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Volume 4, Number 2 (1979) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum "PHILANTHROPISTS AMONG THE LAWYERS": THE LAW SCHOOL JOURNAL OF WALLACE STEVENS STEVEN T. KNIGHT English Department, Northeastern University tennial of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), during 1979. Twice winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, and winner of the Pulitzer and Bollingen prizes, Stevens is now considered by most critics to be one of our century's most innovative poets and, in his essays, a brilliant theorist on the importance of the imagination. Such popular Stevens poems as "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," "Sunday Morning," and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" are today studied in college classrooms as landmark achievements in modern poetry. Stevens' readers have long been fascinated by the juxtaposition of poetry and practical affairs in his life. Despite his lifelong preoccupation with the imagination, Stevens' life was unlike the stereotypical bohemian notion of a poet's existence. For most of his life he lived comfortably in Hartford, Connecticut, as an executive of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. Though he pursued the craft of poetry with a constancy verging on obsession, writing remained his avocation, a pursuit for his infrequent moments of solitude in a hectic business career. The legal profession played an important role from the beginning in the development of this "businessman-poet," as some have dubbed him. His father, Garret Barcalow Stevens of Reading, Pennsylvania (the city where Wallace Stevens himself was born), was a successful attorney with outside interests in business and politics1. Wallace's older brother Garret Jr. also pursued a career in law, as did his younger brother John, who was later appointed to a judgeship in Reading. No doubt the twenty-one-year-old Wallace Stevens also intended to follow his father's lead when, in the fall of 1901, he entered New York Law School. After a brilliant three years at Harvard, where lie had published poems and edited the literary magazine, and a largely un- successful stint as a New York newspaperman, it seemed that this aesthetically- minded young man was at last ready to settle down to the serious legal study so characteristic of his family. If lacunae in one's private journal entries are any indication of hard work, then Stevens' absorption in his law school responsibilities during his first year appears to have been complete. Between the fall of 1901 and August 1902, the journal that for the three previous years had recorded his innermost thoughts did not receive a single entry. In addition to attending law classes, Stevens served a regular clerkship in the office of a practicing New York attorney, W.G. Peckham; it appears that at this time he had little leisure to devote to journal writing. lie did not re-commence his entries until August 1902, but thereafter wrote frequently until his graduation and admission to the New York bar in the spring of 1904. The reader of this journal will discover a sensitive, introspective young man, eager to succeed in the world but also discouraged at times with the hardships of law school. The very first journal entry after the long silence, dated August 9, 1902, speaks poignantly of the young Stevens' lone- liness: Oh Mon Dieu, how my spirits sink when I amThe pain expressed here is echoed in a later entry, dated February 14, 1904: Whatever I was going to write when I turned Hole again, without knowing any of my neighbors.One could speculate that perhaps the "Black Hole" Stevens describes so grippingly here was caused by his impending examinations, both at school and for the bar. The constant tension between business and aesthetics in Stevens' career is another distinct aspect of this journal. At times, this aspiring lawyer writes of the practical necessity for hard work with a fervor that would have made his Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors proud. An unmistakeable fear of poverty pervades this excerpt from his April 5, 1903, entry: The mere prospect of having to support myself onOn October 20, 1903, he comments that "one must have ambition and energy or one grows melancholy. Ambition and energy keep a man young. Oh, treasure! Philosophy, non-resistance, 'sweetness and light' leave a man pitiably crippled and aged, though pure withal." While Stevens seems to be adopting a highly serious, almost anti-artistic pose here, it would be incorrect to characterize him as a dull grind during his law school years. The entry for March 13, 1904 is a good example of the self-mockery underlying Stevens' earnestness: Walking is my only refuge from tobacco + food; + fat face and to think how I have lost ambition +As this passage shows, Stevens was able to wield a sword of irony against the constant demands of law school. Occasionally this sword could be used against the legal profession itself, as in this March 1, 1903, description of one of his long walks: "Beyond Undercliff I met with an encampment of gypsies--I shall soon expect to be meeting Christians in Broadway and philan- thropists among the lawyers." This mildly sarcastic reference to lawyers from a law student is particularly interesting when one considers that Stevens practiced law for only a few years after graduation, finding his permanent niche in the insurance business. One of the journal's most endearing features is its illumination of Stevens' warm friendship with the attorney who supervised his clerkship, W.G. Peckham. Stevens was invited several times to Peckham's home in Westfield, New Jersey, and his summer home in the Adirondacks; unfortunately no account survives of these visits. During the summer of 1903, however, Stevens accompanied his mentor on a hunting trip to the Canadian Rockies, and his accounts of the trip are among the most entertaining of all journal entries. Note, for example, the slightly comic mixture of imaginative vision and simple detail in this account of their camp: There are three fires burning now. One, theStevens' depiction of Peckham's woolen shirt betrays his fondness for his mentor; in his next entry, dated August 6, he describes more of the man's idiosyncracies: "W.G.P. sits up with his lamp translating Heine aloud end- lessly; or else retelling his eternal cycle of stories." Perhaps most re- vealing of all his comments on Peckham is this excerpt from the September 1 entry, the last of the British Columbia trip: "I look in the fire at evening + conjure up a hand to hold; W.G.P. transforms the logs + flames into griffons + monkeys." Here Stevens bestows his highest compliment upon Peckham: that he is a man of imagination. Finally, the most abiding impression this journal gives is of a develop- ing poetic consciousness, a single meditative mind eagerly exploring the natural world. Like the woman in "Sunday Morning" who finds "Elations when the forest blooms,"2 Stevens' imaginative regeneration comes from repeated contact with the world beyond the claustrophobic city. On weekends he was often able to escape the noise and responsibilities of New York, for long walks in the New Jersey countryside. This excerpt from the October 13, 1902, entry is an apt illustration of the physical and imaginative stimuli he de- rived from these jaunts: How deep + voluble the shadows! How perfect the quiet!Wallace Stevens' years in law school therefore played a key role in the formation of a complex, probing poetic mind. Alternately responsible and frivolous, depressed and elated, Stevens is seen in this journal Struggling with the contradictions that would later energize his long poetic career. We should remember one of his favorite aphorisms, "Man is an eternal sophomore,"3 for it effectively characterizes the eternal questioning and ob- serving of his law school years. Knopf, 1966), p. 3 Most of the biographical information and all of the journal quotations are taken from this volume. 2. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), p. 67. 3. Opus Posthumous, ed. Samuel French Morse (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957) p 169. |
