The Good Gray Poet is fired

Secretary of the Interior James Harlan, a former professor of mental and moral science from Iowa, supposedly found a copy of Leaves of Grass (the 1860 edition) on the desk of one of his employees in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Horrified by what he deemed obscene, the employee was fired on June 30, 1865. The employee was, in fact, the author of the book of poetry — Walt Whitman.

29 years later, Harlan denied there was a connection. His dismissal of Whitman was, he said, "on the ground that his services were not needed. And no other reason was ever assigned by my authority." He was new to the job at the time and, he noted, he had inherited "a considerable number of useless incumbents who were seldom at their respective desks."

Whitman, like many other American authors, took a government post as a sure-bet for financial security. His job paid an impressive $1,200 a year and, as he described it, was fairly simple: "All I have hitherto employed myself about has been making copies of reports & Bids, &c for the office to send up to the Congressional Committee on Indian Affairs." At the time, Whitman was also volunteering as a nurse in the Washington, D.C. area amidst the Civil War.

Ultimately, Harlan may have been right about Whitman's work ethic. The work was "easy enough," he wrote, "I take things very easy." He admitted that, though he was supposed to work from 9 to 4, "I don't come at 9, and only stay till 4 when I want." 

William Douglas O'Connor, a daguerreotypist and poet who helped Whitman secure his government job, was especially infuriated by Whitman's dismissal. He complained enough that Whitman was soon granted a job with the Attorney General. Partly to spite Harlan, O'Connor (now known as one of Whitman's strongest boosters) published a highly-exaggerated and flowering biography of Whitman — one which earned him a permanent nickname as The Good Gray Poet.

*Much of the information for this post comes from Jerome Loving's very readable biography Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself.

Thaxter: So soon the end must come

At the end of her life, Celia Thaxter wrote to a friend that he should visit. "Some of us may be slipping out of this mortal state," she warned. It had been two decades since she wrote of the "memorable murder" on the Isles of Shoals where she lived; she remained there nonetheless. In early summer of 1894, she went with friends to tour the islands once more. A friend wrote somewhat romantically about this trip: "Perhaps she knew that it was a farewell."

Celia Thaxter was born on June 29, 1835. She died 58 years later in 1894. She was buried on the island she called home after a funeral held in her parlor. The room was decorated with blossoms from her personal garden, one which was then (as now) quite famous. In the grave, she was covered with more flowers. "After all was done, and the body was at rest... young flower-bearers brought their burdens to cover her," writes her earliest biographers. The flowers piled up, "until it became a mound of blossoms, allied the scene, in beauty and simplicity... It was indeed a poet's burial."

From Thaxter's poem, "Philosophy":

So soon the end must come,
  Why waste in sighs our breath?
So soon our lips are dumb,
  So swift comes death.

So brief the time to smile,
  Why darken we the air
With frowns and tears, the while
  We nurse despair? [...]

Have courage! Keep good cheer!
  Our longest time is brief.
To those who hold you dear
  Bring no more grief.

But cherish blisses small,
  Grateful for least delight
That to your lot doth fall,
  However slight.

And lo! all hearts will bring
  Love, to make glad your days:
Blessings untold will spring
  About your ways.

So shall life bloom and shine,
  Lifted its pain above,
Crowned with this gift divine,
  The gift of Love.

*The image above is "Celia Thaxter in Her Garden" by Childe Hassam. The original is in the Smithsonian Institute.

Wilson: Appeal to my colored brethren

Harriet E. Wilson died in Quincy, Massachusetts on June 28, 1900 at the age of 75. It took about 82 years after her death for her novel, Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, to be rediscovered and re-enter the literary canon. Originally published in 1859, her preface tells readers that failing health and the need for income has inspired her to publish this semi-autobiographical work.

I sincerely appeal to my colored brethren universally for patronage, hoping they will not condemn this attempt of their sister to be erudite, but rally around me a faithful band of supporters and defenders.

The story follows Frado, a mulatto girl who is abandoned by her white mother after her black father's death. She grows up as a free black working for the Bellmonts, a white family in Massachusetts. She later marries a fugitive slave. Frado's "life of a free black" in the North is implied to be no better than that of a slave in the South. From Chapter VIII:

Frado... became a believer in a future existence—one of happiness or misery. Her doubt was, is there a heaven for the black? She knew there was one for... all good white people; but was there any for blacks?

Since its rediscovery in the 1980s and 1990s, Our Nig has been considered by many as the first novel by an African-American female (the first male is generally accepted as William Wells Brown). The trouble is that the work is not entirely fictional and, therefore, defies the typical standards of the genre of novels. Some say it doesn't count and dismiss it, others acknowledge its important fusion of sentimental novel and slave narrative. Alice Walker describes its discovery "as if we'd just discovered Phillis Wheatley—or Langston Hughes... [Wilson] represents a similar vastness of heretofore unexamined experience, a whole new layer of time and existence in American life and literature."

The image above is from the memorial to Harriet Wilson in Milford, New Hampshire which was unveiled in 2006.

Dunbar: A song is but a little thing

Paul Laurence Dunbar earned recognition as America's first professional African-American literary man. His first volume of poetry, Oak and Ivy, was published in 1893 (dedicated to his mother, "who has ever been my guide, teacher and inspiration"); he also published novels, songs, essays, and more. Perhaps most notably, he was recognized and appreciated by all races.

Dunbar was born at 311 Howard Street in Dayton, Ohio, on June 27, 1872, the son of former slaves from Kentucky (his father had fought in the Civil War for Massachusetts). In high school, the teenage Dunbar was the only African-American student in his class for four years. He was not intimidated and became an active member of the student body: he was a member of the debating society, editor of the school paper, and president of the literary society. He graduated in 1891.

In 1895, Dunbar published Lyrics of Lowly Life, a collection which juxtaposed traditional English-inspired poetry with a representative black voice, using a dialect and interpreting themes unique to the African-American experience. The result was a unique book which some scholars suggest introduced an important question in black writing about "the absence and the presence of the black voice in the text," according to Prof. Henry Louis Gates. Compare the first stanza in a couple poems from that collection:

"The Poet and His Song"

A song is but a little thing,
And yet what joy it is to sing!
In hours of toil it gives me zest,
And when at eve I long for rest;
When cows come home along the bars,
And in the fold I hear the bell,
As Night, the shepherd, herds his stars,
I sing my song, and all is well.

"An Ante-Bellum Sermon"

We is gathahed hyeah, my brothahs,
  In dis howlin' wildaness,
Fu' to speak some words of comfo't
  To each othah in distress.
An' we chooses fu' ouah subjic'
  Dis — we'll 'splain it by an' by;
"An' de Lawd said, 'Moses, Moses,'
  An' de man said, 'Hyeah am I.'"

Higginson: Something to have lived for

From the diary of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, dated June 26, 1898:

Received degree of LL.D. somewhat tardily, but glad of delay for the sake of the roar of applause from the audience (beginning with the young men) which greeted it. It was wholly a surprise to me and was something to have lived for.

The honorary doctorate was from Harvard, his alma mater, where he was elected to Phi Theta Kappa at age 16. Colonel Higginson was accomplished as an officer in the Civil War, as an editor, and as a writer. His "better late than never" attitude might have been a reference to his having already received an honorary degree two years earlier from Case Western Reserve University, while his own alma mater was just catching up.

Earlier in 1898, Higginson also published Cheerful Yesterdays, an autobiographical memoir with a title inspired by William Wordsworth's Excursion. In his second chapter, titled "A Child of the College," Higginson praises Harvard:

I come back to Cambridge every autumn, when the leaves are falling from the trees, and the old university, like the weird witch-hazel in the groves, puts out fresh blossoms at the season when all else grows sere.

Higginson goes on to describe his reaction to seeing the newest-matriculated class of freshmen, "boys... full of the zest of their own being, taking the whole world as having been made for them, which indeed it was." Higginson himself was a freshman at Harvard at age 13. It's not hard to imagine him as one of the "kings of to-morrow" when he was a student.

Even so, biographer Brenda Wineapple suggests that these later works of Higginson's, including Cheerful Yesterdays, watered-down his radical past as an abolitionist, military man, feminist, etc. This was partly his own fault for writing his "cheerful" reminiscences. He also purposely disassociated himself; in 1896, he was working on an essay titled "The Recollections of a Radical" — but changed the title for being too combative.

Thaxter: A Memorable Murder

Convicted murderer Louis Wagner was executed on June 25, 1875. In March of that year on the Isles of Shoals (Smuttynose, specifically), two young Norwegian women were bludgeoned to death. Wagner, a 28-year old Prussian immigrant, seemed to have no real motive for killing the two women.

Local resident Celia Thaxter, horrified by the ordeal in the relative quiet of the islands, tried to cope by writing about the incident. She spent hours reading newspaper accounts before writing "A Memorable Murder." She completed the manuscript shortly before Wagner's execution. As she waited for that day, she became concerned that an account of a true murder was in poor taste. She wrote to Annie Adams Fields:

I am only waiting for Wagner to be hung or not (next Friday is the day appointed for his execution) to rush to your threshold with my manuscript and read it to you and J. T. F. [James T. Fields] that you may tell me if I offend against good taste or the proprieties of existence. For it is a delicate subject to handle, so notorious, so ghastly and dreadful - and I would not dare to send it to [William Dean] Howells without asking Mr. Fields first.

Apparently both James and Annie Fields approved, as did William Dean Howells, who published it in The Atlantic Monthly. In the essay, Thaxter offered something the newspapers lacked. "The sickening details of the double murder are well known," she wrote, "...but the pathos of the story is not realized." Thaxter focused on the gentle, innocent lives of the two women, allowing them more than merely serving the role of victims.

So they abode in peace and quiet, with not an evil thought in their minds, kind and considerate toward each other... till out of the perfectly cloudless sky one day a bolt descended, without a whisper of warning, and brought ruin and desolation into that peaceful home.

Her description of the murderer Louis Wagner was quite different: "He was always lurking in corners, lingering, looking, listening, and he would look no man straight in the eyes."

*Much of the information in this post comes from Norma H. Mandel's The Garden Gate: The Life of Celia Laighton Thaxter.

Birth of Rebecca Harding Davis

In the small town of Washington, Pennsylvania (seat of what is believed to be the first county named after America's first president), Rebecca Blaine Harding (later, Davis) was born on June 24, 1831. After a short period in Alabama, her family settled in Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia), just as the town was becoming a major industrial center for the region. She later returned to Pennsylvania, where she graduated as valedictorian from the Washington Female Seminary in 1848.

Years later, Rebecca Harding Davis (as she is best known) wrote Life in the Iron Mills, her first work. When published in 1861 in The Atlantic Monthly by James T. Fields, it proved instantly popular. The short novella begins:

A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me.

A major departure from the typical domestic women's fiction of the time, the dark plumes of smoke on the first page of Life in the Iron Mills represents the side of life Davis was emphasizing. The industrial revolution to her was dark, dirty, and dominated by greed. This life was not ideal.

The work launched Davis's career; she soon moved into the realm of journalism, though she left one newspaper for censoring her work. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps acknowledged her indebtedness to Davis, noting her writing had "grim picturesqueness." Phelps praised Davis's writing style: "Her men and women breathed and suffered, loved and missed of love, won life or wasted it with an ardor that was human, and a power that was art."

In the past three or four decades, Life in the Iron Mills has been reclaimed as a lost classic. It is recognized as a pioneering work in American Realism, decades before William Dean Howells. Further, the work is a major focus for scholars of labor issues and women's writing.

Death of Ellen Hardin Walworth

After living a long and somewhat tumultuous life, Ellen Hardin Walworth died on June 23, 1915 at the age of 82. A founder of the Daughters of the American Revolution (she became editor of its official publication American Monthly Magazine) as well as the Women's National War Relief Effort during the Spanish-American War, Walworth had her hands in several causes and organizations.

Walworth was also a writer and, for a time, she was an officer in the American Authors' Guild (which became the Society of American Authors) under the vice-presidency of Julia Ward Howe. Hardin's writings focused on history; she particularly was known for her expertise on the battlefields of Saratoga, where she lived for much of her life. Her interest in history led to her involvement in preserving many sites associated with American history, including Mount Vernon. She also arranged for the placement of several granite monuments in Saratoga in 1883 which later became part of the Saratoga National Historical Park. One of the spots she marked was the site where Benedict Arnold was wounded on what was known as Burgoyne's Hill.

In an essay titled "The Revival of Americanism," Walworth reminded readers that "next to love of self comes love of country." She writes, "In the United States our patriotism has not failed since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, but it has been singularly evolved through various stages of growth and apparent rest." Americans, she says, are still defining themselves, through politics, culture, and an ongoing interest in the past and their family history. But, she insists, the kind of patriotism that inspired Nathan Hale to regret he had but one life to give to his country in wartime should spread into peace time as well.

Walworth was also interested in science (particularly geology) and was one of the earliest women to present a paper before the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her personal life was a bit disastrous; perhaps I'll write more on that in July.

*Image courtesy of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Mark Twain's Big Bonanza

I have been sitting by the machine 2 1/2 hours, this afternoon, and my admiration of it towers higher than ever. There is no sort of mistake about it, it is the Big Bonanza.

So begins a letter from Samuel Clemens, written from his Hartford, Connecticut home on June 22, 1890. The machine he refers to, the "Big Bonanza," was the Paige Compositor, was an impressive piece of technology that was, by many accounts, exciting just to look at. Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) believed it would revolutionize the printing industry. Between 1880 and 1894, he invested $300,000 of his own money to support its development (equal to over $7 million today).

He considered it a good investment, even though it often broke down (and, because of its many moving parts, there were many opportunities for problems). "I claim yet, as I have always claimed, that the machine's market (abroad and here together,) is today worth $150,000,000," Clemens wrote optimistically.

"This machine is totally without a rival," Clemens's letter continues. "Rivalry with it is impossible." Or so he thought. At the same time, the Linotype machine was in development. Its reliability took the Paige Compositor out of the competition — and left Clemens with serious financial problems. The collapse of the publishing house he owned with his nephew only made it worse (though it had some early success). He eventually recovered, but no thanks to his "Big Bonanza."

His letter closes: "It makes me cheerful to sit by the machine," followed by an invitation to his friend to come by for a drink.

Something for stay-at-home travellers

June 21 marks the Summer Solstice, the official first day of summer. Traveling during the hot season is certainly not a modern concept. Targeting that tradition, in 1876, the Lowell, Massachusetts poet Lucy Larcom compiled a book called Roadside Poems for Summer Travellers. As Larcom wrote in her opening preface:

The book begins and ends like the journey of a summer traveller, and may prove an agreeable companion to such as take it with them in their journeyings; for it lingers by brook and river, among mossy rocks and wayside blossoms, and under overhanging trees, and climbs and descends the hills of our own land, and the countries across the sea... And it has, perhaps, something for stay-at-home travellers as well.

The book collected poems (previously-published ones) by notable writers like Thomas Bailey Aldrich, William Cullen Bryant, Thomas Buchanan Read, Alice Cary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James T. Fields, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Andrews Norton, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Bayard Taylor, Henry David Thoreau, Jones Very and, of course, her good friend John Greenleaf Whittier — as well as several British poets.

One of the contributions from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the poem "Travels by the Fireside." The poem perfectly answers Larcom's prediction that the book would appeal to "stay-at-home travellers as well."

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
  And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
  Points to the misty main.

It drives me in upon myself
  And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
  And still more pleasant dreams.

I read whatever bards have sung
  Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
  Come thronging back to me.

The narrator of the poem reads books reminiscent of his youthful travels and returns to those locales in his mind.

Let others traverse sea and land,
  And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand,
  Reading these poets' rhymes.

From them I learn whatever lies
  Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
  Better than with mine own.

Harte: Let the stately Polar bears waltz

In a move later called "Seward's Folly" in reference to Secretary of State William Seward, Alaska officially became a territory of the United States on June 20, 1867. The land was purchased from Russia at a price of $7,200,000 under the administration of President Andrew Johnson. The move was unpopular, in part because the land was mostly barren; critics called it an "icebox."

Still early in his literary career at the time was Bret Harte, a New Yorker by birth and Californian by choice. He commemorated the acquisition of Alaska in his poem "An Arctic Vision." In it, he praises some of the same aspects about Alaska which critics denounced (slightly edited for length):

Where the short-legged Esquimaux
Waddle in the ice and snow.
And the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
...Let the news that flying goes
Thrill through all your Arctic floes,
And reverberate the boast
From the cliff's off Beechey's coast,
Till the tidings, circling round
Every bay of Norton Sound,
Throw the vocal tide-wave back
To the isles of Kodiac.
Let the stately Polar bears
Waltz around the pole in pairs,
And the walrus, in his glee,
Bare his tusk of ivory;
...Slide, ye solemn glaciers, slide,
One inch farther to the tide,
Nor in rash precipitation
Upset Tyndall's calculation.
Know you not what fate awaits you,
Or to whom the future mates you ?
All ye icebergs make salaam, —
You belong to Uncle Sam!

Leaning on his icy hammer
Stands the hero of this drama,
And above the wild-duck's clamor,
In his own peculiar grammar,
With its linguistic disguises,
Lo, the Arctic prologue rises:
"Wall, I reckon 'tain't so bad,
Seein' ez 't was all they had;
True, the Springs are rather late
And early Falls predominate;
But the ice crop's pretty sure.
And the air is kind o' pure;
'Tain't so very mean a trade.
When the land is all surveyed.
There's a right smart chance for fur-chase
All along this recent purchase,
And, unless the stories fail,
Every fish from cod to whale;
Rocks, too; mebbe quartz; let's see, —
'T would be strange if there should be, —
Seems I 've heerd such stories told;
Eh! — why, bless us, — yes, it's gold!"

While the blows are falling thick
From his California pick.
You may recognize the Thor
Of the vision that I saw, —
Freed from legendary glamour.
See the real magician's hammer.

*The image above is from the New York Public Library Digital Archives, which has a fairly substantial collection of Bret Harte images.

Birth of Fanny Osgood

Frances Sargent Locke was born on June 18, 1811 in Boston, Massachusetts, though most of her early life was spent in nearby Hingham. Years later, she submitted her first poems to Juvenile Miscellany, a publication edited by Lydia Maria Child. She met Samuel Stillman Osgood at the Boston Athenaeum; they married in 1835 and soon had three daughters. She often directed her poetry to her family.

In the late 1830s, living in London while her husband pursued his career as a painter there, "Fanny Osgood" (as she came to be known), published her first two collections of poems. After returning to the United States, she published about a half-dozen more. One of her biggest advocates was the influential editor/anthologist Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who called her work "forcible and original" as well as "picturesque." He believed she was constantly improving as well: "Every month her powers have seemed to expand and her sympathies to deepen." Griswold doted on her enough that it was rumored he was falling in love with her. Either way, Osgood's popularity among American women poets was truly unparalleled up to her early death in 1850.

Modern critics are on the fence with Osgood. Some dismiss the occasionally-flirtatious Osgood and some rate her work with the kind of sentimental, domestic poetry which deserves to be forgotten. One poem which would have feminist critics up in arms is "A Song," which asks a lover to "Call me a bird" before the narrator is locked in a cage, "ne'er dreaming of flight," but only existing to sing to entertain her lover. But the tenderness in some of her domestic works, particularly those addressed to her children, reveal a sincere motherly affection. Literary historian Emily Stipes Watts notes that these poems "are honest attempts to express thoughts and emotions never so fully expressed before by women in poetry" and depict a sincere concern for her daughters' development and well-being. Of course, making any generalization for such a prolific writer is impossible. Even choosing a sample is never fully representative, but I'll go with this one:

  Ah! woman still
  Must veil the shrine,
Where feeling feeds the fire divine,
  Nor sing at will,
  Untaught by art,
The music prison'd in her heart!
  Still gay the note,
  And light the lay,
The woodbird warbles on the spray,
  Afar to float;
  But homeward flown,
Within his next, how changed the tone!

  Oh! none can know,
  Who have not heard
The music-soul that thrills the bird,
  The carol low
  As coo of dove
He warbles to his woodland-love!
  The world would say
  'Twas vain and wild,
The impassion'd lay of Nature's child;
And Feeling so
Should veil the shrine
Where softly glow her fires divine!

This man is the seducer of my wife!

Onlookers were shocked at what they saw (and what they heard). "This man is the seducer of my wife!" screamed Edwin Forrest as he beat a man with a gutta-percha whip. The burly and famous actor assaulted his victim, Nathaniel Parker Willis, in New York's Washington Square on the evening of June 17, 1850. Willis, a famous poet, essayist, and editor, was recovering from illness at the time and, in fact, had nothing to do with the seduction of Forrest's wife.

Willis, a tall man who towered over the 6-foot tall Forrest, was helpless as the whipping brought him to his knees. He was a partial-invalid, forced to near-permanent convalescence, since the late 1840s. His health aside, Willis was also noted for being somewhat effeminate, a "namby-pamby" who presented himself as a refined gentleman. At least one observer noted the "battle" may have been a man versus a woman.

Forrest was suspicious of his wife, Catherine Sinclair, as early as the spring of 1848, when he believed he found evidence of an affair. She swore her innocence, but the two separated by April 1849. Catherine moved in with the journalist Parke Godwin and Forrest filed for divorce in Philadelphia in 1850, still citing adultery. The court denied the request and Forrest was ridiculed in the press. Willis, always a sucker for gossip, joined in.

Coming to Catherine's defense, Willis wrote that Forrest violated "the American standard of what is gentlemanlike, and the American estimate of the treatment due a lady." Forrest applied for divorce again, this time in New York. It wasn't long after that Forrest whipped Willis very publicly in Washington Square.

All this tension was just the crescendo to the six-week divorce trial during the winter of 1851-1852. The city was gripped by the scandal, with "thousands and thousands" awaiting the verdict. During the trial, a witness suggested Willis and Catherine were "lying on each other" in an affair. The court finalized the divorce and, soon after, Willis sued Forrest for assault, winning $2,500 from the actor.

*Much of the information in this post comes from Sentiment and Celebrity: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame by Thomas Baker.

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves

On June 16, 1866, Henry Timrod stood before the graves of more than 600 Confederate soldiers at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina. Thousands boarded carriages, wagons, and railroad cars despite heavy rain, passing by store fronts which closed at noon in honor of the ceremony. As the program was about to begin at 5:00 p.m., rain finally stopped.

A melodeon and choir provided the music for the ceremony overseen by the Charleston Ladies' Association. The poem which Timrod presented is generally acknowledged as his most famous, "Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead":

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
  Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
  The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth
  The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
  The shaft is in the stone!

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
  Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! your sisters bring their tears,
  And these memorial blooms.

Small tributes! but your shades will smile
  More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
  Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
  There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
  By mourning beauty crowned!

Timrod's poem became incredibly famous, and quite rapidly. His work, among that of others, helped establish the "Lost Cause" image of the South: fallen, but proud. Timrod, himself a Charleston-born Confederate veteran,  earned the honorary title "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy." He died within two years of presenting this poem. His dirge certainly contrasted with northerner Oliver Wendell Holmes's "Hymn of Peace," presented three years later, almost to the day. Timrod was later memorialized himself, 35 years later.

Holmes: Angel of Peace

Oliver Wendell Holmes was the go-to guy in the Boston area (and beyond) whenever an occasional poem was needed. He wrote poems specific to events like college reunions, ground-breaking of buildings, dinner parties, birthday parties, annual meetings for various social and academic societies, and more. Known for his good nature, his humor, and his ability to work the crowd (so to speak), Holmes sometimes showed up with a flute to entertain his audiences. Sometimes, his original poems were set to music, usually to well-known tunes.

On June 15, 1869, Holmes attended the "Jubilee" celebration for the end of the Civil War. His poem, "A Hymn of Peace," was sung to the tune of Matthias Keller's "American Hymn":

Angel of Peace, thou hast wandered too long!
Spread thy white wings to the sunshine of love!
Come while our voices are blended in song,—
Fly to our ark like the storm-beaten dove!
Fly to our ark on the wings of the dove,—
Speed o'er the far-sounding billows of song,
Crowned with thine olive-leaf garland of love,—
Angel of Peace, thou hast waited too long!

Joyous we meet, on this altar of thine
Mingling the gifts we have gathered for thee,
Sweet with the odors of myrtle and pine,
Breeze of the prairie and breath of the sea,—
Meadow and mountain and forest and sea!
Sweet is the fragrance of myrtle and pine,
Sweeter the incense we offer to thee,
Brothers once more round this altar of thine!

Angels of Bethlehem, answer the strain!
Hark! a new birth-song is filling the sky!—
Loud as the storm-wind that tumbles the main
Bid the full breath of the organ reply,—
Let the loud tempest of voices reply,—
Roll its long surge like the-earth-shaking main!
Swell the vast song till it mounts to the sky!
Angels of Bethlehem, echo the strain! 

In the lead-up to the Civil War, Holmes stayed mostly on the fence. When his son (the future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.) was injured in battle, the elder Holmes famously went to find him. It was then that Holmes's major pro-Union stance was sparked.

Social Reform will be paramount

The Utopian pilgrims at Brook Farm wanted to expand their idealistic (and Transcendentalist) beliefs to others — so they started a newspaper. The first issue of The Harbinger was published on June 14, 1845. George Ripley, the leading founder of Brook Farm, served as editor and announced his intentions in the inaugural issue: "promote the triumph of the high democratic faith" and "the advancement and happiness of the masses" while raging against "all exclusive privilege in legislation, political arrangements, and social customs." As for content:

The interests of Social Reform will be paramount to all others in whatever is admitted into the pages of the Harbinger. We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men. Every pulsation of our being vibrates in sympathy with the wrongs of the toiling millions; and every wise effort for their speedy enfranchisement will find in us resolute and indomitable advocates.

Brook Farm drew nation-wide interest as an experiment in Utopian communal living. Its founders, including both Ripley and Charles Anderson Dana, studied and promoted the Associationist philosophies of Charles Fourier (and were often away from the farm as they did so). The timing was odd; Albert Brisbane, the leading promoter of Fourierism in the United States, was struggling with his publication The Phalanx. Another journal, The Social Reformer, was also losing steam. The Brook Farmers took up the mantle of both (partly because four members of the community had a background in printing). Thus, The Harbinger was born.

What to name the new publication was a bit of a concern. As journalist and supporter Parke Godwin wrote:

Call it the Pilot, the Harbinger, the Halycon, the Harmonist, The Worker, the Architect, The Zodiac, The Pleiad, the Iris, the Examiner, The Aurora, the Crown, the Imperial, the Independent, the Synthesist, the Light, the Truth, the Hope, the Teacher, the Reconciler, the Wedge, the Pirate, the Seer, the Indicator, the Tailor, the Babe in the Manger, the Universe, the Apocalypse, the Red Dragon, the Plant, Beelzebub—the Devil or anything rather than the meaningless name Phalanx.

The final title is a pun on the French word "fourrier," or "harbinger." The newspaper actually outlived Brook Farm; after Brook Farm's collapse, Ripley and Dana moved to New York, where they continued to publish The Harbinger until its final issue in October 1847.

*The image above is the print-shop, the only building still standing on the site of Brook Farm at West Roxbury, Massachusetts. The other image is the front page of a november 1846 issue of The Harbinger.

**Information for this post comes from Philip F. Gura's American Transcendentalism: A History and Sterling Delano's Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia.

Tribune vs. Ledger

Horace Greeley was in Washington D.C. and left his newspaper, the ubiquitous New York Tribune, in the hands of editor Charles Anderson Dana. Dana (pictured), a former Brook Farm participant, ran an advertisement in the June 13, 1856 issue of the newspaper which caused a bit of a headache.

Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. signed a contract with Robert Bonner to write for his New York Ledger. Bonner always paid top dollar for talent and promoted his contributors aggressively. It surpassed the Tribune in readership and, by the fall of 1856, its success was celebrated with a hundred-gun salute at City Hall Park. Bonner advertised what would be Cobb's second serialized novel for the Ledger; the full-page ad in the Tribune cost Bonner $1,500 and took up a full page.

Dana, however, decided to throw in an editorial on the page next to the advertisement, roundly condemning the Ledger. Logically, it's not a good idea to criticize advertisers, especially one which is such a high-paying, high-profile client. Bonner was outraged, forcing the Tribune to print an apology. Dana later resigned from the staff in 1862.

Another member of the Tribune staff, George Ripley, was also a former Brook Farmer (and, in fact, its visionary founder). After his radical Utopianism and Fourierism, Ripley had mostly settled into a less radical figure and became a popular critic. In his criticism, unlike Dana, he rarely engaged in literary disputes and was known for being cheery, good-natured, and uncontroversial.

*I haven't been able to find either the offensive editorial in question or the apology from which to quote. Anyone with links to online resources, feel free to drop them in the comments section!

Clark: Farewell to life!

Barely in his 30s at the time of his death on June 12, 1841, Willis Gaylord Clark is hardly a well-remembered figure in American literary history. His contemporary writers might be surprised. Washington Irving recalled that the short career of Clark was "useful, honorable, popular... and he has left behind him writings which will make men love his memory and lament his loss." Rufus Wilmot Griswold predicted that his writings would "long be remembered for their heart-moving and mirth-provoking qualities." Edgar A. Poe implied that Clark should be counted the first of Philadelphia poets.

Clark began his journalistic career with the New York Mirror, then the Columbian Star, and the Philadelphia Gazette. It was in Philadelphia that he met Anne Poyntell Caldcleugh, whom he married in 1836. Soon, however, she was sick with tuberculosis and died shortly after marriage. Clark was deeply affected — especially when he began showing symptoms of the disease as well. His poetry became distinctly morbid, including his poem "The Dying Poet." Its second-to-last stanza reads:

Farewell to life! its morning hour
  Was like a golden paradise;
Hope sprang like some luxuriant flower,
  Where youth's enchanted visions rise!
I have had peace — its hour was brief:
  I have had care — it lingered long!
Joy's tree sent down its faded leaf,
  On Pleasure's lip expired the song!

Some of his last works, signed with the name "Ollapod," were newspaper columns about his observations on life, literature, and sentiment. These "Olladopania," which proved very popular, were published by his twin brother Lewis Gaylord Clark (pictured).

After the death of Willis, Lewis stepped up his presence in the literary world, especially in New York.Years earlier, he purchased the floundering Knickerbocker magazine (first edited by Charles Fenno Hoffman). He served as its editor until 1861. Lewis also oversaw the publication of The Literary Remains of Willis Gaylord Clark (1844).

Sigourney: I never wrote for fame

Lydia Huntley Sigourney was probably the most famous American woman poet in the first half of the 19th century. Her first book of poems, Moral Pieces, was published in 1815. She worked as a teacher in Hartford until her marriage to Charles Sigourney in 1819, when she left her job to focus on domestic duties. The marriage was an unhappy one and, shortly after her husband's business failed, Mrs. Sigourney (as she called herself) turned to writing to support the family, which her husband resented.

Her career saw the production of 46 volumes and 2000 articles (published in 300 journals and magazines). Though today maligned as a sentimentalist, she commanded attention in her lifetime; her name alone was worth $500 to the popular Godey's Lady's Book, which paid her to list her as an editor. She was involved in several political and social issues (abolitionism, the rights of Native Americans, women's education) and wrote her autobiography at the end of her life. She died on June 10, 1865 at the age of 73.

Her autobiography, Letters of Life, was published posthumously and served as a great indication of her popularity. She dedicated ten pages to requests she received from various people (mostly strangers) asking her to write poems for them — those ten pages were merely a sampling. She rarely refused these requests, including memorial poems written for people she never knew, though she never wrote one for her husband at his death in 1854.

One chapter of Mrs. Sigourney's autobiography, "Letters of Love," describes her thoughts on marriage. She originally made a personal oath never to marry, deeming herself "a thing set apart." After ignoring love letters for years, she finally found herself engaged. Years later, she was surprised by how she described it in her journal: "I feel almost astonished as I write the words. I am no more mine own, but another's." The final chapter of the book is titled "Good-Bye." As the author faced death, she wrote what is believed to be her final poem, "The Valedictory":

  Here is my Valedictory. I bring
A basket of dried fruits—autumnal leaves,
And mosses, pressed from ocean's sunless tides.
I strew them votive at your feet, sweet friends,
Who've listened to me long—with, grateful thanks
For favoring smiles, that have sustained and cheered
All weariness.
                    I never wrote for fame—
The payment seemed not to be worth the toil;
But wheresoe'er the kind affections sought
To mix themselves by music with the mind,
That was my inspiration and delight.
  And you, for many a lustrum, have not frowned
Upon my lingering strain. Patient you've been,
Even as the charity that never fails;
And pouring o'er my heart the gentlest tides
Of love and commendation. So I take
These tender memories to my pillowed turf,
Blessing you for them when I breathe no more.
  Heaven's peace be with you all!
                    Farewell! Farewell!

Payne: Be it ever so humble

Rufus Wilmot Griswold did not include John Howard Payne in any of his editions of The Poets and Poetry of America, the first major anthology of American poetry. Later, his successor Richard Henry Stoddard added him in an 1870s edition. Stoddard predicted that Payne "will be known only by a single song," though he may have been a bit generous. Payne, who was born on June 9, 1792 (sometimes listed as 1791), has hardly survived into collective memory. The "single song," however, is still memorable, at least in part:

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home!
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.
        Home! home, sweet home!
        There's no place like home!

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain,
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again.
The birds singing gayly that come at my call:
Give me those, and the peace of mind, dearer than all.
        Home! sweet, sweet home!
        There's no place like home!

The poem "Home, Sweet Home" was actually a song from Payne's 1823 opera, Clari, Maid of Milan; Payne wrote only the lyrics, not the music.

Payne was born in New York City. Early in his life, he showed an interest in drama and had his acting debut at about 9 or 10 years old. Shortly after, he moved to England and became successful as an actor, playwright, producer, and editor of a journal. His 1823 opera The Maid of Milan was instantly popular. The ballad "Home, Sweet Home" was published separately and sold tens of thousands. Payne himself made little money off it (having sold the rights to the publishers) and eventually returned to the United States, where he took a particular interest in the Cherokee nation.

His fame, however, resulted in an appointment by President John Tyler in 1842 (with help from Secretary of State Daniel Webster). Payne became the American Consul in the African city of Tunis. It was in that city that Payne died in 1852.

Several years later, "Home, Sweet Home" had a major revival when it became widely sung by Civil War soldiers. Legend has it that some commanding officers banned it since it intensified homesickness so much. Supposedly, in December 1862, opposing Confederate and Union troops found themselves amid a "Battle of the Bands," of sorts. On the eve of battle outside Murfreesboro, Tennessee, one officer wrote: "Every soldier on that field knew when the sun went down... on the following day he would be engaged in a struggle unto death, and the air was full of tokens that one of the most desperate of battles was to be fought." Troops were united, albeit temporarily, through Payne's "Home, Sweet Home."

The song's impact during that time period explains Stoddard's choice to include it (and nothing else) to represent Payne in the 1870s anthology. One of Payne's admirers, after all, was none other than Abraham Lincoln himself.

Whittier's first published poem

A poem titled "The Exile's Departure" saw print in the June 8, 1826 issue of the Newburyport (Massachusetts) Free Press. The editor of the magazine was William Lloyd Garrison, still early in his career. He was intrigued by the anonymous poet and published several more of his poems. "His poetry bears the stamp of true genius," he wrote in the Free Press, "which, if carefully cultivated, will rank him among the bards of his country."

Finally, Garrison rode out to the family farm in Haverhill, eager to meet the anonymous poet. That was the first day that Garrison met John Greenleaf Whittier face to face. Whittier didn't know he was coming and Garrison was surprised to meet a younger man than he expected (they were only three years apart). Garrison encouraged Whittier to further his education and continued publishing his poems with every publication he edited (including Boston's National Philanthropist and the Journal of the Times in Bennington, Vermont).

Garrison also helped Whittier get work in the periodical industry. The most notable connection between the two came in The Liberator, a publication founded by Garrison with a strong anti-slavery agenda. Whittier gladly joined the cause. The poet praised the activist in his poem "To William Lloyd Garrison," calling him the "Champion of those who groan beneath / Oppression's iron hand." Soon, however, the two had a falling out over the direction of the abolitionist movement. They did not reconcile until after the Civil War.

The following is the third stanza (of four) from "The Exile's Departure," Whittier's first published poem:

Friends of my youth! I must leave you forever,
  And hasten to dwell in a region unknown: —
Yet time cannot change, nor the broad ocean sever,
  Hearts firmly united and tried as our own.
Ah, no! though I wander, all sad and forlorn,
  In a far distant land, yet shall memory trace,
When far o'er the ocean's white surges I'm borne,
  The scene of past pleasures, — my own native place.

American authors and their homes

Though Washington Irving is strongly associated with Tarrytown in New York, he did not purchase a home there until June 7, 1835. He was 57 years old when he purchased the "neglected cottage" formerly known as Wolfert's Roost; he renamed it "Sunnyside" a few years later (technically in Irvington, named for the author years later). The home and the author are now inseparable in collective memory. Oliver Wendell Holmes said that Irving's house stood as "the best known and most cherished" of all American houses, second only to Mount Vernon (home of Irving's namesake).

Irving had spent most of his life moving from place to place. He complained that he was eager for a home he could call his own — so eager, in fact, he noted he was "willing to pay a little unreasonably for it." Sunnsyside cost him $1,800. He described it as a "beautiful spot, capable of being made a little paradise." He soon set to work expanding the home; it was in a state of renovation for the next 20 years. With costs piling up, he accepted a job as Minister to Spain in 1842, leaving Sunnyside behind. "The only drawback upon all this is the hard trial of tearing myself away from dear little Sunnyside," he wrote.

24 years after Irving purchased Sunnyside, another American writer began construction of a home which became part of his identity. On June 7, 1859, travel writer, novelist, and poet Bayard Taylor laid the cornerstone for "Cedarcroft," his mansion near Kennett Square, Pennsylvania (at right, seen from the side; today it is privately owned).

Taylor served as both architect and construction supervisor for Cedarcroft. He noted in his journal how he celebrated the beginning stages of his home.

To-day we placed the great corner-stone of the tower, with all due ceremony. Under it is a box of zinc, containing a copy of 'Views Afoot;' an original poem by me, to be read five hundred years hence by somebody who never heard of me; some coins; a poem by [Richard Henry Stoddard] in his own MS.; and various small things.

*The image of Cedarcroft is one I took personally after an arduous hunt on a cold November day in 2008. I was without a camera for my April 2009 trip to Sunnyside; the image above stolen borrowed from Brian Jay Jones, author of Washington Irving: An American Original (a book which I highly recommend).

Gilman: The color is repellant

In temperatures reportedly as high as 103 degrees in Pasadena, California, Charlotte Perkins Gilman began writing a short story on June 6, 1890. She completed the story, titled "The Yellow Wallpaper," the next day. A week later, she sent it off to Scribner's. After a couple rejections, it was finally published in the January 1892 issue of The New England Magazine. It was reprinted at least six more times in her lifetime.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" has been claimed as a classic example of a psychological thriller, of feminist literature, and of depicting women's health issues. The story, which is at least partially inspired by Gilman's real life, features a woman suffering from depression and prescribed the "rest cure."

The story is presented as a journal. The main character and narrator is quickly dismissed by her husband, a doctor who laughs at her and does not believe she is truly sick. Her brother, also a physician, agrees. They forbid her from work and, though she disagrees, she follows their orders, asking, "What is one to do?" Despite her apparent compliance, however, she starts writing. Rather than think about her condition, which her husband says is the worst thing she can do, she focuses on the house and, specifically, the room to which she is confined. She strongly dislikes the wallpaper:

I never saw a worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate, and provoke study, and when you follow the lame, uncertain curves for a little distance, they suddenly commit suicide — plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions.
The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

The wallpaper soon becomes more than just an annoyance...

Many years later, Gilman committed suicide.

Death of Stephen Crane and O. Henry

Stephen Crane ended the 19th century with a severe hemorrhage of the lungs, shortly after hosting a several day-long Christmas banquet. He recovered somewhat but, amidst writing a novel called The O'Ruddy, he suffered two more massive hemorrhages in the spring of 1900. He went to a health spa in Germany, still dictating a few chapters for his novel. He died on June 5, 1900. He was 28 years old.

The O'Ruddy was published posthumously in 1903. Despite his youth, before his death Crane had already published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Red Badge of Courage, and The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure (among other works). Even so, he was not quite as prolific as O. Henry, who died the same day, ten years later, on June 5, 1910. Henry was 47.

Henry, whose real name was William Sidney Porter, wrote mostly short stories, often upbeat, usually with a surprise ending. One of his most famous is "The Gift of the Magi." The story follows a poor couple searching for the perfect gift for their spouse. The wife buys a fob for her husband's prized watch, selling her beautiful hair for money to make the purchase. Unbeknown to her, the husband has sold his watch to buy an extravagant set of combs for his wife's long hair. Henry compares this couple to the Biblical magi:

And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

Lowell: I will like it and therefore I do

James Russell Lowell had a storied career while a student at Harvard College. He enrolled at age 15 and was soon in trouble — a state he held for most of his time there. His sophomore year, for example, he was absent from the required chapel attendance 14 times and from classes 56 times. As he prepared to graduate, he admitted, "During Freshman year, I did nothing, during Sophomore year I did nothing, during Junior year I did nothing, and during Senior I have thus far done nothing in the way of college studies."

Shortly before graduating, Lowell was elected class poet. However, he was suspended and was not allowed to participate in his graduation exercises. Part of the problem was that Lowell did not know what to do with his life, something of a concern for the son of an old and respected New England family. He "settled" on going back to school to study law.

However, when Lowell met Maria White, his uncertainty (and his bad behavior) had to stop. Her father, the wealthy Abijah White, insisted his daughter's betrothed find gainful employment. Lowell hit the books hard. On June 4, 1839, he wrote to a friend:  "I begin to like the law. And therefore it is quite interesting. I am determined that I will like it and therefore I do." In the same letter, Lowell also included a few lines from his poem on "Consistency" that sort of poked fun at his earlier hesitance:

He is a fool who would thy faith deride
  If youth's opinions change before life's close.
Doth not thy shade fall on a different side
  When the sun sets than when his light first rose?

About a year later, Lowell was admitted to the bar. He did not practice law for very long before changing his career path entirely.

Dall: When friendship is a passion

Caroline Healey Dall was one of the few women to gain any influence in the circle of mostly-male Transcendentalists. She was involved with several reform movements, particularly abolitionism and women's rights. In 1860, for example, she held a women's rights meeting in Boston that included James Freeman Clarke, Harriet Tubman, and others. Historians appreciate Dall particularly because of the detailed journals she kept for several decades.

Dall took an interest in fellow female Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller and attended her "Conversations" in Boston in 1841. She found the older woman "more agreeable — modest — than I anticipated." Dall later wrote a biography of Fuller. Some suggested Dall had picked up where Fuller left off but, in her modesty, Dall disagreed. "How unfit I am to be named with Margaret," she wrote, "but it was pleasant to find one person, inclined to throw her mantle over me — and it brought a tear of strong resolve to my cheek."

On June 3, 1841, Miss Healey (she did not marry Charles Henry Appleton Dall until 1844) wrote in her journal about Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (she had seen him speak as early as when she was 12 years old). She noted her impression:

That on Compensation is the finest thing upon the subject... but the views advanced in that upon self reliance — are extravagant and unsafe. When I read the essay upon Friendship, I was moved to find a man — who had gone through the world — feeling — like a girl — under the first development of her passions — for there is a time when friendship is a passion.

Dall noted that she had not yet read the essay "Love," but noted its first sentence  — "Each soul is a celestial Venus to every other soul" — as "peculiar." A male friend of hers noted that "if Mr Emerson had ever seen his soul" he would not have written that.

Brainard: One single flash!

The Connecticut poet John Gardiner Calkins Brainard wrote that an old lady and a young girl were killed by lightning in Montville at a Presbyterian meeting-house on June 1, 1823. The poem he wrote about the event, "The Thunder Storm," was "not an exaggerated account of the particulars" of that incident, he said.

The Sabbath morn came sweetly on,
The sunbeams mildly shone upon
     Each rock, and tree, and flower;
And floating on the southern gale,
The clouds seemed gloriously to sail
Along the Heavens, as if to hail
     That calm and holy hour.

 By winding path and alley green,
The lightsome and the young were seen
     To join the gathering throng;
While with slow step and solemn look,
The elders of the village took
Their way, and as with age they shook,
     Went reverently along.

They meet—"the sweet psalm-tune" they raise;
They join their grateful hearts, and praise
     The Maker they adore.
They met in holy joy ; but they
Grieve now, who saw His wrath that day,
And sadly went they all away,
And better than before.

There was one cloud, that overcast
The valley and the hill, nor past
     Like other mists away:
It moved not round the circling sweep
Of the clear sky, but dark and deep,
Came down upon them sheer and steep,
Where they had met to pray.

One single flash! it rent the spire,
And pointed downward all its fire—
     What could its power withstay?
There was an aged head; and there
Was beauty in its youth, and fair
Floated the young locks of her hair—
     It called them both away!

The Sabbath eve went sweetly down;
Its parting sunbeams mildly shone
     Upon each rock and flower;
And gently blew the southern gale,
—But on it was a voice of wail,
And eyes were wet, and cheeks were pale,
     In that sad evening hour.

Brainard was a lawyer and editor, in addition to writing occasional poems. His first book, published in 1825, collected these scattered works (many of which were published in the Connecticut Mirror, the newspaper he edited). He admitted he was temperamentally unsuited to be a lawyer; others admitted he was temperamentally unsuited to be an editor. He died shortly before his 33rd birthday in 1828.