The 100th anniversary issue of The New Yorker magazine (Feb. 10) includes a literary scoop, the first publication of a previously unknown poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963). The short poem, “Nothing New,” dated 1918 in Amherst, Mass., is written in the front of a copy of his second book, North of Boston, which was owned by a retired teacher and surfaced recently. Poet and critic Jay Parini, a Frost scholar, shares the poem and explains the background briefly in the magazine. The link is here. 

Below is a 1975 essay about Frost’s beginnings in Lawrence, Mass., by author Julie Mofford. A note at the end has background on the essay. 

Robert Frost Became a Poet in Lawrence, Mass.

Julie H. Mofford

All my poetry began right on this spot about the year 1890. –RF

When the city of Lawrence celebrated its Centennial in 1953, Robert Frost sent a telegram to the Lawrence Eagle Tribune. “Thanks to the Eagle for giving me this occasion to express my gratitude to the city of my school days and my beginnings in poetry.  I shall always be concerned for the city’s prosperity.”

The poet’s father left Lawrence for California soon after Harvard graduation.  He married a Scottish teacher and their son, born in San Francisco, was named Robert Lee after the Confederate general.  Nicknamed Copperhead, William Prescott Frost, Jr. favored the Confederacy in the Civil War.  The Lawrence textile mill where Robert’s grandfather was overseer, depended on cotton from Southern plantations.  Rob was eleven when his father died, and the family brought the body cross country by train for burial in Lawrence’s Bellevue Cemetery.

“At first I disliked Yankees,” Frost admitted.  After his sunny, carefree life in California, New England seemed cold, and Grandfather was intolerably strict. The elder Frost owned a three-story clapboard house at 370 Haverhill Street and because the second story was rented out, young Rob, his sister, Jeanne, and their mother, shared two rooms beneath the gabled roof.  The children were scolded for playing on the lawn or wiping dirty hands-on linen towels.  Rob never recovered from the shock of witnessing his grandfather horsewhip an Irish boy caught picking flowers in the yard.

It was around Lawrence that Frost first became “a swinger of birches.” He roamed the banks of Merrimack River and played by North Canal and below the stone dam where “the river curves about the mills.” The boy discovered a cave and imagined hidden treasure.

By age twelve, Rob was working in a Lawrence shoe shop, “and all that summer carried shoe nails in my mouth. I owe everything to the fact that I neither swallowed nor inhaled.” He had no formal schooling until 1886 when his mother took a teaching job in Salem, New Hampshire, and Robert and his sister attended her multi-grade classroom. Belle Frost taught in four different Methuen schools, and her methods were unorthodox with parents disapproving of her class trips to Canobie Lake Park.

After completing grammar school in three years, Robert entered Lawrence High School. His grandfather financed commuting costs from Salem in exchange for chores required of Robert before train departures. The family eventually moved to an apartment on Upper Broadway, beyond Methuen’s Nevins Library, where they lived until after Rob graduated.

The high school he attended, renowned for classical studies, was destroyed by fire in December 1910. “We had Latin and Greek . . . Nothing trivial there. Full of prime selections. Real literature.” Miss Newell turned him onto Latin poetry, and Katherine O’Keefe graded him 98 percent in British history. “I didn’t know I was head of the Class of 1892,” he said. An officer on the school debate team, during an unbeaten season he was a starting player on Lawrence High’s football team. “Much as I liked baseball, I didn’t make that team.”

Elinor White was Robert’s academic rival and girlfriend. She sat beside him in homeroom and wrote poetry for the school Bulletin.

“Do you realize Miss White is catching up?” the principal warned Robert, whose marks dropped due to distraction. “She may get the valedictory instead of you!” Robert wrote the class hymn, and the two students became co-valedictorians at Lawrence High School’s 41^st commencement. One newspaper praised Robert’s speech as “it combined in rare degree poetic thought, a fine range of imagination, and devotion to a high ideal, evincing intellectual compassion much beyond the usual school essay.”

Another journalist called it “a splendid effort, showing research and thought,” adding “its merits might have been shown to better advantage in a more natural delivery.” Awarded the coveted Hood Prize for overall excellence for four years, he sold the gold medal to a Lawrence jewelry shop the following day.

Still his chief competitor, Elinor’s talk was praised as “full of sound sense and original thought, showing fine mental power and culture.” Robert wanted to get married immediately but Elinor had been accepted to St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. She wanted to get her college degree and see Robert established first. The couple conducted a secret wedding ceremony and exchanged rings before parting. Elinor eventually became Frost’s wife of 43 years: “The marriage that made all the poetry possible.”

Robert worked every summer school vacation, often on Merrimack Valley farms. One year, he worked 7 a. m. to 6 p. m., six days a week, at Braithwaite Mill, pushing a wagon along rows of textile machines to collect empty bobbins. He was also caretaker for the Holmes family whose father was keeper of the South Canal head gates. “Robert was something of a hero to us kids,” Susan Holmes remembered, “ready to teach athletic stunts, build a doll’s house, or tell fascinating stories. He would lie on his back under our pear trees and tell tales full of imagination, making him a wonderful companion for children.”

Following graduation, Frost became assistant to the Everett Mill gatekeeper. His job, recording the absences and tardiness of operatives, gave him time for reading and for Elinor. Throughout life, he enjoyed what he called “talks-walking,” and now there were strolls and picnics along the Merrimack or rowing up the Spicket River.

Frost went to Dartmouth College as his grandfather wished, and though he did well enough, he rebelled at being told what to study. After learning of his mother’s difficulties at controlling her 8^th grade class at Methuen’s Central School East, he dropped out, prompting his grandfather to label him “an obstinate, indecisive fool,” who would “never amount to anything.”

The Reverend Charles Oliphant, minister of First Church, Methuen, was on the school committee that hired Frost. “The students Oliphant turned loose on me were a pretty savage gang,” the 18-year old teacher said. “I should have used rattans and canes on those unruly boys!”

One thirteen-year-old boy threatened Robert with an open knife. Oliphant said he could have sent the student to reform school, but Rob didn’t want to ruin the boy’s future. The family invited him to dinner in appreciation and years later Frost learned this boy became a town selectman.

Bored with discipling young people, Frost became a light-trimmer at Arlington Mills in Lawrence where The air was full of dust and wool/A thousand yarns were under pull and for $8 a week, he replaced burned-out arc lamps. “I learned to stand over moving machinery on the top step of a ladder with nothing to hold onto or brace a shin against and unsling an arc lamp from the ceiling for repair. It scared me irresponsible. Once, after having used a broom to cut off the current, I dropped the broom across all the threads to a jackspool and cut every thread. Before I could get down from my high perch, I was gesticulated at and sworn at by boss and overseer.”

Days, when factory lights were unnecessary, Frost hid out of sight reading his pocket Shakespeare. This skinny youth was no match for most mill hands. Once when comparing brawn, Frost stuck a lead pipe under his coat before stepping on the scales. He then took boxing lessons in the back room of a Lawrence saloon, from a retired prize fighter.

These lines from Frost’s poem “A Lone Striker” recall the lunch hour he hiked too far and daydreamed too long.

The swinging mill bell changed its rate                                                                     

To tolling like the count of fate                                                                                 

And though at that the tardy ran,                                                                                  

One failed to make the closing gate.

There was law of God and man                                                                          

That on the one who too late                                                                                 

The gate for half an hour be locked,                                                                        

His time he lost, his pittance docked.                                                                     

He stood rebuked and unemployed. After his mother left the Methuen school system in 1894, she rented one side of the duplex at 96 Tremont Street in Lawrence, and with Jeanne’s help, taught school there. Once, after nightshift in the mill, Robert locked himself in the kitchen as his sister pounded on the door to write “My Butterfly.” Published by The Independent, it was Frost’s first publication for pay in a national magazine. He quickly ordered two copies of Twilight, a collection of original poems, from a Lawrence printer, one copy for himself, the other for Elinor and boarded the train to Canton. St. Lawrence College restricted him from her campus dorm and Elinor was not impressed by Robert’s success. He ripped up the book, scattering its pages along the railroad tracks.

Frost had a fling at journalism. He was employed by The Lawrence Daily American for several weeks, then the weekly Sentinel, but decided reporting meant “Too much prying into the affairs of others.”  He took a teaching position at District School Number 9 in South Salem, N.H., “challenging minds by philosophizing.” Literature was acted out in class, and Frost joined athletic programs with the students.

Frost’s mother moved her home school to the Central Building at 316 Essex Street and after completing his teaching contract, Robert managed her school budget, as well as teaching mathematics and Latin.  Elinor completed college and joined them to teach French. In December of 1895, the couple married in Belle Frost’s apartment and Elinor continued teaching until the birth of their first child, Elliott.

This school relocated to the Simmons House on Haverhill Street, and it was there that Robert Frost made headlines. On December 28, 1896, The Evening Tribune announced: LONG POLICE COURT SESSION – ROBERT FROST FINED FOR ASSAULT ON HERBERT S. PARKER.  Son of a wealthy mill agent, Herbert Parker and his wife rented rooms in Frost’s Haverhill Street house. When Parker accused Robert of insulting his wife and called him a coward, Frost boxed Parker down the stairs and gave him a real shiner.

Bully for you, Herbert! Agent Parker’s son is no John L. Sullivan . . . His pugilistic enemy is hauled into court and fined $10 . . . Frost’s hands ought to have been encased in 16 oz. boxing gloves . . . It was a frosty day for Frost but he paid $10 like a little man, and doubtless thinks the notoriety he gained worth the money. It isn’t anybody’s privilege to challenge the son of a $20,000 mill agent to mortal combat!

Frost never got over being called “riffraff” by the judge. “I thought I’d have to leave town,” he later said.

Soon after this scandal, Robert enrolled at Harvard College in Cambridge, Mass., but his mother’s illness and a doctor’s warning of the tuberculosis that killed his father prevented him from finishing a degree.  In 1899, soon after their daughter Lesley was born in Lawrence, Robert moved his young family to 67 Prospect Street on Powder House Hill in Methuen. Here, Frost became a poultry man, even publishing articles about raising chickens for farm journals. After their son’s death in 1900, Robert’s grandfather put money down on a 30-acre farm in West Derry, New Hampshire, twelve miles from Lawrence, and here, the young family farmed and had three more children. It was a frugal life although Frost’s farming methods were unappreciated by neighbors. He milked the cows at midnight and 1:00 p. m. to fit his writing schedule. [The Frost Farm in Derry, 122 Rockingham Road, is a historic site managed by the state of New Hampshire. Check the website for information about visiting the farm. ]

“That Frost fella is the laziest lout!” one farmer claimed. “Didn’t know enough to keep the wood-box filled.” In 1906 Frost took a teaching job at Pinkerton Academy in Derry and was so successful he was asked to become the principal

Unsettled in a career and unproven as a poet, at age 38 Robert and his family left for England, where he finally won recognition as a poet. Back from England in 1915 and approaching being famous, he went on to teach at Amherst College and the University of Michigan and co-founded the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont. He was also a Library of Congress consultant, represented America in cultural missions to Israel, Greece, and the Soviet Union, and became the only person to receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times.

“Barding around,” was what Frost called the poetry readings and public lectures he presented all over the country. On March 31, 1925, he appeared at the Oliver School in Lawrence where members of the Class of 1892 sang the hymn he penned at Lawrence High School. He attended the dedication of the Robert Lee Frost Elementary School on January 7, 1962.

On a frigid January day with glaring sun in his eyes, Robert Frost recited “The Gift Outright” at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. When JFK was elected, Frost sent him congratulations by telegram: “Great days for Boston, Democracy, the Puritans, and the Irish!” it read. When the young President invited the poet to participate in inaugural ceremonies, Frost replied, “If you can bear at your age the honor of being made President of the United States, I ought to be able at my age to bear the honor of taking part in your inauguration . . . I can accept it for my cause–arts and poetry–now for the first time taken into the affairs of a statesman.”

Fame did not make Frost forget the city of his literary beginnings. “One of the great books that I came near writing but didn’t ever write, was the history of Lawrence.”

1975

Julie Mofford with her late husband, Tom, at right and friend Rick Sherburne

Author Julie Mofford of Maine, former resident of Greater Lawrence and a past contributor to the Howe blog, adds this note: “My sources were several Frost biographies in print before 1975, along with days spent researching Lawrence newspapers on microfilm at the Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover libraries, as well as Frost material at the Madrid, Spain, library of the U.S. Agency for International Development (the same agency Trump & Musk just axed!). In 1974-1976, the Eagle Tribune newspaper of Lawrence/Andover published a dozen articles I wrote about famous people who had lived in the Merrimack Valley, beginning with Anne Bradstreet and Hannah Dustin. This is from that series. When I was a junior at Tufts University, I interviewed Robert Frost in person for my article in the Tufts Weekly.