Irving and Hoffman: the poor little fellow

A little boy suffered an accident in New York resulting in the loss of his leg, prompting a letter from Liverpool dated November 23, 1817. The little boy was future author Charles Fenno Hoffman; the letter-writer was Washington Irving. Writing to Hoffman's mother, Irving offered his sympathy:

It is with utmost concern that I have heard of the accident that has happened to Charles, not merely on his account, but on account of the shock it must have given to your feelings, already so much harassed by repeated afflictions. I hope the poor little fellow has recovered his health, and that you have been enabled to sustain this new trial.

Irving knew the family through Matilda Hoffman, the half-sister of Charles, to whom Irving was engaged when she was a teenager. She died in 1809, but Irving kept in touch with the family (and, incidentally, never married). His letter shows a genuine concern — and, of course, impressive literary ability, made all the more interesting because his fiction rarely showed such sentimentality:

The heart must battle with its own sorrows, and subdue them in silence; and there are some minds, as there are bodies, of such pure and healthful temperament, that they have within their natures a healing balm to medicine their own wounds and bruises. To the soothing influence of such a spirit, my dear friend, I trust for your once more recovering tranquility after all the sorrows and bereavements you have suffered.

Irving also offered an update on his own circumstances, worried that his future prospects "are somewhat dark and uncertain." Two years later, he would begin publishing the work which would put him at the forefront of early American writing: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Readers would have to wait much longer before Hoffman, then nine years old, offered his own literary contributions to the world.

Down goes his body and up flies his name

Just a few days before the publication of Mardi, his third book, Herman Melville wrote to Evert Augustus Duyckinck on April 5, 1849: "All ambitious authors should have ghosts capable of revisiting the world, to snuff up the steam of adulation, which begins to rise strengthening as the Sexton throws his last shovelfull on him —Down goes his body and up flies his name."

Though this was a general statement, it turned out to be prophetic for Melville. Though his first two books, Typee and Omoo, quickly became popular and were financially successful, the author was soon typecast and his subsequent work failed to garner significant attention. Most readers expect the same harrowing adventures based on the author's own life; Mardi, however, broke the trend and was pure fiction. One of Melville's biggest contemporary failures combined real life inspiration with fiction. He called this novel Moby-Dick, now recognized as an important American milestone. That recognition, however, took some time, many years after the last "shovelfull" of dirt had been dumped onto his corpse; it was not until the early 20th century that a Melville rediscovery and revival began.

By the time Melville wrote his letter to Duyckinck, a mutual friend and member of the New York literati named Charles Fenno Hoffman had been declared insane. Melville philosophizes on the point: "Poor Hoffman... This going mad of a friend or acquaintance comes straight home to every man who feels his soul in him, which but few men do. For in all of us lodges the same fuel to light the same fire." Indeed, later in Melville's life, his unhappy marriage led to some in-laws suggesting he be committed for insanity. In his letter, Melville compares insanity with infancy: "In both conditions we are irresponsible and riot like gods without fear of fate—It is the climax of a wild night of revelry when the blood has been transmuted into brandy."

Even so, Melville says, those of us still with our wits must continue living our lives. "But live and push—tho' we put one leg forward ten miles is no reason the other must lag behind—no, that must again distance the other—and so we go till we get cramp and die."

Hoffman: let me see the blush divine

Though the New York poet/editor Charles Fenno Hoffman never married, and seemingly never had a significant lover in his life, he did write a poetic tribute simply titled "St. Valentine's Day," published in 1842. The poem is more of a celebration of loving nature than loving another person and notes that the date is often a transitional tease between the end of winter and the beginning of spring:

The snow yet in the hollow lies;
   But, where by shelvy hill 'tis seen,
In myriad rills it trickling flies
   To lace the slope with threads of green;
Down in the meadow glancing wings
   Flit in the sunshine round a tree,
Where still a frosted apple clings,
   Regale for early Chickadee:

And chestnut buds begin to swell,
   Where flying squirrels peep to know
If from the tree-top, yet, 'twere well
   To sail on leathery wing below—
As gently shy and timorsome,
   Still holds she back who should be mine;
Come, Spring, to her coy bosom, come,
   And warm it toward her Valentine!

Come, Spring, and with the breeze that calls
   The wind-flower by the hill-side rill,
The soft breeze that by orchard walls
   First dallies with the daffodil—
Come lift the tresses from her cheek,
   And let me see the blush divine,
That mantling there, those curls would seek
   To hide from her true Valentine.

Come, Spring, and with the Red-breast's note,
   That tells of bridal tenderness,
Where on the breeze he'll warbling float
   Afar his nesting mate to bless—
Come, whisper, 'tis not always Spring!
   When birds may mate on every spray—
That April boughs cease blossoming!
   With love it is not always May!

Come, touch her heart with thy soft tale,
   Of tears within the floweret's cup,
Of fairest things that soonest fail,
   Of hopes we vainly garner up—
And while, that gentle heart to melt,
   Like mingled wreath, such tale you twine,
Whisper what lasting bliss were felt
   In lot shared with her Valentine.

Birth of Hoffman: takes away a hope from life

Born in New York City on February 7, 1806, Charles Fenno Hoffman later had a short-lived career of influence among the New York literati as a novelist, poet, and editor. His life was full of hardship, certainly, and he outlived his fame.

In 1831, however, Hoffman was 25 years old and still unknown. Though he had passed the bar, he only rarely practiced law and instead hoped to become a writer. His poem "Birthday Thoughts" reflects his aspirations and, more importantly, his worry that fame will be fleeting, if it is ever achieved at all:

At twenty-five—at twenty-five,
  The heart should not be cold;
It still is young in deeds to strive,
  Though half life's tale be told;
And Fame should keep its youth alive,
  If Love would make it old.

But mine is like that plant which grew
  And wither'd in a night,
Which from the skies of midnight drew
  Its ripening and its blight—
Matured in Heaven's tears of dew,
  And faded ere her light.

Its hues, in sorrow's darkness born,
  In tears were foster'd first;
Its powers, from passion's frenzy drawn,
  In passion's gloom were nurs'd—
And perishing ere manhood's dawn,
  Did prematurely burst.

Yet all I've learnt from hours rife
  With painful brooding here
Is that, amid this mortal strife,
  The lapse of every year
But takes away a hope from life,
And adds to death a fear.

Despite his youth at the time, Hoffman already pessimistically considers his approaching death. Two years later, Hoffman was one of the founders of The Knickerbocker, a literary magazine that boasted contributions from Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and others. Hoffman relinquished his editorial duties to Lewis Gaylord Clark after only three issues. Two years after that, he published his first book, A Winter in the Far West, which documented his travels to Missouri and elsewhere. His work was cut short when, in 1849, he was declared insane.

Hoffman: let no more thy music flow!

Though he was promoted as one of the greatest of American writers in the 1840s, Charles Fenno Hoffman died in obscurity on June 7, 1884. Left with only one leg after a childhood accident, the New Yorker left a career as a lawyer to become a poet, novelist, travel writer, and magazine editor. His mental stability, however, was questioned.

After a short hospitalization, he accepted a government job in Washington, D.C. Within months, he was permanently institutionalized, beginning in 1849. The last 35 years of his life were spent in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the state asylum (his doctors apparently forced him to give up literary interests). It was in that hospital that he died at the age of 78.

His poem "No More—No More":

No more—no more of song to-night;
Oh, let no more thy music flow!
Those notes that once could wake delight,
Come o'er me like a spirit-blight,
A breathing of the faded past,
Whose freshest hopes to earth were cast
    Long, long ago.

A livelier strain! nay, play, instead,
That movement wild and low,
That chanting for the early dead
Which best beseems spring's blossoms fled,
A requiem for each tender ray
That from life's morning stole away-
    Long, long ago.

Hoffman: in a dreadful manner

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hoffman, Griswold, and 'The Poets and Poetry of America'

In a letter dated January 11, 1841, Charles Fenno Hoffman wrote to Rufus Wilmot Griswold about his personal biography. Griswold was preparing his important anthology The Poets and Poetry of America, a book which solidified its compiler as an influential arbiter of taste in American poetry, an advocate for "nationalism," and someone easily swayed by personal opinion. The book, published in 1842, collected over 80 poets in 476 pages. Each poet was introduced by a short biographical sketch.

Hoffman clarified to Griswold that, while editing his journal the American Monthly, he simultaneously contributed to the New Yorker, the Mirror, and "other journals, in all of which, among a variety of subjects, [I] wrote zealously in favor of international copyright." In the letter, Hoffman apologized for sounding egotistical. Griswold used much of Hoffman's wording in the final version of his biography.

When The Poets and Poetry of America was published, in fact, Griswold granted Hoffman more space than any other writer — a total of 45 poems (compared to three by Edgar Poe, 11 by Nathaniel Parker Willis, and 14 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). Hoffman's space allotment was double — yes, double — that of any other poet.

Which begs the question: Who the hell is Charles Fenno Hoffman?!?

Hoffman was a New York City-born author and poet. One-legged after an amputation at age 11, Hoffman helped establish the Knickerbocker Magazine (in honor of Washington Irving) in 1833. He published a couple travel books and a novel which fictionalized the so-called "Kentucky Tragedy." He published several volumes of poetry before going insane and being hospitalized in 1849. He spent 35 years in various insane asylums before dying in one in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1884.

Hoffman was never popular as a poet, even within his own New York sphere. Griswold admitted that he allowed his personal friendship with Hoffman to influence his over-representation in the book. In fact, Griswold's selections made for the staunchest criticism for The Poets and Poetry of America (which sold out three editions in six months). Modern scholars note the book is nothing more than "a graveyard of poets" because writers like the insane, one-legged Hoffman are now virtually unknown.