Donald Hassler - Arthur Machen and Montgomery Evans: Letters of a Literary Friendship, 1923-1947

Come tell me: of these two books lying here,

Which most moves heart and mind to tenderness,

The one approaching its three-hundredth year,

The other a recruit fresh from the press?.

In both you find one nature, one appeal,

And that antiquity and this young birth

Share the same glory, equally reveal

Man in his wisest, luckiest hours on earth.

EDMUND BLUNDEN, The Two Books

OFTEN IN LITERARY history, relationships among writers suggest family connections. Those who write, or want to write, seem to want to be seen together in one large tribe, or tribes. There exist, of course, outsiders, orphans, bastards, pretenders, even bounders, but those relationships also comprise a sort of family. Generally, the lineages are easier and more obvious to trace; and so the fascination that we find in literary history and in our work on the texts of these letters has come in part from our gradual recognition of the large family of letters. In a small way, we feel more a part of that family now. One way to see this book is as our attempt to share that feeling.

We recently came across Richard Aldingtons venerable introduction written for the original 1946 edition of the Penguin Portable Oscar Wilde in which he traces a nice literary lineage from Wilde back through Benjamin Disraeli to Byron: Young Disraelis hero was not Brummell, as is supposed, but Byron who also in his day wore astonishing clothes (17). A fantasy writer and general man of letters who enjoyed a brief vogue in the twenties, Arthur Machen had met Wilde several times in the nineties, as is clear early in the letters, and he continued to wear in public, almost as a trademark of his calling as a writer (Purefoy Machen describes this quirk of Arthurs in her recently published autobiography), the Inverness cape that would link him back, in costume at least, through the nineties to Byron, even to Samuel Johnson. Some of the most frequently reproduced photographs of him show this bohemian cape. And at one of the saddest moments of Montgomery Evans life, several years after his friend and mentor Machen had died, and hence after the scope of this book, he is pictured in a January 1953 news photo with his overcoat draped capelike over his shoulders. It is clear from the letters that follow how thoroughly Evans had grown into one of those readers and collectors of Machen who acquired almost a philosophy of life from the reading and the friendship. The introduction to the Goldstone and Sweetser Bibliography of Arthur Machen (1965) describes, as well as anything we know, the influential effect that Machen had on his readers and collectors. We are tempted to make the effort to tell the whole Montgomery Evans story and its connection to this philosophy of life, but that is another story and can only be hinted at in what follows.

Thus it is proper to state at the outset that our book is both more and less than an edition of literary letters. Machen himself needs a thorough edition of the numerous letters he wrote over a very long writing career, many of the manuscripts of which are in the Yale University Library and in the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. One would suspect that many manuscript letters are yet to surface; and there have also been several small collections of Machen letters published prior to this work. Our book is a transcription of the contents of two large notebooks assembled by Evans following Machens death. Evans tells us in his unpublished autobiography that he paid to have his collection of Machen letters and notes mounted in these notebooks early in 1950.

Our presentation of the Evans notebooks does not strive for complete textual accuracy. We have learned to read Machens difficult hand fairly well (Sue is the master of this) and tried to transcribe each letter of interest and substance as accurately as possible. We have excluded a few items in the notebooks, primarily minor invitations and confirmations of planned meetings, and have added in their proper chronological places some letters by Evans to Machen and some other writings by Evans in order to allow the story of the friendship and of the times to emerge as we see it. For the sake of the story, we have arranged our presentation of the letters by decade, and so essentially ignored the large division into two notebooks that Evans had made except to follow chronological order, which Evans did as well, for the most part. Each decade is introduced with some short background material, and most of the letters are followed by extensive annotations. In this way, we hope that the reader will see the filial story as well as accurate texts of some important letters.

It has been a long job for both of us, but a wonderful adventure of discovery as well. Along the way, we have incurred many debts. The Evans notebooks themselves are owned by Mr. Albert Borowitz of Cleveland, who has kindly lent them to the Special Collections of the Kent State University Library. Dean Keller and Alex Gildzen, of Kents Library, have encouraged us and helped us immensely in working with the manuscripts. New York bookseller David Kirschenbaum generously talked to us about his memories of Montgomery Evans and David Borowitz, who originally purchased the notebooks following Evanss death in the spring of 1954. Surviving family members of both Machen and Evans have also been wonderfully gracious to us and talked with us at great length about these writers and their friends. In particular, we are indebted to Janet Machen Pollock of Margaret Marsh, Shaftesbury, Dorset, for permission to print her fathers letters and to Montgomery Evans III of Edmond, Oklahoma, for permission to print material written by his father. Further, we enjoyed a wonderful visit with the niece of Montgomery Evans and her husband, Barbara and Conrad Wilson, at their West Dummerston, Vermont, home in September 1991. Earlier that summersignificantly, over the Fourth of July weekendwe visited Norristown, Pennsylvania, the hometown of the Evans family. We are grateful for conversations with the following individuals in Norristown: Cindy Krepak at the Times Herald offices; Johnny Young of the Norristown Historical Society; Nancy Carlin, the present owner of the home Evanss sister Dorothy built up DeKalb Street from their family home; and Nicholas Childs, whose father had been at Penn Charter School with Evans.