Vol. 34 No. 1 1967 - page 119

L1VES
119
in
which to "establish himself as a self-supporting man of letters," is re–
ported with no suggestion that the agitated heart behind the arrogance
had a claim to be understood: "But Rob, instead of making a tactfully
grateful answer, seemed intent on using the moment as another occasion
for insolence." A similarly chill and schoolmasterish tone is heard in the
treatment of Frost's persistent obsession with suicide: "His early and
purely imaginative play with thoughts of suicide became another life–
long game of indulgent self-pity."
Perhaps some awkwardness of style and uneasiness of tone is un–
avoidable in writing of a poet's boyhood; but one type of idiom, talk of
what Frost or someone else "may have" done or thought, raises a question
of method. A biographer's first duty is to state what
did
happen and
give the evidence; his second, to speculate on its significance. When the
two processes get confused, the result is a blurred twilight reality, irritating
and misleading. An illuminating paragraph on the Swedenborgian-Emer–
sonian interests of Frost's mother goes on to say:
Wordsworth had also helped Mrs. Frost convey to her children the
ability to feel in nature a presence which could and should inspire
with the joy of elevated thoughts. He further helped her explain to
them her belief that whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of
God as a little child does, shall in no wise enter therein. It may have
been easy and natural for her to quote to Robbie and Jeanie, while
still in San Francisco, the lines beginning, "My heart leaps up...."
It
is useless to be told that "it may have been easy and natural" for Mrs.
Frost to quote Wordsworth's lyric, though the sentence leaves the vague
t
impression that she did. We cannot determine from the text or the notes
whether in fact Mrs. Frost read Wordsworth to convey to her children a
feeling of a "presence" in nature, or to explain the gospel injunction to
become as a little child, a lesson not strictly speaking Wordsworthian.
Speculate a biographer must, but how he speculates makes a difference.
As this example indicates, Thompson has an almost obsessive interest
, in
showing that Frost was always much concerned with religious thought,
which he proves, and that in time he arrived at a settled religious belief.
Without denying that Frost had some kind of religious faith, we may
object to how the case is made, particularly when an impression is created
of stronger proof than the evidence warrants.
The Early Years
reflects a
tendency, evident in eulogies pronounced at the time of Frost's death,
to assure the general public that the poet was not "a wild old wicked
\ man,"
that he was at least sufficiently pious, that his works could rest
on the shelf with
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