CONCEPTS OF FAILURE IN EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON'S LONGER POEMS APPROVED: Major Minor Professor g.S. tuh^ Directorector oFtKof tftiee DeDepartmeni t of English ). /c?r^J!rv~**O Dean'of the Graduate School CONCEPTS OF FAILURE IN EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON'S LONGER POEMS THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS BY Eromaline T. Williams, B. A. Denton, Texas August, 1970 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. CONCEPTS OF FAILURE IN BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE 1 II. FAILURE IN PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS 19 III. FAILURE IN MATERIAL SUCCESS Or IN PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY 74 IV. THE THEME OF FAILURE IN THE POETRY OF ROBINSON: A RESUME" 130 BIBLIOGRAPHY 136. in CHAPTER I CONCEPTS OF FAILURE IN BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE Edwin Arlington Robinson, an American poet who lived during the last half of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century, enjoys today a major place among American poets. On one hand he has been compared favor- ably to poets of the nineteenth century such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose work Robinson greatly admired, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson, and on the other hand to the major poets of the early twentieth century such as Robert Frost and T. S. Eliot.* Although Robinson shares with all of these some similarity in either thought or poetic style, he was essen- tially an individual poet who determined his own style and areas of emphasis. He created many unforgettable characters and he was most concerned with the manner in which these char- acters dealt with the problems of human existence. Failure is one of the central themes in the poetry of Robinson. It pervades both his major and minor works and the poems of his youth as well as the poems of his more mature years. Of course the aspects of failure vary as Robinson examines failure in different situations and in individual ^Wallace L. Anderson, Edwin Arlington Robinson; A Critical Introduction (Boston, 1967), p. 153. 1 characters. However, failure in general can never be accepted casually by the one failing, and Robinson implies that it should not be taken lightly or easily condemned by the observer. Robinson looks askance at the world's standards of success and failure, which are often based on social or material values, and establishes standards of success and failure on a more per- sonal and more spiritual scale. In its complexity, failure can defeat but it can also ennoble. The valid test of whether or not a person has failed is not an external test but an internal test including the character's reaction to failure. E. A. Robinson was familiar with failure most of his life. His family endured failure many times. The youngest of three sons, Robinson watched his oldest brother, Dean, apparently climbing toward the pinnacle of success, fail in health and spirit. Dean, educated to become a doctor, and graduated cum 2 laude from medical school, with a penchant for medical research, was thwarted in his first career choice by the desire of his 3 father that he become a practicing physician. Unable to main- tain good health in the rigorous profession of country doctor, Dean became addicted to morphine and eventually to alcohol as 4 well. He returned to the family home in Gardiner, Maine, when 2 Ibid., p. 42. 3 Chard Powers Smith, Where the Light Falls: A Portrait of the Act (New Yorl;, 1965), p. 73u 4 Yvor Winters, Edwin Arlington Robinson (Norfolk, Conn., 1946), p. 2. he was twenty-nine after a brief practice.5 There he remained until his death (presumed a suicide from overdoses of morphine)® thirteen years later. The oldest son had been the first hope of the family. After Dean failed to accomplish anything of merit, Robinson's father decided against any lornusl education for his other sons. Dean was twelve years older than Edwin and he was greatly admired by his youngest brother as they were similar in temperament and enjoyed studious pursuits. To Edwin Robinson fell the task of looking after his older brother while he grew steadily worse, often pacing the floor and moaning for hours7 and eventually bedridden and delirious.® There was no known cure for morphine addiction in Gardiner, Maine, in the late ISOO's, and though Dean underwent treatment in an institu- tion three different times, he could never overcome his addic- tion to drugs. Robinson, therefore, made certain that his brother was supplied with morphine and alcohol as he needed them. After Dean's failure, the second son, Herman, became the family's hope. Herman's talents were in business as were his father's, and he assumed the responsibility of the family's investments. Herman, confident in his own visions of success, 5Emery Neff, Edwin Arlington Robinson (New York, 1948), p. 9. ®Smith, p. 185. 7Ibid., p. 156. 8Anderson, p. 54. invested the Robinson family money and encouraged others to invest in land and improvements in St. Louis and in the West. Unfortunately for Herman and his fellow investors, the United States was entering a period of recession called the "Panic 9 of '93."' Herman and his friends lost their money. In his discouragement and feeling of guilt, Herman not only lost the family fortune, he also lost himself and became an alco- 10 holic. For some time E. A. Robinson assumed most of the respon- sibility for the household, which included Dean, his mother, Herman, Herman's wife, Stoma, and their three young daughters, but Herman eventually became jealous of his brother's rela- tionship with his wife and asked him to leave the family 11 home. Herman and Emma became further estranged as the years passed when Herman became more "alcoholic, bitter, jealous, 12 and . fiendish." Having used all of the money from the family estate and the sale of the family home, and no longer living with his wife and daughters, Herman was penniless. Robinson came to his and Emma's aid in 1905 by agreeing to share the money he would earn in the Custom House job procured 13 for him by President Theodore Roosevelt. Eventually Herman 9 Ibid., p. 49. 10 Smith, p. 273. ^1lbid., pp. 171-172. 12Ibid., p. 200. 13Ibid.. pp. 217-218. conquered his problem with alcohol but by that time he had been stricken with tuberculosis. He died in 1909 at the age of forty-four. Before the deaths of his two brothers, both of the Robinson parents had died. The sons watched their father's rational and physical powers slowly fail. To Robinson fell the task of entertaining and caring for his dying father. Later, alone, the brothers took care of and then buried their 14 mother, who had contracted black diphtheria. The people in Gardiner, including the doctor, minister, and mortician, refused to help them for fear of contracting the disease 15 themselves. Heedless to say, as S. A. Robinson observed his family fail, he became very much aware of failure and all its nuances. Many of his associates were failures of one kind or another. Yvor Winters, one of his biographers and critics, has written: He was surrounded by a group of incomplete geniuses, the debris of the intellectual life which one can meet in any large city in any period; such people are failures and are likely to be weak and somewhat foolish, but they sometimes have the perception and intelligence to recognize and to entertain a distinguished man, and in a worjg of successful mediocrity such ability deserves respect. 14 Winters, p. 6. "^Hoyt C. Franchere, Edwin Arlington Robinson (New York, 1968), p. 61. 16Winters, pp. 6-7. 6 Most of these friends lived in New York, but even in Gardiner Robinson often associated with those who had failed in one way or another. Chard Powers Smith, another biographer, has pointed out that Dr. Schumann, who introduced Robinson to "creative literary life, . had been spoiled by money, didn't practice his profession, was a roughneck in conver- sation, more or less of an alcoholic, and was always getting 17 into or out of 'engagements'." In Smith's opinion, Dr. 18 Schumann was a "perfect Robinsonian failure." Of course one must include Alfred Hyman Louis, one of Robinson's New York friends, in the group of friends who were failures. According to Hoyt C. Franchere, Louis claimed to have been acquainted with most important literary figures in England and the United States. He had practiced many professions, 19 having been "lawyer, poet, musician, prophet." He was reputedly a stirring conversationalist who inspired others by his ideas. When Robinson knew him, he was penniless and starving, and he was kept alive only through gifts from friends. He became part of the "failure-hero" of Captain 20 Craig. 17 Smith, p. 84. 18Ibid. 19 Franchere, p. 41. 20 Ibid., p. 40. External failure or failure that he could see in both family and friends was not Robinson's only concern. Perhaps most important in developing his concepts of failure were his feelings about his own apparent failure. He had chosen a profession hardly approved in Gardiner, Maine. He was concerned about what the townspeople thought of him, for in a letter to his friend Harry De Forest Smith in 1893, he wrote: I have nothing in particular to say except that it is rather lonesome here without you, and on dark, dull Sundays like this I find it hard to be cheerful and optimistic, and everything else that a useful man should be in order to fill his place in nature to the satisfaction of himself and his dear friends who feel so much for his welfare.