Robert Haven Schauffler: An Inventory of His Correspondence at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center

Robert Haven Schauffler, author, lecturer, and musician, was born of American missionary parents in Brünn, Austria, on April 8, 1879. The family returned to the U. S. two years later, where Shauffler later attended Northwestern University (1898-1899) and Princeton University, earning his B.A. in 1902. He pursued postgraduate studies at the University of Berlin from 1902 to 1903. As a cellist, Schauffler studied under Steindel, Schroeder, and Hekking. In 1904, he married Katharine de Normandie Wilson, who died in 1916. During World War I, Schauffler was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the Infantry of the U. S. Army, in which he was also an instructor in the Officers Training School at Camp Meade, Maryland. He participated in the Allied invasion of France, where he was severely wounded before the battle of Montfaucon in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Having been decorated with the Order of the Purple Heart, he was discharged May 28, 1919. Schauffler then resumed his career as author and lecturer, which he continued until his death in 1964.

Schauffler held positions as editor of Nassau Literary Magazine (1901-1902), music editor of The Independent (1903-1904), and was a special contributor to Collier's Weekly (1906), Century (1907), Outlook (1907), Success (1909-1910), Atlantic (1911), and Metropolitan (1911). Schauffler was a prolific poet, whose publications include Scum o' the Earth and Other Poems (1912), The White Comrade and Other Poems (1920), Magic Flame and Other Poems (1923), The Poetry Cure (1925), and New and Selected Poems (1942). He also published monographs on a variety of musicial subjects, including The Musical Amateur (1911), Fiddler's Luck (1920), Music as a Social Force in America (1927), Beethoven: The Man Who Freed Music (1929), The Unknown Brahms (1933), Fiddler's Folly and Encores (1942), Brahms, The Master (1943; with Madeleine Goss), Florestan: The Life and Work of Robert Schumann (1945), and Franz Schubert: The Ariel of Music (1949). Among his travel books, there are Through Italy with the Poets (1908), Romantic Germany (1909), and Romantic America (1913). Finally, Schauffler published many books celebrating holidays and observances, including Thanksgiving (1907), Christmas (1907), Arbor Day (1909), Washington's Birthday (1910), Independence Day (1912), Armistice Day (1927), Plays for Our American Holidays (1928), and Columbus Day (1938). In addition, Schauffler frequently contributed poems and articles to a variety of periodicals and anthologies throughout his career.

Scope and Contents

The collection consists primarily of incoming correspondence, including typed and holograph manuscripts, postcards, Christmas cards, photographs, newspaper clippings, autographs, and a calendar. The materials are arranged alphabetically by correspondent. Outgoing correspondence is interfiled with the incoming correspondence.

Robert Haven Schauffler's wide circle of friends and professional associates is well documented in this collection. Correspondents include musicians, composers, authors, family members, scholars, and admirers. Subjects range from the clumsiness of Schumann's compositional notation to Charlotte Brontë and fundamental questions concerning the poetic process. Among the more significant pieces of correspondence are a series of letters from Grace Hazard Conkling, in which she discusses the character and literary theories of Amy Lowell, Germany and German music, the image of porpoises in her own verse, George Saintsbury's A History of English Prose Rhythm, and Beethoven; letters written by the poet Louise Imogen Guiney to Edward A. Church; German translations of Schauffler's poetry done by Heinrich Barban; a lively discussion of music in the letters of Elizabeth C. Moore; letters from James Oppenheim, comparing poetry to music, questioning proper contemporary poetic subjects, and examining the differences between poetry of the nineteenth century and the twentieth; and, finally, correspondence from George Sterling, in which he touches upon the death of Jack London, his own impending divorce, sobriety, and the beauty of Carmel, California. The correspondence from Fritz Eichenberg, Clare Leighton, and R. H. Sauter include original lithographs and woodcuts printed on cards.

In addition, there are a number of typed and holograph manuscripts of poems, including Katherine Lee Bates's “The Debt,” Robert Graves's “Burrs & Brambles,” Clement Allison's “The Matter with the Poets” and others, poems by Clark Ashton Smith and George Sterling, Louis Untermeyer's “Spratt vs. Spratt” with corrections in his own hand, Edmund Gosse's “The Fear of Death,” poems by Jessie Kemp Hawkins, Richard Hovey's “Matthew Arnold,” Robert Underwood Johnson's “October” and “Portae Musarum,” poems by Theda Kenyon, George Cabot Lodge's “Life and Death,” poems by Charles F. Lummis, James Oppenheim, Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, and Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, and Charles Hanson Towne's “Silence,” among many others. A poem by Siegfried Sassoon, “In Sicily,” is included as a printed publication from the series, “The Ariel Poems.”

In his capacity as musician and biographer of Beethoven, Brahms, and Schumann, Schauffler also received correspondence from such figures as the composer Edwin Grasse, Alfred Einstein, Pablo Casals, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Gregor Piatigorsky, the German concert pianist Elly Ney, Leopold Stokowski, Joseph Szigeti, and Arturo Toscanini. Subjects touched on in the musical correspondence include the Grasse Trio, the difficulties of the blind, musical performance, public taste in music, horseback riding as an inspiration for musical composition, the twelve-tone scale, Igor Stravinsky, Schauffler's Fiddler's Fate, autobiography, book reviewing, Schumann, Schubert, and Brahms.

Other subjects touched on in the collection include the anxiety of German citizens before the outbreak of World War II and their attempts to leave the country, public taste in and reception to literature, the didactic qualities of literature, publishing, the effects of European travel on the American abroad, writers' colonies, the establishment of Israel as an independent nation, the military, college life, and marriage. The correspondence also contains material of a more personal nature, including condolences on the death of Schauffler's first wife, admiration for his poetry, thanks for various assistances and gifts provided by Schauffler, and congratulations on his remarriage.

In addition, there is a folder of autographs of famous singers from the Metropolitan Opera at the turn of the century. Among those included are Emilio Bevignani, David Bispham, Andreas Dippel, Lilli Lehmann, Eugenia Mantelli, Adolf Mühlmann, Lillian Nordica, Pol Plançon, Lempriere Pringle, Edouard de Reszke, Jean de Reszke, Anton van Rooy, Albert Saléza, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink. There are also a few photographs of some of these performers in various roles: Ernestine Schumann-Heink in an unidentified role; David Bispham as Albrecht; Pol Plançon as Méphistophélès in Faust; Andreas Dippel in Lucia di Lammermoor; Anton van Rooy as Hans Sachs in Der Meistersinger; Lillian Nordica in an unidentified role; and Enrico Caruso as Enzo in La Gioconda. This folder also contains a fragment of a holograph note from Jeanne Chausson, the widow of the composer Ernest Chausson. Finally, there are autographs of Johan Bojer and Alexander Siloti as well as an envelope addressed by Sidney Lanier to his wife fom 1872.

The collection was received in two alphabetical sequences, a division which was apparently made for sale purposes. Therefore, these two sequences have been combined into one alphabetical sequence. The folder containing autographs of opera singers and the holograph fragment by Jeanne Chausson was not interfiled within the main sequence but was, rather, filed at the end of the sequence. The autographs of Johan Bojer and Alexander Siloti and the envelope addressed by Sidney Lanier were pulled from the main correspondence sequence because their format suggested collocation with the other autographs.

Further material relating to Schauffler may be found in the following HRHRC collections: Robert Underwood Johnson, Christopher Darlington Morley, PEN, Grant Richards, and Idella Purnell Stone.

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