Harris: under the spell of the old town

The people of Eatonton, Georgia were proud of their native son, Joel Chandler Harris, as he rose to literary fame. Best known for his Uncle Remus tales, Harris was then living in Atlanta, in a home he called Wren's Nest. He was some 80 miles from the town of his birth — not so very far, which made it so hard for him to turn down an offer to return to Eatonton. In a letter dated November 12, 1901, he wrote:

I have delayed answering your letter hoping to see my way clear to accepting the invitation which you were kind enough to send me, and which I assure you is very highly appreciated. Though I have been away so many years, I still feel that Eatonton is my home and the people there my best friends. I love them all, so much so that I have never written anything to be published in book form that I did not ask myself if there could be anything in it which my friends there would not approve. Thus, in a way, they have been my most helpful critics. I thank you heartily for the invitation and regret that a pressure of work will prevent me from accepting.

Harris was then working on what would become Gabriel Tolliver, a book which he dedicated to his friend James Whitcomb Riley. He also admitted to Riley that he had allowed the interest of his characters to overshadow the story. Even so, the book was set in Shady Dale, a fictionalized version of Eatonton, which served as an equally important character in Harris's writings.

The book begins not unlike the invitation he received in 1901: "Cephas! here is a letter for you, and it is from Shady Dale! I know you will be happy now." The narrative voice then admits that he far too often spoke of the town of his youth, that his recollections of Shady Dale were "coloured" and that he saw the people only through his "boyhood-eyes." The other character in that opening, Sophia, warns Cephas that if he were to go back, he'd learn they weren't so different from everyone else after all. "This was absurd, of course—or, rather, it would have been absurd for any one else to make the suggestion; for at that particular time, Sophia was a trifle jealous of Shady Dale and its people."

From Gabriel Tolliver's chapter "A Town with a History":

Before, during, and after the war, Shady Dale presented always the same aspect of serene repose. It was, as you may say, a town with a history. Then, as now, there were towns all about that had no such fortunate appendage behind them to explain their origin... Shady Dale is no city, and it may be that its public spirited citizens stretch the meaning of the term when they call it a town. Nevertheless, the community has a well-defined history...

But to set forth its origin is not to describe its beauty, which is of a character that refuses to submit to description... You are inevitably impressed with a sense of the attractiveness of the place; you fall under the spell of the old town... And yet if you were called upon to define the nature of the spell, what could you say? What name could you give to the tremulous beauty that hovers about and around the place, when the fresh green leaves of the great trees are fluttering in the cool wind, and everything is touched and illumined by the tender colours of spring? Under what heading in the catalogue of things would you place the vivid richness which animates the town and the landscape all around when the summer is at its height? And how could you describe the harmony that time has brought about between the fine, old houses and the setting in which they are grouped?

All these things are elusive; they make themselves keenly felt, but they do not lend themselves to analysis.

Elmore: Tramping, hurrying, rushing

Indiana poet James B. Elmore earned a reputation writing about ordinary things, from sassafras to mushrooms, and from kittens to cuckoo clocks. His poetry was intentionally jaunty and fun, and he earned a great reputation in his region (they called him the "Bard of Alamo," after his home town in Indiana). He was a layer, a preacher, and carpenter, before retiring as a farmer. He found time to write poetry every fee moment he had, and his themes represented his somewhat unpolished rural background. His poem "Streetcar and Elevator," dated September 25, 1900, took an interesting view of the modernization of society (with tongue in cheek):

I'm in the city;
   I don't know what to do,
Unless I take a street car
   And ride the whole town through.

Buzz — they come a-rushing,
   Buzz — they pass you by;
Tramping, hurrying, rushing,
   The people turn and sigh.

A man that works a lever
   Is sitting on in front;
Another, on the rear end,
   With cash, fare bell, and punch.

The sparks are flying round you,
   And something makes a siz;
Your heart is near collapsing.
   O, what a feeling it is!

Jing-a-ling! You're stopping,
   And then you pass along,
While holding to some straps
   That dangle o'er the throng.

As soon as you have started
   They ask you for your fare;
If you don't a nickel have,
   You're trotted off the car.

Yet there is another thing
   Which is not very clear—
How the fleeting elevator
   Goes up and down so queer.

It is always ready;
   You just step in and on.
You can't say your baby prayers
   Until your heart is gone.

You're going up so very fast
   You cannot see about,
And you feel so awful queer,
   As though the bottom was out.

I saw a great big fellow
   A-standing proud and stiff,
And at his first experience
   You should have seen him twist.

He crouched down in one corner
   And expressed himself: "By grit!
I believe I'll take that flight of stairs
   For fear the thing may slip."

I saw him going down the stairs,
   Three hundred pounds avoirdupois,
And by the time he'd reach the ground
   You'd be in Illinois.

Death of Murfree: the sun had gone down

When Mary Noailles Murfree died on July 31, 1922, the author Charles Egbert Craddock died with her. Born and raised in Tennessee, she moved to St. Louis with her family after the Civil War. Some sort of childhood illness (usually reported as "lameness") inspired her interest in reading and literature. Nostalgia for her home state likely inspired her to begin writing "local color" stories about Tennessee. These tales and sketches portrayed a frontier, rural south, a mountainous and wild region made up of tough and rugged characters. Murfree made a good marketing decision, then, to write under the pseudonym Charles Egbert Craddock. She maintained her ruse for several years before surprising, if not shocking, New England's literary elite when her true identity was revealed.

In reality, Murfree/Craddock had little contact with the Appalachian mountain men and women that she featured in her work. She came from a well-known and aristocratic family (her home town of Murfreesboro was name after her ancestor, a veteran of the American Revolution) in central Tennessee. She spent her summers with her family in the mountainous regions in the eastern part of the state, among the Appalachian folks. Her family rank, however, as well as her "lameness" prevented her from much direct interaction with those people. She instead relied on those who made their way to do business to the resort hotel where she stayed.

In other words, though Murfree/Craddock presented herself as someone who knew the ins and outs of this cultural group, she was really an outsider. She certainly was sympathetic to that group of people, though her stories are more sentimental than reality. A sample from her chapter "Drifting Down Lost Creek" from In the Tennessee Mountains shows both her commitment to showing the "color" of Tennessee, her romanticism of the mountains, and her use of local dialect:

The sun had gone down, but the light yet lingered. The evening star trembled above Pine Mountain. Massive and darkling it stood against the red west. How far, ah, how far, stretched that mellow crimson glow, all adown Lost Creek Valley, and over the vast mountain solitudes on either hand! Even the eastern ranges were rich with this legacy of the dead and gone day, and purple and splendid they lay beneath the rising moon. She looked at it with full and shining eyes.
 "I dunno how he kin make out ter furgit the mountings," she said; and then she went on, hearing the crisp leaves rustling beneath her tread, and the sharp bark of a fox in the silence of the night-shadowed valley.

*I am indebted for information in this post to Wingless Flights: Appalachian Women in Fiction (1996) by Danny L. Miller

Madison Cawein: done gone and got married

Madison Cawein married Gertrude McKelvey in Louisville, Kentucky, on June 4, 1903 at 7 a.m. The ceremony, which took place at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, was officiated by Rev. Reverdy Estell and was attended by only a few close relatives. The groom was 38, the bride (wearing a dark blue dress and white blouse and black hat) was 29. Almost exactly nine months later, they had their first and only child Preston Hamilton Cawein (mother and son are pictured here).

The happy husband had, by then, published nearly 20 books, mostly of poetry, and was earning a substantial income as a the popular "Keats of Kentucky." After the wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Cawein headed to Colorado for their honeymoon. As Mr. Cawein wrote a few days later, he wrote to his friend James Whitcomb Riley:

Well, here I am at the foot of Pike's Peak, in the heart of the Rockies, with the loveliest and sweetest girl in the world, spending my honeymoon. I have thought of you many a'time during our jaunts among the canons and cliffs, watching the mists gather and descend on the mountain heights, or gathering wild flowers, of which there is a vast profusion as well as variety, among the heaven-kissing hills, or sitting wondering by some mountain-torrent flinging its wild waters down the bouldered sides of a precipice in many a foaming and roaming cascade; like some snowwhite nymph tossing her arms of foam above her head and flaunting her wild hair of spray to the music of the wind-rocked pines.

Riley, you must not forget me now I have "done gone and got married." My wife is a beautiful, a talented girl; a singer as well as a musician; a reader of the best literature and appreciative of the best poetry, present and past. She has read your work, as every one has, and is full of enthusiasm for it. She is a girl of mind as well as soul...

Undoubtedly to Cawein's delight, Riley did not forget his newly married fellow writer. In fact, the Indiana poet dedicated a poem to his Kentucky friend, "To a Poet on his Marriage":

Ever and ever, on and on,
From winter dusk, to April dawn,
This old enchanted world we range
From night to light—from change to change—
Or path of burs or lily-bells,
We walk a world of miracles.

The morning evermore must be
A newer, purer mystery—
The dewy grasses, or the bloom
Of orchards, or the wood's perfume
Of wild sweet-williams, or the wet
Blent scent of loam and violet.

How wondrous all the ways we fare—
What marvels wait us, unaware! . . .
But yesterday, with eyes ablur
And heart that held no hope of Her,
You paced the lone path, but the true
That led to where she waited you.

Upon Cawein's death in 1914, he left his money, his property, his investments, and his copyright, to his widow, with the exception of a $1,000 fund for his son. By then, Cawein had suffered a reversal of fortune thanks to the stock market crash.

Masters and Spoon River: sleeping on the hill

Reedy's Mirror for May 29, 1914 published the first installment of a series by "Webster Ford," a pseudonym of Edgar Lee Masters. The series, later collected as a book, was known as Spoon River Anthology. The title was the fictional name for a town Masters based compositely on Petersburg and Lewiston, Illinois, where he had spent his early years. He intended to represent all of humanity through a single town with over 240 residents of that town. In fact, each poem in the collection is spoken from beyond the grave by a different character buried in the town cemetery. The first poem, "The Hill," appropriately introduces the scene (and some of the dead people):

Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

One passed in a fever,
One was burned in a mine,
One was killed in a brawl,
One died in a jail,
One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife —
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,
The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one? —
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

One died in shameful child-birth,
One of a thwarted love,
One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire,
One after life in far-away London and Paris
Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag —
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,
And Major Walker who had talked
With venerable men of the revolution ? —
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

They brought them dead sons from the war,
And daughters whom life had crushed,
And their children fatherless, crying —
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where is Old Fiddler Jones
Who played with life all his ninety years,
Braving the sleet with bared breast,
Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,
Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove,
Of what Abe Lincoln said
One time at Springfield.

Eight poems were included in the first installment of what he elsewhere termed "rampant yokelisms." Masters was unsure of their merit but the publisher/editor, William Marion Reedy, immediately knew they would be valued. Reedy had been pestering Masters to write something other than his old-fashioned, Greek-inspired poems and, particularly, something more American. As Masters recorded, the editor told him, "damn it man you're not Doric, you're American." The Spoon River Anthology, which was published as a book a year later, was really the only significant literary success for the Kansas-born Masters.

*Some of the information in this post was gleaned from Edgar Lee Masters: A Biography (2005) by Herbert K. Russell.

Death of Augusta Evans Wilson: at best a struggle

Augusta Jane Evans Wilson died of a heart attack in Mobile, Alabama on May 9, 1909. The author of multiple novels, she was best remembered for her book St. Elmo. Published in 1866, the novel was considered the Southern best-seller equal in popularity as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin was in the North. Various towns, hotels, and even steamboats were named in honor of the author or her characters.

Born in Georgia and raised partly in Texas, young Augusta showed an early interest in literature (despite no formal schooling) and began writing her first novel while still a teenager. Ultimately, she published some nine novels over about 50 years. Many of Wilson's books were popular because of perceived simplicity and domestic or sentimental themes. Immediately after her death, even her obituaries claimed her work already seemed like something from an different time — already old-fashioned, in other words. More modern scholars, however, have found that her female characters were a bit more modern and shared equal power, intellect, and agency as the male characters. In the political world, oddly enough, Wilson was a bit conservative and opposed women's suffrage in the growing movement.

An avid secessionist, Wilson (then still Miss Evans) volunteered to nurse Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. She used her experience as an inspiration for her 1864 book Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice. From that book, here is a scene in which a character named Russell witnesses the death of his elder mother:

"If I could look upon your face once more, my son, it would not be hard to die. Let me see you in heaven, my dear, dear boy." These were the last words, and soon after a stupor fell upon her. Hour after hour passed; Mrs. Campbell came and sat beside the bed, and the three remained silent, now and then lifting bowed heads to look at the sleeper. Not a sound broke the stillness save the occasional chirp of a cricket, and a shy mouse crept twice across the floor, wondering at the silence, fixing its twinkling bright eyes on the motionless figures. The autumn day died slowly as the widow, and when the clock dirged out the sunset hour Russell rose, and, putting back the window-curtains, stooped and laid his face close to his mother's. Life is at best a struggle, and such perfect repose as greeted him is found only when the marble hands of Death transfer the soul to its guardian angel. No pulsation stirred the folds over the heart, or the soft bands of hair on the blue-veined temples; the still mouth had breathed its last sigh, and the meek brown eyes had opened in eternity. The long, fierce ordeal had ended, the flames died out, and from smouldering ashes the purified spirit that had toiled and fainted not, that had been faithful to the end, patiently bearing many crosses, heard the voice of the Great Shepherd, and soared joyfully to the pearly gates of the Everlasting Home. The day bore her away on its wings, and as Russell touched the icy cheek a despairing cry rolled through the silent cottage.

Coolbrith's San Francisco: garmented in fire

The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 began on April 18 shortly after 5 a.m. and lasted between 45 and 60 seconds, not including several aftershocks. Though its range was massive, it was labeled as a San Francisco phenomenon because of the massive fires it spawned there. Among the thousands affected was poet/librarian Ina Coolbrith, born Josephine Anne Smith, whose home was destroyed, along with all her possessions (including the manuscript for a tell-all book which is believed would have revealed her affairs with other California writers like Joaquin Miller and Bret Harte). Also among the items lost were some 3,000 books, including signed editions from her friends, as well as correspondence with literary figures like Mark Twain and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. She was only able to save her pet cat.

Coolbrith's popularity in the California literary scene inspired several attempts to assist her financially. Twain offered autographed photographs of himself to sell, social clubs sponsored dinners or book sales in her honor, and some even pushed the state legislature to offer Coolbrith a pension. Years later, she was named the first poet laureate of California. The disaster somehow spurred Coolbrith to write more poetry than ever before. Among her lines from this period was a poem inspired by the earthquake and fire, "San Francisco — April 18, 1906":

In ended days, a child, I trod thy sands,
    The sands unbuilded rank with bush and brier
And blossom—chased the sea-foam on thy strands,
    Young city of my love and my desire!

I saw thy barren hills against the skies,
    I saw them topped with minaret and spire,
On plain and slope thy myriad walls arise,
    Fair city of my love and my desire!

With thee the Orient touched heart and hands:
    The world's rich argosies lay at thy feet;
Queen of the fairest land of all the lands—
    Our sunset-glory, proud and strong and sweet!

I saw thee in thine anguish! tortured, prone.
    Rent with the earth-throes, garmented in fire!
Each wound upon thy breast upon my own,
    Sad city of my love and my desire!

Gray wind-blown ashes, broken, toppling wall
    And ruined hearth—are these thy funeral pyre.
Black desolation covering as a pall—
    Is this the end, my love and my desire?

But I —shall see thee ever as of old!
    Thy wraith of pearl, wall, minaret, and spire,
Framed in the mists that veil thy Gate of Gold,
    Lost city of my love and my desire!

Mulligan: Sing a song of the long ago

Judge James H. Mulligan was born in Lexington, Kentucky, almost literally just on the other side of the hill from the town of Hustonville. As a poet who almost exclusively celebrated his home state in his writing, it was likely only a matter of time before he wrote about that small central Kentucky town nicknamed "The Crossroads." His poem "Over the Hill to Hustonville" was published in the Lexington Leader on April 4, 1909. Some have called it his first widely read poem:

Over the hill to Hustonville,
   Past mead and vale and waving grain
With fleecy clouds and glad sunshine
   And the balm of the coming rain;
On where hidden beneath the hill,
In the widening vale below —
Chime and smith and distant herd
   Sing a song of the long ago.

Over the hill to Hustonville
   Where silent fields are sad and brown,
And the crow's lone call is blended
   With the anvil beat of the town;
Where sweet the hamlet life flows on,
And the doors ever open wide,
Welcome the worn and wandering
   To the ingle and cheer inside.

Over the hill to Hustonville
   I knew and loved as a child,
A scene that yet lights up to me
   With a radiant glow and mild;
With drowsy lane and quiet street,
Gables quaint and the houses gray,
Ancient inn with battered sign,
   And an air of the far-away.

Over the hill to Hustonville
   Where men are yet sturdy and strong
As were their sires in days long past —
   As true as their flint-locks long.
And maids are shy and soft of speech —
As the wild-rose, lithsome and true,
Eyes alight as the coming dawn,
   Softly blue, as their skies are blue.

Some — sometime — in the bye and bye,
   With all my life-won riches rare —
Dead hopes and faded memories —
   A silken floss of baby hair;
Fast locked close within my heart —
Worn of strife and the empty quest —
I'll over the hill to Hustonville,
   To dream ever — and rest — and rest.

Despite those final thoughts, Mulligan did not rest in Hustonville, but died and was buried in his home town of Lexington, only about six years after this poem was published. Poetry for him was a sort of second career, started after many years in politics and the law. For a time, he served as consul-general to Samoa (where he befriended Robert Louis Stephenson).

Gilman: tell you what I think of you

After the turn of the century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman began producing her own monthly magazine in New York, The Forerunner, which she wrote and edited single-handedly. Although it did well considering it was a one-person production, she often sought to republish her work in periodicals with broader circulation. Such was the case with her story "An Unwilling Interview," first published in The Forerunner in April 1912 and republished in the Woman's Journal (published by Alice Stone Blackwell) on March 29, 1913.

The story features a woman named Ellen Carlyle who has come from rural Idaho to visit her sister, now Mrs. Johnson and living in the big city. But all is not well in the Johnson household. Ellen's newly married nephew Worth Johnson has been the subject of a public scandal. It turns out, the local newspaper publisher is a rival of the elder Mr. Johnson, a reported millionaire, and this rival has created the controversy out of spite. Though Mrs. Johnson acknowledges the publisher's lackey reporters are not directly to blame, her sister notes that they still  should be held responsible.

Aunt Ellen visits the home of her nephew and his wife, an innocent and pretty young shopgirl. While her husband is at work, she has locked herself in her apartment to fend off reporters and photographers, including some who try to trick her. She made the mistake of giving a few quotes, without knowing she was being interviewed, and the publisher has twisted those words into scandal. While Aunt Ellen chats with the bride, a dedicated reporter breaks in through a door using a knife. It turns out to be the same reporter that had tricked her into giving him quotes. Without skipping a beat, he notes the newspaper he represents, and begins his questioning.

Aunt Ellen hardly hesitates before forcing the man into a chair and tying him down. She gives the surprised reporter a stern lecture on the harm he has caused. She says:

"In your original interview with her, by using her innocence and inexperience to gather material from, she herself is made to strike a blow at her husband’s happiness—a refinement of cruelty not used by the Apaches. They torture men and also women, but they do not use the woman to torture the man with. Your master does. In order to accomplish this purpose all common decency must be ignored, all privacy, all delicacy, all respect for personal freedom. This little bride is a prisoner on account of the staring cameras that wait outside. She can not rest because of the noise of her assailants."

Aunt Ellen notes that, though there is no law preventing his behavior, what this reporter and others have done is more than criminal. He begins to blush as he realizes the truth. "Cruel, isn’t it?" she asks, "To tie you up—helpless—and tell you what I think of you." Once the reporter learns his lesson, Aunt Ellen lets him go.

The story, with two "unwilling interviews," was aimed at the journalism style of people like William Randolph Hearst, who stopped at nothing for sensational stories. Gilman, in creating her own independent newspaper, had been striking against the Hearst system and its influence. Due to financial concerns, however, she eventually ceased publishing The Forerunner in 1916.

*I learned much about this independent journal by Gilman, including the date of the republication of "An Unwilling Interview," from Denise D. Knight's essay "Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Randolph Hearst, and the Practice of Ethical Journalism," collected in Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Her Contemporaries: Literary and Intellectual Contexts (University of Alabama Press, 2004).

Death of Hovey: end his night of woe

Richard Hovey died in a New York hospital on February 24, 1900, at the age of 35. Born in Normal, Illinois in 1864, he grew up mostly in Washington, D.C., then enrolled at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where he graduated in 1885. Hovey was an ambitious student, editing two student publications, giving the commencement oration, being elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and writing a version of the school song.

Even so, Hovey struggled to find a career. He abandoned both acting and the ministry before returning to his earlier hobby of writing. According to some accounts, he looked the part of a writer: flamboyantly dressed with a velvet jacket and flowing silk tie. Some have called him an American attempt at Oscar Wilde. His first books of, as they called it, "vagabond" poetry, were co-written with Canadian poet Bliss Carman. Other books by Hovey included dramatic updates of Arthurian legends.

After his death, his wife Henriette Hovey edited a final book, To the End of the Trail (1908), which included, with one exception, poems which had never been published in Hovey's lifetime, as well as a substantial number of translations from, among others, French poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Perhaps for his death an earlier poem would make for more appropriate reading: his poem "Dead" is dated 1890, for example. But for now, instead, here is "World and Poet" (1892):

"Sing to us, Poet, for our hearts are broken;
Sing us a song of happy, happy love,
Sing of the joy that words leave all unspoken, —
The lilt and laughter of life, oh sing thereof I
Oh, sing of life, for we are sick and dying;
Oh, sing of joy, for all our joy is dead;
Oh, sing of laughter, for we know but sighing;
Oh, sing of kissing, for we kill instead!"
How should he sing of happy love, I pray,
Who drank love's cup of anguish long ago?
How should he sing of life and joy and day,
Who whispers Death to end his night of woe?
    And yet the Poet took his lyre and sang,
    Till all the dales with happy echoes rang.

At the time of his death, Hovey was being treated for testicular cancer. After surgery, he apparently suffered a heart attack. He was buried with his mother's family in North Andover, Massachusetts.

Souls of Black Folk: the grain of truth

Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.

I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there.

Thus opens the preface (or, as the titled it, "The Forethought") of The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, dated from Atlanta, Georgia on February 1, 1903. The book, a major title in African American writing, offers a series of essays on contemporary concerns for black Americans – or, as Du Bois says it, "I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive." He ends his preface by asking if he needs to be clear that he is one of the "black folk" in question ("bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh").

Portions of the chapters had been previously published in esteemed journals like The Atlantic Monthly, The New World, and the revived Dial. Making it even more literary, Du Bois opens each chapter with a lyrical epigraph quoting, among others, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, William Vaughn Moody, plus Lord Byron, Friederich Schiller, and Elizabeth Barret Browning. Further, each chapter includes music from traditional slave songs, intentionally creating a tension between the high culture art of poetry and the history of repression and enslavement.

In his first chapter, Du Bois says the book is a response to the unasked question, "How does it feel to be a problem?" He argues that black people in America have a long history to overcome before they can be joyful souls. Their struggle did not end with Emancipation, he makes clear. The book ends with a response to his preface, titled "The Afterthought" (italicized here as it was first published):

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest wonderful. Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare. Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed

Death of Randall: I slumber soon

Though he was born in Baltimore and started his career in Louisiana for much of his career, it was in August, Georgia that James Ryder Randall died on January 15, 1908. He had just turned 69 years old only two weeks earlier. He is mostly known for "Maryland, My Maryland," a now-controversial poem written to his native state urging them to join the Confederacy during the Civil War.

As that war began, Randall was teaching at Poydras College in Louisiana; he could not enlist due to health problems. He became an editor and journalist, publishing various poems here and there, though none achieved the fame of "Maryland, My Maryland." That song was frequently included on lists of "most patriotic songs" alongside the most famous writings of Julia Ward Howe and Francis Scott Key (apparently intended without irony).

After the war, he moved to Georgia and Randall's anti-Union sentiments abated somewhat. He hoped the Northerners (whom he had previously referred to as "scum") would accept the "rebels" back into the fold. Still, the majority of his known verses glorify the South and the Southern cause, which is said to have inspired many people in those states. Even after the War ended, he viewed Confederate soldiers as more honorable and more worthy of adoration (even to the detriment of Union soldiers, as is both the literal and metaphorical case with his poem "At Arlington"). These themes earned him the nickname "The Poet of the Lost Cause." For this post, here is his poem "After a Little While":

              After a little while,
When all the glories of the night and day
              Have fled for aye,
From Friendship's glance and Beauty's winsome smile,
              I pass away,
              After a little while.

              After a little while,
The snow will fall from time and trial shocks
              Down these dark locks;
Then gliding onward to the Golden Isle,
              I pass the rocks,
              After a little while

              After a little while,
Perchance, when youth is blazoned on my brow,
              As Hope is now,
I fade and quiver in this dim defile,
              A fruitless bough,
              After a little while.

              After a little while,
And clouds that shimmer on the robes of June
              And vestal moon,
No more my vagrant fancies can beguile—
              I slumber soon,
              After a little while.

              After a little while,
The birds will serenade in bush and tree,
              But not for me;
On billows duskier than the gloomy Nile
              My barque must be—
              After a little while.

              After a little while,
The cross will glisten and the thistles wave
              Above my grave,
              And planets smile;
Sweet Lord! then pillowed on Thy gentle breast,
              I fain would rest,
              After a little while.

Shortly after Randall's death, friends gathered his various scraps of poetry (which he had given to them when he was last in Baltimore) and published them in a compilation. Much of poetry from his 20s, amid the background of Civil War, are unsurprisingly focused on that conflict. His later poetry became more deeply religious, as in "Resurgam," the final entry in his posthumous collection. In 1936, a monument to Randall was placed in Augusta, the city where he died.

Death of Ik Marvel: effervescence of the spirit

Donald Grant Mitchell was 84 when he died on December 15, 1908. His readers knew him better by his pen name, Ik Marvel. Born in Norwich, Connecticut, and attended Yale, where he edited the literary magazine and gave the commencement oration when he graduated in 1841. He often reflected on his Yale years in his writing, which was appreciated for its informality and wholesomeness. He published two books with little notice in the 1840s. Then, after a tour of Europe, he published two books back to back, Reveries of a Bachelor (1851) and A Dream Life (1851), which were impressively successful. He continued publishing articles and stories for newspapers and magazines. By 1907, the year before his death, he printed his collected works, which filled 15 volumes.

But Mitchell was never long healthy. He was a sickly boy from his youth and, in his adult life, he frequently complained of pulmonary problems. Still, he lived a varied and interesting life, serving for a time as Consul to Venice, edited at least two periodicals in New York, became a landscape gardener and architect, and was granted a Doctor of Laws from Yale in 1878 (he also dedicated the university's Woodbridge Hall, taught a course off and on, and had his portrait hanging in the dining hall for a time). An area of New Haven, Edgewood, was named after his home.

By his 80s, Mitchell was significantly less active. When doctors presumed he had a hemorrhage in his lungs, Mitchell knew the end was near, even as he became less cognizant of his surroundings. Looking out the window of his home of 50 years one day, he said, "I used to know this place, and it was beautiful." He died in his library. He was buried in Woodbridge, Connecticut, and marked with a headstone of his own design. From A Dream Life:

Death levels the capacities of the living as it levels the strength of its victims. It is as grand to the man as to the boy; its teachings are as deep for age as for infancy.

You may learn its manner, and estimate its approaches; but when it comes, it comes always with the same awful front that it wore to your boyhood. Reason and Revelation may point to rich issues that unfold from its very darkness; yet all these are no more to your bodily sense, and no more to your enlightened hope, than those foreshadowings of peace which rest like a halo on the spirit of the child as he prays in guileless tones,—Our Father, Who Art In Heaven!

It is a holy and a placid grief that comes over you;—not crushing, but bringing to life from the grave of boyhood all its better and nobler instincts. In their light your wild plans of youth look sadly misshapen; and in the impulse of the hour you abandon them; holy resolutions beam again upon your soul like sunlight; your purposes seem bathed in goodness. There is an effervescence of the spirit that carries away all foul matter, and leaves you in a state of calm that seems kindred to the land and to the life whither the sainted mother has gone.

This calm brings a smile in the midst of grief, and an inward looking and leaning toward that Eternal Power which governs and guides us;—with that smile and that leaning, sleep comes like an angelic minister, and fondles your wearied frame and thought into that repose which is the mirror of the Destroyer.

Death of Cawein: let us sleep, lass

Madison Cawein had been unconscious for some 87 hours before he finally died at 12:25 a.m. on December 8, 1914. He was 49 years old. His last act had been eating breakfast with his family before heading to the bathroom to shave. He locked the door and almost immediately slipped and hit his head on the side of the bath tub. His wife had to call for help to break open the door. His obituary reported that the accidental fall caused a blood clot in his brain. Family and physicians kept by his bedside for those several days, hoping he would wake up at any moment. He never did.

The Kentucky poet had, by then, earned a reputation both locally and nationally as a nature poet. Cawein himself, however, had grander hopes and wrote ambitious works that challenged the evolving world of American poetry after the turn of the century. Many of his works were politically charged, though these were generally ignored in favor of his verses celebrating his rural home state. He died in relative poverty.

Cawein left behind his wife Gertrude McKelvey (it was her birthday on the day of his death) as well as his young son Preston, who later legally changed his name to Madison Cawein II. He was buried in Louisville at Cave Hill Cemetery. Many of the articles reporting his death cited his poem "At the End of the Road" as a fitting final tribute to the poet:

This is the truth as I see it, my dear,
       Out in the wind and the rain;
They who have nothing have little to fear—
       Nothing to lose or to gain.
Here by the road at the end o' the year,
Let us sit down and drink of our beer,
Happy-Go-Lucky and her Cavalier,
       Out in the wind and the rain.

Now we are old, oh, isn't it fine,
       Out in the wind and the rain?
Now we have nothing, why snivel and whine?
       What would it bring us again?
When I was young I took you like wine,
Held you and kissed you and thought you divine—
Happy-Go-Lucky, the habit's still mine,
       Out in the wind and the rain.

Oh, my old Heart, what a life we have led,
       Out in the wind and the rain!
How we have drunken and how we have fed!
       Nothing to lose or to gain.
Cover the fire now; get we to bed.
Long was the journey and far has it led.
Come, let us sleep, lass, sleep like the dead.
       Out in the wind and the rain.

Elmore: Masons, you are at home

When the corner stone was first laid out for the new Masonic Temple in Crawfordsville, Indiana, local poet James B. Elmore was inspired to write a poem for the building in progress. His poem, "Laying the Corner Stone," was written October 31, 1901, the month after the actual cornerstone had been laid:

Workmen, lay the stone;
     Lay it good and firm,
That Masons, as they come,
     May of our wisdom learn.

Love is the tie that binds
     The hearts of mortal man;
With compass and with square
     We lay this stone so grand.

Master, thou hast wrought
     A work that'll last for aye.
This is the purpose sought;
     Your love cast not away.

God grant this temple rise
     Heavenward with gilded dome.
Go seek and win the prize.
     Masons, you are at home.

We consecrate to-day
     This noble work of art;
We must our homage pay,
     Binding our hands and heart.

O God, to thee we pray;
     Let friendship be our creed.
Cast, cast none away;
     But help, help those in need.

Born and raised on a farm near Alamo, Indiana (the same town as fellow poet Noah J. Clodfelter), Elmore became a teacher but admitted, "It always seemed to be a part of my nature to write poetry." He also admitted he never rewrote his poems once he finished them, saying too much of the original feeling was lost in every edit.

The Masonic Lodge in Crawfordsville counted among its members best-selling author Lew Wallace. When the building was completed in 1904, Wallace spoke at its dedication. The chapter in the town had started some 60 years earlier and the building still stands today. Despite the poetic imagery, the lodge has never had a golden dome.

Had I a thousand lives to give: Memorializing the Boy Hero of the Confederacy

Sam Davis became a courier for the Confederacy after his time as a soldier ended in injury. In November 1863, he was found by the Union Army secreting Union battle plans. He refused to name his accomplice, and his alleged response to his captors became legendary: "If I had a thousand lives to live, I would give them all rather than to betray a friend." Supposedly, even as they were about to hang him as a spy, they offered him another opportunity to save his own life by giving them information. He refused and was hanged. He was 21 years old.

The incident and Davis's commitment to his beliefs inspired many in the South, even after the Civil War. His youth and resiliency inspired his nickname as the "Boy Hero of the Confederacy." On October 11, 1906, nearly 43 years after Davis's capture and execution, local citizens led mainly by women unveiled a statue of Davis in Pulaski, Tennessee near the spot of his death (pictured above shortly after its unveiling; incidentally, the same town has infamous notoriety as the founding place of the Ku Klux Klan). Read at that ceremony was a poem by Alabama-born poet John Trotwood Moore. In fact, Moore's poem, "Sam Davis," had already been published and its popularity helped spread support for the monument and increased Davis's status in collective memory of Tennessee.

"Tell me his name and you are free,"
The General said, while from the tree
The grim rope dangled threat'ningly.

The birds ceased singing—happy birds.
That sang of home and mother-words.
The sunshine kissed his cheek—dear sun:
It loves a life that's just begun!
The very breezes held their breath
To watch the fight twixt life and death.
And O, how calm and sweet and free.
Smiled back the hills of Tennessee!
Smiled back the hills, as if to say,
"O, save your life for us to-day."

"Tell me his name and you are free,"
The General said, " and I shall see
You safe within the rebel line—
I'd love to save such life as thine."

A tear gleamed down the ranks of blue—
(The bayonets were tipped with dew).
Across the rugged cheek of war
God's angels rolled a teary star.
The boy looked up—'twas this they heard:
"And would you have me break my word?"

A tear stood in the General's eye!
"My boy, I hate to see thee die
Give me the traitor's name and fly!"

Young Davis smiled, as calm and free
As he who walked on Galilee:
"Had I a thousand lives to live.
Had I a thousand lives to give,
I'd lose them, nay, I'd gladly die
Before I'd live one life, a lie!"
He turned—for not a soldier stirred—
"Your duty, men—I gave my word."

The hills smiled back a farewell smile.
The breeze sobbed o'er his hair awhile,
The birds broke out in glad refrain,
The sunbeams kissed his cheek again—
Then, gathering up their blazing bars.
They shook his name among the stars.

O Stars, that now his brothers are,
O Sun, his sire in truth and light.
Go tell the list'ning worlds afar
Of him who died for truth and right!
For martyr of all martyrs he
Who dies to save an enemy!

The poem obviously romanticizes the event, showing that the very landscape of Tennessee supported his actions and his decisions. Even the enemy regrets such a strong, young hero should die. The monument of Davis equally romanticizes the subject, showing him with arms crossed defiantly and fearlessly. Whether or not these depictions are entirely accurate is irrelevant; Sam Davis was one of many examples of Southerners creating larger-than-life legends about the Confederacy to give it a positive image.

A model prisoner, willing, obedient, faithful

William Sidney Porter was released from the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus [pictured] on July 24, 1901. Found guilty of embezzlement from the bank where he was employed in Austin, Texas, Porter had been sentenced to five years but served only three and a three months. While incarcerated, he turned to his pen to earn a little income as a writer in support of his daughter; in doing so, he chose the pseudonym O. Henry.

Friends and admirers maintained that Porter was innocent throughout the trial; Porter himself offered little one way or another. "I never had so non-communicative a client," recalled one of his lawyers. "He would tell me nothing." His reticence may have been in part due to the recent death of his wife. He had fled the country and moved to Honduras to avoid facing charges but her illness drew him back. She died almost exactly four years before his release. His release was expedited in part because of his willingness to serve as a pharmacist at the prison, earning him much respect for his hard work and commitment to his duties.

Immediately after his sentencing, Porter assured his mother-in-law that he was not guilty "of wrongdoing in that bank matter." He and others believed he should have been acquitted (though it is difficult to explain why he fled the country as an innocent man). "I naturally am crushed by the result [of the verdict]," he wrote, but he said he cared little for public opinion but wish "I would have a few of my friends still believe that there is some good in me." One employee of the prison noted that Porter did not speak of his conviction and seemed "weighed down by his imprisonment" but that he was "a model prisoner, willing, obedient, faithful."

Some of the stories by "O. Henry" were inspired by conversations with inmates and employees of the prison, allegedly including "The Ethics of Pig." In that story, later part of the collection The Gentle Grafter, the narrator Jefferson Peters chats with a man who makes his living by scamming rich people out of their money. In an innocent town called Mount Nebo, which he describes as being like the Garden of Eden, though no one had known "that Adam had been dispossessed," he sees his opportunity. The town was free of crime and immortality — with the exception of a man named Rufe Tatum, a man convicted of manslaughter who was set to be released that day. Peters sees a potential partner in crime in the man (who is best known as a hog thief) but Tatum forgets his role in their money-making plan and instead steals a pig from a circus. When Peters sees an ad for a reward for the stolen pig, he buys it off Tatum for $800. When he goes to turn in the pig, however, he learns the ad is a fake and Tatum has run off with his money. "So there, you see," said Jefferson Peters, in conclusion, "how hard it is ever to find a fair-minded and honest business-partner."

Johnson: She dwelt within a lifelong dream

Robert Underwood Johnson spent his life in the world of publishing, starting off in the periodical industry in the 1870s, before becoming ambassador to Italy in the early 20th century. He was an author, editor, poet, and fought for international copyright and preservation of historic sites and places with natural beauty. He befriended, among others, Nikola Tesla, John Muir, as well as literary figures like Edmund Clarence Stedman and James Whitcomb Riley. Many of his poems are addressed to these friends — and to some who were less famous. His poem to "A Teacher" was dedicated to "The Beautiful Memory Of One Who Gave Her Life To Her Work" and was read at the National Education Association convention in Madison Square Garden in New York, July 6, 1916:

Go praise the Hero, ye who may:
   I sing the Teacher,—one for whom
The morrow was but more to-day,—
Whose fainting labor showed the way
   To pluck one's gladness from his doom.

The leisure others gave to joy
   She gave to toil: to fill the day
With wine of wisdom her employ.
She, once as merry as a boy,
   Had long forgotten how to play.

I see her when the scurrying band
   Have left her, weary and alone,
Her pale cheek pillowed on her hand,
Watching the wistful evening land
   Without repining, tear, or moan.

Mayhap her spirit, never sad,
   (Ah, what a challenge memory stirs!)
Demanded why grim fate forbade
Her motherhood, who gave each lad
   The love she might have given hers.

She dwelt within a lifelong dream
   Of seeing lands of far romance,—
Of loitering by Arno's stream,
Of catching Athens' sunset gleam
   That can alone its fame enhance.

Still, an uncloistered nun she went,
   With naught more fretful than a sigh,
And in her happy task she spent
Her sweetness, like some rose's scent
   In sacred treasury laid by.

Her pure devotion did not gauge
   Her service by her daily need;
And not her scanty, grudging wage,
Nor spectre of forsaken Age,
   Could take the beauty from her creed.

She faced her calling as it stood—
   Incessant, onerous, obscure;
Content if she but sometime could
Be silent partner with the Good,
   Whose victory was to her so sure.

She knew that all who reach the height
   The path of sympathy have trod;
And pondered, many a wakeful night,
How she could aid with gentle might
   The unseen miracles of God.

What though she might not wait the fruit?
   What though she went before the flower?
She gave the timbre to the lute,
And in the voice that else were mute
   Divined the rare, supernal power.

Of all she lent her strength, a few
   Shall wear her name as amulet.
How many more who struggle through,
Remembering not to whom 'tis due,
   Shall still keep memory of the debt!

Oh, could we know of life the whole
   Hid record, what an envied place
Were yours upon the honor scroll,
Ye faithful sentries of the soul,
   Ye childless mothers of the race!

Death of Gibson: Ungodly Woman of the Nineteenth Century

Ella Elvira Gibson was 80 years old when she died in Barre, Massachusetts on March 5, 1901. Throughout her life, she was a teacher, reformer, public lecturer, poet, and even served as a chaplain during the Civil War.

After the war, the majority of her writing was focused on advancing the Free Thought movement. She particularly spoke out against the rigid dogmas of most Christian sects. Her supporters called her "a valiant worker on behalf of mental emancipation" (and even they admitted she was "a radical of the radicals"). Her obituary in the Free Thought Magazine even called her the female John the Baptist of Free Thought.

One of the many reform movements in which she was involved was for women's rights. She frequently criticized the Bible as a text that degraded women, culminating in her book The Godly Women of the Bible, listed as "by an Ungodly Woman of the Nineteenth Century." In that book, she wrote: "Christianity is an insult to the wisdom of the nineteenth century. To place before its progress and development a leader, ruler, king, savior, god, whose knowledge was less than a modern five-year-old school girl, is an outrage upon humanity." To the critics who called it obscene, she responded that God's word was obscene. Her poetry was decidedly less radical, including "The Star of Friendship":

O, what to me is golden treasure!
   O, what to me is famed renown!
O, what to me is worldly pleasure!
   O, what to me is beauty's crown!

For thieves may steal my golden treasure;
   And tongues may blast my famed renown —
Or death may end my worldly pleasure,
   And stars may fall from beauty's crown.

O, this shall be my golden treasure!
   O, this shall by my famed renown!
O, this shall be my sweetest pleasure!
   One star to own in friendship's crown!

Emma Lazarus and "the Hebraic strain"

When Emma Lazarus died at age 38 in 1887, the copyright of her poems was left in the care of her older sister, Josephine. She accordingly published a two-volume complete poems collection a year later. According to her biographical introduction, Josephine believed her sister was deeply private, but celebrate the family's Jewish heritage: "To be born a Jewess was a distinction to Emma Lazarus, and she in turn conferred distinction upon her race."

Emma's other sister Annie did not agree. 40 years after that statement, Annie was approached by a publisher who wanted to highlight Emma's various poems and translations celebrating her Jewish faith. On February 25, 1926, she declined permission, writing:

There has been a tendency on the part of her public to overemphasize the Hebraic strain of her work, giving it this quality of sectarian propaganda, which I greatly deplore, for I understand this to have been merely a phase in my sister's development, called for by righteous indignation at the tragic happenings of those days. Then, unfortunately, owing to her untimely death, this was destined to be her final word.

Annie had lived with Emma in Europe for her final years and, later, converted to Anglo-Catholicism herself. Her statement about her sister remains controversial — whether it truly reflected Emma's beliefs or Annie's.

In fact, Emma Lazarus's faith has become deeply intertwined with her public image since her death. In various biographical encyclopedias, her Jewish faith is nearly always mentioned; one referred to her melancholy as the result of "the unconscious expression of the inherited sorrow of her race" and a Jewish encyclopedia called her the "most distinguished literary figure produced by American Jewry." After the turn of the century, the New York Tribune called her "the most talented woman the Jewish race has produced in this country." Emma Lazarus and Judaism remain deeply interconnected even today (the image above is from the American Jewish Historical Society). In fact, Lazarus did have a strong "phase" at the end of her life in which she was deeply devoted to her Jewish faith, learned Hebrew, and translated poetry from that language. However, her faith was not exclusive to that period, nor was her religion her only interest.

*The majority of the information in this post was gleaned from a chapter called "The Myth" in Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters (1995) by Bette Roth Young.