Frost, Robert, Farm

The author of 11 volumes of poetry, Robert Frost has been one of the few 20th century poets to command both critical respect and wide readership. During his lifetime he reaped more honors than any other American poet before him. On four occasions he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: in 1924 for New Hampshire in 1931 for Collected Poems, in 1937 for A Further Range, and in 1943 for A Witness Tree.

In the fall of 1940, Frost purchased the Homer Noble Farm, located about three miles east of the small community of Ripton in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Associated with the 150-acre property were a 1-1/2-story frame and clapboard farmhouse, a wooden barn and hay shed, and a 1-story log-walled cabin. Living and writing there during the summer and fall months until his death in 1963, Frost produced five volumes of poetry including his fourth Pulitzer Prize-winner.

The Homer Noble Farm is now owned by Middlebury College. The barn has been demolished but the farmhouse and cabin are in excellent condition and relatively unaltered. The property is not open to the general public but scholars, students, and writers may visit by appointment.

Historical Background

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California. He was the son of William Prescott Frost, Jr., a newspaper reporter from Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Isabelle Moodie Frost, a former teacher who had been born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Robert was 11 years old when his father died of tuberculosis. Honoring a last request, the family took the body back to Lawrence for burial. No funds were available for the return trip and Mrs. Frost settled with her children-- Robert and his younger sister Jeanie--in Salem, New Hampshire, where she earned a living for several years by teaching school.

Frost entered Dartmouth College in the fall of 1892 but disliked formal study so intensely that he left after only two months. During the next two years, he earned a living in miscellaneous ways while sending poems to uninterested editors. In 1894, to celebrate his first sale of a poem--"My Butterfly: An Elegy," published by the New York Independent--he privately printed six of his poems in a booklet entitled Twilight; an edition limited to two copies, one for his affianced, Elinor White, and one for himself.

After his marriage in 1895, Robert Frost taught for two years at his mother's private school in Lawrence and then spent the next two years as a special student at Harvard. In 1900, for reasons of health, he moved to a small farm in Derry, New Hampshire, and conducted a small poultry business there until 1905. Failing as a farmer, he taught various subjects at the Pinkerton Academy at Derry from 1905 to 1911 and then moved to Plymouth, New Hampshire, where he taught psychology for a year in the New Hampshire State Normal School.

By 1912 Frost had decided to devote his main efforts to poetry, and fortified with the money obtained from the sale of the Derry farm and an annuity of $800 left him by his grandfather, Frost set sail for England with his family. Settling first in Buckinghamshire and then in Herefordshire, he cultivated the friendship of a number of English poets. Composing a few new poems and selecting others written at Derry and elsewhere, Frost prepared a volume for publication. Mrs. Alfred Nutt of London brought out the first book, A Boy's Will in 1913. A second, North of Boston, appeared the following year. The cordial praise given those poems by British men of letters won him lasting friendships in England and attracted the surprised attention of critics and editors in his native land. When he returned to the United States in 1915, his first two books had been reissued in New York and North of Boston and soon became a best seller. A third volume, Mountain Interval was published in 1916.

After his return from England, Frost purchased a farm two miles west of Franconia in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. In 1917 he accepted a position as Professor of English at Amherst College. During the rest of his life, Frost spent a part of almost every year teaching and working in a college atmosphere. As his reputation grew, the demands made upon him as a teacher decreased, and he held a number of Fellowships at various colleges, all of which gave him a great deal of freedom to pursue his art. His major appointments were at Amherst (1917- 1920, 1923-1925, 1926-1938, 1949-1963), the University of Michigan (1921-1923, 1925-1926), Harvard (1939-1942), and Dartmouth (1943-1949).

Throughout his life, Frost continued to return to the New England countryside when the weather was good and his schedule permitted. In 1920 he bought the Peleg Cole Farm in South Shaftsbury, Vermont. In December of 1923, he purchased a second farm in the area, "The Gully," which he kept until after the death of his wife 10 years later. In 1940 Frost purchased the 150-acre Homer Noble Farm near Ripton, Vermont, located eight miles from Middlebury College and two miles from the Bread Loaf Inn, where each summer the college sponsored the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Frost knew the area well. He had been influential in establishing the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and he had delivered an annual lecture at the Middlebury School of English since 1921.

From 1940 until his death in 1963, Frost spent the summer and fall months of each year at Ripton (springs were spent at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and winters at the New England-style bungalow that he built on rural land near Coral Gables, Florida). Frost lived simply at the Noble Farm, occupying the log-walled cabin on the hillside above the farmhouse, which he "rented" to his private secretary and her husband, Kathleen and Theodore Morrison. He cooked many of his own meals when not eating at the farmhouse, made his own bed, cut all the wood for his fireplace, and grew vegetables for the Morrisons and himself. Frost normally rose late in the day and wrote, read, or talked with friends far into the night. He continued his habit of taking long walks, especially at night, in the company of his dog Gullie.

Robert Frost reaped more honors during his lifetime than any other American poet before him. On four occasions he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: in 1924 for New Hampshire, in 1931 for Collected Poems, in 1937 for A Further Range, and in 1943 for A Witness Tree. In 1939 he became the third poet in history to receive the coveted gold medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1958 he was appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Frost became such a national institution that he was asked to read a poem at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961. Perhaps the most eloquent tribute paid to him after his death was made by a fellow poet, John Ciardi, who said simply: "He was our best."

Before his death, Frost made arrangements for the transfer of the Homer Noble Farm to the Morrisons. Adjoining parcels of land that he had acquired were left to his friend and caretaker, Stafford Dragon, and sold to the Donald Gordons, parents of the wife of his only grandson, Prescott. Middlebury College bought the Homer Noble Farm from the Morrisons in 1966. As part of the purchase agreement, the couple retained the right to occupy the house during the summer months for a 10-year period. In consequence, the farmhouse and cabin are not open to the general public; however, scholars, students, and writers may visit them by arrangement with the College.