Death of Catharine Maria Sedgwick

Only a couple weeks before her death, writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick wrote to a friend that she had been "in a wretched state... I have been very poorly of late." Sedgwick was 77 years old; the major part of her career, including the novel Hope Leslie (1827), were decades behind her. "'Tis hard work," she wrote, "to be sick, helpless and useless!" She died about two weeks later on July 31, 1867.

Modern literary scholar Nina Baym argues that the majority of Sedgwick's fiction depicts a heroine "who has much to teach her readers but nothing to learn herself." Her female protagonists remain unaltered through the events of the novels. It was not until after Sedgwick's first successes, Baym argues, that women characters in American writing undergo a psychological struggle in their inner lives. But, she notes, if Sigourney "had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent her."

Unlike women writers like Lydia Sigourney or even Harriet K. Wilson, Sedgwick did not begin writing for financial need. Instead, her motivation seemed to be boredom. Between 1822 and 1837, she published eight novels (a ninth, Married or Single?, was published in 1857).

Those who praised Sedgwick included Edgar Allan Poe, who declared The Linwoods (1835) the greatest of her works. William Wells Brown renamed a character in an 1864 revision of his novel Clotel after The Linwoods. Rufus Wilmot Griswold praised her style for being "colloquial, picturesque, and marked by a facile grace which is evidently a gift of nature." Nathaniel Hawthorne called her "our most truthful novelist."

Higginson's milk diet

Known for frequently overworking himself, Thomas Wentworth Higginson soon paid the price of constant labor. By the autumn of 1895, he was bed-ridden for rest and living on a "milk diet" due to dyspepsia, or indigestion (he had a similar problem while a student at Harvard Divinity School, though he also noted his need to save money at the time). After eight weeks, he described having a rare treat — a raw egg — as being like "a whole Christmas dinner." Propped up on pillows during this illness, he wrote his book Cheerful Yesterdays.

On July 30, 1896, Higginson wrote in his journal: "Sent to printers first (new) instalment of narrative... Collapse... This involves putting back on milk diet and cessation of drives for a time."

This relapse also forced Higginson to give up some of his upcoming lectures and trips (one was planned for England). He was resigned to his condition and, in the same journal entry, speculated: "Very possibly semi-invalidism for the rest of my life. Still this to be quietly faced and recognized." Elsewhere, on the cover of this journal, he wrote: "Now that I begin to know a little, I die."

His concern was unfounded, however. Higginson soon recovered and made his trip to Europe after all. Even so, he noticed the positive aspect in his experience as a "semi-invalid." He had read 42 books during the period, for example, and his focus on writing allowed him to earn more money than ever before. Higginson lived for a couple decades longer before his death in 1911.

Herman Melville: the 'Sequel'

After dealing with allegations that his novel Typee was completely fictional, despite the author's claims that it was a true story, Herman Melville went about writing a sequel. One of the earliest references to the book which would become Omoo comes in a letter to his publisher dated July 28, 1846:

You remember you said something about anticipating the piracy that might be perpetrated on the 'Sequel,' by publishing an extract or two from it — which you said you would attend to — I meant to speak to you again about it, but forgot to do so.

Melville also notes that a "revised" edition of Typee was forthcoming, although he had a better term for this version:

The Revised (Expurgated? — Odious word!) Edition of 'Typee' ought to be duly announced — and as the matter (in one respect) is a little delicate, I am happy that the tact of Mr. [Evert] Duyckinck will be exerted on the occasion.

"Expurgated" was the correct term. The new edition of Typee included drastic changes like the removal of entire sections, most notably the entire "Appendix," and some unflattering descriptions of missionaries. But Melville inserted "The Story of Toby," the text which helped corroborate the voracity of the "true" tale.

The manuscript for Typee's sequel, Omoo, was completed by the end of 1846; the book was published in March 1847. As Melville noted in his letter, extracts were published in publications like The Literary World (edited by Evert A. Duyckinck) to whet the appetite of potential readers. Omoo is an account of Melville's experiences in the South Sea Islands after his rescue from the Valley of Typee. It was advertised as:

...the true sequel and counterpart of the author's popular production — Typee. The adventures in the present volume embrace both sea and land. The Nautical incidents of the book are extremely interesting, and the Rambles and Excursions on the Islands of Tahiti and Imeeo, most romantic and extraordinary.

Bryant: I gaze in sadness

On July 27, 1866, Frances Fairchild Bryant died at Cedarmere, sick for some time with "an obstruction of the bile, and water on the heart," according to the family physician. She was just under 70 years old. Her husband, the poet/journalist William Cullen Bryant was devastated, though her death was not unexpected. He wrote, "I think the wedded life of few men has been happier than mine" and referred to her as "my beloved wife and my loving companion for forty-five years and more." She was buried at Roslyn Cemetery the day after her death.

Bryant acknowledged that he always sought his wife's advice on each poem he wrote. "I found its success with the public to be precisely in proportion to the impression it made upon her." In fact, many of Bryant's works were directly inspired by his wife, including "October, 1866," a poem which described his Frances's chronic illness. That poem also served as the final chapter for a loose memoir Bryant wrote of his life; it has never been published. As Bryant wrote in the first paragraph:

What I write here is intended for my own eyes and those of my children... that it may revive in their minds a memory pleasant, though sad, of one who was most dear to them and who was, in all respects an example of goodness such as is rarely seen.

In the poem "October, 1866," Bryant first describes his wife's burial. In the fall, he returns to Roslyn Cemetery to visit Frances's grave; he brings her flowers and remembers their time together. Unable to stand being at Cedarmere alone, a month after the poem, in November 1866, he had to leave the country altogether for a time.

'Twas when the earth in summer glory lay,
  We bore thee to thy grave; a sudden cloud
Had shed its shower and passed, and every spray
  And tender herb with pearly moisture bowed...

Autumn is here; we cull his lingering flowers
  And bring them to the spot where thou art laid;
The late-born offspring of his balmier hours,
  Spared by the frost, upon thy grave to fade.

The sweet calm sunshine of October, now
  Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mould
The purple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough
  Drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold...

I gaze in sadness; it delights me not
  To look on beauty which thou canst not see;
And, wert thou by my side, the dreariest spot
  Were, oh, how far more beautiful to me!

*Information for this post was gleaned, in part, from Gilbert H. Muller's William Cullen Bryant: Author of America as well as Under Open Sky: Poets on William Cullen Bryant, edited by Nobert Krapf.

James Whitcomb Riley: every hope serene

In his early career as a poet, James Whitcomb Riley struggled to get attention. He approached several newspapers to print his works, particularly in his home state of Indiana. Soon, he became one of the state's most famous writers, earning the nickname of "The Hoosier Poet."

Yet, in 1879, he was 29 years old and still struggled (he is pictured at right at age 28). It took the publication of a play to convince newspapers to publish his poetry. One such publication was The Indianapolis Saturday Herald, which published four of his poems in its July 26, 1879 issue: "Last Words," "At Bay," "A Worn-Out Pencil," and "God Bless Us Every One." The latter two were later included in book-length poetry collections in the author's lifetime; the first two never were.

"At Bay" directly addresses "Fate," who the narrator is ready to either embrace or "strike blow for blow." Fate is an enemy in the poem, and its narrator offers harsh words of threatened violence and vengeance. "You have crouched along my track like a hound," the poem says, as Fate blocks "every hope serene." After years of experience, however, the narrator is now ready to confront Fate "hand or fist."

For something completely different, "Last Words" is written in the voice of a woman:

He left me for a foreign land:
  I could not even free
One little tear to gem the hand
  That God had give me;
For "I will follow soon, my dear,"
  I laughed with girlish air, —
"The sun that cheers our pathway here
  Shall beam upon us there!"

And so we parted... Listen, God! —
  I may not even free
One little tear to dew the sod
  Where, sleeping peacefully,
He waits in foreign lands — my dear!
  But prophecy and prayer, —
"The sun that cheers our pathways here
  Shall beam upon us — there!"

Brownson: But we give it up

The literary societies at Dartmouth College gathered to hear Ralph Waldo Emerson speak on July 24, 1838, about a year after Emerson's "Divinity School Address" at Harvard. "Literary Ethics," as the speech was titled, was soon published in pamphlet form, eliciting a critical response from fellow Transcendentalist Orestes Brownson (who, famously, later converted to Catholicism).

Brownson begins his review by attempting to summarize the speech. Realizing he was failing due to Emerson's own meandering thoughts, his review turns to parody. His attempt at summary ends abruptly:

But we give it up. We cannot analyze one of Mr. Emerson's discourses. He hardly ever has a leading thought, to which all the parts of his discourse are subordinate, which is clearly stated, systematically drawn out, and logically enforced. He is a poet rather than a philosopher —  and not always true even to the laws of poetry.

Emerson's speech was really about the role of the scholar in society. He suggests a form of asceticism or personal sacrifice. He says, for example, a "lust of display" is "fatal to the man of letters." And, as always, Emerson says humankind has not progressed as far as it should intellectually. He concludes:

Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another's dogmatism... Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not takeaway your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

*The above image of Brownson depicts him in his later years, as painted by George P. A. Healey in 1863. The original is in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian.

Birth of Sylvester Judd

Most in the circle of Transcendentalists were philosophers, religious leaders, essayists, and poets. Only one was primarily a novelist: Sylvester Judd, born on July 23, 1813.

Born in Westhampton in the western part of Massachusetts, Judd (like most Transcendentalists) studied at Harvard Divinity School and was influenced by the work of Thomas Carlyle and Goethe. He heard Ralph Waldo Emerson present his speech "The American Scholar" in 1837 and became friends with Jones Very. After graduating, he became a pastor in Maine. He was somewhat controversial: he was such a pacifist that he even condemned the American Revolution.

His novel, Margaret: A Tale of the Real and Ideal, was published in 1845 after at least four years of research and writing. Margaret Fuller called it a "work of great power and richness" and James Russell Lowell called it "the most emphatically American book ever written." The Utopian novel follows the daughter of a German musician who is raised in New England. Using a philosophy similar to Brook Farm, the community is transformed into a perfect world through hard work and love for all.

The work was almost never published but the manuscript survived a fire. It was finally published anonymously in one volume in an edition of 1000 copies.A second edition, published in 1851, included a preface by Judd (written in the third person) which responded to many of his critics:

The book was written out of his heart and hope... It is like an old-fashioned ride on horseback, where one may be supposed to enjoy leisure for climbing hills, and to possess curiosity for the trifles of the way... To those who have been glad at what the author has written, he extends the hope that they may never regret their gladness.

Suggestive pictures, or memory sketches

In Waltham, Massachusetts, James Freeman Clarke preached his first sermon on July 21, 1833. A half a century later, in 1883, he reflected on it:

It is just fifty years to-day since I preached my first sermon in Bernard Whitman's church in Waltham. I shall keep the anniversary by beginning the sketch of my life, which my friends have thought may be interesting. I have no remarkable events or adventures to record. But I have lived in an important period; have known many eminent men and distinguished women; have seen great changes in social life, in religious opinion, in private morals and public manners. If I can succeed in making a few suggestive pictures, or memory sketches, it may be a gratification to my children and friends, and possibly contribute matter for the future historian of this period.

The end result of Clarke's efforts was an autobiography of over 400 pages (with the help of Edward Everett Hale), describing the ever-changing world of 19th-century America. He relayed his experience with the Transcendentalists — people like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller. He wrote of his experience with Brook Farm — he bought the land of this failed experiment (never having been a member) and later donated it to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War (it became "Camp Andrew"). During that period, the Reverend Clarke preached to the troops training there.

After Clarke's death, Hale recorded that their mutual friend the Transcendentalist Frederic Henry Hedge said: "You do not get a true estimate of Clarke unless you see him as a poet. He approached all subjects from the poetical side... The rest of us have written as if we were philosophers. Clarke always wrote, no matter how dull a subject, as a poet writes." That first sermon that Clarke preached in Waltham used a phrase which Hale said was "the text of his life": "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."

My third excursion to the Maine woods

"I started my third excursion to the Maine woods Monday, July 20th, 1857, with one companion, arriving at Bangor the next day at noon." Thus wrote Henry David Thoreau in his book, The Maine Woods.

He and his one companion hoped to find a Native American to guide them through, but were told many had fled the area due to an outbreak of small pox. Thoreau finally found a man named Joseph Polis, "stoutly built, perhaps a little above the middle height, with a broad face, and, as others said, perfect Indian features and complexion." Thoreau asked if he knew a guide and "Joe" answered back, "Me like to go myself." He was hired.

Thoreau tried to strike up a conversation with Joe. "In answer to the various observations which I made by way of breaking the ice, he only grunted vaguely." Conversation got easier a little later on and the trio went on their excursion, mostly by canoe. Thoreau observed everything: the landscape, the vegetation, the animal life and, of course, the way Joe used language. He asked Joe the meaning of the word "Musketicook," the original name of the Concord River. "Dead-water," he replied. Thoreau agreed it was an appropriate name. Here, some of his observations about birds:

The birds sang quite as in our woods, — the red-eye, red-start, veery, wood-pewee, etc., but we saw no bluebirds in all our journey.... Ducks of various kinds — sheldrake, summer ducks, etc. — were quite common, and ran over the water before us as fast as a horse trots. Thus they were soon out of sight.

Fuller: that the anguish may be brief

Their trip was full of problems from the beginning. To save money, the family chose to leave Europe in a merchant freighter, the Elizabeth, with a crew accustomed to transporting cargo, not people. First delayed by rain, the ship was also delayed by an outbreak of smallpox which claimed the life of the captain, who was replaced by an inexperienced first mate. Then, within 100 yards of the shore of Fire Island, New York, the Elizabeth hit a sandbar and was heavily damaged. It was July 19, 1850, about 3:30 or 4:00 a.m.

It was there that, within sight of shore, the critic/feminist/reformer/editor/travel writer Margaret Fuller died, along with her husband Giovanni Ossoli and baby Angelino. Most of the crew survived and onlookers on shore waited patiently for cargo from the ship to arrive on shore for their plundering. The bodies of Margaret Fuller and her husband were never found, despite a search by both William Henry Channing and Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau was sent by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who years earlier hand-picked Fuller as the first editor of The Dial, the official journal of the Transcendentalists. Thoreau wrote back what some of the witnesses saw of the ship as it broke apart. He also noted how little of the family's belongings were found: "the broken desk... a large black leather trunk... a carpetbag... and one of his shoes are all the Ossoli effects known to have been found." The wreck of the Elizabeth would be sold for scrap the day he wrote the letter.

Fuller had ominous premonitions about her trip. She wrote at the time about "praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves." In fact, Angelino contracted smallpox at the same time as the Elizabeth's captain. If the boy did die, however, she asked that the whole family "may go together, and that the anguish may be brief." While delayed by rain, Fuller wrote to her mother back in Massachusetts, who she hadn't seen after a few years living in Europe (primarily Italy):

Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty.... I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. But, if God decrees otherwise, here and hereafter, my dearest mother, [I am] your loving child, Margaret.

Jackson/Holm: a mild form of hysteria

The publishing company founded in 1846 in New York as Baker & Scribner. After the death of Isaac Baker, his partner, Charles Scribner, bought the rest of the company. From then on, it was a family business. But, it was not until July 18, 1879 that a published book included the inscription of "Charles Scribner's Sons."

That first book was Saxe Holm's Stories (second series) by an anonymous writer, later revealed as Helen Hunt Jackson. Jackson typically used the pseudonym of "H.H." — though her true identity was not a secret by 1879 — and tried to keep "Saxe Holm" a distinct character.

Jackson's first stories as Holm were written while living in the same boardinghouse in Colorado as Thomas Wentworth Higginson and his wife. Jackson claimed that Higginson even helped edit or write a few of them. But Jackson wanted to keep her identity as Holm a secret from the public, confessing to Charlotte Cushman that she would stop writing if the secret was revealed. Cushman called her hypocritical and told her, "You have virtually drawn it upon yourself."

Jackson was so adamant about keeping Holm a secret in an attempt to disassociate herself from her more autobiographical or more politically-charged works as H.H. The author's own growing doubts about her ability as a writer were also a factor. The second series stories published by Scribner's had an additional problem: many featured a man and a woman who fell in love after one or the other was already married. Jackson felt some guilt about the close relationship she shared with Higginson at the time (who also introduced her to Emily Dickinson; both women were born in Amherst, Massachusetts).

The concern may have been irrelevant, as Holm's popularity was sinking as of this second series. One critic noted they seemed "as if recited by a person laboring under a mild form of hysteria."

Charles Scribner's Sons eventually became Simon and Schuster.

*Some information for this post comes from Helen Hunt Jackson: A Literary Life by Kate Phillips. The image above shows Jackson circa 1875, courtesy of the Tutt Library at Colorado College.

Cooper's Precaution manuscript

"I could write you a better book than that myself!" shouted James Fenimore Cooper, throwing aside a now-forgotten book — or, so legend has it. Family members laughed; Cooper didn't even like writing letters, let alone entire books. He set about doing so nonetheless. Family members were surprised and impressed — and encouraging, even suggesting it could be published. So he did.

In fact, Cooper was very controlling of the publishing details of what became his first book, Precaution. He insisted on a larger 10-point type (rather than the usual 8), for example, partly to make the relatively-short book appear longer. "I have written freely," he explained, "the same as I would talk — have aim'd at nothing but simplicity and clearness." However, clearness was Cooper's problem: the poor legibility in the manuscript he submitted to the typesetter (Cornelius S. Van Winkle, who also worked with Washington Irving). He didn't even break paragraphs (an attempt to save paper) and had to insert asterisks into his manuscript to mark them. The first handful of proof-sheets proved disastrous.

On July 17, 1820, after receiving the bulk of his proofs, Cooper concluded the typesetter had made "tremendous mistakes." He wrote two letters that day in response, showing an iron-hard grip in controlling the printing of his book, but disassociating himself for creating problems because of a sloppy manuscript.

Dialogue, for example, was not set apart, but flowed as normal prose. Cooper scolded the printer for typesetting exactly as he wrote it: "do not... be at all guided by my arrangements in the dialogue." The manuscript was also riddled with an overuse of dashes. "I like the frequent use of the dash — and believe they have ommitted it in one or two cases where I was at pains to insert it." Even so, however, Cooper arbitrarily skipped from dashes to commas — sometimes even in the same sentence: "The evening passed off as such evenings generally do—in gayety—listlessness—dancing—gaping, and heart-burnings." In fact, Cooper often ended sentences with dashes, and noted the typesetter should know which dashes should be replaced with periods.

The same day, July 17, Cooper sailed aboard a whaling vessel, where he would be out of touch for a month. When he returned, he was furious to learn that work on his book had stalled. The proofing process would be a long and hard one before Precaution finally saw print — and failed to garner much attention. His subject matter was British (and the book was published in England) because the author believed an American subject was of no interest.

*Much of the information in this post comes from the highly-detailed biography James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years by Wayne Franklin.

Brown: Joy! the hunted slave is free!

The Colored Citizens of Boston presented a silver pitcher to William Lloyd Garrison on July 16, 1849 "in grateful testimony of his undeviating devotion to the cause of universal emancipation." At the same meeting, the organization passed a resolution in honor of William Wells Brown, who was soon to leave for England to speak out against slavery: "God speed in his mission to Europe," the resolution said.

While overseas, Brown published a novel, Clotel: or, The President's Daughter — today considered the first novel by an African-American (though some historians question the validity of that title, considering it was published in England). It was published in three more versions over the next fifteen years (an unauthorized version also appeared in Dutch). If that's not impressive, he also published The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom, the first play by an African-American.

Born into slavery in Kentucky (the illegitimate son of the cousin of his white owner; people later remarked on his light skin), he was kept illiterate by his several owners as he was bounced from plantation to plantation. He finally escaped to Ohio at 19 or 20 years old. He later moved to Buffalo and assisted the Underground Railroad by bringing escaped slaves across Lake Erie to Canada. He began writing for journalistic presses, becoming one of the most widely-published African-American writers of the century. He jumped genres, from autobiography to fiction to drama to poetry to history.

Once he realized he had strong rhetorical abilities, he began lecturing. His aforementioned trip to England lasted five years. The book he published on that trip, Clotel, focuses on a mulatto slave, the fictional illegitimate child of Thomas Jefferson. After escaping from bondage, her slave-masters come searching for her but she chooses to take her own life rather than return to slavery (he wrote: "Joy! the hunted slave is free!"). The novel begins with a clear statement:

With the growing population of slaves in the Southern States of America, there is a fearful increase of half whites, most of whose fathers are slaveowners, and their mothers slaves. Society does not frown upon the man who sits with his mulatto child upon his knee, whilst its mother stands a slave behind his chair.

*Much of the information from this post was gleaned from William Wells Brown: A Reader, edited by Ezra Greenspan.

Wister: Grotesque and horrible

The relatively-forgotten writer Owen Wister was born on July 14, 1860 in Germantown outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1885, a cousin suggested he go west for health; his western experience had a profound impact and he became a storyteller of the American frontier. After the turn of the century, his major novel was The Virginian (1902), a cowboy novel dedicated to the author's friend Theodore Roosevelt.

Earlier, he was the editor of the National Lampoon at Harvard. Some of his earliest prose pieces were a bit on the whimsical side, including The Dragon of Wantley (1892). In its second edition, Wister included a few critical notices: "Grotesque and horrible;" "Some excellent moral lessons;" "If it has any lesson to teach we have been unable to find it;" and, my favorite, "One wonders why writer and artist should put so much labor on a production which seems to have so little reason for existence."

Wister also wrote a couple biographies, including one of Ulysses S. Grant and another of George Washington. In the latter, titled The Seven Ages of Washington, Wister criticized earlier biographies who censored or altered quotes from America's first President (almost certainly a reference specifically to Jared Sparks). Instead, he happily noted that contemporary historians were depicting Washington, flaws and all. "To-day we can see the live and human Washington, full length... and we gain a progenitor of flesh and blood."

*Image above from the Library of Congress.

Death of George Rex Graham

His leadership led to one of the most popular and successful magazines in the United States but the end of George Rex Graham's life was full of struggle. He died nearly friendless on July 13, 1894 at the age of 81.

Graham was 27 years old when he purchased and merged Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and The Casket, naming his new project Graham's Magazine. What started as a 5,000 circulation journal soon ballooned to five times as much. Credit for its success goes to Graham's business sense: to draw a large audience, he needed high-quality writing from well-known writers. He attracted them by paying them not only well, but very well; Graham estimated at least $1500 a month went to pay contributors (another $2000 was sometimes spent on "embellishments," like original illustrations by John Sartain and others). The term "a Graham page" became the standard rate by which all other magazine editors were judged.

In the 1840s, no other magazine challenged Philadelphia-based Graham's. His contributors over the years included Edgar Allan Poe, Rufus Griswold, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Bayard Taylor, William Cullen Bryant, James Russell Lowell, William Gilmore Simms, Fanny Osgood, Elizabeth Ellet, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Emma Embury, Edwin Percy Whipple, Fitz-Greene Halleck, James Fenimore Cooper, Alice and Phoebe Cary, and even Timothy Shay Arthur. Then Graham made poor personal investments in copper and by 1848, he sold his namesake publication. Benefactors helped him buy back his interest two years later but, by then, the heyday of Graham's Magazine was over. Graham walked away a couple years later and the magazine ceased by 1858. Graham himself disappeared from the literary scene.

By the end, Graham had lost much of his eyesight and relied on the younger generation of editor-friends for financial support. He died in a hospital in Orange, New Jersey, apparently alone and without friends or family. As literary historian Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer wrote, Graham died "a forgotten old man, broken in health and a charge upon the charity of his friends, who had all but disappeared." He was buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia; after over a century left unmarked, Graham's burial place was finally given a headstone in 2010.

Birth of Henry David Thoreau

In a small farmhouse well outside the center of the village of Concord (pictured at left), on July 12, 1817, David Henry Thoreau was born. The town had 2,000 people then and Boston was just under 20 miles away - a four hour ride by stage coach. Years later, the boy (the third of four children) swapped his first and middle names. Today, he is best known to history as Henry David Thoreau.

The family was never particularly well-off and often struggled financially. The boy's father was a storekeeper, later to manufacture pencils with the help of his son. His mother was a talker, always willing to speak her mind, even about political issues. Because of her anti-slavery views, for example, the family later housed fugitive slaves en route to Canada. Perhaps most importantly, Mr. and Mrs. Thoreau loved nature and tried to take time to walk together. A friend later noted that Thoreau's own love of nature was inherited from his parents.

The family moved around often but, as an adult, Thoreau noted his permanent connection to Concord, calling it "the most estimable place in the world."

The family left the home when young Thoreau was about a year old. In more recent history, the building was scheduled for demolition. In the 1990s, however, a community organization saved the property and now, as of 2010, the site of Thoreau's birth is now open to the public for the first time in history. Though its open hours are relatively limited, the journey is worth the effort (only two turns past the Orchard House and The Wayside). What makes this property unique is that Thoreau was the only Concord author (unlike Emerson, Hawthorne, and the two Alcotts) actually born in that town.

*Much of the information on Thoreau's birth and family comes from Milton Meltzer's Henry David Thoreau: A Biography.

Bradstreet: thundring nois

Anne Bradstreet is generally accepted as the first known poet published in the New World. She lived in what is now Cambridge, Massachusetts for a time, but her house burned down on July 10, 1666. Her poem, "Upon the Burning of Our House," describes the incident:

In silent night when rest I took,
For sorrow neer I did not look,
I waken'd was with thundring nois
And Piteous shreiks of dreadfull voice.
That fearfull sound of fire and fire,
Let no man know is my Desire.
I, starting up, the light did spye,
And to my God my heart did cry
To strengthen me in my Distresse
And not to leave me succourlesse.
Then coming out beheld a space,
The flame consume my dwelling place.

And, when I could no longer look,
I blest his Name that gave and took,
That layd my goods now in the dust:
Yea so it was, and so 'twas just.
It was his own: it was not mine;
Far be it that I should repine.

He might of All justly bereft,
But yet sufficient for us left.
When by the Ruines oft I past,
My sorrowing eyes aside did cast,
And here and there the places spye
Where oft I sate, and long did lye.

Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest;
There lay that store I counted best:
My pleasant things in ashes lye,
And them behold no more shall I.
Under thy roof no guest shall sitt,
Nor at thy Table eat a bitt.

No pleasant tale shall 'ere be told,
Nor things recounted done of old.
No Candle 'ere shall shine in Thee,
Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall bee.
In silence ever shalt thou lye;
Adieu, Adeiu; All's vanity.

Then streight I gin my heart to chide,
And didst thy wealth on earth abide?
Didst fix thy hope on mouldring dust,
The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?
Raise up thy thoughts above the skye
That dunghill mists away may flie.

Thou hast an house on high erect
Fram'd by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished,
Stands permanent tho' this bee fled.
It's purchased, and paid for too
By him who hath enough to doe.

A Prise so vast as is unknown,
Yet, by his Gift, is made thine own.
Ther's wealth enough, I need no more;
Farewell my Pelf, farewell my Store.
The world no longer let me Love,
My hope and Treasure lyes Above.

I look through tears on Beauty now

The poet/painter Washington Allston was 63 when he died on July 9, 1843. His funeral was held two days later and, by the late evening, he was buried by moonlight and torchlight at the burying ground across from the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Common.

Several poetic tributes were written for Allston, including ones by his nephew Ellery Channing ("Allston's Funeral"), Hannah Flagg Gould (The Burial of Allston: A Dirge), and Henry Theodore Tuckerman ("On the Death of Washington Allston").

Allston's first wife, Ann Channing Allston, was sister of the minister William Ellery Channing. She died in 1815. Years later, in 1830, he married her cousin Martha Remington Dana, sister of the poet Richard Henry Dana (and, of course, aunt to the novelist Richard Henry Dana, Jr., who was the executor of Allston's estate). It was with the Dana family that Allston was buried.

Richard Henry Dana, Sr. was particularly moved by the death of his brother-in-law and wrote one of the more touching poetic tributes:

I look through tears on Beauty now;
And Beauty's self less radiant looks on me;
Serene, yet touched with sadness is the brow,
Once bright with joy, I see.

...Why shadowed thus thy forehead fair?
Why on the mind low hangs a mystic gloom,
And spreads away on the genial air,
Like vapours from the tomb?

Why should ye shine, you lights above?
Ye little flowers, why open to the heat?
No more within the heart ye filled with love
The living pulses beat.

Well, Beauty, may you mourning stand!
The fine-beholding eye, whose constant look
Was turned on thee, is dark; and cold the hand
Gave more than vision took.

Nay, heart, be still! Of heavenly birth
Is Beauty sprung:—Look up!—behold the place!
There He, who reverent traced Her steps on earth,
Now sees Her, face to face.

*The image at the top of this post is a self-portrait by Washington Allston, 1805. It is now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The thing for your publishing list this fall

In the mid-19th century, an up-and-coming writer could get no better endorsement than one from John Greenleaf Whittier. On behalf of a young female poet he had befriended, Whittier wrote to his publisher James T. Fields on July 8, 1853:

I enclose to thee what I regard as a very unique and beautiful little book in MS. I don't wish thee however to take my opinion; but, the first leisure hour thee have read it, and I am sure thee will decide that it is exactly the thing for your publishing list this fall.

Whittier noted that these poems were "unlike anything in our literature" and would appeal to both "young and old." It was not until the postscript that Whittier mentioned the author's name: "Lucy Larcom of Beverly [Massachusetts]."

Larcom had published a few poems here and there, especially in the Lowell Offering, a publication which catered to the mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts. She met Whittier in the mid-1840s; the two became good friends and Whittier often promoted her work. Later, they co-edited three books together.

James T. Fields, however, did not see her potential. He passed on the manuscript. It later was given to John P. Jewett, who published it as Similitude from Ocean and Prairie. Whittier concluded Jewett, not Fields, was "the best publisher for it."

Poe: To My Mother

Edgar A. Poe outlived several mothers and maternal figures. His birth mother, Eliza Poe, died when the boy was a month and a half shy of his third birthday. Jane Stanard, his first crush as a schoolboy and the mother of his friend Robert, died when he was 15. Poe's foster-mother Frances Allan, who doted on him, died when Poe was 20 (Poe himself missed the funeral because his foster-father didn't tell him in time). Six years later, Poe's paternal grandmother (Elizabeth Cairnes Poe) died an old woman in her 70s.

But Poe himself later denied his connection to these mother figures. Instead, he looked to his mother-in-law, Maria Poe Clemm. "Muddy," as he called her, was the mother of Poe's wife Virginia Clemm (she was also his aunt, making Virginia his first cousin). After the marriage, the trio made a unique family household and stuck by each other through financial hardships and personal tragedies. When Virginia died in 1847, Poe and Muddy remained together in their cottage in The Bronx.

Poe's appreciation for Muddy was expressed in a sonnet published on July 7, 1849 in Boston's Flag of Our Union newspaper.

"To My Mother."

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother,”
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you—
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,
In setting my Virginia’s spirit free.
My mother—my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

*The image of Maria Clemm is courtesy of the Edgar Allan Poe Society (http://www.eapoe.org), the absolute best resource for Poe on the internet.

Death of Paul Hamilton Hayne

When Charleston, South Carolina was bombarded during the Civil War, Paul Hamilton Hayne lost his home and his ample library to an exploding shell. His first book of poems was published only a few years earlier in 1855 when he was 25. He published two others by the time he was 30.

Hayne refused to let the Civil War deter him from his path of poetry, especially after his health kept him from fulfilling a term of enlistment. He moved to a new home in Georgia, one which he described as "a crazy wooden shanty, dignified as a cottage... Our little apology for a dwelling was perched on the top of a hill, overlooking in several directions hundreds of leagues of pine barren... A wilder, more desolate and savage-looking home could hardly have been seen east of the prairies." His writing desk was a workbench left behind by carpenters.

Life became somewhat isolated for Hayne, who died at this home he named Copse Hill on July 6, 1886. He was 56 years old. His new home provided him ample inspiration and his post-bellum works included the poem "From the Woods" and the collection Mountain of the Lovers. He has been nicknamed the Poet Laureate of the South and, though he embraced Southern themes in his writing, also proudly noted his appreciation of northern poets like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Hayne's own place in the literary canon is questionable (as are most Southern writers from this period, be it Albert Pike, William Gilmore Simms, or Hayne's good friend Henry Timrod). He may have been his own worst critic. On his personal copy of one of his early books, he scribbled, "Boyish and bombastic! Should have been whipped for publishing it!"

"Great Poets and Small"

Shall I not falter on melodious wing,
In that my notes are weak and may not rise
To those world-wide entrancing harmonies,
Which the great poets to the ages sing?
Shall my thought's humble heaven no longer ring
With pleasant lays, because the empyreal height
Stretches beyond it, lifting to the light
The anointed pinion of song's radiant king?
Ah! a false thought! the thrush her fitful flight
Ventures in vernal dawns; a happy note
Trills from the russet linnet's gentle throat,
Though far above the eagle soars in might,
And the glad skylark — an ethereal mote —
Sings in high realms that mock our straining sight.

Walworth: Settling some family matters

Ellen Hardin Walworth was well-respected as a historian in Saratoga, but her personal life suffered major difficulty. Her husband, Mansfield Tracy Walworth, was her step-brother after her mother's second marriage. The couple had seven children together (two died in childbirth) but Mr. Walworth (an occasional novelist) was increasingly violent and unstable. She left him in 1861 and moved to Kentucky. They later reconciled but separated again, and reconciled again, before the decade was up.

When Ellen was the victim of her husband's physical abuse during her eighth pregnancy, she sought permanent separation or what she called "limited divorce." He continued to harass her, however, even going so far as to use her as a model for an unsympathetic character in his serialized Married in Mask. He also sent her threatening letters, including one which implied he would destroy the school she was running, and another which threatened to kill her.

Fed up, the couple's son Frank got involved (after intercepting most of these letters). He went to his father's home and left a note: "I want to try and settle some family matters." When father came to visit his son at his hotel, he was immediately led to a room. When the door closed, four shots were fired.

Frank exited the room, seen with a smile on his face, and went out to sent a telegraph to his family: "I have shot and killed father." He then turned himself in to the police.

The New York Times tried to portray Mansfield Walworth sympathetically, praising his writing ability, but still admitted the children were treated "not as a father should treat his children" and his wife "not as a man should respect and love his wife."

Frank was sentenced to life in prison on July 5, 1873. His mother Ellen Walworth testified on his behalf and appealed, claiming her son was insane. The state eventually agreed and his conviction was overturned in 1877.

* More on this family can be found in Geoffrey O'Brien's soon-to-be-released The Fall of the House of Walworth.

Taylor: the greater task, for thee to live!

As part of the nation's centennial celebration on July 4, 1876, Pennsylvania poet and travel writer Bayard Taylor (pictured) was chosen to present an original poem in Philadelphia. They also asked him to find someone to write an original Cantata. He first thought of Edmund Clarence Stedman, but he was out of the country. So he wrote to Sidney Lanier: "I am sure you can do this worthily. It's a great occasion, — not especially for poetry, as an art, but for Poetry to assert herself as a power."

Lanier agreed to it, and his cantata (set to music by Dudley Buck) was performed at the opening ceremonies of the centennial celebration in May. The event was a proud representation of both North and South.

The crowd gathered in Independence Square (site of Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed) to hear Taylor recite his poem, "Centennial Ode." This is the final stanza:

     Look up, look forth, and on!
     There's light in the dawning sky:
The clouds are parting, the night is gone:
     Prepare for the work of the day!
     Fallow thy pastures lie
     And far thy shepherds stray,
And the fields of thy vast domain
     Are waiting for purer seed
     Of knowledge, desire, and deed,
For keener sunshine and mellower rain!
     But keep thy garments pure:
Pluck them back, with the old disdain,
     From touch of the hands that stain !
     So shall thy strength endure.
Transmute into good the gold of Gain,
Compel to beauty thy ruder powers,
     Till the bounty of coming hours
     Shall plant, on thy fields apart,
With the oak of Toil, the rose of Art!
     Be watchful, and keep us so:
     Be strong, and fear no foe:
     Be just, and the world shall know!
With the same love, love us, as we give;
     And the day shall never come,
     That finds us weak or dumb
     To join and smite and cry
In the great task, for thee to die,
And the greater task, for thee to live!

After Taylor's death two years later, John Greenleaf Whittier (who wrote a hymn for the same centennial celebration) assessed the writer's career: "It is perhaps too early to assign him his place in American literature... His Centennial ode [and others]... are sureties of the permanence of his reputation."

Melville: the book's genuineness

In January 1841, Herman Melville sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts aboard the 359-ton Acushnet. His real-life experiences aboard the whaling vessel inspired his first book Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, first published in England 1846 as Narrative of a Four Months' Residence among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands. It had a fair share of critics, many of whom objected to scenes of cannibalism, savage violence, heathenish idols, and the like. He also portrayed the "savage" natives rather sympathetically and subtly criticized attempts to "civilize" them.

The worst criticism in the eyes of Melville, however, was the suggestion that the story was fiction. Among those who made the accusation was Evert Augustus Duyckinck. Though somewhat fictionalized, the author maintained it was mostly based on truth; when the actual friend who inspired the "Toby" character in the book came forward, however, Melville felt vindicated. In a letter dated July 3, 1846, he wrote:

There was a spice of civil scepticism in your manner, my dear Sir, when we were conversing together the other day about 'Typee" — what will the politely incredulous Mr. Duyckinck now say to the true Toby's having turned up in Buffalo[?] ...Seriously, my dear Sir, this resurrection of Toby from the dead — this strange bringing together of two such places as Typee and Buffalo, is really very curious. — It cannot but settle the question of the book's genuineness.

Melville had, in fact, assumed that Richard Tobias Greene (aka "Toby") had died on the island. Toby, in turn, assumed that Melville ("Tommo" in the novel) had not survived. Toby's sudden appearance (verified by the harpoon scar on his forehead) convinced American publishers to print an American edition of Typee (Harper & Brothers declined, saying it was too fantastic), though Melville made several changes. He added "The Story of Toby," based on the new information about his friends survival. Additionally, possibly under pressure from his American publisher, he removed several passages with sexual connotations. At one point, for example, Marquesan girls (described as "revealing their naked forms to the waist") make their way onto the ship, to the delight of the all-male crew. In the original, he wrote: "What a sigh for us bachelor sailors! how avoid so dire a temptation?"

Dana: intensely interested in my own country

The steamship America left Boston on July 2, 1856 en route to Liverpool. Among the passengers was Richard Henry Dana, Jr., who had spent two years before the mast in the previous decade, traveling ultimately to California. Despite this ample experience at sea, he had never been to Europe. He would stay on foreign soil for only about 41 days.

Two of Dana's companions for the trip were Thomas Gold Appleton, the "prince of rattlers," and William Wetmore Story, who was abandoning the law to study art. The trio talked and told stories, making half-formed plans to co-author a book called Spray from the Paddlebox. Appleton, who was a frequent traveler to Europe and elsewhere, called it "one of the pleasantest passages I have made." Dana described it this way:

We started punctually at twelve, with a most beautiful day overhead and around us... and we went down the harbor in beautiful style — actually bound to Europe, — the Europe of my dreams, that I hardly dared believe I should ever see. But now that the time has come, I am so intensely interested in my own country, in the impending struggle between the free classes and the slave-power that I cannot conjure up a thought of England.

Dana was already a founding member of the Free Soil Party and served as the lawyer defending fugitive slave Anthony Burns. The majority of his career for the next decade after his European trip was devoted to the anti-slavery cause, often serving as a pro bono lawyer for fugitive slaves.

Death of Harriet Beecher Stowe

Though primarily remembered for one novel, one which was the highest-selling of the century, Harriet Beecher Stowe (pictured at left, 1886) wrote much more than Uncle Tom's Cabin. In 1889, however, she suffered a crippling stroke. It took a major toll on her and she realized she was nearing her death. As she wrote to Oliver Wendell Holmes four years later:

I am passing the last days of my life in the city where I passed my school-girl life [Hartford, Connecticut]. My physical health, since I recovered from my alarming illness, I had four years ago has been excellent... [but] my mental condition might be called nomadic.

By 1894, her children noted their mother's change. "She herself is changed very very much. Should you meet her without knowing who she was, I don't think you would recognize her at all. Her hair is snowywhite, her face very thin... and has the vague wondering expression of infancy."

By the end of June, Stowe was confined to her bed with brain congestion and apparent paralysis. Stowe died on July 1, 1896, surrounded by family at her home at Nook Farm. It was about two weeks after her 85th birthday.

"I love everybody," Stowe once wrote in a letter. Years later, her son and biographer wrote, "She was impelled by love and did what she did, and wrote what she did, under the impulse of love."

*Much of the information from this post comes from Philip McFarland's The Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe, which closes (quite poetically) with the emphasis on Stowe's love.