Literary critic and professor Sidney Cox met Robert Frost in 1911, when he was 22 and Frost was 37. Cox retained his initial reverence for the poet throughout their many years of friendship, describing him as “the wisest man, and one of the two deepest and most honest thinkers, I know.” Here, Frost consoles his friend after a breakup, advising him to be self-confident.
10 July 1913 Beaconsfield
Dear Cox:-
I get your story and I am sorry for you. The only thing I don’t understand is the philosophical not to say meek way in which you take your luck. You attribute it to your lack of self confidence. What would that mean I wonder. Are you any less sure of yourself than are others of your age? And is it in religion or in business or in politics or in society or in love? One thing I know: you will not be any more sure for a while after an experience like this. I don’t like it for you.
If you want my opinion, I think it all comes of your overhauling your character too much in the hearing of others. You give your case away as Tennyson did his when he confessed that wherever he wrote King Arthur he had in mind Prince Albert. He spoiled the Idyl[l]s for the present generation (I mean our own) and perhaps for all generations to come. And yet the poems are neither better nor worse for the confession. You must not disillusion your admirers with the tale of your sources and processes. That is the gospel according to me. Not that I bother much to live up to it.
And if you want my opinion, there is one other thing that enhances your effect of extreme youth. You are too much given to being edified—benefited, improved by everybody that comes along, including me. You must learn to take other people less uncritically and yourself more uncritically. You are all eaten up by the inroads of your own conscience.
To get back to your trouble. I can’t account for the calm you preserve except on the assumption that you hope there is still hope. Be frank about that. If it is anything to you, or can result in anything, for us to meet Miss Howard, Mrs Frost and I will be glad to have her out to see us in August. But if the affair is closed I am afraid I should only be awkward in meeting her. What should I say. I am not good at talking about everything but what is in the back of my mind. But you shall decide. Do you have something like a real wish that we should talk with her—for some secret reason that you may not want to own even to yourself? Let me know soon. I will scold you more in my next letter. Sincerely yours Robert Frost.
FURTHER READING
Find a 1957 review of Cox’s biography of Frost, A Swinger of Birches, here.
Listen to a lecture by Don Paterson on “Frost as a Thinker” here.