Moody, William Vaughn. Papers, 1892-1925

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Literature and Poetry

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William Vaughn Moody [1869-1910], American poet, play write and teacher, studied painting at the Pritchett Institute of Design in 1885, and did college preparatory work in classics at the Riverview Academy in 1887 before entering Harvard in 1889. He graduated second in his class in 1893. Moody published his first poems in the Harvard Monthly, and while at Harvard became friends with Daniel G. Mason, George Santayana, Norman Hapgood, Robert Herrick, and Robert Morss Lovett. He received his M.A. from Harvard in 1894 and taught English literature there during 1894-5.

In Autumn of 1895, he joined the English faculty of the University of Chicago as Instructor in English and Rhetoric; as Assistant Professor in English and Rhetoric, Moody conducted his last classes at the University in Winter Quarter of 1903--although he remained "on leave" until his formal resignation in 1908. At Chicago Moody continued his friendships with Herrick and Lovett and established ties with Ferdinand Schevill, John M. Manly, Hamlin Garland, Harriet Monroe, and Mrs. Harriet Brainard [nee Harriet Converse Tilden] who later became his wife.

In 1901--the year after he met Mrs. Brainard--his volume of Poems appeared. The next year saw the publication of A History of English Literature co-authored by Robert Morss Lovett; in 1905 Lovett and Moody published A First View of English Literature. In October of 1906, Moody's play The Great Divide opened in New York; it was a great success and ran for two years. Before his early death in 1910, Moody was considered one of America's leading poets and perhaps her most promising playwright--a judgment sustained until the 1920's. He was honored by Yale University in 1908 when he received the D. Litt. In May 1909, Moody and Harriet Brainard were married; because of his health they settled in Southern California in December of that year. Moody's last prose play The Faith Healer opened in New York in January 1910. On October 17, 1910, Moody died of a brain tumor in Colorado.

Included in these papers are two folders of general correspondence ca. 1896-1910. Among the correspondents are Jane Addams [February 9, 1901], Edwin Markham, Norman Hapgood, Harriet Monroe, Richard W. Gilder, Charles Eliot Norton, Edmund C. Stedman; there is also correspondence from Moody's publishers, and letters from appreciative readers. Box 1, folders 3-6 contain letters from Moody to Robert Morss Lovett ca. 1892-1906 [folder 3 also includes an early Moody poem, "Applause"]. Correspondence from Daniel G. Mason to Moody ca. 1895-1906 are in folders 7-8.

William Vaughn Moody's travel diary for a European trip in 1897, four notebooks, and student themes, are in Box 1, folders 9-14. In 1897, twenty-eight year old William Vaughn Moody set out on his third trip to Europe in five years with a friend and colleague from Chicago, Ferdinand Schevill. Both were instructors at the University of Chicago--Schevill in Modern History, Moody in English. Moody kept a short account of a portion of this trip. It began as his ship approached the Azores on April 2, then it was four days before the second entry was made on April 6. After this faltering start, the account is silent until April 24, when Moody and Schevill were settled in Rome. The diary then covers numerous side trips from Rome and their departure from that city. After April 24 it becomes a daily account of their excursions until May 17, when the account ends abruptly.

The diary is not merely an account of the incidents of the trip, but Moody also records his impressions of Italy--the countryside, the people, its history and its art. The relationship between the accounts given in the diary and the descriptions found in Moody's poetry are of particular interest. Robert Morss Lovett, in his introduction to the Selected Poems of William Vaughn Moody (p. xxxix) comments: "Joining Ferdinand Schevill on a bicycle trip northward, he [Moody] found such joy and hope on a morning ride out of Orvieto as inspired 'Road-Hymn for the Start'". In part, the poem reads:

Down the road the day-star calls;

Touched with change in the wide heavens,

like a leaf the frost winds touch,

Flames the failing moon a moment, ere it

shrivels white and falls;

Hid aloft, a wild throat holdeth sweet

and sweeter intervals.

Moody's diary entry for the same event, the departure from Orvieto, sets a somewhat different mood. He records on April 30: "Started at 9 for Perugia-road apparently 25 miles on map; warning of the padrona that we should find it 160 miles proved well-founded. The whole mortal morning we climbed through the mountains with Orvieto's noble hill always in sight and seemingly exactly the same distance away--comment on instinct and tradition among Italian road builders. About noon the hard hot climb was over and we dashed down a rocky road 8 or 10 miles to Ficulle...."

In the same poem appear these lines:

We have felt the ancient swaying

Of the earth before the sun,

On the darkened marge of midnight heard

Sidereal rivers playing;

This compares with Moody's diary entry for April 29, the eve of the departure from Orvieto: "Wine at dinner and its effects. Our talk and smoke. I felt the swaying of the sun around the earth, Ferd saw the whole of Italy with its rivers and mountains and jewelled cities." This diary is a record of the poet's thoughts and impressions at the beginning of his first fertile artistic period. It consists of 176 pages; however, Moody used only 54 of these. There are notations inside each cover.

The four notebooks contain ideas for plays; notes for a Hopi play and a bibliography of books on the Hopi Indians; Outline of a play about Blairs and Trumans; possible titles and subjects for poems; notes on Prometheus and other classical gods; a list of Greek words and their English meanings; addresses of friends. Some of Moody's student themes are graded and have instructor's comments.

Box 1, folder 15 - Box 2, folder 20 contains literary works by William Vaughn Moody arranged chronologically. Included are manuscripts and typescripts of poems; poetic dramas and plays, The Fire-Bringer, The Masque of Judgment, The Death of Eve, The Faith Healer, and a fragment of The Great Divide; and a galley proof of fifty pages of the book A First View of English Literature.

The remainder of Box 2 is devoted to miscellaneous biographical information on W.V.M. including extracts from Daniel Mason's journal ca. 1894-1900; a chronology of Moody's life; some of Harriet Moody's comments on her husband's work; and letters written to Robert Morss Lovett in response to his 1931 Selected Poems of William Vaughn Moody. In addition, there are two folders of biographical and critical printed materials about Moody. Included are reprints of critical articles on Moody's work as well as reviews of the posthumous editions of his works; some news clippings about him; and personal tributes, mostly prose but several poetic. Among the authors are Karle Baker, John Grimes, Paul Shorey, Percy MacKaye, Robert Morss Lovett, and two of Moody's students at the University of Chicago, Grace Veeder and Charlotte Wilson.

Additional (and occasionally duplicate) printed material is found in the four scrapbooks, which have been disbound and fill Box 3. The bulk of this material is news clippings--some comments on Moody's poetry but primarily reviews of his plays. These reviews are very extensive, covering both foreign and domestic performances. There are also playbills and programs. Biographical data [supplied by Harriet Moody] is included and there are a number of printed items of related interest: Percy MacKaye's "Uriel," written as a eulogy to Moody, and Ferdinand Schevill's article in a University of Chicago literary magazine, The Circle, "A Remembered April: Recollecting a Spring with a University Poet," Vol. 2, No. 8, June, 1924.

The following related resources are located in the Department of Special Collections:

• Names
  • Moody, William Vaughn, 1869-1910
  • Schevill, Ferdinand, 1868-1954
  • Addams, Jane, 1860-1935
  • Hapgood, Norman, 1868-1937
  • Markham, Edwin, 1852-1940
  • Monroe, Harriet, 1860-1936
  • Norton, Charles Eliot, 1827-1908
  • Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 1833-1908