Freeman: They say the house is haunted

Born in Randolph, Massachusetts on October 31, 1852, Mary E. Wilkins later married Dr. Charles Freeman (they soon separated). As a girl, she began writing to support her family, ultimately publishing over 20 novels and short story collections. Perhaps it is appropriate that a woman born on Halloween wrote several ghost stories. One such story, published before her marriage, was "A Gentle Ghost" (1889).

In the tale, four women are traversing a cemetery in the spring. Just when they are ready to turn back, they discover a small child all by herself at one of the plots. She tells them her name is Nancy Wren and that she is ten years old.

"It's nobody I know," remarked the questioner, reflectively. "I guess she comes from — over there. She made a significant motion of her head towards the right. "Where do you live, Nancy?" she asked.
The child also motioned towards the right.

To the right of the cemetery is the almshouse. The girl points out several plots and claims this is where her family is buried. One of the women is dubious. "It's the Blake lot!" said she. "This child can't be any relation to 'em." But Nancy claims she used to play with Jane Blake.

"She died forty year ago this May," said she, with a gasp. "I used to know her when I was a child. She was ten years old when she died. You ain't ever seen her. You hadn't ought to tell such stories."

The women, shocked and unnerved by the child, leave her and make their way towards the exit of the cemetery. On the way out, they notice the home across the street, the home of the Dunn family.

"Say," said she, in a mysterious whisper, "I want to know if you've heard the stories 'bout the Dunn house? ...I heard it pretty straight — they say the house is haunted."

The haunted house of the Dunn family soon has a connection to the almshouse next door — and little Nancy Wren and even the deceased Jane Blake...

Stedman: Let there be light!

Honoring the dedication of the Statue of Liberty only days earlier, the October 30, 1886 issue of Harper's Weekly included the above illustration by Harry Fenn. It also included a poem by Connecticut-born poet, critic, essayist, and promoter of international copyright Edmund Clarence Stedman. The poem carries the title "Liberty Enlightening the World":

..."My name is Liberty!
   From out a mighty land
I face the ancient sea,
   I lift to God my hand;
By day in Heaven's light,
A pillar of fire by night,
   At ocean's gate I stand
      Nor bend the knee.

"The dark Earth lay in sleep,
   Her children crouched forlorn,
Ere on the western steep
   I sprang to height, reborn:
Then what a joyous shout
The quickened lands gave out,
   And all the choir of morn
      Sang anthems deep.

"Beneath yon firmament,
   The New World to the Old
My sword and summons sent,
   My azure flag unrolled:
The Old World's hands renew
Their strength; the form ye view
   Came from a living mould
      In glory blent.

"O ye, whose broken spars
   Tell of the storms ye met,
Enter! fear not the bars
   Across your pathway set;
Enter at Freedom's porch,
For you I lift my torch,
   For you my coronet
      Is rayed with stars..."

O wonderful and bright,
   Immortal Freedom, hail!
Front, in thy fiery might,
   The midnight and the gale;
Undaunted on this base
Guard well thy dwelling-place:
   Till the last sun grow pale
      Let there be light!

Flash it across the waters!

French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to design an official centennial gift to the United States from the people of France. The whole project was completed ten years late; the Statue of Liberty, as it is now called, was dedicated on October 28, 1886.

At the dedication ceremony, a poem was read by Jeremiah Eames Rankin, "The Fairest of Freedom's Daughters":

Night's diadem around thy head,
The world upon thee gazing,
Beneath the eye of heroes dead
Thy queenly form up-raising,
Lift up, lift up thy torch on high,
Fairest of Freedom's daughters!
Flash it against thine own blue sky,
Flash it across the waters!

Stretch up to thine own woman's height,
Thine eye lit with truth's lustre,
As though from God, Himself a-light,
Earth's hopes around thee cluster,
The stars touch with thy forehead fair;
At them thy torch was lighted.
They grope to find where truth's ways are,
The nations long benighted.

Thou hast the van in earth's proud march,
To thee all nations turning;
Thy torch against thine own blue arch,
In answer to their yearning!
Show them the pathway thou hast trod,
The chains which thou hast broken;
Teach them thy trust in man and God,
The watchwords thou hast spoken...

God, home, and country be thy care,
Thou queen of all the ages!
Belting the earth is this one prayer:
Unspotted be thy pages!
Lift up, lift up thy torch on high,
Fairest of Freedom's daughters!
Flash it against thine own blue sky,
Flash it across the waters!

Poet and editor Edmund Clarence Stedman also offered a poem to the Statue of Liberty, published only days later.

Taylor: my future so bright

Only one thing could stall production of Bayard Taylor's book Northern Travels: Summer and Winter Pictures — his marriage. On October 27, 1857, Taylor married Marie Hanson. They honeymooned in London (where Taylor finalized the British edition of his book).

From London, Taylor hoped to make his way to Russia to secure new material for a future book of the travel essays which had become his signature. Like the rest of the country, however, he was suffering from financial setbacks. Instead, the couple went to Greece.

Travel defined both Taylor and his wife. They met (and got engaged) in Germany, where her father was an astronomer. Before marrying, he awaited approval from her mother, then living in Russia. He called their marriage (his second, after the death of his first wife Mary Agnew in 1850) "a step which makes us all so happy and my future so bright." They had a daughter, Lilian, a year later.

In his introduction to Northern Winters, Taylor explains his reason for traveling so extensively and writing about those travels:

My object in travel is neither scientific, statistical, nor politico-economical; but simply artistic, pictorial, — if possible, panoramic. I have attempted to draw, with a hand which, I hope, has acquired a little steadiness from long practice, the people and the scenery of northern Europe, to colour my sketches with the tints of the originals, and to invest each one with its native and characteristic atmosphere. In order to do this, I have adopted, as in other countries, a simple rule: to live, as near as possible, the life of the people among whom I travel.

After Taylor's death, Marie Hanson-Taylor edited his life and letters (under that hyphenated name, with help from Horace Scudder). She became the caretaker of Cedarcroft, the home they built in 1860. She was nicknamed "The Mistress of Cedarcroft" and lived there until her own death 47 years after that of her husband.

Wheatley: I have taken the freedom

From his headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, George Washington received a letter from a 20-something named Phillis Wheatley, dated October 26, 1775. "Sir, she wrote, "I have taken the freedom to address your Excellency in the enclosed poem... Your being appointed by the Grand Continental Congress to be Generalissimo of the armies of North America, together with the fame of your virtues, excite sensations not easy to suppress." Here is the poem, "To His Excellency General Washington":

...Muse! bow propitious while my pen relates
How pour her armies through a thousand gates,
As when Eolus heaven’s fair face deforms,
Enwrapp'd in tempest and a night of storms;
Astonish'd ocean feels the wild uproar,
The refluent surges beat the sounding shore;
Or thick as leaves in Autumn's golden reign,
Such, and so many, moves the warrior’s train.
In bright array they seek the work of war,
Where high unfurl’d the ensign waves in air.
Shall I to Washington their praise recite?
Enough thou know'st them in the fields of fight.
Thee, first in peace and honours,—we demand
The grace and glory of thy martial band.
Fam'd for thy valour, for thy virtues more,
Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!

One century scarce perform'd its destined round,
When Gallic powers Columbia's fury found;
And so may you, whoever dares disgrace
The land of freedom’s heaven-defended race!
Fix'd are the eyes of nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia's arm prevails.
Anon Britannia droops the pensive head,
While round increase the rising hills of dead.
Ah! cruel blindness to Columbia's state!
Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.

Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev'ry action let the goddess guide.
A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! be thine.

He did not respond for several months. Wheatley was a published poet but also a former slave. Washington, a Virginian plantation owner, must have hesitated at least in part because of a question of decorum. How does a slave-owner address a freed slave? Wheatley made the letter even more loaded by using the term, "I have taken the freedom."

But, Washington did, in fact, respond (eventually). "If you should ever come to Cambridge," he wrote, "...I shall be happy to see a person so favoured by the Muses." Though there is no evidence that "Miss Phillis" (as she was addressed by Washington) ever took him up on his offer, it is certainly impressive that the offer was made at all.

Hoffman: in a dreadful manner

According to the October 25, 1817 issue of the New York Evening Post, a boy was sitting on the "Courtlandt-street Dock, with his legs hanging over the wharf." A steamboat was coming in and he tried to jump down on it. Instead, he was caught by the boat and his right leg was crushed "in a dreadful manner." His right leg had to be amputated above the knee.

The boy, future writer Charles Fenno Hoffman, replaced his missing limb with "a cork substitute," according to the Cyclopedia of American Literature, compiled by Evert Augustus Duyckinck. According to all reports, the lack of a right leg never impeded Hoffman in any way. He continued "the out-door life and athletic exercises" which he enjoyed. At age 15, he enrolled at Columbia College, where he particularly excelled on the debate team. He dropped out in his junior year but was apparently given an honorary degree years later.

Perhaps his most interesting accomplishment to emphasize Hoffman's "out-door" and "athletic" life was his trip in 1833. That year, he traveled on horseback from his home in New York as far west as the Mississippi River, through Kentucky and Virginia, in the dead of winter. The trip was the basis for his book A Winter in the West.

Hoffman and his friends never seem to mention much about the leg situation. But, looking at one particular scene in A Winter in the West, you can't help but picture his situation:

I rode thus for miles without seeing a living thing except a raven, which... I at once took it for granted was hovering near one of the savage beasts to which he so faithfully plays the jackal. Wheeling my horse suddenly from the trail towards a thicket of dwarf oaks... he shied from the bush, and I was thrown upon the spot. After extricating the foot, by which I was dragged a yard or two, from the stirrup, I sprang up but little hurt, and moved as quickly as possible to catch my horse... "This is very ridiculous."

...I sat down at once among the long dry grass, and stripping off my leggings, and disembarassing my heels of the now useless spurs, stowed all away in my coat-pockets.

Lowell in a Chatty Mood

The October 24, 1886 issue of the New York World included an article focused on James Russell Lowell, then Minister to the Court of St. James in England. The interview with the aging poet-turned diplomat was titled "Lowell in a Chatty Mood."

The author of the article, Julian Hawthorne (pictured below), was an up-and-coming writer, perpetually in the shadow of his father Nathaniel Hawthorne. Years earlier, Lowell had tutored him in German while at Harvard; Julian dropped out without graduating

Hawthorne reported in his article that Lowell thought the House of Lords was made up of fools, and that the Prince of Wales was "immensely fat." As for English writing, Lowell was completely uninterested: "I have not followed it," he said. Upon being told that Thomas Hardy was "very good," Lowell began to read one of his books. "I did not get on with it," he said. "Afterwards, I met him; he is small and unassuming in appearance — does not look like the genius of tradition." Hardy was not amused.

Henry James wrote privately that he knew Hawthorne had played an "infamous trick", leaving him "the basest cad" and deserving of a flogging. Lowell denied much of what Hawthorne reported and claimed that the whole interview was off the record. He also worried that the article made him seem like "a toothless old babbler." In fact, Lowell printed a reply only a few days later in the World. "The reporter has made me say the reverse of what I really must have said and of what is the truth." James was disappointed by Lowell's relatively calm dismissal of the incident. "His protest, however," wrote James, "ought to have been sharper."

Child: We are not dead; we are the living

After an accomplished career as a writer and a proponent of reform movements (including abolitionism), Lydia Maria Child died at the age of 78. Two days later, on October 23, 1880, her funeral was held before her burial at North Cemetery in Wayland, Massachusetts. There were very few in attendance — friends, neighbors, nieces, the few remaining fellow abolitionists, and "poor people who had been recipients of her charity."

Child's majors works included a domestic manual for those with only a modest income and her Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (1833). The book, printed still early in the active anti-slavery movement, was controversial; the Boston Athenaeum even revoked Child's free library privileges. It argued that slavery was destructive to everyone, including slave owners, and urged northerners to take action. It was read by people like William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Wendell Phillips. Phillips in particular credited Child's book as a main source of inspiration for his own anti-slavery efforts.

In fact, it was Phillips that presented the eulogy at Child's funeral in 1880. "Mrs. Child's character was one of rare elements," he said, "and their combination in one person rarer still." Phillips said that she always followed one divine rule: "Bear ye one another's burdens." He also noted that she never slowed down, even inher old age. She had "still the freshness of girlhood... [with] ready wit, quick retort, mirthful just." He also claimed that, in their last meeting, Child thought "spirit hands" had given her the words which should inscribe her epitaph: "You think us dead. We are not dead; we are the living." Those words were, in fact, inscribed on her gravestone.

Child's good friend John Greenleaf Whittier was particularly saddened by her death. To her, he dedicated his poem "Within the Gate." The poem concludes:

And so, since thou hast passed within the gate
      Whereby awhile I wait,
I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie:
      Thou hast not lived to die!

Birth of James A. Bland

James A. Bland was born one of 12 children in Flushing, New York on October 22, 1854. He went on to graduate from Howard University; while an undergraduate, his father was also studying law there. It was at Howard that Bland became intrigued by music — to the dismay of his father, the first nonwhite to serve as examiner in the United States Patent Office.

A banjo player, Bland listened to songs sung by former slaves around Washington, D.C. In 1873, he decided to do something with his musical interest and went into show business. He wore blackface, although he was an African-American, to perform in minstrel-shows. Eventually, he joined Haverly's Genuine Colored Minstrels and the troupe took their show to London in 1881. When the company returned to the United States, Bland stayed behind, building up a following in England until 1896. Soon after, his reputation began to dwindle as his style of comedic performance fell out of fashion. He died of either tuberculosis or pneumonia in Philadelphia in 1911; he was 56.

Bland was a singer, musician, and actor, but was especially recognized for his songwriting — earning him a place in the Songwiters Hall of Fame. He copyrighted some three dozen songs, including his most famous, "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" (1878). For a time, it was the Virginia state song; in 1997, the State Senate voted to re-designate it as "state song emeritus," retiring it because of its minstrel history and slight racism. Some words were even re-written (by order of the legislation!):

Carry me back to old Virginia,
There's where the cotton and corn and 'tatoes grow,
There's where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There's where this old darkey's dreamer's heart am long'd to go.
There's where I labor'd so hard for old Massa my loved ones,
Day after day in the field of yellow corn,
No place on earth do I love more sincerely,
Than old Virginia, the State where I was born.

*For the information in this post, I am particularly indebted to Frank Cullen's Vaudeville, Old and New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America.

We set down our Dial on the earth

The members of the Transcendental Club all supported the establishment of a new journal for their cause; as Ralph Waldo Emerson called it, "an organ of our own, wherein we can have entire freedom; in which the purest thoughts and tastes may be represented." But who would run it? Bronson Alcott — a vocal supporter for "a free Journal of the soul" — was not an option, nor was Frederick Henry Hedge, then living too far away in Maine. George Ripley had his own projects (though he would serve as business manger for The Dial). Emerson himself refused, writing that "we all wish it to be, but do not wish to be in any way personally responsible for it."

On October 20, 1839, the role of first editor of The Dial was accepted by Margaret Fuller. She wrote in her journal: "It is now proposed that I should conduct a magazine which would afford me space and occasion for every thing I may wish to do." Work began a couple months later; its first issue was in print by April 1840. Its introduction, likely a combined effort by Fuller and Emerson, read:

And so with diligent hands and good intent we set down our Dial on the earth. We wish it may resemble that instrument in its celebrated happiness, that of measuring no hours but those of sunshine. Let it be one cheerful rational voice amidst the din of mourners and polemics. Or to abide by our chosen image, let it be such a Dial, not as the dead face of a clock... but rather such a Dial as is the Garden itself, in whose leaves and flowers the suddenly awakened sleeper is instantly apprised not what part of dead time, but what state of life and growth is now arrived and arriving.

Though she would use the magazine as an outlet for her own reform ideas (including her feminist essay "The Great Lawsuit"), Fuller was instantly frustrated with her editorial duties. For one, her promised salary of $200 was likely never paid. Hedge, one of the strongest supporters of the idea of a journal, suddenly refused to contribute, worrying about his reputation. Alcott's contributions, his "Orphic Sayings," were incoherent and embarrassing. Orestes Brownson called the journal "vague" and "aerial," lacking focus in the real world. Worse, despite his refusal to be titled as editor, Emerson became a micro-manager. Fuller left the magazine two years later.

*A solid source for the information in today's entry is the first volume of Charles Capper's monumental Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life.

Hayne: from the war-wearied hand

After a five-day siege of Yorktown, Virginia by combined American and French forces, the commander, Charles Cornwallis, and his British troops surrendered on October 19, 1781. Soon after, the British government recognized the independence of the United States.

100 years after the surrender at Yorktown, Southern poet Paul Hamilton Hayne commemorated the event in poetry. The American Revolution theme seems unusual for a poet more known for his connection to the Civil War. In a fairly lengthy poem titled "Yorktown Centennial Lyric," dated October 19, 1881, he writes:

Hark! hark! down the century's long reaching slope
To those transports of triumph, those raptures of hope...
And mark how the years melting upward like mist
Which the breath of some splendid enchantment has kissed,
Reveal on the ocean, reveal on the shore
The proud pageant of conquest that graced them of yore.

Hayne notes the difficulty in America's founding ("stubborn the strife ere the conflict was won!") and how the colonists might have lost hope ("the wild whirling war wrack half stifled the sun"). Instead:

The day turned to darkness, the night changed to fire,
Still more fierce waxed the combat, more deadly the ire,
Undimmed by the gloom, in majestic advance,
Oh, behold where they ride o'er the red battle tide,
Those banners united in love as in fame.

Much of the poem is dedicated to the support of France and "the lilies, the luminous lilies of France." Cornwallis, on the other hand, "sharpens his broadsword" which "so oft has reaped rebels like grain."  A bold boast, the poem notes, for a man who will soon be running in fear. The siege ends ("O morning superb!") and the soldiers walk away in silence. They know peace is upon them:

When Peace to her own, timed the pulse of the land,
And the war weapon sank from the war-wearied hand,
Young Freedom upborne to the height of the goal
 She had yearned for so long with deep travail of soul,
A song of her future raised, thrilling and clear,
Till the woods learned to hearken, the hill slopes to hear: —
Yet fraught with all magical grandeurs that gleam
On the hero's high hope, or the patriot's dream,
What future, though bright, in cold shadow shall cast
The proud beauty that haloes the brow of the past.

Birth of Thomas Holley Chivers

On a cotton plantation outside of Washington, Georgia, Thomas Holley Chivers was born on October 18, 1809. He witnessed the death of his sister while in his teens (a traumatic experience that should have forewarned a life full of the loss of loved ones). He married his 16-year old cousin Frances Elizabeth Chivers in 1827 but, within a year, she left him along with their infant daughter.

Chivers left Georgia shortly after, enrolling at Transylvania University in Kentucky, where he earned his M.D.  Returning to his home state, Dr. Chivers hoped to reconcile with his wife. He was wrong, but demanded his legal right to a portion of his wife's estate. She tried to divorce him but he would not allow it, resulting in a major scandal. Georgia law eventually dissolved their marriage; Chivers likely never saw his daughter again. The trouble inspired his first book of poems, The Path of Sorrow (1832), which he self-published.

He soon remarried and with his second wife, Harriet Hunt of Springfield, Massachusetts, he had four children. Each of them died young. Dr. Chivers's life was full of enough suffering that his poetry almost exclusively focuses on themes of death, mourning, and loss. Inspired in part by his friend Edgar Allan Poe (who he later suggested plagiarized from him), his poetry also emphasized the quality of sound... to much less success. Evert Augustus Duyckinck called Chivers formulaic — and even broke down the formula, including 20% "mild idiocy," with another 10% of "gibbering idiocy." It is difficult not to agree. From "Threnody, Composed on the Death of My Little Boy":

By the Waters of Salvation,
  Christ's Salvation, full of pain —
Christ's Salvation, in probation,
I sit down in tribulation,
And now write this Lamentation
  For the lost, the early slain!
Waiting, (hoping for salvation,)
  For his coming back again.

But, as awful as some of his poetry is, he writes with enough sincere melancholy that it's hard not to appreciate what he's doing. From "Song to Isa":

Upon thy lips now lies
  The music-dew of love;
And in thy deep blue eyes,
  More mild than heaven above,
  The meekness of the dove.

More sweet than the perfume
  Of snow-white jessamine,
When it is first in bloom,
  Is that sweet breath of thine,
  Which mingles now with mine.

*Recommended reading: Thomas Holley Chivers by Charles M. Leland, if you can find it. Last year, for Chivers's bicentennial, the magazine Georgia Backroads had a great article by Ellen Firsching Brown on the doctor-poet. Another source of information, including a better list of books to look for, is here.

Marriage of Grace Greenwood

Sarah Jane Clarke, a New Yorker by birth, married Philadelphian Leander K. Lippincott on October 17, 1853. They settled in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, in Beaver County, just northwest of Pittsburgh. Sarah Jane Lippincott was better known by her pen name, Grace Greenwood. Though she was incredibly prolific — she first drew national attention in 1844 with a poem in the New York Tribune — she never wrote about her married life.

The couple founded The Little Pilgrim, a monthly magazine for children, with "Grace Greenwood" as its editor, though it ended in 1868. He contributed his own stories and at least one book is credited to both Mr. and Mrs. Lippincott (the Greenwood pseudonym was never meant to hide her identity, and she occasionally published poems side-by-side, one with her real name, and one with her pen name).

Mrs. Lippincott was very interested in politics and lost her job at Godey's Lady's Book after publishing an anti-slavery essay in The National Era. She often spoke out for international copyright law, noting it would be "an immeasurable benefit to the native genius." In response to the idea that authors should write only for the pleasure of writing, she wrote that if America wants writers to labor and sweat over high quality writing, they must be paid a "sweating wage." What little wages she got, however, "Grace Greenwood" was happy to keep for herself.

However, when she married in 1853 at 30 years old, she soon learned that a married authoress plays a different role. Beginning that year, her works were now copyrighted under the name of her husband. As Melissa J. Homestead notes, "although she was still an author, she was no longer a literary proprietor... Her 'sweating wages' legally belongded to her husband." In 1876, however, Leander Lippincott was indicted for land fraud and fled the country. Their marriage was apparently never happy and rumors spread he was not faithful.

*Some information for this post comes from Melissa J. Homestead's American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822-1869.

Elmwood: The house itself is dead

"I have written a poem of one hundred lines or so," wrote Thomas Bailey Aldrich in a letter dated October 16, 1891. The letter's recipient, Prof. George Edmund Woodberry, would have been very interested in the poem: it was dedicated to James Russell Lowell.

The poem, "Elmwood," was subtitled "In Memory of James Russell Lowell"; he had died only two months earlier. The title refers to Lowell's family home in Cambridge, which Aldrich rented in 1872 while Lowell traveled through Europe.

Here, in the twilight, at the well-known gate
I linger, with no heart to enter more.
Among the elm-tops the autumnal air
Murmurs, and spectral in the fading light
A solitary heron wings its way
Southward — save this no sound or touch of life.
Dark is that window where the scholar's lamp
Was used to catch a pallor from the dawn.

The poem is surprisingly personal and sad. At one point, the poem's narrative voice even trails off, leaving a thought unfinished. He pauses:

And listened to the crooning of the wind
In the wide Elmwood chimneys, as of old.
And then — and then...

He continues observing the now-silent home. "The vacant windows stare across the lawn," Aldrich writes. "The house itself is dead."

Woodberry, a prolific literary historian, elsewhere wrote how impressed he was by Lowell's varied career as a poet, critic, scholar, and diplomat. Woodberry noticed, however, that his works "have not been hitherto so much recognized as was right." He concluded that Lowell was "a great writer."

Aldrich: no dramatic ambition

Today he is mostly known for his novel, The Story of a Bad Boy (based on his years in Louisiana), and his many poems, but Thomas Bailey Aldrich experimented in all types of writing. His first play, Judith and Holfernes, premiered at the Tremont Street Theatre in Boston on October 13, 1904.

Aldrich began writing the play to overcome his grief after the death of his son, Charles. Charles died of tuberculosis at the age of 34; the entire family had rallied around him, moving with him to Saranac Lake for treatment. Finding his home "crowded with ghosts," he met with the actress Nance O'Neil and her manager, the Canadian-born McKee Rankin. "Miss O'Neil... has fallen in love with my narrative poem 'Judith and Holofernes," he wrote in a letter, "which she desires me to dramatize for her." At the time, he doubted he would bother attempting the project, noting "I've no dramatic ambition, or ambition of any kind. If everything I have written should be absolutely obliterated I shouldn't cry."

Once it was finally performed, however, Aldrich was happy with his experiment as a playwright. To the star of his show, he wrote, "I am glad that I did so rash a thing as attempt to be a dramatist!"

A contemporary critic wrote that the Boston performance was "sumptuous" and, despite the demands of the audience, the playwright refused to speak on stage. Even so, the critic noted that, though it made a good dramatic poem, "it is not a great play." Later productions in New York were unsuccessful.

Fern: I thank thee that I live

After 16 and a half years, the final column by Fanny Fern was published on October 12, 1872 — two days after her death. Fern, whose birth name was Sara Payson Willis, had printed her column continuously, without exception, every week in the New York Ledger since 1856. Her weekly salary made her the highest-paid columnist in the United States.

Fern's life, however, was not easy. Her first husband died in 1845 and she turned to her wealthy and influential brother, the writer Nathaniel Parker Willis. For reasons still unknown today, he shunned her. She married again but divorced shortly after. She wrote children's stories and a newspaper column, attracting the attention of James Parton, editor of the Home Journal (owned by Willis). He printed some of her work and, when Willis protested, he resigned as editor. Shortly after, Fern and Parton married (he was 11 years younger).

Fern's major break was the book Ruth Hall (1854), which fictionalized some of her unhappy experiences in her second marriage as well as a depicting thinly-veiled caricature of Willis, renamed "Hyacinth Ellet" — an effeminate, obnoxious editor who tries to sabotage the literary ambitions of the title character. The book sold 100,000 copies in one year, ultimately arguing that women need to financially support themselves.

Fern suffered for some time with cancer, at one point losing the use of her right arm. No matter; she wrote with her left instead. Her final column was titled "End of the Summer Season." In it, she wrote about a vacation:

As for me, whether I go early or late, whether my eyes are open or shut, memory will always make pictures for me... which makes me say with Festus, "Oh, God, I thank thee that I live."

Her editor, Robert Bonner, ordered the next issue of the Ledger print its editorial page with black edges representing mourning. He wrote, "Her success was assured, because she had something to say, and knew how to say it."

*I cannot recommend strongly enough Joyce W. Warren's Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman, which was used as a major source for this post.

To trace new seas, and happy nations rear

Today is Columbus Day — the official celebration of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in October 1492. The day did not become an official national holiday until the 20th century, but American writers were celebrating Columbus much earlier.


Joel Barlow, for example, published The Vision of Columbus in 1787 — a single poem which took the space of nine "books." Barlow, an early poet who served as a chaplain during the American Revolution, later expanded that 9-book poem into The Columbiad. Though both versions of the poem went through several editions, contemporary (and modern) critics remain divided on its merit.

The poem is a series of visions presented to Columbus by Hesper, a guardian, while he is imprisoned. Hesper shows him a vision of the American continents and their history up to the time of Barlow composing the poem, including the Revolution. The poem tells us why:

"Here, then," says Hesper with a blissful smile,
"Behold the fruits of thy long yeas of toil.
To yon bright borders of Atlantic day,
Thy swelling pinions led the trackless way,
And taught mankind such useful deeds to dare,
To trace new seas, and happy nations rear,
Till by fraternal hands their sails unfurled
Have waved at last in union o'er the world.
  Then let thy steadfast soul no more complain
Of dangers braved and griefs endured in vain,
Of courts insidious, envy's poisoned stings,
The loss of empire and the frown of kings;
While these broad views thy better thoughts compose
To spurn the malice of insulting foes;
And all the joys descending ages gain,
Repay thy labors and remove thy pain.

The first version of The Vision of Columbus was sold by subscription and its appendix included a list of subscribers. They included Gen. Henry Knox, the father of John Gardiner Calkins Brainard, the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the artist Charles Wilson Peale.

Edgar Allan Poe is dead

He collected several anthologies, among the highest-selling books in the entire century. An influential editor, a prolific literary critic and essayist, and one of the most well-read men in the United States, Rufus Wilmot Griswold's reputation today rests on one obituary that he wrote. First published on October 9, 1849, in the New York Tribune, the obituary began:

Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it... He had few or no friends. The regrets for his death will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art lost one of its most brilliant, but erratic stars.

Griswold's description of Poe claimed his "choler" was quickly raised, that he was plagued with gnawing envy, and that he believed all people were villains. His career, said Griswold, was spent seeking success only for a "right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit." Much of Griswold's characterization of Poe was stolen verbatim from a work of fiction by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

One of the earliest responses to Griswold's posthumous attacks on Poe came from George Lippard, the young Philadelphia novelist who considered Poe a mentor. In several articles, Lippard both defended Poe and attacked Griswold. At one point, he said that he would give more for Poe's toe nail than for "Rueful Grizzle's soul." Lippard predicted Poe's fate:

As an author his name will live, while three-fourths of the bastard critics and mongrel authors of the present day go down to nothingness and night. And the men who now spit upon his grave, by way of retaliation for some injury which they imagined they have received from Poe living, would do well to remember, that it is only an idiot or a coward who strikes the cold forehead of a corpse.

*The debate between Griswold and Lippard over the legacy of Poe continues this month (October 2010) at the Rye Arts Center in New York as part of their annual "POE: EVERMORE." The original script was written by me, your faithful American Literary Blogger; I'll also be performing as Mr. Lippard.

Blackened and bleeding in Chicago

The Great Chicago Fire burned for three days beginning on October 8, 1871. As with many other national tragedies, several poets were inspired to memorialize the event and its unfortunate victims lyrically. Bret Harte, for example, wrote "Chicago" a description of the horrific devastation left behind: "Blackened and bleeding, helpless, panting, prone / On the charred fragments of her shattered throne."

On the other hand, John Greenleaf Whittier noted how Americans were unified in the need to stay hopeful in his own poem, also named "Chicago":

From East, from West, from South and North,
The messages of hope shot forth,
And, underneath the severing wave,
The world, full-handed reached to save.

John Boyle O'Reilly personified Chicago as a woman "who was once so fair," but now "charred and rent are her garments." Like Whittier, O'Reilly notes that she is "rich in her treasures" because she has friends who will assist her. The country, after all, is striving for Chicago's rebirth:

Silent she stands on the prairie,
Wrapped in her fire-scathed sheet:
Around her, thank God, is the Nation,
Weeping for her desolation,
Pouring its gold at her feet...

It is estimated that as many as 400 people died in the Great Chicago Fire. The rumor persisted for years that the fire which destroyed four square miles was started by the family cow owned by the O'Leary family.

Guest post: Death of Poe and Holmes

*Today's guest blog is by novelist Matthew Pearl, whose historical fiction mysteries include The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow. His third novel, The Last Dickens, follows the publisher James R. Osgood in pursuit of the last manuscript of Charles Dickens. Matthew has also written a two-part guest blog for The Edgar Allan Poe Calendar. For more information, please visit his web site.

Edgar Allan Poe and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. both died on October 7, one in 1849, the latter in 1894. There are many interesting ways to compare and contrast Holmes and Poe from the points of view of a biographer, a historian, or a reader. I have some thoughts on the two figures from the perspective of a fiction writer who has used both as characters in novels.

I chose Holmes as the central figure in my first novel, The Dante Club. This was not an obvious decision, because the story (as the title suggests) really is an ensemble, and I had my pick of terrific historical personalities from a small group that helped complete the first American translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. For a while, I leaned toward James Russell Lowell, another colorful poet and close friend of Holmes's. Why did I end up hitching my wagon to Holmes? Holmes's strength as a character reflects one of his personal strengths in life: versatility. In writing a novel about poets who must embark on a dangerous investigation, the historical novelist could ask for no better recruit than Holmes: not only a popular poet, but a Harvard Medical School professor, a physician, and himself a novelist — not to mention a savant at conversation, wit and socializing.

Think of the challenge of writing about writers and trying to make it engaging and dramatic. A writer's central occupation involves sitting at a desk and, well, writing, and their personalities are often introverted. Not material that necessarily lends itself to external drama. Being one myself, I know I'd make a pretty boring character! No wonder doctors, lawyers and police officers are such frequent choices as protagonists for books, films and television. But Holmes erases these worries, and grants you wonderful settings for scenes, as well, other than a writer's library. I'm not the only one to think so, either: check out Tess Gerritsen's The Bone Garden for another Holmes adventure.

Poe presents such a different profile to the fiction writer. His persona is so larger than life and enigmatic, many novelists are tempted to make him come off as somewhat demented, similar to some of the characters he created. Fellow novelist Louis Bayard and I actually contributed a joint article about the appeal of using Poe as a character for Poe Studies journal. Unlike Lou, whose novel The Pale Blue Eye caught up with Poe as a young cadet at West Point, in my novel, The Poe Shadow, Poe has just died and the intrigue surrounding his death animates the story. I've told Lou I think he's very brave by using Poe as a character. For me, trying to compete with reader's own ideas of what Poe would be like as a person was too daunting, and a hit-or-miss proposition. Unlike Holmes, whom many of my readers discovered for the first time in my novel, everyone has their "own" Poe. That's part of the way I wanted instead to use Poe's "shadow": to show how unattainable the real Poe is, and how that could send my characters on an adventure of discovery that, in the context of my novel, becomes a matter of life or death.

I also liked the idea of reminding my readers that enjoying and caring about Poe in 1849 took courage and originality, that he was not the icon he is today. Having this distance from Poe, rather than placing him center stage as a character, also allowed my characters to realize, as I did, that, unlike the mythical Poe, at the end of the day Poe was looking for a normal, stable, family and financial life... one that might have looked something like Holmes's, had Poe survived long enough to see his plans through.

Boker: O Poet of the present day!

Born to a wealthy Philadelphia family on October 6, 1823, George Henry Boker became a poet, a playwright and, for a time, a diplomat (like his friend Bayard Taylor). Another friend, Charles Godrey Leland, noted that even as a boy, "Boker's knowledge of poetry was remarkable." His family fortune made him comfortable enough that he devoted much of his time to the pursuit of scholarly studies.

Boker, along with his group of literary friends, preferred looking to the Old World for inspiration. As Richard Henry Stoddard wrote to Boker: "Read Chaucer for strength, read Spenser for ease and sweetness, read Milton for sublimity and thought, read Shakespeare for all these things... Get out of your age as far as you can." Boker tended to agree, and often chose not to treat American subjects.

Boker, Taylor, Leland, and Stoddard were never as popular as the earlier generation of American poets (major names like Longfellow, Holmes, Bryant and others). As the second wave of American writers in the 19th century, they often struggled to get respect from critics. That struggle may be what Boker referred to in his poem "Ad Criticum":

...The world grows sage. The harmless tales
That took her in her infant years,
Now stretch her patience till it fails,
And weary her averted ears.

The poem continues by referring to the typical thought of the day that a new American literature must reflect the unique landscape of the country. To Boker, however, "this landscape, bought and sold" make up "the pictured scenes, no more... these are the scenery, not the play." The poem concludes:

O Poet of the present day!
Range back or forth, change time or place,
But mould the sinews of your lay
To struggle in the final race!

Your triumph in the end stands clear;
For when a few short years have run,
The past, the present, there and here,
To future times will be as one.

Howells, Scudder, Gilman: Pretty blood curdling

"The author wished me to send you this," William Dean Howells wrote to Horace Scudder (pictured at left) on October 5, 1890. "It's pretty blood curdling, but strong, and is certainly worth reading." The story Howells sent along with his letter was "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Scudder, by then, had replaced Howells as editor of The Atlantic Monthly some nine years earlier. Gilman had herself referred to "The Yellow Wall-Paper" as "my awful story," and reported that her husband called it "a ghastly tale... [which] beats Poe and Doré!" She admitted it was "a simple tale, but highly unpleasant."

Scudder, a reverend, apparently agreed. In fact, he found it a bit too ghastly. To Gilman, he wrote a two-sentence letter:

Mr. Howells has handed me this story. I could not forgive myself if I made others as miserable as I have made myself!

This somewhat curt letter was Scudder's only notice to Gilman that he chose not to publish the story in The Atlantic Monthly. It did not see print until the January 1892 issue of The New England Magazine. Howells disagreed with his friend's opinion. In 1920, he included "The Yellow Wall-Paper" in his collection of The Great Modern American Stories.

*For more information, see Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper: A Sourcebook and Critical Edition, edited by Catherine J. Golden.

Birth of Stratemeyer

Edward Stratemeyer was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey on October 4, 1862. Though his major successes would come in the 20th century with the creation of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, he started writing as a hobby, distributing short stories to friends.

The first story which earned him any money was "Victor Horton's Idea" (1889), under the name Arthur Winfield. He sent the story off to a children's newspaper in Philadelphia and was happy to receive a check for $75 shortly after (six times his weekly salary). He continued writing, churning out story after story, often under various pseudonyms. His first book was Richard Dare's Venture (1894), and he continually published through the end of the century, with The Rover Boys in 1899.

After the turn of the century, he formed the Stratemeyer Literary Syndicate. Under that banner, he produced series after series of works using ghost writers. Each writer was paid a flat rate for their work but Stratemeyer retained all copyright. Because of the anonymity of all these writers, there has been some confusion in determining how much work is really Stratemeyer's.

The theme of his earliest works often had something to do with sudden success. As one scholar noted, Stratemeyer had stumbled upon a formula that would come to define juvenile fiction. He also followed popular interest: airplanes, cars, radios, movies, the North Pole, miners in the Alaskan frontier, and even a cameo by Thomas Edison. These adventures implied instant rags-to-riches stories were possible — if not, likely.

*For further reading, see The Essential Edward Stratemeyer Collection or the biography Edward Stratemeyer: Creator of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew by Brenda Lange.

Mark Twain's magnificent marketing

MAGNIFICENT FIREWORKS

were in contemplation for this occasion,

but the idea has been abandoned.

Thus read a handbill for the first professional lecture offered by Mark Twain. Held at an opera house in San Francisco on October 2, 1866, advertisements also noted that the doors opened at 7 p.m., but "the trouble begins at 8."

Samuel Clemens had only adopted the pseudonym "Mark Twain" about two years earlier, but quickly cemented his place as a teller of humorous but interesting tales. The 30-year old's topic for October 2 was "Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands." Though he had given a small number of lectures before, this was the first time he was compensated. The audience was charged a modest admission fee; Clemens assumed few people would show up (perhaps the inspiration for his sly marketing scheme).

Instead, he was surprised to see a completely packed house — and was suddenly struck with stage fright. He overcame his fear, however, and presented his lecture successfully. He repeated the same lecture many times that year, even as late as 1873. In one version of the text, he began like this:

Ladies and gentlemen: The next lecture in this course will be delivered this evening, by Samuel L. Clemens, a gentleman whose high character and unimpeachable integrity are only equalled by his comeliness of person and grace of manner. And I am the man! I was obliged to excuse the chairman from introducing me, because he never compliments anybody and I knew I could do it just as well.

As biographer Connie Ann Kirk wrote, "That night launched a career that would bail Clemens out of financial straits more than once in his life." By 1895, he had presented over 1,000 lectures and speeches (not all in the United States).

*Some information for this post comes from The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain (2005) by Alex Ayres. See also Connie Ann Kirk's Mark Twain: A Biography (2004) for a fascinating discussion of his lecture technique and showmanship.

Willis: I should like to marry in England

Nathaniel Parker Willis was traveling overseas when he wrote to a friend, "I should like to marry in England." He worried that "my best years and best affections are running to waste." He implies that he would really like to find a woman with a trust fund. Shortly after, he met Mary Stace, the daughter of the Royal Ordinance Keeper at Woolwich Arsenal. They were married about a month later on October 1, 1835; her father granted her £300 a year allowance.

The couple spent a two-week honeymoon in Paris. Shortly before leaving, Willis arranged for the publication of Pencillings by the Way, a book commenting on his European travels and meetings with famous Europeans (including royalty). Yet, he confided in his wife, "I have lived the last ten years in gay society, and I am sick at heart of it." The couple moved to England, but Willis's interactions with high society did not stop (nor would they ever, really); they soon befriended Charles Dickens in London, for example.

One of Willis's sketches, "Beware of Dogs and Waltzing," seems to refer to Willis and Mary Stace through a character named Mabel Brown. The name was too plain for her, Willis wrote, and many wanted to change it for her. The male protagonist, a representation of Willis himself, is Mr. Lindsay Maud — "a gentleman whom I wish you to take for more than his outer seeming." With one look, he appears to show he "cares nothing for your opinion." His face is quite Willis-like:

His eyes are like the surface of a very deep well. Curling brown hair, broad and calm forehead, merry chin with a dimple in it, and mouth expressive of great good humour, and quite enough of fastidiousness. If this is not your beau ideal, I am very sorry.

By the end of the story, Mabel Brown is successfully wooed by Lindsay Maud, when he "poured out the fervent passion of his heart" to her. Their love softens his previous off-putting personality and they almost certainly live happily ever after — the last line of the short story reveals that Miss Brown (the future Mrs. Maud) has inherited a substantial fortune.