An excerpt from my work-in-progess book “A Plea for Loveliness: Life, Times & Circles of Mary Mowbray-Clarke.” This chapter focuses on poet Amy Lowell, and the Sunwise Turn bookshop’s initial forays into publishing.

BALLADS FOR SALE!

The American poet Amy Lowell (1874–1925) made early introductions for Gilbert Cannan in America, sharing his concern for D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence was in dire straights financially and living in destitute artistic exile after both his wife’s German parentage and his own outright contempt for the war had effectively killed his career, with constant harassment by British authorities and persecution under the Defence of Realm Act. His health was also precarious, having barely survived a severe infection of the global influenza pandemic which killed millions during this time.

Writing to Cannan in the US on October 16, 1919, Lowell describes D.H. Lawrence’s desperate condition, hoping to make arrangements with Cannan as to some course of action:

[…] I am terribly grieved to hear (what, however, I knew already) of Lawrence’s financial difficulties and bad health. I know that he wants to come to America, he has already written me several letters on the subject; but I have discouraged it to my utmost, believing that he will come here merely to die… […] I should be more than willing to contribute to any fund that anyone might raise for this purpose, but I could not undertake to bear all the expense alone…[1]

Gilbert took up Lawrence’s cause, writing articles calling attention to his plight and raising money. His actions were somewhat resented by Lawrence who balked at the “charity” but it was a pet cause and likely generated sympathy for him among the intellectual elite of New York. All this serves to illustrate Amy Lowell’s enmeshed presence in the intellectual circles of the Sunwise Turn, which began very early in the history of the bookshop.

Amy Lowell was an important early proponent of “free verse,” a fierce rival of Ezra Pound, and a founding member of the original Imagist poetry group in England. She was a well-known part of the literary cohort of the time, but often subject to ridicule by her literary peers. Pound, notoriously jealous of her place in the Imagist group, made the snide remark that she had co-opted the principles of Imagism, derisively calling her contributions “Amygism.” D. H. Lawrence, in spite of her valiant efforts to salvage his career and her financial support, quipped that “In everything she did she was a good amateur.” Witter Bynner, a literary prankster and part of the Sunwise Turn social circle, cruelly nicknamed the overweight Lowell “the hippopoetess.” The perceived resentment was probably not because of her well-known lesbianism, or even her eccentric personality. Homosexuality and any number of eccentric traits were as welcomed as could possibly be during this time period among the avant-garde echelon in which Amy Lowell existed. It was more likely some resentment sprang from the two-fold fact that Amy Lowell was known to have come from a wealthy, well-connnected family and she was a relentless, shameless self-promoter. T.S. Eliot branded her the “demon saleswoman of poetry.” Even among the radicals and feminists of the era, this sort of ambitious “salesmanship” went almost unnoticed when associated with a man such as Ezra Pound. It was shocking and remarkable when coming from a cigar-chomping loud-voiced woman. Nevertheless, Amy ignored all criticism and forged ahead. A recent biography summed it up neatly:

Lowell went on lecture tours the way rock bands roll from city to city today — with an entourage, a suite at the best hotel, and a gathering of reporters awaiting her latest outrage. On the lecture platform, she would read a poem and then pause, looking at her audience, demanding, “Well, hiss or applaud! But do something!” Almost always she got an ovation — and some hisses. At receptions and dinner parties, she was carefully watched. When would she light up? She seldom disappointed, although her favored stogie was, in fact, a small brown panatela and not the big black cigar featured in the more sensational reports.[2]

Poet and biographer Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) was an occasional visitor to the Brocken, connected with the poetry circles of Mary Mowbray-Clarke’s friend Eunice Tietjens, who was herself a bona-fide Brockenite. Tietjens describes Masters in her autobiography like this:

An afternoon with Masters was physically exhausting. There are persons whose mental vitality is such that ordinary people cannot follow them without strain. Amy Lowell was such a person, but never so much to me as Masters.[3]

In a 1918 letter to Poetry editor Alice Corbin Henderson, Masters expresses his own physical exhaustion with Amy Lowell, in the sort of crude terms that were oftentimes applied to her:

In regard to Amy Lowell, I have the same reaction towards her that Nietzsche expressed with reference to persons — I can positively smell her, and all the way from Boston. The smell is of a fat woman on a hot day, red faced and damp under the arms. This last book of hers, which I have not read except in spots and the poems that I see of hers, prove conclusively that she is just a physical force, restless, industrious, workwoman with words. She never had an original idea in her life, and just as you say, all her experiments are appropriated. […] The very idea of making such a ballyhoo about a form that is nothing but a prose paragraph with an occasional rhyme. Well, if I ever say anything about her except privately to you or some others, I hope my tongue will cleave to the roof of my mouth.[4]

Despite these sorts of cruel sentiments being expressed privately and publically, Lowell never missed a beat and went right ahead in making her permanent mark in literary history. Aside from helping connect Gilbert Cannan to intellectual circles in America, Lowell is an interesting connection between Henderson’s “Bomb Shop” and the Sunwise Turn. The very first publishing venture undertaken by Sunwise, under the direction of Madge Jenison (aside from another series of broadsides issued in 1917 featuring texts opposing capital punishment, Mary Mowbray-Clarke would orchestrate all Sunwise Turn publishing) was a poem by Lowell titled Ballads For Sale coupled with an illustration by Walt Kuhn, in a series of “poetical broadsides.” Meanwhile, Lowell was represented by two poems, Granadilla and Carrefour in issue no. 4 (Easter 1920) of Coterie, the small press magazine published by Hendersons.

Madge Jenison and Mary Mowbray-Clarke began to daydream and plan in October of 1916 about pressing the Sunwise Turn into service as a publishing imprint. Amy Lowell was apparently among the first of the poets who were only tangentially part of the social circle to be invited to participate. A surviving series of correspondence between Madge Jenison and Amy Lowell affords an opportunity to see how the project unfolded step by step.[5] Madge Jenison to Amy Lowell, October 25, 1916:

My dear Miss Lowell:-

Would you be willing to write or send us something for a poetry broadside like the Flying Fames brought out by the Poetry Bookshop of London? We want to bring out six before Christmas. Witter Bynner is going to do one for us and James Oppenheim[6] and we want very much to have you. We are first publishing two plays of Lord Dunsany […] and thought we would have both the plays and the broadsides uniform so that they could be bound by collectors, and the first edition we thought too we would keep limited. […]

“A Night at An Inn” by British-born playwright and fantasy novelist Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany, had its premiere at the Neighborhood Playhouse on April 22, 1916, almost exactly coincident with the opening of the Sunwise Turn. Dunsany had ancestry in the Irish peerage and resided in a castle named Dunsany Castle in Ireland. He was a romantic author, much of his writing somewhat of a precursor of the modern “sci-fi” and atmospheric horror genres. He was involved with the Irish Literary Revival and therefore well acquainted with others connected to Sunwise Turn such as Padraic Colum. “Night at an Inn” was published as “Neighborhood Playhouse Plays №1” by Sunwise Turn sometime after the Neighborhood Playhouse premiere, though apparently not before October, as Madge’s letter indicates. The cover of this publication, which did not end up being sized to match or be bound with the broadside series, featured a small maroon-on-blue design (see illustration on the RIGHT). The title page included a note: “-THE DRAWING ON THE COVER IS FROM A SILVER SEAL CUT BY LORD DUNSANY-“ In the collection of plaster medallion casts and negatives recovered from the Brocken by Bill Wilson in 1963 there is an identical design, a negative plaster mold for casting, here reversed to match the image on the cover of the program published by Sunwise Turn (see illustration on the LEFT), making it likely that this is the work of Lord Dunsany as opposed to John Mowbray-Clarke.

A rough sketch by an unknown artist for a cover of A Night at an Inn which was apparently made before the decision was made to use Lord Dunsany’s “silver seal” design. Image: The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Works by unidentified artists, folder 16.6)

Amy Lowell to Madge Jenison, October 30, 1916:

My dear Miss Jenison:

Your enterprise of “Poetical Broadsides”, in imitation of the “Flying Fame Broadsides” published by the Poetry Book Shop of London, is a very interesting one. I have always liked theirs so much and regretted that nobody over here ever saw fit to issue any.

As far as I am concerned, I could give you a poem which would fit your purposes, but there are certain things I must know first about the scheme. Do you intend to have these broadsides illustrated, as Harold Munro has his?

Lowell mentions copyright, and that she would be “have to refuse” if she were not to retain the copyright, but that otherwise “it will be a pleasure to me to help you in every way in my power.”

Examples of the “Flying Fame Broadsides,” these issued in 1914, mentioned in Madge Jenison and Amy Lowell’s correspondence. These were designed by Claud Lovat Fraser, who began issuing a series of broadsides and tiny pamphlets, usually hand-colored, from his home in 1913. In 1914 Harold Monro’s Poetry Bookshop took over production. In June 1908 Miss E.C. Yeats and Jack Yeats also undertook a similar enterprise at Cuala Press, Dundrum, Co. Dublin, issuing a monthly series of “broadsides” (innacurately titled, as both the Poetry Bookshop and the Cuala Press issued their poems printed on both sides or in tri-fold forms, whereas a true “broadside” is printed only on one side –the Sunwise Turn’s production then, were true broadsides.) Amy Lowell’s familiarity with the Poetry Bookshop’s project was first-hand — Harold Monro had written to her in 1915 that “Briefly they are supposed to be good poetry (not too much of it because no one ever writes much good poetry) with cheap production. Anyone who will is supposed to be able to buy them. They’re not the final form of production, but something between the periodical and the collected volume.”[7] (Image: Pallant House Gallery Bookshop online, https://pallantbookshop.com/product/poetry-broadsheets-flying-fame-poetry-bookshop-broadsides-rhyme-sheets/ — accessed 8/13/2020)

Madge Jenison to Amy Lowell, Nov. 2 1916:

[…] Our plan was to publish the broadsides as a magazine would, without reserving any book rights. They’re to have illustrations at the top both the hand colored and black and white as Harold Monro did. […] We have a corps of young people interested in the shop who will color the drawings for us. Walt Kuhn is to do one drawing — Herbert Crowley another.

Four hand-colored examples of Sunwise Turn broadside №4, featuring Herbert Crowley’s illustration alongside a poem by Padraic Colum. Image sources, LEFT TO RIGHT: 1) Collection of Newman family, South Mountain Road. 2) Collection of Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift of Carl Zigrosser 1974 (1974–179–571). Includes notation “colored by Crowley.” 3) Amy Lowell papers, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library. Includes the bookplate of “Hal Witter Bynner” on the reverse. 4) Collection of the author, found in the Brocken August 2015.

Madge writes that there is much interest already in the project, and in time she hopes it will organically grow into something that is not merely an imitation of the ‘Flying Fame’ broadsides. This would indeed come to pass in that the Sunwise Turn broadsides were a unique snapshot of their own time and place — the pairing of each particular artist with each poet was obviously a thoughtful, intentional process, creating interesting cross-discipline conversations/juxtapositions between visual and literary work. Only Amy Murray had a Sunwise Turn broadside all to herself, as she was both a visual artist and poet. Madge continues, offering extremely vague hints about payment for the authors –

We have not made definite plans about what percentage we can allow authors because it is all so experimental but it will be somewhere between five and ten percent. […]

I hope you will come in soon to see all the […] things we are doing and how happy an ultra-modern bookshop can be.

After some conversation about printing details and what sort of poem to contribute, Madge receives Amy Lowell’s “Ballads for Sale” and responds excitedly in a letter of Nov. 8:

My dear Miss Lowell ;-

We are perfectly delighted with the ballad. It is exactly what we want to send off our series. We intended to have your drawing done by Walt Kuhn but this is so sensitive and full of rhythm, we are going to see if Davies will not do it. Will let you see it as soon as I can. We hope to have the photos ready the first of December or before. […]

Lowell to Jenison, the very next day, Nov. 9:

My dear Miss Jenison:

I am glad you like “Ballads for Sale”. […]

I note in your letter of November 2nd that you will pay the author between five and ten percent. Exactly what does that mean, five percent, or ten per cent, or possibly seven per cent? I think this percentage ought to be arranged. […] I shall be interested to see the picture.

Lowell is particular about the typesetting, and there is a series of letters regarding the possibility of Walt Kuhn shortening his design to properly accommodate the text (Davies did not ultimately end up participating in the broadside series), until finally, by December 1916, the printing is finished and the cadre of Sunwise Turn artists are busy with hand-coloring.

Madge Jenison to Amy Lowell, Dec. 2:

[…] The first two broadsides I’m enclosing, just hot from the press. We had a corps of young people here all yesterday afternoon coloring them. I hope the Ballads for Sale is near enough to the dream you had, to pass. I could not tamper with Walt Kuhn about the drawing but the spacing on the paper seems to us fairly satisfactory […] They are selling very wildly.

Walt Kuhn’s design, which would be used to illustrate Amy Lowell’s poem, was also used on this 8 x 10 in. block-printed poster, probably intended either as a cover for a bound set of the broadsides or as a promotional poster to be displayed in the shop. Collection of Ohio State University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Sunwise Turn Bookshop Records (oversize folder 1).

There are a few more letters, with Amy Lowell asking for extra copies to distribute during the upcoming holiday season, but the thread essentially wraps up with a letter from Lowell to Jenison dated Dec. 4:

I have received the Broadsides, and I think they look very well, although I am afraid I like Miss Murray’s picture better than Mr. Kuhn’s. Still, the coloured one of Mr. Kuhn’s is charming, and looks like some beautiful flower.

I expect to be in New York at the end of this week, and I shall hope to come in and see you then.

Please let me thank you for all the care you have taken with the Broadside.

Two hand-colored examples of “Sunwise Turn Broadside №1” which pairs a drawing by Walt Kuhn with a poem by Amy Lowell. Collection of Newman family, South Mountain Road.

The Sunwise Turn broadsides were ultimately printed in a limited edition of 250 of each of five designs (six were planned, but only five seem to have made it to print), which essentially represented the “stable” or artists and poets at Sunwise Turn in 1916. Listing artist followed by author, the series was comprised of 1) Walt Kuhn/Amy Lowell, 2) John Mowbray-Clarke/Gladys Cromwell, 3) Amy Murray (artwork & poem), 4) Herbert Crowley/Padraic Colum, 5) Howard Coluzzi/Witter Bynner. A collection of the broadsides donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art by Carl Zigrosser are annotated with notes of which artists did the hand-coloring. Zigrosser noted that the Coluzzi/Bynner example was “colored by [Frank] Applegate,” Crowley/Colum was “colored by Crowley” and the Mowbray-Clarke/Cromwell was “colored by Coluzzi.” A community effort! Very likely many artists who stopped by to help gift-wrap books etc. spent a few stray hours coloring broadsides. Francesco Daniele, Charles Burchfield, Martha Ryther — there possibilities are vast. Tantalizingly it will never be known exactly who colored which specific broadsides aside from the few examples collected by Carl Zigrosser, adding an element of mystery to their allure as literary/artistic rarities.

Sunwise Turn broadside №5, pairing Howard Coluzzi with Witter Bynner, hand-colored by Frank Applegate. 13 7/16 X 7 7/8 in. Note typo: “Crawing [sic] by Howard Coluzzi.” Aside from the collection of broadsides (Zigrosser’s collection held at PMA is incomplete, missing the Walt Kuhn/Amy Lowell and Amy Murray editions) Zigrosser also donated the original artwork for Coluzzi’s broadside, which he likely purchased from Sunwise Turn. Collection of Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased with the Lola Downin Peck fund from the Carl and Laura Zigrosser collection, 1982. (1982–10–142)

They may have sold a large batch of the broadsides during the holiday rush of 1916, but sales evidently slowed over time — as late as 1927, when Sunwise Turn was liquidating its stock, there were still stray broadsides left to be sold.[8] Several hand-colored examples were found in the ruins of the Brocken, while other copies exist in far-flung archives of various libraries and art museums across the United States. Night at an Inn, meanwhile, was likely printed at the same time as the broadsides, and in a much larger edition. Alice Lewisohn contributed $259.75 toward its printing, and continued to receive royalties on its sales (along with Lord Dunsany) as it went through multiple printings.[9] A letter from “J.J. Little & Ives Co., Printers Electrotypers and Bookbinders” dated Oct. 24, 1916 — the day prior to Madge’s initial letter to Amy Lowell, offers some details of the printing history:

Regarding the 250 each of six “Broadsides”, you anticipate getting out, we estimate that the cost to you will be about $25.00 We are figuring on a size 5 ½ by 7 ½, setting for each about the same amount of matter as on a page of A NIGHT AT AN INN […] Regarding the 1000 covers for A NIGHT AT AN INN; for printing these in two colors and making necessary cuts from a sketch supplied by you and furnishing stock as per sample supplied by you, the cost will be $21.50.[10]

The broadside series was profiled in an article in the book review section of the NY Evening Post of May 10, 1919, noting that

In this country the Sunwise Turn has brought out a few broadsides. Amy Lowell, who wrote the first one, appropriately called it “Ballads for Sale” — fresh, new ballads, with the ink scarce dried upon them,” as the ballad singers themselves might have cried them. […]

Walt Kuhn has drawn the picture of a ballad singer to go with this one, and another artist has colored it. Different artists were asked to color these broadsides, and so unlike have been the interpretations which the coloring has put upon the drawing that collectors must look them all over very carefully before deciding which one to acquire. There are only a fixed number of each printed, in some cases 250 or thereabouts, and when these are sold no others are to be had.[11]

Three examples of Sunwise Turn broadside №2, which pairs Gladys Cromwell’s “The Scientist” with a drawing by John Mowbray-Clarke. The example on the right includes a note by Carl Zigrosser that it was “colored by Coluzzi.” Sources, left to right: 1) Found in the Brocken, 2015, collection of the author. 2) Amy Lowell papers, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library. Despite being found among Amy Lowell’s papers this broadside includes the bookplate of “Hal Witter Bynner” on the reverse indicating it was originally from Witter Bynner’s collection. 3) Collection of Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Carl Zigrosser, 1974 (1974–179–568).

The publicity afforded by this profile failed to send customers rushing to Sunwise Turn to snatch up the remaining stock. Madge Jenison writes to Amy Lowell in a letter of June 17, 1920, after she herself had sold her stock and retired from her official Sunwise Turn duties:

My dear Miss Lowell :-

I am sending you a clutch of the entire edition of your broadsides although it is not quite sold out. In case you should want any more there are about thirty here. The edition was 250 copies and we [???] the uncolored ones for $.25 the first half of the edition, the later half was sold for $.35. […] The colored ones we did the work ourselves […] we never kept track of how many we did. […] Broadsides are [snowed] under for the moment. There is a rhythm about everything even bookselling. We […] get so distracted in something new ourselves, and then after a time return to the old ardours. This is the reason there are still thirty of your broadsides.[12]

Four hand-colored examples of Sunwise Turn broadside no. 3, Amy Murray’s “Cow of Curses” with her own illustration. Image sources, left to right: 1) Collection of Newman family, South Mountain Road. 2) Collection of Dartmouth College, Rauner Special Collections Library, Hanover NH (VAL 809.18 5958) 3 & 4) Amy Lowell papers, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library. The example furthest to the right includes bookplate of Witter Bynner of the reverse.

Example of an uncolored Sunwise Turn broadside — no. 3, Amy Murray. Collection of Amy Lowell papers, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library. The reverse includes a rubber-stamped mark reading “Harvard College Library Jan 3 1917.”

Detail from a 1920 Sunwise Turn catalog advertising the broadside series, priced “from 25 c to $1.00.” Image source: The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Catalogs and price lists, folder 2.4)

Despite the apparently lackluster commercial success of the series, the shop would continue to sporadically issue, or consider issuing, further Sunwise Turn broadsides. Some were actualized, such as a series of text-only broadsides in opposition to capital punishment, and at least one broadside “bulletin” distributed on behalf of the Gary School League, a political action group formed in defense of a controversial educational system which was popular among the progressive-minded at the time. Others seem to have only gone as far as the planning stages — a letter dated Feb. 26 1917 letter from poet Helen Hoyt to Madge Jenison shows the beginnings of a plan that doesn’t seem to have gotten past the planning stages:

Dear Miss Jenison:

Nina Swinnerton said you wanted a poem of mine for a Broadside. Not being very sure what you would like I sent a number of poems for her to show you. I am wondering if you chose anything.[13]

Mary Mowbray-Clarke’s diary entry of Monday Feb. 11, 1924:

[…] Rather busy day, arranging with Boardman Robinson about a drawing for Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Pioneer.” He wants $100 for it. Then seeing a number of people about different matters of printing.[14]

A letter of the next day to artist, cartoonist and women’s rights activist Nina E. Allendar continues the thread:

Dear Miss Allender,

Miss Millay is allowing me to print a limited and signed broadside of her poem “The Pioneer”, which first appeared in your “Equal Rights”, with a drawing by Boardman Robinson. Before doing so I want to be sure that this in no way in your estimation interferes with your rights in the poem. Poets are never very business-like but journalists and book-sellers have to be — more’s the pity!

We would print a first issue of 500 copies on hand made paper […] signed by both the poet and draughtsman. […] This would probably be popular in the party. We would, of course, have as a bibliographical note, the fact that the poem was written for the Nov. 18th, 1923 celebration & published first in “Equal Rights.”[15]

Allender agrees to the plan, and sends the poem along with details about its historic and publication history, but there is (as yet) no evidence that this broadside ever made its way to print.

Sunwise Turn broadsides calling for the abolition of capital punishment. These examples (numbers II, IV and V), were issued in 1917, with no. V bearing the date of March 3, but it’s unknown how many (if any) more installments were produced. A press notice mentions Madge Jenison’s mysterious “assistant editor” on this project, artist Marguerite Grannis, whose name is listed on broadsides IV and V, as well as Samuel W. McCall (1851–1923), 47th. Governor of Massachusetts, whose daughter Ruth McCall was an early stockholder in Sunwise Turn and would become one of Mary Mowbray-Clarke’s primary business partners after the departure of Madge Jenison. From an article titled “Penalty of Death Under Fire,” dated Jan. 29 1917: A nation-wide campaign for the abolition of capital punishment is under way. Sponsored by a group of men and women prominent in the world of philanthropy and other public affairs, propaganda against the hangman’s noose and the electric chair is to be directed through every possible channel. The first in a series of weekly broadsides, issued in New York by this group of propagandists, cites several active steps already taken by the committee. […] A visit by Governor McCall, of Massachusetts, by Stanley Rumbough, resulted in the governor’s permission to use the subjoined extract from his message in any way which would further the purposes of this committee […] The extract from the message to the Massachusetts Legislature reads: “I urge you to pass legislation abolishing capital punishment. I believe that the principles of humanity and the scientific methods of penology both demand that it be done away with, and the experience of the States and nations which have abolished it warrant us in taking action.” The broadside calls attention to the advocacy of the abolition of the death penalty by these seven well-known humanitarians: George Foster Peabody, Dr. Felix Adler, Charles M. Lincoln, George W. Kirchwey, Adolph Lewisohn, Frederic C. Howe and Edwin R. Seligman. Signers of the broadside include Grace Humiston, Mrs. V. Everitt Macy, Stanley Rumbough, John Mowbray-Clarke, Noble Foster Hoggson, Mrs. Sidney Colgate, Vida Milholland, Margaret Adler, Madge Jenison, Richard Cholmeley-Jones, Eugene Boissevain, Spencer Miller, Jr., and Margueritte M. Grannis. (The News Journal, Wilmington Delaware. Mon. January 29, 1917. p. 2)

LEFT: Original artwork, presumably by John Mowbray-Clarke, and RIGHT: a postage-stamp size sticker attached as a seal on the Gary School League “bulletin” broadside distributed by Sunwise Turn in 1917. “The Gary School League” refers to a group organized in defense of the controversial “Gary Plan” of public education. This “work-study-play” model of education was initially devised in by William Wirt (1874–1938). Heavily influenced by the educational philosophy of John Dewey, Wirt was hired as school superintendent in by Elbert H. Gary, chairman of United States Steel in Gary, Indiana, a town founded in 1906 through the wealth of Gary and his steel empire. Wirt implemented a novel approach to public schooling in this new industrial city which focused on hands-on vocational training. Learning was not to be separated from social conditions, and students were encouraged to learn from one another (across age groups) while student-run work-communities within the school built the desks, bookshelves and chairs used within the school. A student-run print shop would handle the school’s printing needs. Even electrical and plumbing work would be done by students with the aid of teacher-artisans. Wirt wrote that The school is a playground, garden, work shop, social center, library, and traditional school combined in one plant and under the same management.[16] The increasing notoriety of the Gary Plan’s social as well as financial benefits led to Wirt being invited to introduce the system to New York, with extremely divisive results. Tammany politicians and their backers came to see the system as a threat to the social order, as it had been by some from the beginning. Wirt wrote that In the early days of Gary many of the ministers were calling the Gary System “the work of the devil.” That epithet was used, they said, [because] “The Gary Schools are sugar-coating the way to hell with their bands and orchestras, dramatics, nature-study, social club work, folk dancing and play.”[17] The Gary Plan was a high-minded cause taken up generally by progressively aligned women’s groups, and became increasingly vilified by everyone else. The Gary School League was one of the few groups organized in defense of the Gary Plan, and they were outnumbered, and out-shouted, at increasingly tense public meetings by Tammany-backed groups such as the Bronx Anti-Gary League and numerous parents’ groups. In the end riots erupted, perhaps undertaken spontaneously by students, though many held that the students were encouraged to riot under the guidance of those who not only wanted the Gary Plan dead but wished to use the unrest as a cudgel to secure a Tammany electoral victory. A newspaper sympathetic to the Gary School cause put it this way: The spectacle of 5,000 school children […] in a riot against the sort of schools provided by the city, has its comic aspects. […] If the affair had been merely an outbreak of youthful high spirits and boyish lack of responsibility, the Brownsville school riot might be dismissed as one of the funny misadventures of a busy police day. There is unfortunately, a darker side to the picture. Youthful high spirits had nothing to do with the matter […] It was planned not by the children of any of the schools but by unscrupulous politicians who have undertaken to make the “Gary schools” an issue to carry a city election.[18] The evidence is reported to be based on a “mole” who sat in on a planning meeting, but the journalist speculates the scheme would backfire. It did not, and the Tammany political machine won a landslide victory. The Gary Plan was forgotten by history. Madge Jenison mentions it off-hand several times in her book about the shop: “I slipped down in the corner of a Chesterfield where I had sat politely discussing the Gary system and the psychology of the unconscious […]” “The best authorities passed upon the lists on town planning, child labor, public hygiene, water supply, delinquency, the Gary School, penology […]”[19] Image source: The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Works by unidentified artists, folder 16.6 and Broadside Series, folder osf1)

Unsurprisingly, given that Amy Lowell had now been brought into the Sunwise Turn fold via the broadside series, she was invited to give a poetry recital. Similar to the first author’s talk by Theodore Dreiser, what actually happened that evening isn’t easy to piece together, but it isn’t nearly as clear-cut as Lowell simply taking the stage and reading. Carl Zigrosser remembered Lowell reading at Sunwise, “black cigar and all,”[20] and Beatrice Wood writes in her autobiography of an occasion where she recited Amy Lowell’s “Patterns” one evening, enraptured by the music of my own voice. Applause was polite.[21]

“Patterns” was Amy Lowell’s “hit” poem at this time — initially published in 1915 in Little Review, it proved both shocking and popular. The poem is set in the 18th century and deals with female sexuality and social constraints in the context of a male-dominated world and a backdrop of war which clearly alludes to WWI. The first-person narrator mounts an inner protest while managing to outwardly conform to tradition. The poem had obvious resonance for its time, and was also exquisitely crafted, remaining to this day Lowell’s most frequently anthologized work. It was also more intimately personal than most realized during her lifetime — Lowell’s lover who lived and travelled with her from about 1905 to 1907, Elizabeth “Bessie” Seccombe, was among the 1,198 passengers who perished when a German U-boat torpedoed the civilian passenger ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, drawing the US into WWI. Surviving records indicate that Lowell never mentioned Seccombe, or her tragic death, in any correspondence, and if she mentioned her in conversation it was kept strictly private.[22] “Patterns,” with its portrait of a woman who bears silent witness to her sexuality and the larger pattern of war which threatens all private desires, can be read as a public expression of this very personal story.

The emotional weight that “Patterns” had for Amy Lowell herself probably caused her further irritation at the Sunwise Turn reading. What Beatrice Wood doesn’t tell the reader in her autobiography is that the “one evening” that she recited “Patterns” was in fact the same evening that Amy Lowell was present to recite her own works! Beatrice Wood’s daily diary of January 22, 1917:

Amy Lowell reads at Sunwise Turn. I recite “Patterns.” Evening not marvelous.[23]

Similarly to Dreiser’s reading, Mary and Madge’s excitement and enthusiasm translated into impromptu invitations for friends and audience members to share the stage and engage with the author. An additional layer of confusion arose when Bumper fell ill and Mary, who likely planned to introduce Lowell, handed the reins to Madge Jenison. An evening which would already have been more chaotic than was typical became somewhat of a free-for-all. This apparently did not sit well with Amy Lowell. Madge Jenison doesn’t mention Beatrice Wood’s recitation of “Patterns” in an apologetic letter to Lowell sent six days after the reading, but it’s obvious that things were a little more complicated than Carl Ziggroser’s simple account of seeing “Amy Lowell, black cigar and all.” –

I am sorry that your evening at the shop turned out just as it did. Mrs. Clarke’s little boy was ill and she had to keep you waiting to be introduced since I am too stammering to do these things, and I am afraid Landseer Mackenzie[24] proved a bad lot. She is a delightful person — she is really though it would be hard to make you think so I am sure and I thought you would fall upon each other’s ideas with special delight, but I had not counted upon that British habit of being insulting and liking it which always startles us in America so much.

Mrs. Clarke and I felt the greatest self satisfaction over your evening and enjoyed it to the fullest measure and we were so much taken aback when our friends suggested that there was a black spot on it. You see that The Conning Tower[25] agrees with us. The clipping is from F.P.A’s column in Wednesday’s tribune. Will you drop us a line or stop by some time to see us and let us know that we did not let you in for too much of a [bother].

One scarcely knows how things can turn out so far from what they [planned? promised?]. We both hate to feel that we have gone astray in [???] to value your support of what we hope to make the Sunwise Turn — support which was so generously and intimately given.

Sincerely yours -

Madge Jenison

January 28, 1917

I have no New York address and must send this to Brookline.[26]

The clipping that Madge mentions in this letter was in fact from the Thursday January 25 edition of the New York Tribune. Under the heading “The Wonderings of a Listener” it gives a wonderful snapshot of the moment. The reviewer seems blissfully unaware of the tensions caused by Landseer Mackenzie’s apparently insulting engagement with Lowell, or any other unadvertised guest-readers:

Amy Lowell was reading Number 6 of her cycle called “The Hammers.” Tap-tap-tap: they were making Napoleon’s casket. From the walls of the little bookshop so fittingly named “The Sunwise Turn” golden light was reflected upon a hundred upturned faces. One head was bowed beneath a huge blue hat, and I wondered what that face was like, and what thoughts it masked. Beside me E.B. was looking straight at Miss Lowell, yet through her, beyond her, far into history, to Destiny itself. And the four Peculiar People on the long bench facing us — the three Greenwich Village girls with short hair and unhemmed neck scarfs, and the one man with long hair and the lips he had just touched red with rouge — even these four, whose fluttering entrance had aroused such remarks as “I thought none of them wore it short these days,” or, “There’s vers libre for you,” — even these sat dumb, quite evidently awed by the sight of an Emperor, and more, lying stiff and cold under a shroud. I marvelled [sic] at a personality that could shed its light, thus, across centuries. […][27]

This beautiful review did little to assuage Amy Lowell’s annoyance at the disorganized way in which the evening had unfolded. Her speedy response to Madge Jenison’s letter was sent the next day:

My dear Miss Jenison:

[…] I confess I thought you treated me with scant courtesy at my reading in your shop the other evening, for, in speaking for you without an honorarium, I was going against a firm rule of mine, and I only did it with the feeling of friendship for what you are endevouring to do; and it seemed to me that the least you could have done in return was to have permitted me to have the evening to myself, without unnecessary and futile discussion.

I thank you for your letter, which proves that it was merely an error in judgment on your part, and not an intentional rudeness. But it has convinced me of the wisdom of my usual procedure, and yours will be the last favour of the kind I shall ever grant.

The clipping you sent me was certainly very nice, but I am afraid I did little justice to my own work that evening, as I felt the presence of hostility in some of the audience, and the close proximity of Miss Mackenzie made it quite impossible for me to throw myself into the reading, as I usually do. Incidentally, had you contemplated asking other people to speak that same evening, it would have been better to have asked me beforehand if such a proceeding would be agreeable.

However, I am glad that you enjoyed what I did do, and I shall endevour to forget what I realize was only an untoward circumstance.[28]

Correspondence between Amy Lowell and Madge Jenison is spotty after this. Lowell does ask about the possibility of one of her books being included on the Sunwise Turn’s monthly promotional postcard mailings, indicating she was on their subscription list and recognized that they could help promote her work — but the relationship doesn’t appear warm. Regarding the postcards, she writes “You know I gave you my services at a reading from friendship. Could you not do this from friendship in return?” Madge Jenison then apparently pointed out that the work in question had been included in a prior postcard which Lowell had missed, prompting an apology.[29]

As for Madge Jenison’s take, she offers a characteristically positive interpretation in her memoir about the shop, mentioning Amy Lowell among the many readings and events in the early days of Sunwise Turn:

Quite naturally, from all the currents that flowed in and out of the shop we came to have something happening every Tuesday evening. We had opened with a reading of Dreiser’s plays. There had been poetry lectures and a series on libertarian education, a debate between a theoretical pacifist and a young Frenchman who had been fighting. Once it was a series on Spanish mimes and coplas; and once Amy Lowell, as the foremost exponent of verse libre, and an English musician with interesting theories of rhythm, debated rhythm for three hours. The room would grow colder and colder and people would stay on and on.[30]

While Madge omits the fact that the English musician, Landseer Mackenzie, was apparently insulting or aggressive in this exchange, the debate was probably genuinely interesting. Amy Lowell was unquestionably on the forefront of her era in respect to poetic explorations of rhythm. She drew influence from the rhythms of spoken language, as opposed to “formal” cadence, but she was most definitely not “making it up as she went” — there was fully developed reason to her absence of rhyme. Mackenzie’s own theories were grounded in mysticism, which would have set her at odds with Lowell, who belonged to a “school” of poetry (Imagism) which was moving away from florid romanticism and attempting to approach some objective sense of “things as they really are” — which often meant hard, concise and devoid of (immediately apparent) structure. Mackenzie may have espoused her own “theories” (which were more akin to a form of spiritual conviction) rabidly in a debate with Lowell as she was likely at least partly drawn to Theosophic philosophies as a balm for the incalculable losses of the war. Her brother Colin had been killed at the Battle of Liège, the first battle of the war, in 1914. Context gives a different tone to the oftentimes befuddling texts of the era dealing with communication with the dead and attempts to shift the world of frail and foolish human consciousness to a “higher” spiritual vibration or cosmic consciousness. In other words, Mackenzie may have attacked Amy Lowell with the ferocity of a zealot. Her writings make clear why she would have been offended by Lowell’s “vers libre” — she believed passionately in the preservation of “traditional” artform in order to free the soul from its own hubris. A soul thus liberated could then aid in the collective advance toward a higher spiritual plane. Some of her writings which touch on her understanding of rhythm offer a sense of what the “debate” was like, if one can imagine three hours of this delivered in the course of an impassioned exchange:

Rhythm is a law which governs and works through the senses. Rhythm is the law that connects feeling and idea.[31] Art is concerned with the production of effects in form, or the bringing about of change in form by a practical application of fundamental law of expression. The alchemists of old were true artists, because they produced gold by an understanding of the practical application of natural law for a definite purpose. The working of the law achieved the result, not the man. The title of artist is merited only by one who applies a natural law for the production of a specific effect. […] Does the poet know the nature of the words he uses, and their rhythmic value, so that he may accord them to the rhythm of his inspiration? Does he know the law which governs the expression of inspiration in an idea? […] He may arrive at a poetical result by good craftsmanship, or by psychic mediumship; but the process is not art. […] The purpose of art is to raise the soul or nature to the degree of sensibility necessary for the highest possible manifestation of form.[32]

Amy Lowell’s evening at the Sunwise Turn debating (or was it arguing?) with Landseer Mackenzie and listening to Beatrice Wood’s by all accounts underwhelming performance of “Patterns” is one not typically mentioned in accounts of her life. She seems to have only dipped her toe into the waters of the Sunwise Turn. There are scattered references that indicate she continued to have only a very arm’s length, sporadic connection with the shop to the end of her life, but she certainly never forgot it. In the last published collection of her work, a book of prose-tales called “Legends” (1921) she pays a perhaps unwitting tribute to fellow poet Amy Murray in this word-portrait in a “legend” titled Many Swans: Sun Myth of the North American Indians:

A stream flowed in a sunwise turn across the prairie, and the name of the stream was “Burnt Water,” because it tasted dark like smoke. The prairie ran out tongues of raw colours — blue of camass, red of geranium, yellow of parsley — at the young green grass.[33]

[1] Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Amy Lowell correspondence. (Cannan, Gilbert, 1884-, recipient. 2 letters; 1919., 1919.) MS Lowell 19–19.4, MS Lowell 19.1, (218)

[2] Carl Rollyson, Amy Lowell Anew: A Biography (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2013) Introduction, xvii

[3] Eunice Tietjens, The World at my Shoulder, The Macmillan Company, New York. p. 47

[4] Alice Corbin Henderson Collection 1861–1987, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (box 6, folder 2) Letter dated November 22, 1918.

[5] All letters in the series of correspondence between Amy Lowell and Madge Jenison regarding the publication and printing of the Sunwise Turn broadside series are sourced from Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Amy Lowell correspondence. “Jenison, Madge: MS Lowell 19–19.4, MS Lowell 19, (650)” and “Jenison, Madge: recipient, MS Lowell 19–19.4, MS Lowell 19.1, (690).”

[6] James Oppenheim (1882–1932), was editor/founder of Seven Arts magazine. A prolific poet, novelist, and psychoanalyst who was an early proponent of the philosophy of C.G. Jung, Oppenheim was also a vocal pacifist. He is among the many who were “considered” for publication by Sunwise Turn but whose work did not make it into the final purview for whatever reasons.

[7] Joy Grant, Harold Monro and the Poetry Bookshop (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 1967) pp. 108–109 Letter cited as “(24 March 1915) Houghton Library, Harvard.”

[8] Mary Mowbray-Clarke records a “Sale at Valley Cottage Barn” in July 1927 which resulted in “sale of 3 broadsides — .75” Another note dated August 2, 1927 on Sunwise Turn letterhead, which is crossed out to reflect a “New address, the Brocken, Pomona, NY” includes the note “Paid for 7 broadsides $1.75” The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Winding up the business, 1927–1929, folder 2.1)

[9] “Guibor,” a mystery play of the fourteenth century as played by Yvette Guilbert, has just been added to the series from the Neighborhood Playhouse published by the Sunwise Turn. The series also includes “Night at an Inn,” which has now reached its fourth printing. (“Newsie Notes,” The Washington Herald, Sun. June 15, 1919 p. 8 “) Internal sales and printing records held at the Ransom Center note that Night at an Inn sold 903 copies between Nov. 23 1916 — Feb. 1 1919, was reprinted in an edition of 350 in 1919, with 250 additional copies in 1920. The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Folder 3.6: Accounts (publications and sales), 1919–1920

(See “Sunwise Turn Publications in a/c with Sunwise Turn, Aug. 1 1920,” and “Cash (Receipts): 1916/ Nov. 23” in ledger book.)

[10] The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Container osf 1, “Broadside Series.”)

[11] Amy Bonner, “Revival of the Broadside” New York Evening Post. Section 3 (Book Section) p. 1

[12] Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Amy Lowell correspondence. “Jenison, Madge: MS Lowell 19–19.4, MS Lowell 19, (650)”

[13] The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (folder 7.10)

[14] Mary Mowbray-Clarke, daily diary 1924. Collection of Jethro Nisson, scans on file with the author.

[15] The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (folder 7.6)

[16] William Wirt, The Great Lockout in America’s Citizenship Plants (National Association for Year-Round Education, San Diego, 1937 — “Printed by Students of Horace Mann School.”) p. 23

[17] Ibid. p. 112

[18] “Sowing the Wind,” The Brooklyn Dail Eagle, Sun. October 21, 1917

[19] Madge Jenison, Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling (E.P. Dutton & Company, 1923) pp. 65, 75

[20] Carl Zigrosser, My Own Shall Come to Me. (Enschede en zonen; Haarlem, The Netherlands: 1971.) p. 298

[21] Beatrice Wood, I Shock Myself: the autobiography of Beatrice Wood, (Edited by Lindsay Smith. Dillingham, Press, Ojai, CA., 1985) p. 17

[22] Carl Rollyson, Amy Lowell Anew: A Biography (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2013) p. 61 (Amy Lowell’s relationship with Seccombe was revealed through the discovery of series of correspondence held by the Massachetts Historical Society during the course of research for Rollyson’s 2013 biography.)

[23] Beatrice Wood papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. (Box 17, folder 1, diaries.)

[24] Madge Jenison is referring to (Jane Norah) Landseer Mackenzie (1876–1936), an Irish-born British musician and author who worked as a vocal coach and piano teacher in New York. She was the niece of Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (1802–1873), the quintessential British painter of animals and designer of the lion of Trafalagar Square in London. She wrote several Theosophically-inspired books — The Trinity of Life (1920) and The Universal Medium: A New Interpretation of the Soul (1922) — which detailed her theories concerning psychic powers and the nature of the soul. These books also outline her spiritually imbued theories of artistic best practice. She evidently found something offensive in Amy Lowell’s “vers libre” approach to poetic rhythms, which ran afoul of her own theories. (see “Miss M’Kenzie of Polk County Dead,” The Times-News, Hendersonville, NC, Jan. 1 1936, p. 3 and S. Foster Damon, Amy Lowell: A Chronicle Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York, 1935 p. 396)

[25] A reference to a witty, often satirical column “The Conning Tower,” which was syndicated in the New York Tribune, the New York World, the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Post. The Conning Tower was administerd by columnist and poet Franklin Pierce Adams (1881–1960) aka “F.P.A.”

[26] Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Amy Lowell correspondence. “Jenison, Madge: MS Lowell 19–19.4, MS Lowell 19, (650)”

[27] “AL,” The Wonderings of a Listener, in Franklin Pierce Adams’ column “The Conning Tower.” New York Tribube, Thursday January 25, 1917, p. 9

[28] Ibid. Letter dated January 29, 1917. “Jenison, Madge: recipient, MS Lowell 19–19.4, MS Lowell 19.1, (690)”

[29] Ibid. Letters dated April 9 and 20, 1917, respectively.

[30] Madge Jenison, Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling (E.P. Dutton & Company, 1923) p. 101

[31] (Landseer Mackenzie as quoted in) Katherine Ruth Heyman, The Relation of Ultramodern to Archaic Music (Small, Maynard & Company, Boston, 1921) p. 56. (This book also includes quotations from Ananda Coomaraswamy, and some of the text seems to have been influential on Mary Mowbray-Clarke’s own ideas regarding color-theory.)

[32] J.N. Landseer Mackenzie The Universal Medium: A New Interpretation of the Soul (Arthur H. Stockwell, London & D.V. Nichols, New York. 1922) pp. 123–124

[33] Amy Lowell, Legends (Houghton Mifflin Co. New York and Boston, 1921) p. 110