THE JANITOR’S BOY
AND OTHER POEMS

Marceau
Nathalia Clara Ruth Crane

THE JANITOR’S BOY
AND OTHER POEMS

By NATHALIA CRANE

NEW YORK
THOMAS SELTZER
1924

Copyright, 1924, by
THOMAS SELTZER, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
First Printing, May, 1924
Second Printing, May, 1924

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Foreword, by
WILLIAM ROSE BENET
Nathalia at Ten, by
NUNNALLY JOHNSON
Afterword, by
EDMUND LEAMY

TO
MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

When I took the two poems from Nathalia’s mother, and promised to read them, I had seen none of the press notices of Miss Crane’s talent. Being only a quasi-journalist I seldom read the newspapers. I am extremely skeptical of infant prodigies, and the poems of Nathalia’s that I have since seen most quoted in newspaper articles about her are just what you would expect. They prove nothing except that she is a little girl with a lively fancy. Certain poems in this first collection, however, seem to me to prove something more.

Some long time ago in Scotland there was a little girl named Marjorie Fleming, and to-day a twelve-year-old, Helen Douglas Adam, the daughter of a Scotch parson and his wife of Dundee, is her successor overseas to the juvenile purple. Miss Adam has now been published both in England and America. Yet the best poems of hers that I have read do not seem to me to possess such individuality or such maturity of melody and diction as Miss Crane’s best poems. Then there is our own Hilda Conkling, whose mother is a distinguished American poet, and who writes in free verse and has published several volumes of poems. Hilda is a real poet. But she has never grappled with and conquered certain problems of poetic structure from which Miss Crane, by sheer instinct, seems to have wrested occasional victory.

I took the two poems from Nathalia’s mother; and first I read The Blind Girl. I came upon the two verses:

In the darkness who would answer for the color of a rose,

Or the vestments of the May moth and the pilgrimage it goes.

Oh, night, thy soothing prophecies companion all our ways,

Until releasing hands let fall the catalogue of days.

These lines and the meditation from which they spring were the spontaneous phrasing and the natural meditation of—a child of ten. That in itself, I think, is sufficiently remarkable.

In the darkness who would cavil at the question of a line,

Since the darkness holds all loveliness beyond the mere design.

Strange insight for a comparative infant!

In her lighter moments—and, naturally, there are a great many—Nathalia’s “heart is all a-flutter like the washing on the line”; she “could not stain romance with monetary fee”; and, when she has sat upon a bumble-bee, she knows “the tenseness of humiliating pain.” Many a grown humorist might envy the freshness of such amusing phrase.

There is much laughter and nonsense in this book—that of a rather romantic little girl with a quick eye and ear and a pert fancy. But there is, as I have intimated, more than that.

Cloud-made mountains towered

Beckoning to me;

Visionary triremes

Talked about the sea.

There were strings of camels

On the Tunis sands.

There were certain cities

Holding out their hands.

Here the thing we call poetry asserts itself. The instinct for remarkable phrase and striking figurative expression is either inborn or it is not. Facility with rhyme and metre is not nearly so remarkable. But when a child can write, as in the poem My Husbands,

I hear in soft recession

The praise they give to me;

I hear them chant my titles

From all antiquity.

it is almost uncanny. Here is, if you like, a somewhat derivative diction, but here also is true poetry by every test.

He showed me like a master

That one rose makes a gown:

That looking up to Heaven

Is merely looking down.

Well, I not only wonder how she has learned simple finality of phrase so quickly; I also wonder whether she can possibly realize the philosophical implications of her best poems.

As for imagery, Nathalia’s angels hearing “the hurdy-gurdies in the Candle-Maker’s Row” is an example of her fancy that quickens into imagination. She sees the Oriental bees flying “in golden convoys to the mountains of the moon,” she quizzically presents the pathos of The Dinosaurs’ Eggs; she has “steered by stars that sorrowed, with the moonlight in our wake”; she sees Berkley Common

Like a manuscript, all yellow, and with many things deleted,

Yet a manuscript completed, with embellishments most rare,

Berkley Common lies forgotten, with its fields of everlasting,

And the sunlight on the windows of the empty houses there.

As to exactly what she is trying to say in The Symbols, I am in doubt, but it is hard to forget the Talmud stalking like a rabbi in a gown.

On the one hand, with Nathalia, we have simply a rhyming gift turned to amusing descriptions of certain fairly ordinary episodes and characteristics of life that interest every healthily alert young lady. On the other hand, we have the beginnings of a poet with a true ear for rhythm, an eye for the color of words, and a fancy that often rises into the realm of imagination. I only hope that the young lady will continue to enjoy all the ordinary incidents of her existence as much as she has heretofore, and to perfect her technique in her spare moments. It needs perfecting. It is hardly to be wondered at that her work is still in the experimental stage. She is not yet “the youngest of the seers,” nor yet “released from fetters of ancestral pose,” but there is undoubtedly conquest of poetic beauty “waiting down the years” for her—“revisions of the ruby and the rose,” as she puts it. Read the first two verses of The Vestal and marvel that a young lady of Nathalia’s age should be able to master without effort such a perfectly Emily Dickinsonian idiom. This is no copy; it is something that even Emily Dickinson would not have been at all ashamed to have written. And that is a good deal to say.

Now as to prophecies, who can make them? Frankly, I have not the slightest idea how Miss Crane’s gift may develop. I only know that she has given signs of astonishing precocity as a young poet. Her parents have wisdom and they will see that she is not spoiled. Her gifts will simply develop according to her experience of literature and her experience of life. It is a very ticklish thing to endeavor in any way to direct so young a gift. It will find by instinct its own nourishment; that is my belief.

Meanwhile, to Nathalia, good luck on the difficult road!

William Rose Benet

New York City, May, 1924.

NATHALIA AT TEN

Nathalia’s day is today. All of Time that is past, from the birth of those odd old folk, the troglodytes, about which she has ruminated so pleasantly, up to and through the final scene of the latest Broadway moving picture is, to her, a harvested crop—important in its way but no longer interesting. And as for tomorrow and the next year, they will have their turn presently. It is today....

This extract from Nathalia’s as yet unarticulated philosophy is offered by way of information for those who are instinctively inclined to be harsh, on general principles, with a talent that springs, a little too boldly perhaps, ahead of its years.

Nathalia had been writing her verse for several months before Mr. and Mrs. Crane came across it, writing it without fuss or excitement and storing it in a small and private album, content apparently with the reward of whatever pleasure the rereading of it gave her. If she had, even secretly, any concern with such a vanity as applause, she certainly did not betray it. And when shortly before Christmas of 1922, the little girl mailed some of her poems to a Brooklyn newspaper and received immediate acknowledgment from the editor, her parents were as much astonished as, later on, was the editor of a newspaper when, after having accepted a number of poems signed Nathalia Crane, the author herself walked into the office and proved to be a mite of a human being.

I was one of the file of reporters that trailed into Nathalia’s home the morning after her first publication, bent less on nourishing and encouraging a young artist than on getting a human-interest story. It was a file that eventually included generous, vociferous, and indiscriminate eulogists, a file that threatened to demoralize or spoil whatever young talents Nathalia had.

Those kind-hearted newspaper folks showered her with a shocking amount of almost unqualified praise, some of it accurately placed but most of it merely blank fire. This would have been very bad for her but for one thing—Nathalia never read any of it.

And so, unaffected, she maintained the same tenor of her young days, playing with her dolls when she pleased and retiring to her boudoir to make rhythms when she pleased. She has always written, and still does write, only when the fancy prompts her.

What Nathalia has written is the kind of thing that she can write, whatever its merits or demerits. She has measured it against no other verse, youthful or adult. The inspiration for most of it comes from books she has read, which are mainly romantic in character. As for the rest, it happens that she is an extraordinarily articulate little girl, and if in some cases the conceits and fancies which she crystallizes are no rarer than those that, in all probability, throng the mysterious mind of every imaginative child, the explanation is simply that she is able to utter and clarify them, and these other children are, for the most part, normally unable to do that. That also they have, in Nathalia’s case, taken the form of mature work, as evidenced, in one way, by the fact that editors published her contributions for several months before learning that she was so much below the accepted age for serious consideration, is, I believe, another mark of her high singularity.

Others, unfortunately, will be less easily satisfied. A cynicism concerning the future careers of precocious children is one of the rigid fundamentals of nearly every mind. It has, no doubt, a valid basis. But, for that reason, Nathalia’s future, probably very dark in popular prospect, threatens to shade her present. That is why I offered at the outset, as a point of information, the comment on Nathalia’s general attitude toward life. Nathalia, I am sure, sees no reason why anybody else should read these poems with an eye any further ahead in time than this afternoon’s sunset. She is content to leave the verdict, so far as posterity is concerned, to her own grandchildren.

Nunnally Johnson

Brooklyn, N. Y., May, 1924.

THE JANITOR’S BOY
AND OTHER POEMS

THE JANITOR’S BOY

Oh I’m in love with the janitor’s boy,

And the janitor’s boy loves me;

He’s going to hunt for a desert isle

In our geography.

A desert isle with spicy trees

Somewhere near Sheepshead Bay;

A right nice place, just fit for two

Where we can live alway.

Oh I’m in love with the janitor’s boy,

He’s busy as he can be;

And down in the cellar he’s making a raft

Out of an old settee.

He’ll carry me off, I know that he will,

For his hair is exceedingly red;

And the only thing that occurs to me

Is to dutifully shiver in bed.

The day that we sail, I shall leave this brief note,

For my parents I hate to annoy:

“I have flown away to an isle in the bay

With the janitor’s red-haired boy.”

OH, ROGER JONES

Oh, Roger Jones! Oh, Roger Jones!

Oh, Prince! O, Knight! Ah me!

We used to play at keeping house,

Beneath an old oak tree.

Your hair was red, your eyes were brown,

You had a freckled nose;

You were the father of my dolls,

My husband—I suppose.

Oh, Roger! You were only nine,

And I was half-past eight;

It really was romantic, or

As good, at any rate.

THE FLATHOUSE ROOF

I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine.

But my heart is all a-flutter like the washing on the line.

I long to be a heroine, I long to be serene,

But my feet, they dance in answer to a distant tambourine.

And, oh! the dreams of ecstasy. Oh! Babylon and Troy.

I’ve a hero in the basement, he’s the janitor’s red-haired boy.

There’s the music of his mallet and the jigging of his saw;

I wonder what he’s making on that lovely cellar floor?

He loves me, for he said it when we met upon the stair,

And that is why I’m on the roof to get a breath of air.

He said it! Oh! He said it! And the only thing I said

Was, “Roger Jones, I like you, for your hair is very red.”

We parted when intruders came a-tramping through the hall;

He’s got my pocket handkerchief and I have got his ball.

And so it is I’m on the roof. Oh! Babylon and Troy!

I’m very sure that I’m in love with someone else’s boy.

Alone, upon the starry heights, I’m dancing on a green,

To the jingling and the jangling of a distant tambourine.

To the stamping of a hammer and the jigging of a saw,

And the secret sort of feeling I’m in love forever more.

Do you think it’s any wonder, with the moonlight so divine,

That my heart is all a-flutter, like the washing on the line?

JOHN PAUL JONES

’Tis John Paul Jones—the janitor’s boy,

He lives on the gun-deck floor,

Where all of the windows are action ports,

And the dumbwaiters rattle and roar.

The old trash tins are our hand grenades

And the rugs on the backyard lines—

Are the mains of the Britisher Serapis

That we fight with our bursting “Nines.”

’Tis John Paul Jones—my Admiral;

His hair is a glorious red;

And I am the maiden who serves as the mate

To see that the sawdust is spread.

He leans on the rail of the laundry tubs

As the Serapis lifts on our lee;

Our gun crews chant by the carronades

And the powder boys yell in their glee.

For he who stands in Colonial rags,

Is born to the gift of the game—

Of shaking the dust from a Serapis,

Or the dust from the halls of fame.

I whirl the wheel of the wash machine

In the spray of a soap-suds sea;

But I know in my heart that the daring Jones

Is winning the fight for me.

And I think it is sweet of John Paul Jones,

In playing the good old game,

To do all the fighting just for love—

With never a thought of fame.

THE ROVERS

“Oh, wilt thou go a-sailing,” said the janitor’s boy to me:

“It’s raining, but I’ve got a raft rigged with a canopy.

“We carry boisterous batteries, our cannon balls are stones,

But I’ll wager all your loveliness you’re safe with John Paul Jones.”

I asked him very faintly was he competent to steer?

He said he was authority on rafts and running gear.

Then suddenly his voice sank low to slow and gentle tones,

And off I went a-sailing with my captain, John Paul Jones.

We drifted down the avenue that was our sweep of sea.

And never man or mermaid any happier than we.

We paused beside a paradise depicted on a sign;

We moored fast to the margin of its crimson border line.

We slipped our surf-filled sandals off, we waded to the knee,

And when I felt like swooning John Paul Jones supported me.

The darkness hesitated, fearing we might lose our way;

We counted all the street lamps ’ere we homeward sought to stray.

We counted corner lanterns, and the understanding stars

Saw we were linked by longings for the shining shell-strewn bars.

For the realms reserved for rovers, for the rafts and painted signs,

And the right to moor to ring-heads in the far-off border lines.

THE VACANT LOT

They’re going to build a flathouse on the lot next door to me;

And Roger Jones, the janitor’s boy, is mad as he can be.

That lot was like a tropic isle, with weeds and rubbish fair,

The rusty cans and coffee pots, that looked like Roger’s hair.

’Twas oft we strolled among the weeds, we were in love, you see,

And Roger Jones was going to build a bungalow for me.

We used to rest upon a rock just where the weeds were tall;

We were engaged, I think, until the builders spoiled it all.

But now they’ve ruined Roger’s plans, they’ve dug up all the lot;

With all the brick and mortar round, you’d never know the spot.

They came with carts and horses; tore our wilderness apart;

No wonder Roger Jones was wild; it nearly broke my heart.

We could have done some wondrous things if time were not so slow;

The weeds, they might have grown to trees, fit for a bungalow.

With rusty cans and broken glass, we’d planned a home so nice;

But they dumped their brick and mortar in our little paradise.

They dumped their brick and mortar ’mid the smoky lakes of lime,

Yet we won’t forget, ’twas Eden—Eden, once upon a time.

Eden, where we dreamed supremely—rusty can and coffee pot;

Eden, with the weeds and rubbish, in a vacant city lot.

And now, we’re simply waiting, oh, that janitor’s boy and me,

Until the janitor’s boy grows up and finds himself quite free

To just discover areas where builders never go,

Where we may live forever in a little bungalow.

THE SWINGING STAIR

From the flotsam of a city street we built the Swinging Stair,

And latitude, or longitude, the least of all our care.

A tilting board—an orange crate—the sparrows screamed with glee,

As we swung to port and starboard like a lugger on the sea.

We cruised without a compass, but with merchandise of worth,

To barter pins and needles at the portals of the Earth.

The helmsman was my hero brave, his hair as red could be;

Perhaps he was the janitor’s boy, but he belonged to me;

He was mine because I made him master of the Swinging Stair,

And because I liked the color of his very auburn hair.

The surf upon the sandbars called the price of sugar cane;

It was mounting every moment down upon the Spanish Main.

The trades were in the topsails, in the scuppers raced the foam,

But never did we get beyond the gateway of our home.

We have notions that the motions of a lugger ’neath a tree

Do not exactly tally with the leagues she makes at sea;

Yet the glory of the ocean lies in no far distant goal,

But reflections in the water, and the port to starboard roll.

THE VESTAL

Once a pallid vestal

Doubted truth in blue;

Listed red as ruin,

Harried every hue;

Barricaded vision,

Garbed herself in sighs;

Ridiculed the birth marks

Of the butterflies.

Dormant and disdainful,

Never could she see

Why the golden powder

Decorates the bee;

Why a summer pasture

Lends itself to paint;

Why love unappareled

Still remains the saint.

Finally she faltered;

Saw at last, forsooth,

Every gaudy color

Is a bit of truth.

Then the gates were opened;

Miracles were seen;

That instructed damsel

Donned a gown of green;

Wore it in a churchyard,

All arrayed with care;

And a painted rainbow

Shone above her there.

THE BLIND GIRL

In the darkness, who would answer for the color of a rose,

Or the vestments of the May moth and the pilgrimage it goes.

In the darkness who would answer, in the darkness who would care,

If the odor of the roses and the winged things were there.

In the darkness who would cavil o’er the question of a line.

Since the darkness holds all loveliness, beyond the mere design.

Oh night, thy soothing prophecies companion all our ways,

Until releasing hands let fall the catalogue of days.

In the darkness, who would answer for the color of a rose,

Or the vestments of the May moth and the pilgrimage it goes.

In the darkness who would answer, in the darkness who would care,

If the odor of the roses and the better things were there.

PRESCIENCE