Coates: For Death make room!

On May 31, 1889, the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania suffered a massive flood when a neglected dam failed during a storm. The man-made Conemaugh Lake was released, dumping 20 million tons of water on the town. A stone bridge temporarily blocked the onslaught of water but as debris piled up a fire was sparked (it burned for three days). All in all, the disaster caused the death of over 2,200 people.

Philadelphia poet Florence Earle Coates was one of several who paid poetic tribute to the tragic event. Coates frequently published poems in periodicals but here first book, Poems, was published in 1898 and included "By the Conemaugh":

Foreboding sudden of untoward change,
   A tight'ning clasp on everything held dear,
A moan of waters wild and strange,
   A whelming horror near;
And, 'midst the thund'rous din a voice of doom, —
"Make way for me, O Life, for Death make room!

"I come like the whirlwind rude,
   'Gainst all thou hast cherished warring;
I come like the flaming flood
   From a crater's mouth outpouring;
I come like the avalanche gliding free —
And the Power that sent thee forth, sends me!

"Where thou hast builded with strength secure,
   My hand shall spread disaster;
Where thou hast barr'd me, with forethought sure,
   Shall ruin flow the faster;
I come to gather where thou hast sowed, —
But I claim of thee nothing thou has not owed!

"On my mission of mercy forth I go
   Where the Lord of Being sends me;
His will is the only will I know,
   And my strength is the strength He lends me;
Thy loved ones I hide 'neath my waters dim,
But I cannot hide them away from Him!"

Coates's poem is collected with several others which were written about the Johnstown Flood. The town's residents immediately set to rebuilding (rather than abandoning) and Clara Barton came to aid in their efforts.

Coates published a few other books. James Whitcomb Riley (who also wrote of a natural disaster around this time) said of her work, "The poems are truly poems because of their simple, natural inspiration. A new uplift and hopefulness comes with the reading of the volume — every line!"

*The image above depicts Johnstown after the flood. Photographers rushed to the scene to create stereograph images which were sold to tourists and others.

Flag of the free heart's hope and home

On May 29, 1819, the poet Joseph Rodman Drake saw his most famous poem published, "The American Flag." It was printed in the New York Evening Post, and almost instantly put Drake in the highest rank of American poets at the time.

The New York City-born poet had his earliest work published before he was 16 years old. His first book of collected poems, The Culprit Fay and Other Poems, was not published until well after his death. He was particularly mourned by his close friend Fitz-Greene Halleck, equally famous in those days, equally forgotten today. The two had collaborated frequently and, so the story goes, Halleck re-wrote one of the stanzas in "The American Flag" as a favor. What follows is just a part of the poem. The full version is here.

When Freedom, from her mountain height,
  Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
  And set the stars of glory there;
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then, from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand,
The symbol of her chosen land.

Majestic monarch of the cloud!
  Who rear'st aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest-trumpings loud,
  And see the lightning-lances driven
When strive the warriors of the storm,
And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven—
Child of the sun! to thee 't is given
  To guard the banner of the free,
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle-stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
  The harbingers of victory! [...]

Flag of the free heart's hope and home,
  By angel hands to valor given;
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
  And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!
  Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
  And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?

The year "The American Flag" was published, Drake was already sick with tuberculosis. Drake ("The Bronx Poet," he was later called) was 25 when he died of the disease.

In 1915, 95 years after the publication of "The American Flag," Drake was memorialized by the Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences. The poem was set to music by a local school teacher and, according to the program, "Sung by One Hundred Pupils of the School, accompanied by the Morris High School Orchestra." The party proceeded, by "automobile," to Drake's grave to unveil his restored memorial marker. They also dedicated Joseph Rodman Drake Park, which still exists. At its dedication that day, a poem by Halleck was read.

*The image above is captioned "At Drake's Grave Restored - May 29, 1915" and was published in the booklet which was printed after the commemoration.

To holier tasks that God has willed

The activist William Lloyd Garrison died after a sudden illness. A funeral was held on May 28, 1879 that drew an impressive crowd of admirers, including several fellow abolitionists (Wendell Philips and Lucy Stone, for example).

The poet-abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier was represented too. An original poem was written specifically for the occasion and read by one of the ministers. Whittier had earned his earliest support from Garrison, who published his first poem, helped him get formal schooling, and got him a job with an abolitionist newspaper. In the 1830s, Whittier said he loved Garrison like a brother, making Whittier's poem, titled "Garrison," quite appropriate for the occasion:

The storm and peril overpast,
     The hounding hatred shamed and still,
Go, soul of freedom! take at last
    The place which thou alone canst fill.

Confirm the lesson taught of old —
    Life saved for self is lost, while they
Who lose it in His service hold
    The lease of God's eternal day.

Not for thyself, but for the slave
    Thy words of thunder shook the world;
No selfish griefs or hatred gave
    The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.

From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew
    We heard a tenderer undersong;
Thy very wrath from pity grew,
    From love of man thy hate of wrong.

Now past and present are as one;
    The life below is life above;
Thy mortal years have but begun
    The immortality of love.

With somewhat of thy lofty faith
    We lay thy outworn garment by,
Give death but what belongs to death,
    And life the life that cannot die!

Not for a soul like thine the calm
    Of selfish ease and joys of sense;
But duty, more than crown or palm,
    Its own exceeding recompense.

Go up and on! thy day well done,
    Its morning promise well fulfilled,
Arise to triumphs yet unwon,
    To holier tasks that God has willed.

Go, leave behind thee all that mars
    The work below of man for man;
With the white legions of the stars
    Do service such as angels can.

Wherever wrong shall right deny,
    Or suffering spirits urge their plea,
Be thine a voice to smite the lie,
    A hand to set the captive free!

At sunset, Garrison was laid to rest at Forest Hills Cemetery in Massachusetts.

*The bust above was sculpted by Anne Whitney, who also created a statue of fellow abolitionist Charles Sumner, now located in Harvard Square. This image of Garrison was used as the frontispiece for the published version of Garrison's services.

Birth of Julia Ward Howe

On May 27, 1893, the poet/activist Julia Ward Howe wrote in her journal:

My seventy-fourth birthday. Thank God for my continued life, health, and bodily and mental power. My prayer to Him is that, whether I am to have a year, a month, a week, or a day more, it may be for good to myself and others.

Later that day, she attended a reception for the women of the Press Association. After tea, Howe made a short speech and was given a birthday bouquet of carnations. In the evening, she practiced a sermon she was presenting at a Unitarian church the next day.

On the same day several years later, in 1909, Howe commemorated her own 90th birthday in a note to a friend and admirer.

You wrote me a lovely letter on my ninetieth birthday. I cannot help feeling as if the impression expressed by you and so many other kind friends of my personal merits must refer to some good work which I have yet to do. What I have done looks small to me, but I have tried a good deal for the best I have known. That is all I can say. I am much touched by your letter, and encouraged to go on trying. Don't you think that the best things are already in view? The opportunities for women, the growing toleration and sympathy in religion, the sacred cause of peace? I have lived, like Moses, to see the entrance to the Promised Land. How much is this to be thankful for! My crabbed hand shows how Time abridges my working powers, but I march on to the brave music still, as you and many of the juniors do.

Howe died about a year and a half after this letter at the age of 91. In addition to her many poems (including "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"), Howe served with several women's rights organizations, some of which she founded. She frequently lectured, even going to Europe and the Middle East to call for peace in response to the Franco-Prussian War and aiding a peace conference in London.

Serenity in spite of all contingencies

It was only after a short career that the Georgia-born poet/novelist Sidney Lanier struggled with tuberculosis. When he could, he traveled in search of health while still writing — when he could.

He wrote a letter to his friend, Gibson Peacock, on May 26, 1877. The letter reads, in part:

I long to be steadily writing again. I'm taken with a poem pretty nearly every day, and have to content myself with making a note of its train of thought on the back of whatever letter is in my coat-pocket. I don't write it out, because I find my poetry now wholly unsatisfactory in consequence of a certain haunting impatience which has its root in the straining uncertainty of my daily affairs; and I am trying with all my might to put off composition of all sorts... [until] next week's dinner shall remove this remnant of haste, and leave me that repose which ought to fill the artist's firmament while he is creating. Perhaps indeed with returning bodily health I shall acquire strength to attain this serenity in spite of all contingencies.

The same year he wrote this letter, 1877, his book Poems was published, a 94-page book of previously-published works. One of the poems was "Rose-Morals"; this is part I:

  Would that my songs might be
    What roses make by day and night —
Distillments of my clod of misery
      Into delight.

  Soul, could'st though bare thy breast
    As yon red rose, and dare the day,
All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest?
      Say yea — say yea!

  Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye;
     The wind is up; so; drift away.
That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly,
      I strive, I pray.

The book did not sell particularly well and Lanier worried about taking care of his family. Soon after, he was offered a position as lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. He then became much more prolific than the above letter might suggest. He wrote several books over a short period of time — some of which had to be published posthumously. Lanier died in 1881 at the age of 39.

Bicentennial of William Henry Channing

William Henry Channing is probably not as well-known as his uncle, one of the foremost Unitarian preachers, or even as famous as his brother, the much-maligned poet Ellery Channing. W. H. Channing was born 200 years ago today on May 25, 1810.

After graduating from Harvard Divinity School, Channing was ordained at a church in Cincinnati. While there, he succeeded his colleague James Freeman Clarke as editor of the Western Messenger. Already floating in the circle of Transcendentalists, Channing had previously been asked by Orestes Brownson to review an essay called "The American Scholar" by one Ralph Waldo Emerson (who shares his birthday). Channing concluded that Emerson's points were "hinted, without the progressive reasonings through which he was led to them." (He later was more openly laudatory; in a private letter in 1842, he writes of Emerson's "fineness of touch about all he does, and such a genuine appreciation of everything! ...I thank Heaven I was born in the same day with him.")

Later, while in New York, Channing became interested in the Associationist movement, the same reform ideas that inspired Brook Farm, and issued a journal, The Present, to promote it. His theories eventually evolved into, what he called, "Christian Union," the idea that a fervent faith among the masses could fix society's problems and lead to greater equality. More than just a theory, Channing put his beliefs into practice, emphasizing that Christians were obligated to work for the good of neglected or abused segments of the population. By 1847, he termed it "Church of Humanity."

One of those inspired by Channing was fellow obscure Transcendentalist Christopher Pearse Cranch. As Cranch later recalled, "He always took an intense interest in the spiritual elevation of the people, but no less in establishing a high standard of morality for the cultured classes." Cranch noted Channing's opposition to slavery, the Mexican War, the annexation of Texas. "It is difficult to describe a man so perfect... He held an ideal standard in everything," he wrote.

Channing was also a lifelong friend of Margaret Fuller. "She was peerless," he wrote of her. After Fuller's death in 1850, he visited the wreck at Fire Island where she died, spending two days there talking to survivors. Channing, Clarke, and Emerson collaborated on her biography. Channing sought out a man named James Nathan (with whom Fuller may have had a romantic relationship) for his relevant letters. He refused (and friend told Emerson that a biography could not be written without them; his letters were later edited and published, in small part, by Julia Ward Howe).

Emerson in particular rushed the project and controlled its direction. Channing wanted to take his time, particularly in the section about Fuller's marriage and pregnancy (still somewhat confusing today). Channing believed that Fuller, on principle, would never legally marry and privately told Emerson as much. Emerson was unconcerned and made up a wedding date, apparently out of thin air. The book, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, remains controversial and has been blamed for much of the 19th century's judgment of Fuller as an abrasive, arrogant, "unwomanly" figure.

Bicentennial of Margaret Fuller

It was 200 years ago today that Sarah Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. That day,  May 23, 1810, Timothy Fuller and Margarett Crane welcomed their first child into the world; father, however, would have preferred a boy. Even so, he went about educating his little daughter as if she were a son.

Young Margaret (she dropped the name "Sarah" as a child because it made her sound too old) was reading and writing by age three and a half. By about age six, she was translating Latin. Her father forbid her from reading typical feminine fair like sentimental novels and etiquette books. She read them anyway, and wrote long letters to her father justifying that decision. At age 10, Margaret wrote a cryptic note on her birthday: "On the 23rd of May, 1810, was born one foredoomed to sorrow and pain, and like others to have misfortunes."

24 years after that, on her birthday in 1844, she completed the last draft of her first book, Summer on the Lakes. The book chronicled her adventures in the Great Lakes region and beyond. Her travels took her to Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Niagara Falls. She went kayaking, hiking, and interacted closely with Native  Americans, whom she portrayed sympathetically in her book. It was published with illustrations by her companion on the trip, Sarah Clarke, wife of James Freeman Clarke. In preparing to write her book, she did additional research on the region using the library at Harvard College — making her the first woman to do research at America's oldest college.

Fuller earned several other firsts: first editor of the Transcendental journal The Dial, first full-time book reviewer, first female overseas correspondent, and author of the first major American book on feminism, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). She occasionally experienced ominous dreams which she considered premonitions, much like her cryptic note at age 10. She died tragically in a shipwreck off Fire Island, New York in 1850. She was 40 years old.

Fuller lived life to the fullest, perhaps more than other Transcendentalists, who were more thinkers than doers. From Summer on the Lakes, here's how she describes her disappointment in white-water rafting:

I sat down, and in less than four minutes we had descended the rapids, a distance of more than three quarters of a mile. I was somewhat disappointed in this being no more of an exploit than I found it. Having heard such expressions used as of "darting," or, "shooting down," these rapids, I fancied there was a wall of rock somewhere, where descent would somehow be accomplished, and that there would come some one gasp of terror and delight, some sensation entirely new to me; but I found myself in smooth water, before I had time to feel anything but the buoyant pleasure of being carried so lightly through this surf amid the breakers... I should like to have come down twenty times, that I might have had leisure to realize the pleasure.

*The image above is from the Fuller collection at Houghton Library, Harvard. It is believed to be the only photographic image of Fuller, though several copies exist. To learn more about this fascinating woman, and some of the events in honor of her 200th birthday, please visit http://www.margaretfuller.org/.

Alcott: Go nurse the soldiers

The first of what became four installments of Hospital Sketches was published in the magazine Boston Commonwealth on May 22, 1863. Later, in book form, it carried the subtitle "An Army Nurse's True Account of Her Experiences During the Civil War." The author, Louisa May Alcott, had spent about six weeks volunteering at a Union hospital outside of Washington, D.C. during the Civil War. Her letters home were the basis of the book.

Prior to Hospital Sketches, Alcott had only published one book, a small print-run called Flower Fables in 1854 when she was 21 years old. This second book was, to the surprise of the author, a popular one. The Boston Transcript noted the sketches were "fluent and sparkling in style, with touches of quiet humor and lovely wit, relieving what would otherwise be a topic too sombre and sad." William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator, noted that "they are overflowing with genius, wit, humor, pathos, and womanly compassion and tenderness," concluding that "all who read them will greatly relish them."

The book format was published only months after the final magazine installment by James Redpath. Redpath promised to donate a small portion of each copy sold to children made homeless or orphaned by the war. Her father, the Transcendentalist philosopher Bronson Alcott, was proud: "I see nothing in the way of a good appreciation of Louisa's merits as a woman and a writer," he wrote.

Published under the pseudonym Tribulation Periwinkle, Hospital Sketches was not quite autobiography; one major change from the true story was that the narrator (Miss Periwinkle) does not join the Union cause because of a particular passion. Instead, she was merely looking for something to do. The book opens:

  "I want something to do."
  This remark being addressed to the world in general, no one in particular felt it their duty to reply; so I repeated it to the smaller world about me, received the following suggestions, and settled the matter by answering my own inquiry, as people are apt to do when very much in earnest.
  "Write a book," quote the author of my being.
  "Don't know enough, sir. First live, then write..."
  "Go nurse the soldiers," said my young neighbor, Tom, panting for "the tented field."
  "I will!"

Simms fights for copyright

The 1840s were a terrible time for American writers, who struggled to protect their works without international copyright. Several writers had already voiced their opinion. From his Woodlands estate, novelist/poet William Gilmore Simms wrote an open letter on the topic on May 21, 1844.

The letter, which took up nearly 20 two-column pages in the Southern Literary Messenger's August 1844 issue, was directly addressed to South Carolina Congressman Isaac Holmes. It begins:

The discovery of printing took the world by surprise and authors not less than all the rest... But, in truth, their rights were not invaded for a long while after the discovery of printing.

Simms goes on to discuss the history of printing and its impact on society and authors, as well as the development of different versions of copyright and other protections — in detail. Common Law, he says, should protect writers but does not and, as such, a more explicit law on the books is required. He goes on:

It is an error to say, or to suppose that the object of Government is the greatest good of the greatest number. Were this so, no man would enter society at all. Society would be fatal to his individuality... Its true object is the security of the individual man... It is individual life and property which needs and claims protection.

Simms notes that writers deserve the right of protection of their property more than all others. They do not seek property elsehwere, as a miner for gold, but as the "sole creator, almost without agent or implement of any sort." These creations, he says, spring from nowhere and cannot be controlled.

But control was necessary, he contends. Despite the claim that the British dislike American books, piracy of American writers was abundant. Simms writes, "hundreds of American works have been republished in England, without the privity of the author, frequently without his name and sometimes with a most base perversion of it to make it pass for original and European." What's worse, American publishers are doing the same to British writers.

Further, by controlling our own publications, we also choose what will be published abroad, perhaps allowing American writers the chance to earn respect from British critics who continuously dismiss American writing.

Our securities against foreign injustice, slander and reproach, are to be found in native authorship, as certainly as that our protection against a maritime enemy, is in having an adequate number of stout frigates of our own.

The fight for international copyright continued throughout most of the 19th century.

*The image above is a portrait of Simms now owned by the American Portrait Gallery. Digital file is courtesy of the William Gilmore Simms Society.

Halleck: Inscribed with all reverence

Fitz-Greene Halleck became a household name as a poet in the nineteenth century. In fact, his reputation was so strong that, immediately after his death, efforts were made to memorialize him in no less a public spot than New York City's Central Park. The statue, still standing, is considered the first public memorial to an American poet. Today, he is mostly forgotten.

But, at the age of 12, young Fitz-Greene (who was partially deaf) knew nothing of that legacy, or forgotten legacy, that was to come. On May 20, 1803, the young boy wrote one of his earliest poems, likely at his family's home in Guilford, Connecticut:

Stern winter is gone: no more it snows,
But lambkins briskly play;
They skip about the verdant fields,
And hail returning May.

The robin sits on yonder bough
And tunes his whistling lay,
While sweetly throbs his little throat
To hail returning May.

The sun, just rising in the east,
New gilds the smiling day;
With noises gay the hills resound,
And hail returning May.

The plains are dotted in verdure green,
The hills and dales look gay;
The shepherd sings along the plain,
And hails returning May.

Maria rose at early dawn,
And took her lonely way
Where bleating herds skip lightly round,
And hail returning May.

Maria, gayest of the plain,
To you I tune my lay;
May you fore'er enjoy the sweets
Of verdant, blooming May.

The poem was addressed to his sister. The original manuscript opens with: "Inscribed with all reverence to Miss Maria Halleck, by her brother, Fitz-Greene Halleck."

Poe and Longfellow: Favorably known to me

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would have had every reason to dislike Edgar Allan Poe in the 1840s. Poe, the preeminent American critic of his day, spent part of the middle of that decade engaged in a "Longfellow War." Longfellow, by then one of the major American poets, had gained his reputation unfairly, according to Poe, who accused the Portland, Maine-born poet of imitating other poets.

Yet, when Poe became a staff editor of the highly-circulated Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia, he knew that Longfellow would impress his readers. So, he humbly solicited a contribution, well before his major attacks against the poet he later called "a dextrous adapter of the ideas of other people." In his letter, Poe wrote of the "fervent admiration" of Longfellow's genius and suggested that Longfellow was far too important to recognize a little-known critic like Poe. Longfellow's response was dated May 19, 1841:

You are mistaken in supposing that you are not 'favorably known to me.' On the contrary, all that I have read from your pen has inspired me with a high idea of your power; and I think you are destined to stand among the first romance-writers of the country, if such be your aim.

Longfellow never responded publicly to Poe's criticism, even after Poe's death; this is likely because he knew he really was an imitator. He often attributed his ideas or poetic formats to others, a typical practice in romantic poetry. Poe, on the other hand, strove for originality (though he occasionally lifted ideas too). Longfellow's words about Poe, his worst critic, were always kind. In fact, in 1875, he even suggested (apparently from memory!) an epitaph for Poe's planned memorial monument: "The fever called Living is conquered at last."

*The image of Longfellow above dates to 1840 and was painted by Cephas Giovanni Thompson. The original still hangs in his long-time home in Cambridge, Massachusetts (where he was living at the time this letter was written). The image is courtesy of the National Park Service.

Booth: An honor, I presume

Edwin Booth was known as an important and well-respected actor, probably more successful than his now-infamous brother John Wilkes Booth. On May 18, 1863 (two years before his younger brother would assassinate President Abraham Lincoln), Booth wrote a letter from the desk of Washington Irving in New York. He was not particularly impressed by the opportunity.

Booth had moved into a room rented from publisher George Putnam while looking for a place of his own ("a permanent home while on earth," he wrote). He had recently lost his wife Mary Devlin and worried about what he would leave his daughter Edwina when he was gone. Booth was strongly affected by his wife's death and struggled internally:

You would not think that I suffer... nor would I have you think that I do suffer constantly: it is only at times, as now... Believe in one great truth... God is... This should make me happy, should it not? But it does not. I never knew how much I loved her.

The melancholy mood made it hard for him to enjoy his visit to, presumably, Irving's home in Tarrytown. Irving had died about four years earlier and maintained a reputation as one of America's greatest writers. Booth noted the fact nonchalantly: "I am writing on Washington Irving's table — an honor, I presume." He made no further mention of the incident and concluded his letter (dated the day before Mary Devlin's birthday): "Write cheerfully and at length; I need it!"

Booth remarried a few years later but his second wife, Mary McVicker, died after only about 12 years of marriage. Booth himself died in 1893 and was buried beside his first wife in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

*The image above is an albumen print of Booth with his daughter Edwina ca. 1864, not long after this letter was written. From the George Eastman House Collection.

He loved to do good by stealth

On May 17, 1870, the poet/journalist William Cullen Bryant stood before the New York Historical Society to deliver his "Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin Verplanck." Verplanck, a politician and occasional writer associated with the Knickerbocker group, had died about two months earlier at the age of 83.

Verplanck was also the Historical Society's vice-president at the time of his death. Bryant began his speech by noting how their late colleague was part of the framework of the organization. "It is as if one of the columns which support a massive building had been suddenly taken away," he said. Bryant then described Verplanck's life, his ancestry, his education, his career. Verplanck, Bryant noted, had given his first public speech at the age of 18, a patriotic one for Independence Day.

Bryant said that Verplanck wrote one of the earliest reviews of his poetry. In 1824, when Bryant was "an unknown literary adventurer" (his words), Verplanck positively reviewed him and encouraged further writing. At the same time, Verplanck began his career as a politician, elected to Congress several times (while in Washington, he promoted copyright protections for American writers), later a member of the New York state legislature and, later, edited an American edition of the dramatic works of Shakespeare. He contributed to the North American Review, served as "governor" of a city hospital, wrote critical reviews of works by Washington Irving and others, was vice-chancellor of a university, wrote satirical pamphlets, served as president of the board of immigration, founded The Talisman journal with Bryant, and gave speeches on history, art, and literature. Verplanck was one of many who successfully wove a life of letters into a life of politics.

Bryant praised Verplanck professionally and personally. "He loved to do good by stealth," Bryant said, emphasizing his friend's humility. Verplanck's last words, according to Bryant, were to a doctor. He asked where the doctor had studied. "Paris," he answered. Verplanck said nothing further, rolled over, and died.

*The image above is from the Brady-Handy Photograph Collection at the Library of Congress.

Marriage of Edgar Poe

Edgar A. Poe married his first-cousin Virginia Clemm on May 16, 1836. He was 27; she was about three months shy of her 14th birthday. By today's standards, the marriage was a bit odd but, for the time, their relationship was not particularly unusual, though she was slightly young (15 years old was a more common marrying age).

The ceremony took place in Richmond, Virginia, overseen by a Presbyterian minister named Amasa Converse. The venue was the home of Mrs. James Yarrington, Poe's current landlord in a boarding house he stayed with both Virginia and Virginia's mother Maria Clemm (the sister of Poe's father). Mrs. Yarrington helped with the arrangements, even baking the cake. The couple then spend a short honeymoon in Petersburg, Virginia (a local Poe fanatic has taken it upon himself to reclaim the connection and is, quite appropriately, celebrating this coming Wednesday).

Several theories about the Poes still circulate: Maria Clemm may have suggested the pairing and hastened the marriage; the couple may not have consummated their marriage; they may have behaved more like brother and sister than husband and wife (Poe nicknamed her "Sissy"). One theatrical version of the Poes suggests that young Virginia had a sexual fetish for horror stories and sought Poe as a husband (making her the aggressor in the relationship). Friends said they didn't share a bed for at least the first two years of marriage. By all contemporary accounts, Virginia was beautiful and Poe was devoted to her. He once described her as "a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before."

The unfortunate trend in some Poe studies is to assign autobiographical elements to each of his writings, with no room for other interpretations. I disagree and suggest that few if any of Poe's works were inspired by his wife or her later illness (she only lived to be 24). Many friends assumed Virginia was the inspiration for the poem "Annabel Lee," probably written well after her death (and published after Poe's own death in 1849). The connection is certainly tempting and some scholars use the reference to the dead "maiden" in the poem as evidence that Virginia died a virgin.

However, a closer literary tribute is the romantic sketch "Eleonora" (1842), which describes the life of an isolated family of three: a man, his cousin-wife, and his mother-in-law. If Virginia is the inspiration for the title character, this is not a very virginal description of her:

We had drawn the god Eros from that wave; and now we felt that he had enkindled within us the fiery souls of our forefathers. The passions which had for centuries distinguished our race came thronging with the fancies for which they had been equally noted, and together breathed a delirious bliss over the Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass. A change fell upon all things. Strange brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burst out upon the trees, where no flowers had been known before. The tints of the green carpet deepened, and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up in place of them ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen, with all gay, glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us; and golden and silver fish haunted the river, out of the bosom of which issued, little by little, a murmur that swelled at length into a lulling melody more divine than that of the harp of Æolus, sweeter than all save the voice of Eleonora.

*The images represent Edgar Poe a few years after marriage (sans mustache) as painted by Samuel Stillman Osgood. The portrait of Virginia Poe is a relatively-new discovery, now privately owned.

Death of Emily Dickinson

The end of Emily Dickinson's life was full of grief. In April 1882, a minister she befriended named Charles Wadsworth died and, six months later, her mother died. A little over a year later, her favorite nephew died too. In March 1884, her friend Otis Phillips Lord (a judge, whom some speculate may have been a romantic interest) died. Dickinson wrote, "The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my Heart from one, another has come."

On May 15, 1886, Dickinson herself died of a form of kidney disease called Bright's disease. She was 55 years old. She requested that all her letters be burned; she left no specific instructions about her manuscript poems, which were found later. Few had ever been published.

Her funeral was held in the library at the family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, where her white coffin was decorated with vanilla-scented heliotrope, a Lady's Slipper orchid, and blue field violets. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the editor from whom she sought advice on her writing, read the poem "No Coward Soul Is Mine" by Emily Brontë. He had previously met her only twice but would become her greatest booster posthumously. She was buried in the family plot at West Cemetery in Amherst (pictured). The greater controversy over her poems was yet to come.

Her poems were heavily edited then re-edited posthumously, before later being restored. Her poems are usually without titles and today are often referred to by a numbering system. This one was numbered XXXI. in a 1924 edition:

Death is a dialogue between
The spirit and the dust.
"Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,
I have another trust."

Death doubts it, argues from the ground.
The Spirit turns away,
Just laying off, for evidence,
An overcoat of clay.

Death of Fanny Osgood

Frances Sargent Osgood died of tuberculosis on May 12, 1850 at her home in New York. She suffered from the disease for years, possibly as far back as the mid-1840s when she had a friendship (or possibly a romantic relationship) with Edgar A. Poe.

By the end of her life, Fanny (as she was called) had lost her ability to speak. Her last word, "angel", was written with the intention of being mailed to her husband, the painter Samuel Stillman Osgood (who painted her portrait, right). She was buried in her parents' lot at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A year later, a collection of her writings was published by her friends in order to raise money for Osgood's memorial headstone. It was reissued as Laurel Leaves in 1854 with a biographical introduction by the anthologist Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who had served as a booster during her early career (Griswold may have had romantic feelings for her). Samuel Osgood took a long time installing her monument, but it was one which he designed himself. The current family marker was inspired by her poem "The Hand That Swept the Sounding Lyre":

The hand that swept the sounding lyre
  With more than mortal skill,
The lightning eye, the heart of fire,
  The fervent lip are still!
No more, in rapture or in woe,
  With melody to thrill,
     Ah, nevermore!

But angel hands shall bring him balm
  For every grief he knew,
And Heaven’s soft harps his soul shall calm
  With music sweet and true,
And teach to him the holy charm
  Of Israfel anew,
     Forevermore!

Love’s silver lyre he played so well
  Lies shattered on his tomb,
But still in air its music-spell
  Floats on through light and gloom;
And in the hearts where soft they fell,
  His words of beauty bloom
     Forevermore!

The metal lyre that topped the family monument at Mount Auburn had five strings representing the family. Four were cut by 1851: Osgood's two surviving daughters died the year after their mother, joining another daughter who died in infancy. Samuel Osgood, the last string on the lyre, died in 1885; his was the last wire cut.

Calm martyr of a noble cause

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, was captured on May 11, 1865. The Civil War was ending. Davis was imprisoned for several years and many Southerners considered him a martyr. One was poet Mary Walker Meriwether Bell (1830-1872).

Bell, who kept a detailed diary throughout the war, was Kentucky-born and the wife of a Confederate enlistee who earned the rank of Commander in the First Kentucky Cavalry. Legend has it that when Union soldiers came to her house, Bell fended them off with a Bowie knife. In a scuffle, she was able to grab the pistol of a ranking officer and prepared to fire before being seized.

Her poem, "Jefferson Davis," praises him and the cause for which he stood by comparing him to military leaders and heroes throughout history:

Calm martyr of a noble cause,
  Upon thy form in vain
The Dungeon shuts its cankered jaws,
  And clasps its cankered chain;
For thy free spirit walks abroad,
  And every pulse is stirred
With the old deathless glory thrill,
  Whene'er thy name is heard.

The same that lit each Grecian eye,
  Whene'er it rested on
The wild pass of Thermopylae —
  The plain of Marathon;
And made the Roman's ancient blood
  Bound fiercely as he told,
"How well Horatio kept the brige,
  In the brave days of old."

The same that makes the Switzer's heart
  With silent rapture swell,
When in each Alpine height he sees
  A monument to Tell:
The same that kindles Irish veins
  When Emmet's name is told;
What Bruce to Caledonia is,
  Kosciusko to the Pole —

Art thou to us! — thy deathless fame,
  With Washington entwined,
Forever in each Southern heart
  Is hallowed and enshrined; —
And though the tyrant give thy form
  To shameful death — 'twere vain;
It would but shed a splendor round
  The gibbet and the chain.

Only less sacred in our eyes,
  Thus blest and purified,
Than the dear cross on which our Lord
  Was shamed and crucified,
Would the vile gallows tree become,
  And through all ages shine,
Linked with the glory of thy name,
  A relic and a shrine!

Sprung up like wild flowers

Sometimes nicknamed the "Sweet Singer of Hartford," Lydia Huntley Sigourney wrote the preface to her Poems on May 10, 1834. In it, she claims that the poems "have sprung up like wild flowers in the dells, or among the clefts of the rock; wherever the path of life has chanced to lead."

Mrs. Sigourney, as she often signed her works, proved incredibly popular even outside her home state of Connecticut. Several women's book clubs and literary salons were named in her honor. A good wife and mother, as was expected of her, she only turned to writing to reverse financial problems in the family. Self-educated, she focused on poetry with pious themes and domestic topics.

Modern feminist scholars often  decry this aspect; "the mere mention of Sigourney's name invokes a caricature: a mildly comical figure exemplifying the worst aspects of domestic sentimentalism," according to Nina Baym, who seeks to reclaim her work. Those who support her suggest that her poetry was written especially for an audience expecting certain social roles, not that Sigourney herself did not challenge them. Perhaps that is why her 1834 collection of Poems went through 25 editions during her lifetime. Even so, she did get an anti-slavery poem into this edition — impressive for such an early, public stance.

Form your own opinion, perhaps from her poem "The Mother," part of this 1834 collection:

I saw an aged woman bow
  To weariness and care,
Time wrote his sorrows on her brow
  And 'mid her frosted hair.

Hope, from her breast had torn away
  Its rooting scathed and dry,
And on the pleasures of the gay
  She turned a joyless eye.

What was it that like sunbeam clear
  O'er her wan features run,
As pressing toward her deafened ear
  I named her absent son?

What was it? Ask a mother's breast
  Through which a fountain flows
Perennial, fathomless and blest,
  By winter never froze.

What was it? Ask the King of kings,
  Who hath decreed above
That change should mark all earthly things,
  Except a mother's love.

Death of Samuel Griswold Goodrich

Peter Parley was the name most often used by Samuel Griswold Goodrich on his books aimed for children. Goodrich, who died on May 9, 1860, used the grandfatherly Parley character (see illustration at right) to introduce young people to legends, United States history, and American life. His book The Tales of Peter Parley About America (1828) begins:

Here I am! My name is Peter Parley! I am an old man. I am very gray and lame. But I have seen a great many things, and had a great many adventures, and I love to talk about them.

He is credited with having published over 40 such books, though some may have been ghost-written by others. Goodrich was also a publisher, a poet, a biographer, the editor of an annual gift book (The Token), a Massachusetts state representative and state senator and, later in life, United States Consul to Paris.

Goodrich was also an early booster for other American writers, including Nathaniel Parker Willis and Lydia Maria Child. One poetry anthology in the 1840s referred to him as a "liberal patron of American authors and artists; and it is questionable whether any other person has done as much to improve the style of the book manufacture." His writing was praised as "cheerful" and full of "pure morality" with a melodious flow. Connecticut-born, Goodrich settled in New York after returning from his consulship overseas; it was in that state where he died in 1860. His most important period, however, was spent in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, which now has a Peter Parley Road named in his honor (on land he once owned).

Goodrich was not without his critics, however. He supported the early career of a then-anonymous writer of short stories who frequently published in The Token. Nathaniel Hawthorne felt underpaid (and undervalued), calling Goodrich "a good-natured sort of man enough... but rather an unscrupulous one in money matters, and not particularly trustworthy in anything." Hawthorne determined Goodrich took advantage of writers, "born to do what he did, as maggots to feed on rich cheese."

Death of Jones Very

Perhaps the most Transcendental of the Transcendentalists was Jones Very, a Salem, Massachusetts-born poet/prophet. He revealed to Ralph Waldo Emerson that his poems were written while he was in a sort of divine trance (which Emerson did not believe, noting that God would have helped him with his poor spelling). Then, one day while tutoring Greek at Harvard, Very began his transformation into a prophet. "Flee to the mountains," he shouted to his surprised students, "for the end of all things is at hand!"

Shortly after announcing he was the Second Coming of Christ, Very was committed to an in insane asylum. After his release, however, Very calmed down considerably, telling others that his role as a prophet was meant to be short-term only. Emerson helped him publish a book of poems and essays and Very committed himself as a relative recluse with family in Salem.

Most of the last four decades of Jones Very's life are unclear or entirely unrecorded. He died May 8, 1880 and was buried at the Old South Cemetery in what is now Peabody (pictured). Bronson Alcott wrote of him as "spectral" with a "ghostly air," but someone he was fortunate to have known.

Very's poems were mostly sonnets, including this one, "The New Birth":

'Tis a new life; — thoughts move not as they did,
With slow uncertain steps across my mind,
In thronging haste fast pressing on they bid
The portals open to the viewless wind
That comes not save when in the dust is laid
The crown of pride that gilds each mortal brow,
And from before man's vision melting fade
The heavens and earth; — their walls are falling now. —
Fast crowding on, each thought asks utterance strong;
Storm-lifted waves  swift rushing to the shore,
On from the sea they send their shouts along,
Back through the cave-worn rocks their thunders roar;
And I a child of God by Christ made free
Start from death's slumbers to Eternity.

Wheatley says farewell to America

Phillis Wheatley wrote the poem "Farewell to America" on May 7, 1773, addressed to her master Mrs. Susanna Wheatley. Susanna had made sure the young slave they purchased in 1763 was taught to read and write. Soon, Phillis (named after the slave ship that brought her to Boston) was writing poetry.

Phillis accompanied her master Mr. Wheatley to London in 1773; there she published her first collection of poems after finding a number of prominent white males to offer their names in support of the idea that an enslaved young black woman was capable of writing poetry. That background may make the poem she wrote right before she left somewhat more poignant (I have removed the numbers above each stanza):

Adieu, New-England's smiling meads,
Adieu, th' flow'ry plain:
I leave thine op'ning charms, O spring,
And tempt the roaring main.

In vain for me the flow'rets rise,
And boast their gaudy pride,
While here beneath the northern skies
I mourn for health deny'd.

Celestial maid of rosy hue,
Oh let me feel thy reign!
I languish till thy face I view,
Thy vanish'd joys regain.

Susannah mourns, nor can I bear
To see the crystal shower
Or mark the tender falling tear
At sad departure's hour;

Not regarding can I see
Her soul with grief opprest
But let no sighs, no groans for me
Steal from her pensive breast.

In vain the feather'd warblers sing
In vain the garden blooms
And on the bosom of the spring
Breathes out her sweet perfumes.

While for Britannia's distant shore
We weep the liquid plain,
And with astonish'd eyes explore
The wide-extended main.

Lo! Health appears! celestial dame!
Complacent and serene,
With Hebe's mantle oe'r her frame,
With soul-delighting mien.

To mark the vale where London lies
With misty vapors crown'd
Which cloud Aurora's thousand dyes,
And veil her charms around.

Why, Phoebus, moves thy car so slow?
So slow thy rising ray?
Give us the famous town to view,
Thou glorious King of day!

For thee, Britannia, I resign
New-England's smiling fields;
To view again her charms divine,
What joy the prospect yields!

But thou! Temptation hence away,
With all thy fatal train,
Nor once seduce my soul away,
By thine enchanting strain.

Thrice happy they, whose heavenly shield
Secures their souls from harm,
And fell Temptation on the field
Of all its pow'r disarms.

Bird and Forrest: Spartacus

The actor Edwin Forrest had very specific requirements when taking the lead role in new plays. He started offering prizes to well-written plays which met his standards; one such contest was won by Robert Montgomery Bird. However, Forrest did not want to produce the winning script, Pelopidas, or the Fall of the Polemarchs, a play set in Thebes in 378 B.C. So, he put Bird to work on an entirely new play, instructing him carefully on the requirements of the lead character.

On May 6, 1831, Bird completed The Gladiator, a play which tells the story of the revolt of Roman slaves under Spartacus. Forrest was pleased and set about producing it. By the fall, it opened in New York at the Park Theatre. Its success was instantaneous despite all of its problems: It was raining heavily on opening night, its scenery and costumes were poorly done, and secondary players were bad actors. Soon, however, the play traveled to Philadelphia, Boston, and elsewhere — all on the strength of the lead actor, Edwin Forrest.

Forrest's strengths were superficial, and certainly not "high" art. His "muscles" as an actor were not metaphorical and he made sure he was shirtless for much of The Gladiator. He loved melodrama and was overly emotive — full of fierce passion and rending grief. He wanted the spotlight, quite literally, and his Spartacus character easily outweighed all the other roles combined. Spartacus, the leader, is a tragic warrior, fighting to free his wife and child from slavery, but whose foil is a fellow revolting slave who wishes to ransack Rome rather than merely return home free. Through his treachery, Spartacus's family is killed and later dies himself, with sword in hand.

As playwright, Bird was likely surprised. He had low expectations for the play and noted the performance itself was "a horrid piece of bungling from beginning to end." One reviewer disagreed, calling it "the best native [i.e. American] tragedy extant." By the end of Bird's life, it had been performed over 100 times. Forrest and Bird continued to work together for much of their careers.

*The image above depicts Forrest as Spartacus later in his career, when weight gain forced him to cover his body more.

Birth of Nellie Bly

Just 40 miles outside of Pittsburgh, on May 5, 1864, Elizabeth Jane Cochran (she later added an "e" to the end of her last name) was born. As a child, she was nicknamed "Pink" for her attachment to that color. In later years, she was known by her pen name, Nellie Bly.

Bly was a journalist, first inspired by a column in a Pittsburgh newspaper she deemed sexist enough to warrant a reply. The editor, impressed by her spirit, offered her a job. It was this editor who chose her pen name, based on a song by Stephen Foster.

She focused many of her articles on the conditions of working women, including investigative articles from behind the scenes. She was pressured, however, to focus on more feminine topics, like fashion. Bly rebelled and attempted to serve as a foreign correspondent in Mexico; she was pressured out of the country for criticizing unlawful arrests authorized by the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz. She left the Pittsburgh newspaper; she was 21.

Then, in 1887, she went insane.

Bly was institutionalized at the Women's Lunatic Asylum at Blackwell's Island, New York. She was deemed "a hopeless case" by doctors and newspapers sensationally reported of the "pretty insane girl." She was released after ten days with help from editor Joseph Pulitzer. In fact, it was all a ruse; she had feigned insanity to get an inside look at the conditions of the asylum, with help from Pulitzer.

She exposed the whole thing in her book, Ten Days in a Mad-House. She particularly lashed out against the poor meals, the lack of cleanliness (rats roamed the halls), exceptionally bad treatment from nurses who often beat patients. Worse, doctors paid no attention to patients and, as she strove to convince them she was sane, she was ignored. "The insane asylum on Blackwell's Island, she wrote, "is a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out." Her book led to a federal investigation and extensive reform. As she wrote:

What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Here is a class of women sent to be cured. I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.

Birth of William Hickling Prescott

Born in Salem, Massachusetts on May 4, 1796, William Hickling Prescott was the grandson of a Revolutionary War colonel. While attending Harvard, legend has it, a crust of bread stuck in his eye resulted in permanent damage which would lead to near-blindness over time. Expected to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, Prescott turned to literature after a tour of Europe.

His eye injury, it seems, had a major impact on the aspiring writer. An early biographer noted "it determined the whole course of his life." As the biographer noted, "he turned from a dim world without to a radiant world within, took himself in hand, and forged laboriously in the dark the tempered weapon of his mind and heart."

Prescott had a fairly prolific, though short, career as a writer of history. His first was The History of Ferdinand and Isabella (1837), followed by his influential The History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and several other books. For his style of describing history, some regarded Prescott as the first "scientific historian" in the United States. So impressive was his reputation as a historian that Washington Irving gave up a project on writing a history of Mexico when he heard Prescott was working on something similar. As Irving wrote, the historian's other writings "gave me at once an assurance that you were the man to undertake the subject." Irving's own historical work included a biography of his namesake George Washington.

Prescott inspired many biographies (I found eight on Google books) and his home on Beacon Hill in Boston is now open to the public — fairly impressive for a historian.

Birth of Andy Adams

On May 3, 1859, Andy Adams was born on a farm in Indiana. As a young teenager, he ran away from home and moved to Texas to become a cattle rancher, often driving animals to other parts of the state or neighboring states. It was a time some historians refer to as the "golden age" of the Texas cattle industry. He made his last cattle drive in 1889 and soon moved to Colorado to seek his fortunes as a gold miner. Instead, he turned to writing.

A real-life cowboy, Adams wrote western fiction. His first book was published just after the turn of the century in 1903. The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days detailed the drive of 3,000 cattle from Texas to Montana over a five-month period in 1882. The book, dedicated "to the cowmen and boys of the Old Western Trail," was a literal chronicle. Its author did not add a plot other than the drive itself and there was no romance side-story (resulting in what many would call a dull book today). Journalists, critics, and readers assumed the book was Adams's autobiography; though based on some of his own experiences, it is indeed a work of fiction.

Several similarly-themed books were to follow and, at least for a time, Adams was regarded as the best chronicler of the western and cowboy life. Here's how the narrator in The Log of a Cowboy describes the beginning of his journey with 3,000 cattle:

Our Circle Dot herd started on its long tramp to the Blackfoot Agency in Montana. With six men on each side, and the herd strung out for three quarters of a mile, it could only be compared to some mythical serpent of Chinese dragon, as it moved forward on its sinuous, snail-like course. Two riders, known as point men, rode out and well back from the lead cattle, and by riding forward and closing in as occasion required, directed the course of the herd. The main body of the herd trailed along behind the leaders like an army in loose marching order, guarded by outriders, known as swing men, who rode well out from the advancing column, warding off range cattle, and seeing that none of the herd wandered away or dropped out. There was no driving to do; the cattle moved of their own free will as in ordinary travel.

The leader of this drive had this advice: "The secret of trailing cattle is never to let your herd know that they are under restraint."


*The illustration above depicts "Meeting with Indians" by E. Boyd Smith, published in The Log of a Cowboy's first edition.

Behold a huge bundle of scribble

Nathaniel Hawthorne joined the community at Brook Farm mostly for economic reasons, rather than philosophical ones. George Ripley and the other founders of the cooperative community believed that sharing responsibility would allow ample time for intellectual pursuits, like writing. Hawthorne quickly learned this wasn't the case. He complained about his role as a farmer, shoveling manure, and dealing with stubborn cows. "Even my Custom House experience was not such a thraldom and weariness," he wrote later. "Thank God, my soul is not utterly buried under a dung-heap." Even his short-term role as treasurer for the venture left him annoyed. The experience, however, inspired a novel.

On May 2, 1852, Hawthorne wrote to his friend, the critic Edwin Percy Whipple with the opening line, "Behold a huge bundle of scribble, which you have thoughtlessly promised to look over!" (view the whole letter) He included a manuscript copy of the novel, Hollingsworth: A Romance. Hawthorne, however, was not certain of the title. "I wish, at least, you would help me to choose a name," he pleaded. The author offered several alternatives as well. Whipple's response no longer exists but when the book was finally published, it carried the title The Blithedale Romance.

Hawthorne admitted the work was inspired by Brook Farm (which had failed by then), but emphasized it was a work of fiction. Scholars, however, have dug deep into the work to find real-life connections. Most agreed upon is the basis of the character Zenobia, whose inspiration seems to have come from Margaret Fuller. Fuller never officially joined Brook Farm was a frequent enough visitor and lecturer there that she had her own teacup and a cottage was named in her honor. From chapter 6:

Zenobia was truly a magnificent woman. The homely simplicity of her dress could not conceal, nor scarcely diminish, the queenliness of her presence. The image of her form and face should have been multiplied all over the earth. It was wronging the rest of mankind to retain her as the spectacle of only a few. The stage would have been her proper sphere. She should have made it a point of duty, moreover, to sit endlessly to painters and sculptors...

Henry Timrod memorialized

Charleston, South Carolina memorialized the poet Henry Timrod on May 1, 1901 with a large statue in Washington Square. Timrod, who was born in Charleston, gained notoriety as "The Poet Laureate of the Confederacy."

A trained lawyer and teacher, Timrod published poetry here and there as early as 1848. However, it was not until the outbreak of the Civil War that he achieve significant fame. Illness kept him from serving as a soldier for long so he turned to editing a newspaper in his hometown. He became prolific as a poet but never earned much money; he died poor of tuberculosis in 1867.

Proceedings for the memorial began at 5:00 p.m. that "glorious May day with rays aslant," as one newspaper reported. It was unveiled from beneath an oversized United States flag. The massive crowd ("a scene of rare beauty," according to the newspaper) saw a tall pedestal of gray granite, surmounted by a bronze bust sculpted by Edward V. Valentine. Children presented wreaths and flowers, enough that the base of the monument was no longer visible. If Timrod himself had been there, perhaps he would have humbly yet graciously thanked the crowd by reciting this sonnet of his:

I thank you, kind and best beloved friend,
With the same thanks one murmurs to a sister,
When, for some gentle favor, he hath kissed her,
Less for the gifts than for the love you send,
Less for the flowers than what the flowers convey,
If I, indeed, divine their meaning truly,
And not unto myself ascribe, unduly,
Things which you neither meant nor wished to say,
Oh! tell me, is the hope then all misplaced?
And am I flattered by my own affection?
But in your beauteous gift, methought I traced
Something above a short-lived predilection,
And which, for that I know no dearer name,
I designate as love, without love's flame.