, prose plays of modern American life. But toward the end of his brief life his work was not gaining in force. Readers of ”The Death of Eve” have little sorrow over the poet's failure to complete this play--the first two members of the trilogy which it was to conclude are n.o.bly phrased, but they are so cloudy in thought and weak in dramatic construction that they do their author's fame little service. Prometheus, Pandora, Deucalion, Eve, Cain, Raphael, and Michael, angels and archangels, thrones, dominions and powers, were characters too mighty for the talent of this poet, who could handle adequately enough a problem of contemporary politics or draw quaint lessons from the caged beasts in a menagerie.
Perhaps the coldness which annoys some readers of Moody's poems, the sense of aloofness from the common experience of mankind, the artificiality which mars such expressions of sympathy for humanity as are intended in ”Gloucester Moors,” are things for which it is unjust to blame the poet. His friend, John M. Manly, wrote in the preface to his ”Poems and Plays”: ”He was an epicure of life, a voluptuary of the whole range of physical, mental, and spiritual perfections.” But in Moody's poetry we find more of the mind than of the heart; we feel that we are in the presence of a charming and cultured personality, but we have no feeling of intimacy with the writer.
”Of thine own tears thy song must tears beget,” wrote Rossetti. ”O singer, magic mirror hast thou none save thine own manifest heart.” And a greater poet than Rossetti exclaimed, ”Ah, must (Designer Infinite!) Thou char the wood ere thou canst limn with?” A similar thought was in Horace's mind when in the _Ars Poetica_ he said, ”if you wish me to weep, you must first weep yourself.”
Well, few tears are drawn by Moody's poems, nor did many tears go into their making. His wood was not charred. But he was a conscientious and accomplished artist, doing the best he could with the powers that were his. His work is thoughtful, imaginative, and well-wrought, his ”Great Divide” is destined to periodic revivals, and the best of his lyrics are sure of a place in the anthologies.
William Vaughn Moody was born in Spencer, Indiana, on July 8th, 1869. He was the son of a prosperous retired steamboat captain. In 1871 the family moved to New Albany, on the Ohio River. The elder Moody died in 1886. William Vaughn Moody went to Riverside Academy and entered Harvard in 1889, being then twenty years old. In his senior year he went abroad with a wealthy family as tutor to their son. During the trip he made a walking tour of the Black Forest and Switzerland with a party of friends, including Norman Hapgood. He also spent some time in Greece and Italy.
He returned to Harvard to study for his master's degree and stayed on as an instructor in English. In the autumn of 1895 he went to the University of Chicago as instructor in English, reaching the rank of a.s.sistant professor before his departure eight years later. His life at the University of Chicago seems to have been rather leisurely. It was varied by journeys abroad and bicycle tours in Illinois and Wisconsin.
Swimming, bicycling, golf, tennis, walking, and mountain-climbing are mentioned by Mr. Manly as Moody's favorite sports, and it is not to be wondered that he had little time for writing, however unexacting his academic duties may have been.
Although his connection with the University of Chicago did not cease until later, he taught no cla.s.ses after 1902. He did, however, do a certain amount of work academic in character, editing some editions of the cla.s.sics and collaborating with his friend Robert M. Lovett in a ”History of English Literature.” He first became known to the general public by the successful presentation of his prose play, ”The Great Divide.” He died in Colorado Springs on the seventeenth of October, 1910. A few months before his death he married Miss Harriet C. Brainerd.
It is interesting to trace the influences in Moody's work. He was very thoroughly a man of books, and some critics complain that there is more ink than blood in the veins of the people of whom he writes. Certainly it is possible to find traces of his reading on nearly every page that he wrote. The lovely fourth stanza of ”Gloucester Moors” is Coleridge; ”Faded Pictures” is Browning at his worst; and ”The Daguerreotype” is a deliberate effort to imitate the irregular ode-form of Coventry Patmore.