The subtle brotherhood on the seas

The April 30, 1898 issue of The Publisher's Weekly announced the publication of The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure. Its author, Stephen Crane, was 27 years old at the time. His novella, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, had been published only five years earlier; The Red Badge of Courage came two years after that.

The title story, "The Open Boat," is based on Crane's real-life experience while serving as a journalist corresponding from the Cuban War of Independence. The steamship on which he was traveling, the SS Commodore, hit a sandbar and sank. Crane was one of the last to escape, using a dinghy which overturned as he and others attempted to reach shore. The young journalist's report of the disaster made the front page of the newspaper three days after rescue.

Though "The Open Boat" was inspired by the true event, the story is fictional. It follows four characters as they try to find their way back to land after their disaster at sea. Only one character is named, the oiler Billie. Billie is the strongest of the group and the one Crane wrote most sympathetically. He is also the only of the main characters who does not survive. He was based on a real person who also did not survive the real incident. That real person, William Higgins, was the subject of Crane's dedication, along with the other men involved.

Crane is known for his pioneering psychological realism, often while rejecting sentimentality. His work is often compared to impressionistic art, resulting in a sort of ambiguity. I see more of a jumpy, quirky, real-life snapshot with realistic stream-of-consciousness. From part III:

It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow, spoke always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command a more ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dingey. It was more than a mere recognition of what was best for the common safety. There was surely in it a quality that was personal and heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of the boat there was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it.

It seemed to me I should die too

Sophia Holland was 15 years old when she died on April 29, 1844. Her cousin, who was only slightly younger, had helped keep watch while Holland was on her deathbed. When she finally died, this cousin, whose name was Emily Dickinson, was devastated. Two years later, she wrote: "it seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even look at her face."

Young Emily was depressed enough that her family sent her to Boston to recover before returning to Amherst Academy. "I told no one the cause of my grief," she wrote, "though it was gnawing at my very heart strings. I was not well & I went to Boston & stayed a month & my health improved so that my spirits were better."

The death which hit so close to home has been credited (by some) as one of the sources for Dickinson's ongoing fascination with morbid topics. Others have suggested that the early death of such a close friend turned her away from formal religion (though her poetry is riddled with a fair mix of both religious and morbid themes). "She was too lovely for earth," Dickinson had written, "& she was transplanted from earth to heaven." The following poem is not necessarily written for Sophia Holland (this is a 1901 version, labeled XXII):

The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth, —
The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.

*The above portrait of Dickinson dates to about 1846 or 1847. For a time, it was the only authenticated photo of the reclusive poet. One other exists, though its authenticity is disputed.

The fever called "Living"

At the end of Edgar Allan Poe's life, the financially-struggling poet was ardently searching for a second wife (his first, Virginia Clemm, died in 1847). Many of the women he pursued were hopeless causes, including Nancy Richmond of Lowell, Massachusetts — a married woman he nicknamed "Annie." The relationship between Poe and Richmond (or, really, Poe and many women) confuses most Poe scholars and biographers; it may have been platonic, it may have been a sibling-like attachment, or it may have been more. Regardless, the relationship inspired one of Poe's greatest poems.

Determined to see her no matter the cost, Poe made Richmond promise that she would visit him, even if he was on his deathbed. A promise secured, he soon went about reaching his death-bed. In an event which may or may not have been a suicide attempt or, perhaps, a desperate act for attention or, perhaps a complete work of fiction, Poe nearly died from the use of laudanum (his only recorded drug use). The experience is believed to have inspired his poem, "For Annie."

Published concurrently in Nathaniel Parker Willis's Home Journal and the Boston-based Flag of Our Union on April 28, 1849, the poem was described by Poe as "the best I have ever written." Here is an edited version of it (full version here):

Thank Heaven! the crisis—
  The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
  Is over at last—
And the fever called "Living"
  Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know
  I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
  As I lie at full length—
But no matter!—I feel
  I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,
  Now, in my bed
That any beholder
  Might fancy me dead—
Might start at beholding me,
  Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,
  The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
  With that horrible throbbing
At heart:—ah, that horrible,
  Horrible throbbing!

The sickness—the nausea—
  The pitiless pain—
Have ceased, with the fever
  That maddened my brain—
With the fever called "Living"
  That burned in my brain...

She tenderly kissed me,
  She fondly caressed,
And then I fell gently
  To sleep on her breast-
Deeply to sleep
  From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,
  She covered me warm,
And she prayed to the angels
  To keep me from harm—
To the queen of the angels
  To shield me from harm...

But my heart it is brighter
  Than all of the many
Stars in the sky,
  For it sparkles with Annie—
It glows with the light
  Of the love of my Annie—
With the thought of the light
  Of the eyes of my Annie.

Poe died within six months of the poem's publication. After her husband's death, Richmond officially changed her name to "Annie."

Holmes: our brave old tree

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes once confessed that he was a bit provincial. Indeed, much of his writing centers on Boston, which he called the "Hub of the Solar System." He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a home where (allegedly) the Battle of Bunker Hill was planned. Just a couple hundred yards from his front door stood a famous tree where, local legend has it, General George Washington took command of the Continental Army in 1775. On April 27, 1861, Holmes sat under that tree and composed a poem on its legend, "Under the Washington Elm, Cambridge":

    Eighty years have passed, and more,
    Since under the brave old tree
Our fathers gathered in arms, and swore
They would follow the sign their banners bore,
    And fight till the land was free.

    Half of their work was done,
    Half is left to do,—
Cambridge, and Concord, and Lexington!
When the battle is fought and won,
    What should be told of you?

    Hark! — 'tis the south-wind moans, —
    Who are the martyrs down?
Ah, the marrow was true in your children's bones
That sprinkled with blood the cursed stones
    Of the murder-haunted town!

    What if the storm-clouds blow?
    What if the green leaves fall?
Better the crashing tempest's throe
Than the army of worms that gnawed below;
    Trample them one and all!

    Then, when the battle is won,
    And the land from traitors free,
Our children shall tell of the strife begun
When Liberty's second April sun
    Was bright on our brave old tree!

In its own way, the poem is somewhat like "Paul Revere's Ride" in that it discusses a Revolutionary War topic in the context of the Civil War ("the south wind moans"). Earlier in the month when Holmes wrote it, his son Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. enlisted in the Union Army.

The tree no longer stands; when it became old it was torn down (and cut into souvenir pieces). There is no significant proof of the connection to Washington. Even so, a marker exists (shaped innocuously like a manhole cover) in the street in the middle of one of the most dangerous intersections in Cambridge (gawkers, beware).

*The image above is courtesy of the Cambridge Historical Society. Its headquarters, the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House, includes a small exhibit on the Washington Elm and its transition to souvenir pieces. More information on the tree is easily found on their web site.

Sidney Lanier: for love and not for hate

The Georgia-born poet Sidney Lanier joined a secret literary society while a student at Oglethorpe University. There, he fostered his love of literature (and entertained his friends by playing the flute). He was a diligent student and became somewhat pious. He graduated in 1860 at the top of his class. Within six months, his home state of Georgia voted to secede from the United States.

As a Southerner, Lanier carefully weighed his options with both the Union and the Confederacy but the Civil War broke out too quickly. As he wrote:

An afflatus of war was breathed upon us. Like a great wind it drew on, and blew upon men, women, and children. Its sound mingled with the serenity of the church organs... It sighed in the half-breathed world of sweethearts... It thundered splendidly in the impassioned appeal of orators to the people. It whistled through the streets, it stole in the firesides, it clinked glasses in bar-rooms, it lifted the gray airs of our wise men in conventions, it thrilled through the lectures in college halls, it rustled the thumbed book leaves of the schoolrooms.

Lanier became a Confederate soldier but, once the war was over, he somewhat regretted the decision. He rejoiced in the overthrow of slavery but mostly he was disappointed at the cost of the war: "a million of men slain and maimed, a million of widows and orphans created; several billions of money destroyed; several hundred thousand of ignorant schoolboys who could not study on account of the noise made by the shells." He lamented the resulting poverty and ruin of so many people.

On April 26, 1870, Lanier gave a public speech, the "Confederate Memorial Address." It begins:

In the unbroken silence of the dead soldierly forms that lie beneath our feet; in the winding processions of these stately trees; in the large tranquility of this vast and benignant heaven that overspreads us; in the quiet ripple of yonder patient river, flowing down to his death in the sea; in the manifold melodies drawn from these green leaves by wandering airs that go like Troubadours singing in all the lands; in the many-voiced memories that flock into this day, and fill it as swallows fill the summer, — in all these, there is to me so voluble an eloquence to-day that I cannot but shrink from the harsher sounds of my own human voice.

In the after effects of war, Lanier calls for silence, for people to listen to nature and, especially, for tranquility. "We shall bear our load of wrong and injury with the calmness and tranquil dignity that become men and women who would be great in misfortune... To-day we are here for love and not for hate. To-day we are here for harmony and not for discord."

Death of James T. Fields

James T. Fields changed the business of American publishing. More than serving as a publisher or literary agent, however, Fields was a close friend of all of his writers, fostered their work, and often made helpful (or sometimes unhelpful) suggestions. When he died on April 24, 1881, he was only 63 years old; he was soon buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. Condolences from around the country (and the world) poured in to his widow, Annie Adams Fields.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson called him "the best and most sympathetic literary counselor I ever had." Harriet Beecher Stowe noted that "he did habitually and quietly more good to everybody he had to do with than common." Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that, "Very rarely, if ever, has a publisher enjoyed the confidence and friendship of so wide and various a circle of authors." Critic Edwin Percy Whipple told of how Fields was fond of teasing his friends but never to the point of offending them. "His wildest freaks of satire never inflicted a wound," he wrote, and "when he laughed at the expense of one of his companions, the laugh was always heartily enjoyed and participated in by the object of his mirth."

In addition to letters, there were many poetic tributes, including "Auf Wiedersehen" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and "In Memory" by John Greenleaf Whittier. One of the most touching came from the minor writer Parke Godwin, mostly known as a journalist. He wrote to Mrs. Fields in particular:

I cannot wish thee comfort in this hour
  Of life's supremest sorrow; for I know,
By aching memories, how little power
  The best words have to mitigate a woe,
With which, in its own bitterness alone,
  The heart, amid the silences, must deal.
But here, where ocean makes eternal moan,
  Along its melancholy shores, I feel
How mightier than nature's loudest voice
  Is that soft word, which to the ruler said,
Amidst his desolated home, 'Rejoice!
  Thy dear one sleepeth: think not he is dead:'
All death is birth, from out a turbid night,
Into the glories of transcendent light.

The year before her husband's death, Mrs. Fields opened their home to Sarah Orne Jewett for part of the winter and their vacation home for part of the summer, establishing a life-long "friendship." About a year after Mr. Fields's death, Jewett and the widow Fields moved in together. Their "Boston marriage" seemed very public, and was not criticized; it is unclear how close their relationship was.

*The image of Fields, above, is taken from the web site of author Matthew Pearl, who's first novel - The Dante Club - included a fictionalized Fields as a main character. Fields has a more minor role in Pearl's most recent novel, The Last Dickens.

Tributes to Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's actual birth date is uncertain but it is generally believed to be April 23, 1564. The Bard certainly was a major influence to several American writers, including ones you've never heard of. One, for example, was Charles Sprague (1791-1875) the "Banker Poet of Boston." He presented his "Shakespeare Ode" in Boston in 1823. It reads, in part:

  God of the glorious Lyre!
Whose notes of old on lofty Pindus rang,
  While Jove's exulting choir
Caught the glad echoes and responsive sang, —
  Come! bless the service and the shrine
  We consecrate to thee and thine.

  Fierce from the frozen north,
  When Havoc led his legions forth,
O'er Learning's sunny groves the dark destroyers spread;
  In dust the sacred statue slept,
  Fair Science round her altars wept,
  And Wisdom cowled his head...

  Then Shakespeare rose!
  Across the trembling strings
  His daring hand he flings,
  And lo! a new creation glows!
There, clustering round, submissive to his will,
Fate's vassal train his high commands fulfil...

Looking for more obscurity? Another Shakespeare fan was the Charleston, South Carolina-born Augustus Julian Requier (1825-1887). Requier was, for a time, Attorney General of Alabama (a role he held when that state became part of the Confederacy). He spent his last years in the state of New York. His "Ode to Shakespeare" was published in 1860:

He went forth into Nature and he sung,
Her first-born of imperial sway — the lord
Of sea and continent and clime and tongue;
Striking the Harp with whose sublime accord
The whole Creation rung!

He went forth into Nature and he sung
Her grandest terrors and her simplest themes —
The torrent by the beetling crag o'erhung,
And the wild-daisy on its brink that gleams
Unharmed, and lifts a dew-drop to the sun!
The muttering of the tempest in its halls
Of darkness turreted; beheld alone
By an o'erwhelming brilliance which appals —
The turbulence of Ocean — the soft calm
Of the sequestered vale — the bride-like day,
Or sainted Eve, dispensing holy balm
From her lone lamp of silver thro' the gray
That leads the star-crowned Night adown the mountain way!
These were his themes and more — no little bird
Lit in the April forest but he drew
From its wild notes a meditative word —
A gospel that no other mortal knew:
Bard, priest, evangelist! from rarest cells
Of riches inexhaustible he took
The potent ring of her profoundest spells,
And wrote great Nature's Book!

If you know of any better Shakespeare tributes from other 19th-century poets, especially obscure ones, feel free to add a link in the comments section.

Death of Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, predicted his own death. His prediction was based on the astronomical phenomenon that marked his birth:

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together."

Halley's Comet is visible from Earth every 75 or 76 years. Twain was born shortly after the comet was visible in 1835. He made the above prediction in 1909. He was right: he died of a heart attack just as Halley's Comet was again visible on April 21, 1910. He was 74 years old. He was buried in Elmira, New York; the town is preparing a re-enactment of the funeral this weekend.

Much of Twain's life was marked by hardship. He lost substantial money through bad investments (printing technology, for one, and co-ownership in a failed publishing house, for another). For a time, he moved to Europe for its lower expenses and made his money as a lecturer. After about ten years, he returned to the United States — but not to his home in Hartford (today the Mark Twain House, open to the public) but to Redding, Connecticut. It was there, in the home named Stormfield, that he died a widower (his wife died a few years earlier).

Shortly before his death, Twain donated the first books to what became the town's first public library. He asked it be named after his daughter, Jean, who had died a few months earlier. After Twain's death, businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie helped fund it.

Fact is better in history than fiction

In the 19th century, several people were mythologizing the American Revolution. Many writers, who were children or grandchildren of veterans of that struggle, elevated the Founding Fathers as larger-than-life infallible heroes. These writers included Jared Sparks (at right), who altered George Washington's letters for publication to make him look more dignified. Washington Irving wrote a well-researched biography of America's first president as well but mostly told it through anecdotes, many of which are apocryphal.

But, perhaps, there is no more famous a myth-maker as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who turned Paul Revere into a national hero in the days leading to the Civil War. Despite what his poem claimed, Paul Revere did not wait on the banks of Charlestown to see the signal from the Old North Church ("one if by land, two if by sea"); he actually helped set them up as a back-up signal, in case he didn't reach his destination. He did not row himself to the opposite shore, but was rowed over by friends. He did not go to "every Middlesex village and farm," but only a select few. His main goal was to reach the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington, just off the battle green.

Perhaps most importantly, Paul Revere did not ride alone. He was one of several riders that day, including William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. Longfellow was aware of all the available data on the historic ride and purposely chose to ignore it to create a composite character that would inspire his generation.

The irony comes from a letter written 18 years after the poem. Richard Henry Stoddard (pictured, right, near the end of his life in 1902) was preparing an article on Longfellow and wanted to confirm some biographical details. After reviewing an early draft, Longfellow pointed out a couple inaccuracies and, in a letter dated April 20, 1878, concluded:

This is perhaps of no great importance, but, generally speaking, fact is better in history than fiction.

Longfellow left just enough wiggle room to suggest that, for the sake of a poem, perhaps fiction can be useful in history.

The shot heard round the world

The morning after Paul Revere's famous ride marked the first real battle of the American Revolution. April 19, 1775 was later commemorated by several Massachusetts poets who looked back at the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

 "Concord Hymn" (1836) by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Some of Emerson's words were engraved at the base of a statue by Daniel Chester French at the Old North Bridge in Concord. Across the river is a small memorial to the British soldiers who were killed which quotes from Emerson's friend James Russell Lowell:

"Lines [Suggested by the Graves of Two English Soldiers at Concord Battle Ground]" (1845)

The same good blood that now refills
The dotard Orient's shrunken veins,
The same whose vigor westward thrills,
Bursting Nevada's silver chains,
Poured here upon the April grass,
Freckled with red the herbage new;
On reeled the battle's trampling mass,
Back to the ash the bluebird flew.

Poured here in vain; — that sturdy blood
Was meant to make the earth more green,
But in a higher, gentler mood
Than broke this April noon serene;
Two graves are here: to mark the place,
At head and foot, an unhewn stone,
O'er which the herald lichens trace
The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true,
To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed;
What brought them here they never knew,
They fought as suits the English breed:
They came three thousand miles, and died,
To keep the Past upon its throne;
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,
Their English mother made her moan.

The turf that covers them no thrill
Sends up to fire the heart and brain;
No stronger purpose nerves the will,
No hope renews its youth again:
From farm to farm the Concord glides,
And trails my fancy with its flow;
O'erheard the balanced hen-hawk slides,
Twinned in the river's heaven below.

But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs,
Proud of thy birth and neighbor's right,
Where sleep the heroic villagers
Borne red and stiff from Concord flight;
Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun,
Or Seth, as ebbed the life away,
What earthquake rifts would shoot and run
World-wide from that short April fray?

What then? With heart and hand they wrought,
According to their village light:
'T was for the Future that they fought,
Their rustic faith in what was right.
Upon earth's tragic stage they burst
Unsummoned, in the humble sock;
Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first
Rose long ago on Charles's block.

Their graves have voices; if they threw
Dice charged with fates beyond their ken,
Yet to their instincts they were true,
And had the genius to be men.
Fine privilege of Freedom's host,
Of humblest soldiers for the Right! —
Age after age ye hold your post,
Your graves send courage forth, and might.

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed

Listen my children and you shall hear:
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wasn't entirely correct in his description of the fateful day of April 18, 1775 and the exploits of patriot and silversmith Paul Revere — now one of his most famous and most criticized works. Then again, it was never his intention to write history.

Longfellow visited the North End early in April 1860. In his journal, he records: "We climb the tower to the chime of bells, now the home of innumerable pigeons. From this tower were hung the lanterns as a signal that the British troops had left Boston for Concord." He started writing "Paul Revere's Ride" around the same time, 150 years ago this year.

It took him six months to complete the poem. During that time, Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The poet corresponded heavily with his friend the United States Senator Charles Sumner. He read the newspapers. And, perhaps most importantly, he knew the country was headed to a new "revolution" (his word, not mine).

He knew the true story of Paul Revere, having read his autobiography and other accounts. In fact, Longfellow was not writing about Paul Revere or the American Revolution. He was writing about the Civil War, the next revolution. The poem was not so much a call to arms, but a call to unite, a message of defiance (and not of fear). Longfellow wanted the American people to remember the last time they united for the cause of freedom (this time, the cause was freedom of slaves). He had publicly announced his abolitionist thoughts in 1842 in his book Poems on Slavery, just as his fame as a poet was beginning to build.

Between the first publication of "Paul Revere's Ride" and its inclusion in Tales of a Wayside Inn (renamed "The Landlord's Tale") in 1863, Longfellow wrote in his journal: "We are on the brink of Civil War. It is Slavery against Freedom; the north wind against the southern pestilence."

More on the sesquicentennial of "Paul Revere's Ride," including ongoing events in celebration of it as well as further discussions of its writing and its accuracy, visit www.paulreveresride.org.

It will be a new experience

In the circle of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, several people assisted him in his pursuit to bring continental European culture to the English-speaking world. Some of these friends included George Washington Greene, James Russell Lowell, and George Ticknor. Perhaps he had no closer relationship, however, than with Thomas Gold Appleton, his brother-in-law.

Appleton and Longfellow first met in Switzerland and it is there that the young professor fell for the beautiful Frances "Fanny" Appleton. They married after a seven-year courtship.

Tom Appleton published more books than did Longfellow on varying topics, ranging from travel essays to art books to poetry, many signed as "TGA." Heavily cultured, Appleton dabbled in poetry and painting, though he never amassed more than a local reputation in his 72 years. In the Boston area, however, he was known as a patron of the fine arts and for his witticisms

He once said that all good Americans, when they die, go to Paris. Instead, he died of pneumonia in New York at age 72 on April 17, 1884, having outlived his sister and her husband. On his deathbed he noted that death "will be a new experience." TGA had already experienced quite a bit in his life. He was incredibly well-traveled, and wrote (or created art) based on these experiences, including this poem about "A Sunset on the Nile" (which Longfellow published in his anthology Poems on Places):

Past emerald plains and furrowed mountains old,
Whose violet gorges snare the wandering eye,
The pillared palms day's dying ember's hold,
Like shafts of bronze against the crimson sky,
And every cloud mirrors its rosy fold
In tremulous waves which blush and wander by —
We float, and feel the magic penetrate,
Till all our soul is colored by the hues,
Making a heaven of earth, and, satiate
With splendor, we forego the use
Of speech, and reverently wait
While fades the glory with the falling dews,
And darkness seals for memory each gleam,
Happy to know it was not all a dream.

There is not one word of truth in this

By 1875, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was famous for many things. Certainly, he was among the country's most popular poets, but he was also a linguist, academic, and frequently published translations. These efforts were valued in England only slightly less than in the United States. Longfellow's earliest career pursuits were as a scholar of modern languages, which he taught both at Bowdoin College and at Harvard College. He also published the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.

Longfellow was valued as someone who brought interesting pieces of mainland European (and, more rarely, Asian) culture to the English-speaking world, from poetry to prose to fables to scholarship to decorative arts. For these reasons, it was not so hard to believe recent news that a new major translation of a play was in the works. Yet, as the 68-year old wrote in his journal for April 16, 1875 (a great example of his wry humor and frequent frustration with the press):

Read in the London Publishers' Circular that "Professor Longfellow has almost ready for the press a translation of the Nibelungen Lied in verse, and a sacred Tragedy, conceived in the spirits of his Judas Maccabeus, which extends to no less than fifteen acts." There is not one word of truth in this.

The Nibelungenlied is an epic poem in German, likely dating to the 12th or 13th century. Longfellow had, in fact, written a long play-in-verse on the hero Judas Maccabeaus a couple years earlier. Earlier in his career, he had written several other plays, including The Courtship of Miles Standish and The Spanish Student, but never wrote another one after Judas Maccabeaus — certainly not one with over 15 acts.

Poetic tributes for the death of Lincoln

April 15, 1865 — the death of Abraham Lincoln, America's first assassinated President — inspired many poetic tributes. Among them are poems by Richard Henry Stoddard, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, and the very famous "O Captain! My Captain!" — perhaps the best-remembered poem by Walt Whitman (with a rhyming meter).

Perhaps one of the more surprising tributes in verse came from Herman Melville, today known as a novelist and, occasionally, a short story writer, rather than as a poet. In fact, in 1866, Melville published an entire volume of poems focused on the Civil War. As with many of Melville's later works, however, it was generally ignored. The poem to Lincoln, titled "Martyr," is introduced as being "indicative of the Passion of the People on the 15th of April, 1865." According the Melville, that passion is one of anger, threatening violence:

Good Friday was the day
  Of the prodigy and crime,
When they killed him in his pity,
  When they killed him in his prime
Of clemency and calm—
  When with yearning he was filled
  To redeem the evil-willed,
And, though conqueror, be kind;
  But they killed him in his kindness,
  In their madness, in their blindness,
And they killed him from behind.

  There is sobbing of the strong,
    And a pall upon the land;
  But the People in their weeping
    Bare the iron hand:
  Beware the People weeping
    When they bare the iron hand.

He lieth in his blood—
  The father in his face;
They have killed him, the Forgiver—
  The Avenger takes his place,
The Avenger wisely stern,
  Who in righteousness shall do
  What the heavens call him to,
And the parricides remand;
  For they killed him in his kindness
  In their madness and their blindness,
And his blood is on their hand.

  There is sobbing of the strong,
    And a pall upon the land;
  But the People in their weeping
    Bare the iron hand:
  Beware the People weeping
    When they bare the iron hand. 

If you'd like, compare the tone of Melville's poem with that of Julia Ward Howe:

Crown his blood-stained pillow
   With a victor's palm;
Life's receding billow
   Leaves eternal calm.

At the feet Almighty
   Lay this gift sincere;
Of a purpose weighty,
   And a record clear.

With deliverance freighted
   Was this passive hand,
And this heart, high-fated,
   Would with love command.

Let him rest serenely
   In a Nation's care,
Where her waters queenly
   Make the West most fair.

In the greenest meadow
   That the prairies show,
Let his marble's shadow
   Give all men to know:

"Our First Hero, living,
   Made his country free;
Heed the Second's giving,
   Death for Liberty."

Other poetic tributes to Lincoln (there are lots) were collected here.

Douglass dedicates monument

The Freedman's Monument, or Emancipation Monument, in Washington, D.C. was not the only project to memorialize Abraham Lincoln. It was, however, the first to solicit donations solely from former slaves or, according to the National Park Service, "those who had most directly benefited from Lincoln's act of emancipation."

The statue, designed by Thomas Ball, was unveiled on April 14, 1876. In his right hand, Lincoln holds a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation over a pedestal with an image of George Washington. Lincoln's left hand hovers over a kneeling former slave whose chains have been broken.

The dedicatory speech was made by author and activist Frederick Douglass at the statue's unveiling. Calling it a "national act — an act which is to go into history," he emphasized the event's importance for freed men (and presumably women):

Wise and thoughtful men of our race, who shall come after us, and study the lesson of our history in the United States; who shall survey the long and dreary spaces over which we have traveled; who shall count the links in the great chain of events by which we have reached our present position, will make a note of this occasion; they will think of it and speak of it with a sense of manly pride and complacency.

The memorial, though depicting Lincoln, was intended to honor the concept of emancipation. Even so, Douglass's speech elevates Lincoln as the personal savior of enslaved people. Douglass concluded:

Fellow-citizens, the fourteenth day of April, 1865, of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever remain a memorable day in the annals of this Republic. It was on the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning crime of slavery—the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator.

The statue was unveiled on the 11-year anniversary of the day Lincoln was shot (which was also the country's centennial year), rather than the anniversary of his death the next day, possibly as a symbol of recognizing the living aspect of Lincoln's legacy.

It is worth noting that a copy of the statue in Boston was removed in 2020. The controversy stems from the statue depicting a black man kneeling to a white man. Though likely not the artist's intention, the symbolism is inappropriate in the 21st century.  

*I am particularly indebted to Lisa's History Room (a wonderful vignette-styled blog) for making me aware of this date.

Stedman and the International Copyright Act of 1891

The passing of the International Copyright Act of 1891 was certainly reason to celebrate. It marked the first time that United States law protected foreign books, preventing piracy. Up to this point, many books printed overseas (particularly British ones) were republished without the author's permission at no cost to the publisher. This meant that potential American authors were shunned by publishers who did not want to pay for new works. Why pay a new author when you can just steal from an established one? Some authors, like Washington Irving, did the extra work to copyright their writings twice (on different continents) for better protection.

The passage of this new law was important enough that, on April 13, 1891, a group of writers gathered in New York to celebrate. This group had worked hard to promote better copyright law and, as such, took the name the American Copyright League. Presiding over the celebration was critic and poet Edmund Clarence Stedman, who broke down the importance of the occasion this way:

You know, gentlemen, that this was fought for, during many years, chiefly on grounds relative to the welfare of American authors and the development of a home literature. For one, I always have felt that the wrongs experienced by foreign writers, however prejudicial to our reputation among nations, and outrageous as they were, have been less severe than the cruel ills so long inflicted upon our own men of letters — of less moment than the repression of American ideas, the restricted growth of our national literature.

Stedman gave credit to the many who fought for copyright law before him, including William Cullen Bryant and George Palmer Putnam. He did acknowledge that both foreign authors and home-grown authors should be thankful for the new law. "Primarily, this is an author's jubilee," he said. "We hope that foreign authors — and especially our English fellows of the craft — are rejoicing, are rejoicing just a little."

Assassination attempts on Jackson connect to writers

After 1835, President Andrew Jackson was lucky to be alive. A would-be assassin named Richard Lawrence pulled a gun on him and fired — the gun misfired. Lawrence (an unemployed house painter) had prepared for the possibility, and drew a second gun — which also misfired. He was easily subdued. His trial took place on April 11, 1835.

Lawrence, an Englishman, felt that Jackson's death would bring more money to the country (possibly referring to the struggle over the Bank of the United States). He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the remainder of his life in a mental institution. His prosecuting attorney was the lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key.

Key worked with the defense in crafting the insanity plea. By this time, he had already written what would become his most famous work, a poem today referred to as "The Star-Spangled Banner" (1814), also known as the National Anthem of the United States. He wrote several other poems, most of which have a more religious rather than patriotic tone.

But, Andrew Jackson's literary associations through assassination attempts do not end there. Earlier, in 1833, Jackson was attacked on a steamboat by former Navy officer Robert B. Randolph, recently dismissed from his post by the President. He was unarmed, but succeeded in causing Jackson to bleed from the face. Like Lawrence, Randolph was easily subdued. Shortly after, in Fredericksburg, Maryland, Jackson spent time with the always-ready-to-rub-elbows Washington Irving (some accounts say he was with the President during the attack and assisted in subduing Randolph; this is not the case). Irving wrote of the affair:

The old gentleman was still highly exasperated at the recent outrage offered him by Lieutenant Randolph... It is a brutal transaction, which I cannot think of without indignation, mingled with a feeling of almost despair, that our national character should receive such crippling wounds from the hands of our own citizens.

When a Jackson admirer from Virginia offered to kill the assailant in response, the President answered: "I want no man to stand between me and my assailants, and none to take revenge on my account."

*The portrait of Andrew Jackson, above, is by Philadelphia artist Thomas Sully, who had several literary connections of his own.

Death of William Ticknor

William Davis Ticknor helped situate Boston and New England as a center of American literature. His work with partner James T. Fields led to the first true American publishing house. Ticknor & Fields (which later evolved to Houghton, Mifflin, and Company) aimed for a broad national audience, paid its authors well, introduced the concept of royalty payments, and staunchly defended their books from piracy. Though he was not a writer himself, Ticknor hoped that his name on a book's title page reassured readers that the book was a good one.

Ticknor was well-acquainted with all of his authors, who came to respect him as a literary adviser, businessman, marketer, and friend. He deserves extra credit for his unusually close relationship with the reclusive author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

When Hawthorne traveled to Washington, D.C. in 1862, his wife Sophia insisted that Ticknor accompany him. Ticknor handled all the travel arrangements, including purchasing train tickets and personal items for his favorite author. Ticknor had previously accompanied Hawthorne to the nation's capital in 1853 while the latter prepared to take a job as consul to Liverpool.

Their last trip together was in 1864. Hawthorne was getting sick and thought travel would do him good. Ticknor, the younger of the two, was in perfect health. However, sometime before leaving Boston he caught a cold. Amidst heavy rains in New York, it developed into pneumonia. In Philadelphia, Ticknor wrote to Mrs. Hawthorne that her husband "continues to improve." While visiting Fairmount Park, Ticknor offered Hawthorne his coat because of the cool air. Back at the Continental Hotel that night, however, Ticknor had trouble breathing. "I am sorry to say," Hawthorne wrote, "that our friend Ticknor is suffering under a severe billious attack... He had previously seemed uncomfortable, but not to an alarming degree." A physician was called and the author never left his publisher's side.

The next morning, April 10, 1864, editor George William Childs went to visit at their rooms. Hawthorne, in a daze while mumbling and pacing, said Ticknor had died. "My best friend, on whom I depended, coming here for my benefit," Childs recorded; Hawthorne had expected his own death on that trip, not that of his friend William Ticknor, aged 53.

*The photo to the right shows Fields, Hawthorne, and Ticknor.

Hawthorne sworn in

Like most other early American writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne struggled financially. In fact, it is said that he was kicked out of the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts for not paying rent. Knowing that his writing alone would not support him and his family (by this time, he was married and had two children, Una and Julian), he sought full-time work. As an avowed democrat, he looked to the political world and was soon offered a job at the Custom House in his home town of Salem, Massachusetts, an appointment approved by President James K. Polk. He was sworn in on April 9, 1846 as surveyor. His appointment earned him an annual salary of $1,200.

The author assumed the job overlooking Derby Wharf would allow ample time for him to write but, he soon learned, free time was not the issue. His experience at the Custom House was trying for other reasons. As he wrote to his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

I am trying to resume my pen... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that the afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write.

Hawthorne had previously worked at the Custom House in Boston so he should have known the drudgery of this line of work. The building is today preserved as part of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Inside, the desk he used (pictured) is on display to the public.

He was forced out of his Salem position in the spring of 1849 when the democrats lost power. He did not take part in the public discussions about losing his job. As he wrote, "There is no use in lamentation. It now remains to consider what I shall do next." He eventually turned his experience into the sketch "The Custom-House," printed as an introduction to The Scarlet Letter in 1850.

Longfellow visits the dentist, has daughter

On April 8, 1847, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow experimented with drugs — so to speak. That day, he visited his dentist, Dr. Nathan Cooley Keep, to have a tooth "extraction." Dr. Keep was experimenting with ether as an anesthetic (a term coined by Longfellow's friend and fellow poet, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes). Longfellow recorded the experience in his journal:

Stepped into Dr. Keep's and had a double tooth extracted under the ethereal vapor. On inhaling it, I burst into fits of laughter. Then my brain whirled round, and I seemed to soar like a lark spirally into the air. I was conscious when he took the tooth out and cried out as if from infinitely deep caverns, 'Stop;' but I could not control my muscles or make any resistance, and out came the tooth without pain.

Longfellow was often willing to try novel medical techniques. Throughout his life, he suffered from neuralgia and poor eyesight, both of which he treated with the water therapy and other treatments. He was happy to advocate these medical techniques with others. In fact, just the day before Longfellow's visit to the dentist, on April 7, 1847, his wife Frances Appleton gave birth to the couple's first daughter, whom they named Fanny, after her mother. Dr. Keep administered ether to Mrs. Longfellow — making her the first woman in the United States to give birth under anesthesia. Friends were worried when she agreed to use ether but she reassured them because her husband felt confident about it. He was fairly impressed she went through with it. Longfellow wrote about it to his friend Charles Sumner:

The great experiment has been tried, and with grand success! Fanny has a daughter born this morning, at ten. Both are well. The Ether was heroically inhaled.

We know it was controversial even among family members, judging by allusions made in letters in the few days after the birth. Longfellow tries to laugh off their concern, noting that if his wife had been asked if she would prefer a boy or a girl, "she would have replied, I will take ether." Alas, young Fanny did not survive more than a couple years.

*The image above shows Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Frances Appleton Longfellow with their first two children, Charles (center) and Ernest. After the birth of baby Fanny, they would have three more daughters.

Bicentennial of James Freeman Clarke

James Freeman Clarke was born 200 years ago today on April 4, 1810. After graduating from Harvard Divinity School, he preached his first sermon in Waltham, Massachusetts before moving to Kentucky (then a slave state). There, he became an ardent abolitionist. He soon returned to Massachusetts and contributed to The Dial, The Christian Examiner, The Atlantic Monthly, and other publications. Many of his books were religious, but he also wrote poetry and prose, especially short biographies.

As a Transcendentalist, he maintained a particularly close friendship with Margaret Fuller. While editing the Western Messenger in Kentucky, he commissioned her first literary review; she later became America's first woman to be a full-time literary critic. After her death, Clarke assisted Ralph Waldo Emerson in preparing Fuller's posthumous memoirs, particularly focusing on her early years. After the failure of Brook Farm, Clarke purchased the land in West Roxbury, later donating it to Abraham Lincoln for use as a training ground for soldiers.

On his 70th birthday in 1880, Clarke's friend Oliver Wendell Holmes presented a poem prepared for the occasion, titled "To James Freeman Clarke" (slightly trimmed for length here):

How few still breathe this mortal air
  We called by school-boy names!
You still, whatever robe you wear,
  To me are always James.

That name the kind apostle bore
  Who shames the sullen creeds,
Not trusting less, but loving more,
  And showing faith by deeds.

What blending thoughts our memories share!
  What visions of yours and mine
Of May-days in whose morning air
  The dews were golden wine,

Of vistas bright with opening day,
  Whose all-awakening sun
Showed in life's landscape, far away,
  The summits to be won!

His labors, — will they ever case, —
  With hand and tongue and pen?
Shall wearied Nature ask release
  At threescore years and ten?

Count not his years while earth has need
  Of souls that Heaven inflames
With sacred seal to save, to lead, —
  Long live our dear Saint James!

Irving and Bryant

William Cullen Bryant paid homage to his fellow New York writer Washington Irving in honor of the latter's birthday on April 3, 1860. Irving had died only five months earlier and Bryant was invited to present a speech by the New York Historical Society. He began:

We have come together, my friends, on the birthday of an illustrious citizen of our republic, but so recent is his departure from among us, that our assembling is rather an expression of sorrow for his death than of congratulation that such a man was born into the world. His admirable writings, the beautiful products of his peculiar genius, remain, to be the enjoyment of the present and future generations.

As early as 1827, Irving showed an appreciation for Bryant's poetry. In a letter to his friend Henry Brevoort, he wrote, "I have been charmed... with what I have seen of the writings of Bryant," calling him one of the "masters of the magic of poetical language."

Irving and Bryant were both members of the Bread and Cheese Club, an informal social group which met at the Washington Hotel on Broadway in New York. Other members included the poet Fitz-Greene Halleck, the politician Gulian Verplanck, and the novelist James Fenimore Cooper.

In 1832, Irving served as the editor to the collected Poems of William Cullen Bryant, An American in London. In his dedication, dated March 1832, Irving praised Bryant as "essentially American." The poems, he said, are "characterised... by a purity of moral, an elevation and refinement of thought, and a terseness and elegance of diction." The highest praise Irving could offer was saying Bryant's poems appear "to belong to the best school of English poetry" and added that if the British liked Cooper, they'd love Bryant.

*The images depict a young Washington Irving (upper image) and a young William Cullen Bryant (lower image).

A dirge for Albert Pike

Albert Pike gave up on writing poetry long before his death and turned his attention particularly to his role with the Freemasons; he earned the title Sovereign Grand Commander. At 81 years old, he wrote his will, leaving specific instructions for the care of his body and his funeral. However, when he died on April 2, 1891, his instructions were not followed.

He asked that his body be "cremated without any ceremony other than the word 'Good-bye!'" His ashes, he asked, be placed between two acacia trees. He specifically requested no "procession, parade or music," only the Kadosh ceremony of the Freemasons. Instead, his Masonic brothers had his body lay in state for two days, where it was visited by thousands. In addition to the Kadosh the next day, they held services at an episcopal church the day after that.

Rather than no ceremony at all, it was somewhat extravagant. One attendee noted that the walls of the church were covered in black draperies and his coffin was surrounded by candles in tall, silver candlesticks. At his head was a huge iron cross. The body was draped in laurel, vines, berries, and violets. He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, D.C. Other Masons commissioned a white marble gravestone which was placed in 1917. As he requested, the stone listed only his name, birth and death dates, and the words: Laborum Ejus Superstites Sunt Fructus Vixit. Apparently, his body was later moved to the House of the Temple, the Masonic headquarters in Washington.

Shortly after his death, efforts were made to honor Albert Pike with public art in Washington, D.C. A statue was finally unveiled in 1901. It depicts Pike with a book in one hand seated on a slab of granite, with a secondary statue of Minerva at his feet. A witness to its unveiling called it "one of the most important Masonic events that ever took place." Masons from around the country were present. Pike remains the only former Confederate officer honored with a statue in Washington.

 From his poem, "A Dirge":

     Vainly, ah! vainly we deplore
     Thy death, departed friend! No more
  Shalt thou be seen by us beneath the skies.
     The barbed arrow has gone through
     Thy heart, and all the blue
  Hath faded from thy clay-cold veins, and thou,
  With stern and pain-contracted brow,
Like one that wrestled mightily with death,
     Art lying here now.

A trout on a plate beats several in the aquarium

Perhaps it is appropriate that American humorist Guy Wetmore Carryl died on April Fool's Day. A Columbia University graduate, he went on to become a journalist, editor, and author before his death at age 31 on April 1, 1904. His first major work was Fables for the Frivolous, published in 1899.

The book presents both new fables and re-writes of some famous fables, often belittling the premise of the story and usually concluding with a moral. The fables, written entirely in verse, included titles like "The Persevering Tortoise and the Pretentious Hare." The book is populated by talking animals and plant life who often speak in puns. Some of the jokes are a little tasteless, most are just groaners.

In the tale of "The Microscopic Trout and the Machiavellian Fisherman," a man catches an "infinitesimal" fish. Seeing the dire predicament he was in, the trout was decidedly unhappy:

“I request,” he observed, “to be instantly flung
      Once again in the pool I’ve been living in.”
The fisherman said, “You will tire out your tongue.
      Do you see any signs of my giving in?
Put you back in the pool? Why, you fatuous fool,
      I have eaten much smaller and thinner fish.
You’re not salmon or sole, but I think, on the whole,
      You’re a fairly respectable dinner-fish.”

The fisherman’s cook tried her hand on the trout
      And with various herbs she embellished him;
He was lovely to see, and there isn’t a doubt
      That the fisherman’s family relished him,
And, to prove that they did, both his wife and his kid
      Devoured the trout with much eagerness,
Avowing no dish could compare with that fish,
      Notwithstanding his singular meagreness.

And The Moral, you’ll find, is although it is kind
      To grant favors that people are wishing for,
Still a dinner you’ll lack if you chance to throw back
      In the pool little trout that you’re fishing for;
If their pleading you spurn you will certainly learn
      That herbs will deliciously vary ’em:
It is needless to state that a trout on a plate
      Beats several in the aquarium.