Informant38

Vachel Lindsay married his wife the day after he met her, and stayed married and in love. the marriage produced two children:

• Nicholas Cave Lindsay became a teacher and poet who has made his living as a boat builder and carpenter. He has published several volumes of poetry and oral history. Nicholas and his wife, Dubose, live on Edisto Island, off the coast of South Carolina, and they are the parents of ten children. Today Nicholas is recognized as the only authentic interpreter/performer of his father's ideas.
• Susan Doniphan Lindsay lived in Wales after she married John Russell, son of Bertrand Russell. Susan, like her father, was an artist and a writer. She also was a celebrated dancer, receiving a scholarship with the Martha Graham Dance Company. Susan died November 22, 1990, at the age of 64.

when he was young and single he walked across America using his poetic gift to feed himself, and abiding by these principles:

• 1. Keep away from the cities.


• 2. Keep away from the railroads.


• 3. Have nothing to do with money.


• 4. Ask for dinner about quarter after eleven.


• 5. Ask for supper and a night's lodging about quarter to five.


• 6. Travel alone.


• 7. Be neat, truthful, civil and on the square.


• 8. Preach the gospel of beauty.

Vachel wanted to live only by trading his poetry for room and board. All the money Vachel received he spent soon or he sent to his family. He never wanted money in his pockets.

Vachel, with his book Rhymes to be Traded for Bread, started out to experience the world first hand. He wanted to be perfectly honest with whomever he met on his tramps. Following these rules, Lindsay traveled the country making a name for himself.
Vachel Lindsay walked a vast stretch of land in this great country. His three tramps added up to 2800 miles. The first and shortest tramp stretched 600 miles. Vachel started in the state of Florida in 1906 and tramped his way to Kentucky. People began to notice this up-and-coming poet. Two years later after a trip to Europe, Vachel set off on a second walkabout. This time his trail led him 800 miles from New York City to Ohio where he had attended Hiram College. After this he returned home to Springfield, Illinois, and stayed there for a while, but four years of city life were too much, and in 1912 Lindsay prepared to tramp again. This trip was much more publicized. Local newspapers printed his rules and other tramping facts. Lindsay left on a tramp that was as long as his others combined. It was 1400 miles from Springfield to New Mexico, but Lindsay took every step.

{most of the above is, verbatim, the fine scholarly work of Ms. Huffman's English 437 class at Lanphier High School in Springfield Illinois, Lindsay's hometown.
other places on the web wherein the works of this much-maligned and misinterpreted herald can be found are:
• selfknowledge.com
• Poet's Corner
Lindsay gets spat upon by politically-correct reactionaries, many of them also devoting their virulent scorn for Samuel Clemens' racist masterpiece Huck Finn (that's irony Shawna, bitter irony, I love these men, and they are not racist, but the opposite). Lindsay's case is harder to make because he was so incautious, unlike Twain who seems to have been a genius of non-hypocritical hypocrisy. Lindsay just hit it flat out and stayed at maximum velocity. He wasn't Sandburg, he wasn't, most definitely wasn't, Yeats or Eliot. but his heart was big enough it seemed to have no boundaries, merging with the world he loved, and that love is what people responded to, and still do, or would if they had a chance to hear his voice.}