University of Virginia Library

Three Separate Leaves from Robert Frost's Derry Years: A Note and Transcriptions
by
Roger D. Sell

Stored together with Robert Frost's Derry notebook[1] are three separate leaves of white wove paper, written in his handwriting of the same period. His handwriting of a much later date (1951) also appears on two of them, in

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Two of them, blue-ruled and measuring 165 x 218 mm. and 173 x 212 mm., are essentially independent of the notebook. The third, however, probably belonged to it at one stage. Its unruled paper seems to be the same, and at 140 x 215 mm. it is not significantly larger than the notebook's leaves (129-134 x 202-213 mm.). On one of its short edges we can assume there were originally two holes (one now torn away completely), corresponding to those with which the other leaves were threaded into the notebook cover. The leaf can be fitted into the sequence of leaves as the very last leaf. (Anywhere else, it would upset both the flow of contents and the correspondences—stains, and indentations from heavy writing—deriving from physical contact between adjacent leaves.) And in this position it would of course be a natural candidate both for detachment, for contents of a different kind, and for more wear and tear.

One of the blue-ruled leaves contains a version of the poem about a blue-bird which was revised for publication in Collected Poems 1930.[2] The catalogue of the Barrett Frost collection notes variants.[3] Two other manuscript versions of the poem, apparently an earlier and a later, exist in other libraries.[4]

Both the other leaves contain prose jottings. Lawrance Thompson suggests that the one probably taken from the notebook was used by Frost for memoranda in his efforts to inspire his students at Pinkerton Academy to a more original style of composition.[5] I should myself suggest that the jottings on the other leaf represent some interesting essay topics. And I have already pointed out all these cryptic notes, on both leaves, should be read as shorthand for thoughts on politics, aesthetics and versification, on the value of science, learning and virtue, such as were to recur throughout Frost's life; and that four points in particular anticipate later statements even in verbal detail, revealing what were to become some of his most fruitful poetic beliefs.[6] The Derry period was crucially formative for him, and these two leaves offer a fascinating insight into the way his mind was working at that time.

Both Thompson and I myself have quoted and paraphrased from them, but only very incompletely. Frost scholars now need a full transcription such as is offered below.

As nearly as possible, the transcriptions preserve the relative positions of the words on the page. Italic type represents writing in ink; the rest is in pencil.

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[Blue-ruled loose leaf, 173 x 215 mm., recto]
[illegible word]
All these different phycological experiments
Poetry as measure
Sight and Insight. Sense and Insense
Stretching the Idea of ['Belief' del.] Imagination
Accused of talking as if to an audience when I have none
Believes in telephone
Believing the Future In (How soon you foresee what
you are going to say. I thought of that poem as I
wrote it.
No surprise to author none to reader
The Parties to Poetry
What You Have to Have Been Lousy?
The Ultimate Essay (Attempt)
Metaphor May not be far but it is our farthest forth.
Only accumulation of ages
[vertical bracket in pencil] We Can Communicate: We Cant Communicate
Aristotle Imitation
The great word is Verification
['The' del.] *Learning a [intrl.] Need not be sound if it is
Means ['M' over 'm'] for Conveying Sound a sound
Seized Leisure and the Artists Revolt from the Middle Class
Greater
Balance expected missed and compensated for
Science Pointed toward Domesticity and Robot a domestic
High School Boys Disillusionment—Finds we are joke of Europe
over
[Blue-ruled loose leaf, 173 x 215 mm., verso]
Give Them the Right to be Courteous
{Peasant [illegible word]
{Tradesman Grasping
Greatest ['Middle' del.] Upper Middle Class the World Has Known
[Unruled loose leaf, 140 x 215 mm., probably last leaf of
Derry notebook, recto; prose beginning 'Milton' relined]
This is as old as Derry days
You can see from it where one idea started
R. F. 1951 [This headnote in Frost's late hand.]
I hate most the fellow who makes common stories
of the ['a' del.] flight of man.
He came out of the heavy mist and contemplated
the terms and accepted them. They were then
as they are now: A little more pleasure than pain,
pain ['p' over 'P'] greater in length and breadth but exceeded
by pleasure in height, one more pleasure than pain
['when all' del.] by actual count, ['en—'del] the pleasure of being
alive.
The Fan. (Baseball)
The Tramp Worshipper (A Boy at the Roadside
Milton spoke in terms of the studies of his youth ['of the' del.] about the great events
that *were drawing [ab. undel. 'had drawn'] him away from those studies. In Comus
"Love Virtue; she alone is free". The only free man is the abject slave of virtue. Not

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so says ----. The freeman will use virtue as he will use vice to the ends of his own
free spirit.
The three unities are of Reality *Decorative Form [ab. undel. 'Design'] and Significance.
Architecture may be pure Design—Design only in stone.
Thought advances like spilled water along dry ground. Stopping gathering breaking
out and running again.
"Dont write unless you have something to say." Until you have something to say.
Go and get something to say.
[Unruled loose leaf, 140 x 215 mm., probably last leaf of Derry notebook, verso; prose relined]
We approve of people to their faces to gain their approval. We disapprove of them
['when they are absent' del.] behind their backs to gain our own approval. But we
are the two-faced devils.
A Tentative Farm. He thought he would; then he thought he wouldn't.
The Store in the Evening
Tiffile Berry
The Outlook thinks Curtis will be the great aviator in history because he ['was the first to' del.] sailed down the Hudson like Fuller Egan thinks Perry's exploit was equal to Columbus because it was possibly as hard. Willman thinks to get into history by crossing the Atlantic in an airship because Columbus crossed the Atlantic. They are all like imitators of the great. Their intention is good, but they don't know what the great really did for them to imitate. Columbus for instance didn't cross the Atlantic. He didnt suffer hardships and privations. At least not for these thing [or thims] is he Columbus. Why is he immortal then? Can't you tell? Well because he had *the [intrl.] faith that so few are capable of, the faith in an idea. Not for him to feel his way round Africa to Ind. He launched out into space with ['confidence' del.] the supreme confidence of reason. Great in his confidence, great in his justification. The nearest him among the aviators and the only ones near him are the Wright brothers.

Notes