In between his time at Harvard (1897–1900), when he published frequently in undergraduate magazines, and his move to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1916, when he was beginning to appear with regularity in the newly emerging little magazines of avant-garde writing, Wallace Stevens led a double life in New York City, with the lion's share of his waking hours spent trying (and failing) to earn a wage good enough to enable him to resume the comfortable upper-middle-class style he had been accustomed to in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he grew up, and in Cambridge, where he was supported by his father's faithful checks. In the late hours of evening during his New York years he read and occasionally wrote verses. On weekends he became the part-time exemplar of Teddy Roosevelt's ideal of the “strenuous life,” taking marathon walks in the country of twenty to thirty miles.

While his son was still at Harvard, Garrett Stevens – successful lawyer, small businessman, and poet himself – had sent Wallace this letter, which haunted the younger Stevens for the rest of his life: