Edwin Markham’s Poem to Howard Pyle

Here is a poem by Edwin Markham:

Art
To Howard Pyle

At her light touch, behold! a voice proceeds
Out of all things to chide our sordid deeds;
A beauty breaks, a beauty ever strange,
The Changeless that is back of all the change.
Lightly it comes as when a rose would be
Takes feature yet remains a mystery.

This poem was born out of a request from Howard Pyle himself: after illustrating a deluxe edition of Markham’s The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (Doubleday & McClure Company, 1900), Pyle asked the poet to write him “an autograph verse” which he could insert into an “especial” copy of the book. It was “especial” - and, in fact, unique - in that Pyle glued the original illustrations onto sheets of Whatman’s hot-pressed paper onto which the publisher - in part compensation for the work Pyle had done - had printed the poems. Pyle then bound the book with wooden covers and decorated them with his daughter Phoebe’s pyrography set.

Ultimately, “Art” appeared in Markham’s subsequent collection, Lincoln & Other Poems, published in 1901 by McClure, Phillips & Company - and not by Doubleday, Page & Company, the successor to Doubleday & McClure, which had dissolved even before The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems was published (although the name still appeared on the title-age and spine). A chagrined Frank Nelson Doubleday, wrote on the flyleaf of an office copy of The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, "This edition was made to please the author and get his next book. It did neither."

And after trying to sell his unique copy of The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, Howard Pyle - in the words of Gertrude Brincklé - “lost interest in it and had it torn up.”

Decoration for “A Song of Peace”

Howard Pyle’s “decoration” for Edwin Markham’s poem, “A Song of Peace,” appeared in Collier’s Weekly for June 14, 1902. And 108 years ago today - on June 20, 1902 - Augustus Saint-Gaudens wrote a “fan” letter to Pyle (not the first time, either) about this piece, declaring, “…The virility and poetry and the beauty of it are remarkable…”

Unfortunately, Saint-Gaudens’ letter has gone missing and the only evidence of it we have is the above line, quoted by Charles Abbott in his 1925 Pyle biography. Pyle’s reply, however, written on June 24, resides at Dartmouth College. In it, he offers to give the drawing to Saint-Gaudens and asks if he should “fill it out to a large square, completing the figures in procession.” Pyle sent the drawing in July, but I don’t know if he reworked it - or if it was burned in the sculptor’s studio fire in 1904 - as it has yet to come to light.

Note: Since writing this I’ve learned that the drawing was loaned by Mrs. Augusta Saint-Gaudens to the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1922, so perhaps it’s still out there, somewhere.