Jackson and the condition of the Mission Indians

Though mostly recognized for her short stories, Helen Hunt Jackson turned her writing to concerns over the affairs of Native Americans (culminating in a novel). In late 1882, she traveled to Southern California specifically to witness, as she wrote, "the condition of the Mission Indians" there as an official agent of the Department of the Interior. "I shall visit every Indian village in the Southern counties," she promised, "and make an exhaustive examination of their condition."

Her intention was to reveal to the public how impoverished Native Americans had become. To accomplish this, she proposed a series of six articles to the New York Independent; the series was so important to her, she sold all six in advance for the usual price she received for a single article. The final in the series, "The Temecula Exiles," was published on November 29, 1883.

Jackson was shocked almost immediately after her arrival in California. She found right away that one of the villages she intended to visit was in the process of being forcibly removed by the government, despite the people having tilled the land there for generations, and having already been previously displaced.

For her work with the Interior Department, as well as for her articles, Jackson demanded and examined various legal documents, land deeds, and other records. At least one colleague in the Bureau of Indian Affairs questioned if Jackson overstepped her role, or if she had the appropriate background for such work. Undaunted, she sought legal representation on behalf of Native Americans who wanted to defend their claims against the government, made official recommendations to remove white trespassers, reassert land rights, and fund better schools and welfare programs. Versions of a bill inspired by her reports was finally passed, after several controversial failures, in 1891 — six years after Jackson's death. Towards the end of her life, Jackson referred to the majority of her writing as merely a woman's hobby but noted, "nothing looks to me of any value, except the words I have spoken for the Indians."

*For information in this post, I turned to The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson, 1879-1885 (1998), edited by Valerie Sherer Mathes.

Two lives woven & welded together

1901 (source)

Livy Darling, I am grateful — gratefuler than ever before — that you were born, & that your love is mine & our two lives woven & welded together!

Samuel Clemens had been married to his wife Olivia Langdon for over 18 years when he wrote this love note to her on November 27, 1888. It was her 43rd birthday.

Olivia came from a fairly wealthy family; Clemens did not, though he had become friends with her brother Charley. He accompanied Olivia and her family to a reading by Charles Dickens in New York in 1868. Clemens (by then mostly recognized as a journalist but already offering public lectures) was instantly infatuated by her beauty. He paid a visit to the Langdons as the first of 34 scheduled calls on New Year's; he never made it beyond his first stop. He later recalled she was "sweet and timid and lovely." Their courtship continued through letters until their eventual marriage in 1870.

By the time Clemens wrote this letter, his 18 years of marriage saw the publication of some of his most enduring works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). At the time, he was writing A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (by then, he and his wife were living in their now famous home in Hartford) and had recently received an honorary degree from Yale University. He was also beginning to invest in a typesetting machine which would nearly ruin him. Three years after this letter, they moved to Europe for financial reasons (the copyright on his works was saved by being transferred to Olivia). He outlived her by about six years.

Olivia Langdon Clemens was well-read and much of her personal correspondence is heavily laden with literary references. Prior to her marriage, for example, she kept a commonplace book and included a quote from Hyperion by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (a novel strongly inspired by his difficult courtship with his future second wife): "Look not mournfully into the Past... improve the Present; it is thine — Go forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear, and with a brave and manly heart."


*I first became aware of this note thanks to Shaun Usher and his fascinating and fun web site Letters of Note.
**Recommended reading: The Courtship of Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain (1997) by Susan K. Harris.

Sedgwick: the feeling of the times

On November 25, 1841, Catharine Maria Sedgwick reflected on her success as a writer in an informal account book. She noted that her 1835 novel The Linwoods sold 4,300 copies of its original print run of 5,000 within a year (a number which doubled typical sales figures, according to publisher George Palmer Putnam). It remains one of her most popular works, after the earlier novel Hope Leslie.

The Linwoods; or, 'Sixty Years Since' in America was set during the American Revolution but published, as the subtitle suggests, about six decades after that conflict (the subtitle also references Sir Walter Scott). As Sedgwick writes in her preface:

The writer has aimed to exhibit the feeling of the times, and to give her younger readers a true, if a slight, impression of the condition of their country at the most—the only suffering period of its existence, and by means of this impression to deepen their gratitude to their patriot-fathers; a sentiment that will tend to increase their fidelity to the free institutions transmitted to them. 

Despite the setting, Sedgwick chose to ignore most of the historic events and war-related details, though General Lafayette makes an appearance. Amid this period of conflict (apparently Sedgwick believed the "only suffering period"), the titular Linwood family are loyalists who remain dedicated to the King of England. The next generation of Linwoods, however, question that loyalty, including a daughter named Isabella, who becomes the main heroine of the story.

Isabella (and, ultimately, Sedgwick herself) questions her place in the status quo, not only in the form of revolution from England, but also in the role of women and blacks in the New World. Her friend Rose, an enslaved black woman, believes it as merely a beginning: "Can't you see these men are raised up to fight for freedom for more than themselves? If the chain is broken at one end, the links will fall apart sooner or later." The Linwoods was an immediate success; contemporaries referred to it as a "charming tale of home life." Sedgwick did not publish another novel until 22 years later.

*I am entirely indebted to James L. Machor for much of the information in this post, found in his Reading Fiction in Antebellum America: Informed Response and Reception Histories, 1820-1865 (2011). Further information comes from Catherine Maria Sedgwick: Critical Perspectives (2002), edited by Lucinda Damon-Bach and Victoria Clements.

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.

Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!

Though she was an ardent abolitionist, a novelist, and a prolific author, Lydia Maria Child is best remembered for one poem. She was a household name for the better part of the 19th century; most people in the 21st only have a vague recollection of the song originally presented as the poem usually titled "A New England Boy's Song (About Thanksgiving)," first published in 1844:

Over the river and through the wood,
   To grandfather's house we go;
      The horse knows the way
      To carry the sleigh
   Through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river and through the wood —
   Oh, how the wind does blow!
      It stings the toes
      And bites the nose,
   As over the ground we go.

Over the river and through the wood,
   To have a first-rate play.
      Hear the bells ring,
      "Ting-a-ling-ding!"
   Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!

Over the river and through the wood
   Trot fast, my dapple-gray!
      Spring over the ground,
      Like a hunting-hound!
   For this is Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river and through the wood,
   And straight through the barn-yard gate.
      We seem to go
      Extremely slow,—
   It is so hard to wait!

Over the river and through the wood —
   Now grandmother's cap I spy!
      Hurrah for the fun!
      Is the pudding done?
   Hurrah for the pumpkin-pie!

Birth of Mulligan "In Kentucky"

James Hillary Mulligan was born in Lexington, Kentucky on November 21, 1844. After a short time in Canada, he returned to his home state to become a lawyer. In 1870, his businessman father built a home for Mulligan and his new wife which they named Maxwell Place (now the official residence of the president of the University of Kentucky).

Mulligan became a prominent judge, was elected to both the state's House of Representatives and the Senate, and was known as one of the greatest orators in Kentucky history. In 1894, he was named Consul-General to Samoa under President Grover Cleveland, where he befriended English novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. He served in that exotic role for only two years, though his experience resulted in a book on the government and culture of that area.

Mulligan was also an editor and poet. In 1902, he entertained a group of legislators at a banquet, for which he written his most enduring verses. As one newspaper reported at the time, he first gave "an unusually brilliant and witty toast" before withdrawing "a deadly weapon, a dangerous-looking type-written manuscript." The poem, "In Kentucky," begins:

The moonlight may be softest
               In Kentucky,
And summer days come oftest
               In Kentucky,
But friendship is the strongest
When the money lasts the longest,
Or you sometimes get in wrongest
               In Kentucky.

Mulligan's careers effectively ended in 1904, when a family meal was tainted with arsenic-poisoned food. There were no convictions in the attempted murder.

*The image above depicts Judge Mulligan with one of his children. I found this photo in the book Lexington, Heart of the Bluegrass by John Dean Wright (University Press of Kentucky, 1982). I am not aware of any legal/copyright concerns, though the image is undated. I do not recommend copying or reuse of this image.

Death of Halleck: in the sunbeams of fame

Fitz-Greene Halleck complained that he was feeling unwell and a physician was called. He went to bed early on November 19, 1867, a Tuesday evening, and warned his sister Marie, "I am afraid I shall not live until morning." Just before 11 o'clock that evening, his sister went to check on him in his room. He was sitting up in bed, acknowledged her, allegedly asked, "Marie, hand me my pantaloons, if you please," before falling back on the bed without a moan. He never got up again. He was 77 years old.

Halleck had quickly become one of the most well-known humorists and poets of his day. By 1849, he was able to move back from New York to his home town in Guilford, Connecticut, thanks to an annuity left to him by the estate of his former employer John Jacob Astor. Unmarried himself, he spent his final years with his unmarried sister, ignoring requests for public readings. Frequently sick, he expected his death as early as 1860. When he was laid to rest at Alderbrook Cemetery, his funeral procession was a marvelous spectacle.

Among Halleck's final works was a book-length poem, Young America, which described the shaping of the country through an allegory about a boy. From that poem, written at the end of the Civil War:

How sweetly the Boy in the beauty is sleeping
Of Life's sunny morning of hope and of youth,
May his guardian angels, their watch o'er him keeping,
Keep his evening and noon in the pathways of truth.

Ah me! what delight it would give me to wake him,
And lead him wherever my life banners wave,
O'er the pathways of glory and honor to take him,
And teach him the lore of the bold and the brave;

And when the war-clouds and their fierce storm of water,
O'er the land that we love their outpourings shall cease,
Bid him bear to her Ark, from her last field of slaughter,
Upon Victory's wings, the green olive of Peace;

And when the death-note of my bugle has sounded,
And memorial tears are embalming my name,
By young hearts like his may the grave be surrounded
Where I sleep my last sleep in the sunbeams of fame.

Summoned to duty by his charger's neighs,
The only summons that his pride obeys,
He bows his farewell blessing, and is gone,
In quiet heedlessness the Boy sleeps on.

Parents of Stedman: angel of my infancy

It was due to illness that Major E. Burke Stedman (pictured at right) took to the sea, under the advisement from doctors that tropical air would restore his health. He traveled alone, leaving his family at home in Hartford, Connecticut; his wife had a newborn child, and their son Edmund Clarence Stedman was only two years old, and all agreed it would be too perilous to accompany Major Stedman. "Don't let my dear little Clarence forget his father," he wrote on November 17, 1835, in the last letter to his wife Elizabeth Clementine (pictured below), "let him look at my portrait and he may not."

The patriarch of the Stedman family never returned. He died aboard the Emily two weeks after his last letter en route to Santa Cruz and he was buried at sea. It took four weeks before the family heard of his death. Without him, they packed up their belongings and moved from Hartford to Plainfield, New Jersey to live on the farm of his maternal grandfather. His Puritanically pious grandfather attended to his earliest education, teaching him to read using the family Bible. By the time he was six, he was precocious and already flowing with poetry. On more than one occasion, his mother reported, he refused to go to bed and responded to the request, "Let me alone, please, the poetry is coming." Sure enough, the boy grew up to be an influential man of letters.

At Cedar Creek, the young Stedman was crowded by family, including several cousins. His father's family, however, wanted the Stedman children back in Connecticut. His paternal grandfather even promised a substantial inheritance if Mrs. Stedman complied. She initially refused, despite her financial distress, and attempted to earn extra money by contributing to magazines like Godey's and Graham's. Eventually, she gave up the effort, and the young boy was taken in by his father's brother. Even so, Stedman always had a preference to his mother, who died when he was in his 30s. To her, he wrote the sonnet "A Mother's Picture":

She seemed an angel to our infant eyes!
Once, when the glorifying moon revealed
Her who at evening by our pillow kneeled, —
Soft-voiced and golden-haired, from holy skies
Flown to her loves on wings of Paradise, —
We looked to see the pinions half concealed.
The Tuscan vines and olives will not yield
Her back to me, who loved her in this wise,
And since have little known her, but have grown
To see another mother, tenderly
Watch over sleeping children of my own.
Perchance the years have changed her: yet alone
This picture lingers; still she seems to me
The fair young angel of my infancy.

Mulligan: back to sweet Clark County

Clark County, from Wikipedia

James Hillary Mulligan was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1844 — and was quite proud of it. Though he moved to Canada for a part of his education, he returned to complete his legal studies at Kentucky University. As a writer, editor, judge, and elected official in the state (or, technically, the commonwealth), much of his career is focused on Kentucky, including his poetry. On November 15, 1905, he was invited to present a poem to the Commercial Club in Winchester. He happily read a poem he wrote for the occasion, "Back to Sweet Clark County":

       I am weary of the wandering,
       The waiting and the pondering,
The shadows kindly lengthen out their warning;
       And I've come to the conclusion,
       Inspiration or illusion,
And I'm back to sweet Clark County in the morning.

       The years loiter still and dreary,
       Musing voices hale and cheery,
Old memories around my heart are storming;
       And the saddened days forlorn
       But lengthen out the cheerless morn,
And I'm off to sweet Clark County in the morning.

       And though the years a-many be,
       A scene comes often back to me,
A homestead quaint and landscape fair adorning,
       Yet an incense floats too often,
       And this makes the heart to soften,
And I'm off to sweet Clark County in the morning.

       Wandering wide in stranger lands,
       I've felt the clasp of kindly hands,
And while no thrill of friendship pulses scorning;
       Of a truth, in nothing vaunting,
       Other than a something wanting—
And I'm off to sweet Clark County in the morning.

Incidentally, Mulligan's former home, Maxwell Place, is now the official residence of the president of the University of Kentucky.

Douglass: murder, robbery, inciting insurrection

Though Frederick Douglass claimed to disagree with abolitionist John Brown's radical raid on Harper's Ferry, the governor of Virginia presumed he was a co-conspirator in the bloody failure. Gov. Henry A. Wise went so far as to write to the President of the United States James Buchanan on November 13, 1859:

I have information such as has caused me, upon proper affidavits, to make requisition upon the Executive of Michigan for the delivery up of the person of Frederick Douglass, a negro man, supposed now to be in Michigan, charged with murder, robbery, and inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia.

Douglass had moved to Michigan and, for a time, even Canada to avoid being accused of associating with Brown, with whom he had met some two months before Harper's Ferry. In one of his  autobiographies, Douglass admits "there is no reason to doubt" that the President aided Wise in attempting to find him. Within six hours of his fleeing from his home in Rochester, New York, United States Marshalls swooped into the town in search of him.

By then, Douglass was already a well-known figure and orator, known as the courageous and intelligent escaped slave from Maryland, who had since become an author and journalist. Only two weeks before Governor Wise's letter to President Buchanan, Douglass wrote to the local Rochester newspaper that he was innocent of involvement with Harper's Ferry. Referring to "the thing calling itself the Government of Virginia," Douglass railed against the accusation that he intended to be one of the soldiers in the insurrection which came from one of the men about to be executed for his own involvement:

This is certainly a very grave impeachment, whether viewed in its bearings upon friends or upon foes, and you will not think it strange that I should take a somewhat serious notice of it... I have always been more distinguished for running than fighting, and, tried by the Harper's-Ferry-insurrection-test, I am most miserably deficient in courage... The taking of Harper's Ferry wras a measure never encouraged by my word or by my vote. At any time or place, my wisdom or my cowardice has not only kept me from Harper's Ferry, but has equally kept me from making any promise to go there... My field of labor for the abolition of slavery has not extended to an attack upon the United States arsenal. In the teeth of the documents already published and of those which may hereafter be published, I affirm that no man connected with that insurrection, from its noble and heroic leader down, can connect my name with a single broken promise of any sort whatever. So much I deem it proper to say negatively. The time for a full statement of what I know and of All I know of this desperate but sublimely disinterested effort to emancipate the slaves of Maryland and Virginia from their cruel task-masters, has not yet come, and may never come. In the denial which I have now made, my motive is more a respectful consideration for the opinions of the slaves' friends than from my fear of being made an accomplice in the general conspiracy against slavery, when there is a reasonable hope for success.

Birth of Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta

The daughter of an Irish nationalist who later moved to Cuba, Anne Charlotte Lynch was born in Bennington, Vermont, on November 11, 1815, raised in Connecticut, went to school in Albany, New York and, later, wrote her first book on Rhode Island. It was in Connecticut that she wrote to her friend on her 20th birthday:

I believe I have had every variety of feeling humanity is capable of, and there remains nothing for me now, not even a disappointment. My mind, too early matured, has reached at this period the limit it should only have attained at threescore; and now, like some plant, blossoming prematurely, it droops and withers, while all around it is verdant. But you will call me an egotist, and I shall deserve it; so let me turn to some more agreeable topic.

She then moved to Manhattan and established herself at the center of literary and elite cultural circles (surrounded by people like Margaret Fuller, Horace Greeley, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, Bayard Taylor, and others). It was in Europe that she met her husband, the Italian professor Vincenzo Botta.

In addition to earning a reputation as one of the greatest salon hostesses of the era, Lynch Botta was a prolific poet and occasional artist. Much of her writing reflects those dual interests; several of her poems are based on her reactions to paintings or sculptures. Usually, her poems had a slight religious tint to them and many mused on death and the afterlife. Her poem "Books for the People" (published in 1849):

          Light to the darkened mind
Bear, like the sun, the world's wide circle round,
Bright messengers that speak without a sound!
          Sight on the spirit blind
Shall fall where'er ye pass; your living ray
Shall change the night of ages into day;—
          God speed ye on your way!

          In closet and in hall,
Too long alone your message hath been spoken:
The spell of gold that bound ye there is broken;
          Go forth and shine on all;
The world's inheritance, the legacy
Bequeathed by Genius to the race are ye;
          Be like the sunlight, free!

          A mighty power ye wield!
Ye wake grim centuries from their deep repose,
And bid their hoarded treasuries unclose,
          The spoils of time to yield.
Ye hold the gift of immortality;
Bard, sage, and seer, whose fame shall never die,
          Live through your ministry.

          Noiseless upon your path,
Freighted with lore, romance, and song, ye speed,
Moving the world, in custom and in creed,
          Waking its love or wrath.
Tyrants, that blench not on the battle-plain,
Quail at your silent coming, and in vain
          Would bind the riven chain.

          Shrines, that embalm great souls!
Where yet the illustrious dead high converse hold,
As gods spake through their oracles of old;
          Upon your mystic scrolls,
There lives a spell to guide our destiny;
The fire by night, the pillared cloud by day,
          Upon our upward way.

O'Reilly: Boston chastened by fire

The flames began in the early evening of Saturday, November 9, 1872, before raging out of control. Slightly delayed by a lack of horses, the fire brigades of Boston were slow to put out the fire, which soon became one of the greatest conflagrations of the century. The Great Boston Fire, as it came to be known, came only a year after a similar one in Chicago. The event laid to waste 65 acres with nearly 800 buildings destroyed, and an estimate $150 million in damage.

Boston emigrant John Boyle O'Reilly was particularly moved by the devastation. He wrote a poem simply titled "Boston" (he had already written a poem about Chicago and, even earlier, about the tragic flood in western Massachusetts), questioning the role God has played in using fire to teach Bostonians a lesson:

O Broad-breasted Queen among Nations!
     O Mother, so strong in thy youth!
Has the Lord looked upon thee in ire,
And willed thou be chastened by fire,
     Without any ruth?

Has the Merciful tired of His mercy.
     And turned from thy sinning in wrath,
That the world with raised hand sees and pities
Thy desolate daughters, thy cities,
     Despoiled on their path?

One year since thy youngest was stricken:
     Thy eldest lies stricken to-day.
Ah! God, was Thy wrath without pity,
To tear the strong heart from our city,
     And cast it away?

O Father! forgive us our doubting;
     The stain from our weak souls efface;
Thou rebukest, we know, but to chasten,
Thy hand has but fallen to hasten
     Return to Thy grace.

Let us rise purified from our ashes
     As sinners have risen who grieved;
Let us show that twice-sent desolation
On every true heart in the nation
     Has conquest achieved.

Apparent neglect in Griswold's Temple of Fame

With its first edition in 1842, The Poets and Poetry of America became the defining anthology of American verse. Its editor, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, quickly became one of the most powerful literary figures of the day: Writers of all backgrounds, and all levels of success, did what they could to get into Griswold's favor. For his own part, Griswold claimed no personal bias in his selections (though his generous section on his friend Charles Fenno Hoffman was questionable).

In the next decade or so, however, Griswold's reputation took a dive. His posthumous attacks on Edgar Allan Poe certainly left him open to public controversy, but he also suffered privately from the awkward divorce from his second wife, followed by attacks from angry women who tried to break up his third marriage. His face was by then scarred from an explosion in his home, and his wife and daughter were in a horrific train accident in 1853 (his daughter was briefly pronounced dead; his other daughter had been taken from him to live with his second wife). Amid all this, Griswold was no longer the intimidating literary power he once was, leaving him open to attack from even the most minor of poets.

On November 8, 1855, David Bates wrote to him angrily for being excluded from the 10th edition of The Poets and Poetry of America. He wrote that he never asked to be part of the "Temple of Fame" that Griswold had created with his book. Once included, however, he assumed he would stay in its pages (as most others did):

Perhaps I have been too modest. I certainly never begged the honor, or claimed it as a right: and yet I feel that an Author, who has been favourably noticed by the press, both in England and America... deserved that much consideration at the hands of an American in the land that gave him birth.

Bates particularly argues that he is popular enough, and therefore his exclusion is inappropriate. His writing was in school texts, for example, and so he demanded to know why Griswold, this self-proclaimed arbiter of American poetic taste, had neglected him (slyly suggesting it was personal):

As you are doubtless aware of the popularity of some of my poems, will you be kind enough to inform me why I have been treated with apparent neglect, as I am not conscious of having ever wronged you in thought, word or deed.

Whatever the reason, Bates was not reinserted for the 1856 edition — the final edition before Griswold's death in 1857.

Henry on Field: he found his kingdom

O. Henry had been working for the Daily Post in Houston, Texas for only about three weeks when he heard of the death of his friend and fellow author Eugene Field. Originally, he called his column "Tales of the Town" before changing it to "Some Postscripts." Most were short, humorous vignettes. On November 6, 1895, two days after Field's death, however, he offered this poetic tribute:

No gift his genius might have had,
   Of titles high in church or State,

Could charm him as the one he bore
   Of children's poet laureate.

He smiling pressed aside the bays
   And laurel garlands that he won,

And bowed his head for baby hands
   To place a daisy wreath upon.

He found his kingdom in the ways
   Of little ones he loved so well;

For them he tuned his lyre and sang
   Sweet simple songs of magic spell.

Oh, greater feat to storm the gates
   Of children's pure and cleanly hearts,

Than to subdue a warring world
   By stratagems and doubtful arts!

So, when he laid him down to sleep
   And earthly honors seemed so poor;

Methinks he clung to little hands
   The latest, for the love they bore.

A tribute paid by chanting choirs
   And pealing organs rises high;

But soft and clear, somewhere he hears
   Through all, a child's low lullaby.

Birth of Allston: censure not the Poet's art

Though he is most often associated with Massachusetts, the poet/painted Washington Allston was born on a plantation near Waccamaw, South Carolina on November 5, 1779. While in school in Rhode Island, he became interested in Art; by the time he graduated from Harvard in 1800, he was also interested in poetry and delivered a class poem.

After graduating, Allston spent some time at the Royal Academy in London. He then continued his studies in Paris and Rome before returning to the United States in 1809. Only two years later, he returned to Europe and there published his first book, Sylphs of the Seasons, in 1813. By 1818, he returned to the Boston area and remained there for the rest of his life.

In addition to the title poem in Allston's first book, Sylphs of the Seasons included several poems with religious themes, references to classical mythology, as well as lines dedicated to works of Art. Allston was considered by many to be among the first American poets attempting to show the Old World that creative culture existed in the United States. Moreover, there were some Americans who considered poetry a wasted effort. One of the poems in Allston's first collection, "To a Lady Who Spoke Slightingly of Poets," gets defensive:

Oh, censure not the Poet's art,
Nor think it chills the feeling heart
    To love the gentle Muses.
Can that which in a stone or flower,
As if by transmigrating power,
    His gen'rous soul infuses;

Can that for social joys impair
The heart that like the lib'ral air
    All Nature's self embraces;
That in the cold Norwegian main,
Or mid the tropic hurricane
    Her varied beauty traces;

That in her meanest work can find
A fitness and a grace combin'd
    In blest harmonious union,
That even with the cricket holds,
As if by sympathy of souls,
    Mysterious communion;

Can that with sordid selfishness
His wide-expanded heart impress,
    Whose consciousness is loving;
Who, giving life to all he spies,
His joyous being multiplies
    In youthfulness improving?

Oh, Lady, then, fair queen of Earth,
Thou loveliest of mortal birth,
    Spurn not thy truest lover;
Nor censure him whose keener sense
Can feel thy magic influence
    Where nought the world discover;

Whose eye on that bewitching face
Can every source unnumber'd trace
    Of germinating blisses;
See Sylphids o'er thy forchead weave
The lily-fibred film, and leave
    It fix'd with honied kisses;

While some within thy liquid eyes,
Like minnows of a thousand dies
    Through lucid waters glancing,
In busy motion to and fro,
The gems of diamond-beetles sow,
    Their lustre thus enhancing:

Here some, their little vases fiil'd
With blushes for thy check distill'd
    From roses newly blowing,
Each tiny thirsting pore supply;
And some in quick succession by
    The down of peaches strowing:

There others who from hanging bell
Of cowslip caught the dew that fell
    While yet the day was breaking,
And o'er thy pouting lips diffuse
The tincture—still its glowing hues
    Of purple morn partaking:

Here some, that in the petals prest
Of humid honeysuckles, rest
    From nightly fog defended,
Flutter their fragrant wings between,
Like humming-birds that scarce are seen,
    They seem with air so blended!

While some, in equal clusters knit,
On either side in circles flit,
    Like bees in April swarming,
Their tiny weight each other lend,
And force the yielding cheek to bend,
    Thy laughing dimples forming.

Ner, Lady, think the Poet's eye
Can only outward charms espy,
    Thy form alone adorning—
Ah, Lady, no: though fair they be,
Yet he a fairer sight may see,
    Thy lovely soul exploring:

And while from part to part it flies
The gentle Spirit he descries,
    Through every line pursuing;
And feels upon his nature shower
That pure, that humanizing power,
    Which raises by subduing.

Death of Field: Sailed off in a wooden shoe

Eugene Field had planned to leave on a trip to Kansas City when he died unexpectedly at 5 o'clock in the morning on November 4, 1895. His body was discovered by his son at their home in Chicago. His death was quite sudden and, though he had been sick, none thought his heart disease was so poor. His obituary called him "a remarkable character" whose "verses endeared him to the multitude." The St. Louis born Field was a humorist and poet, particularly popular among children. He had written the 19th section of what became his final work, The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, only two days before his death (his brother, Roswell Martin Field, Jr., wrote the introduction for the book's posthumous publication). For a man who died in his sleep, perhaps it is appropriate that his most work famous remains "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod":

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
   Sailed off in a wooden shoe—
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
   Into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
   The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring fish
   That live in this beautiful sea;
   Nets of silver and gold have we!"
            Said Wynken,
            Blynken,
            And Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang a song,
   As they rocked in the wooden shoe,
And the wind that sped them all night long
   Ruffled the waves of dew.
The little stars were the herring fish
   That lived in that beautiful sea—
"Now cast your nets wherever you wish—
   Never afeard are we";
   So cried the stars to the fishermen three:
            Wynken,
            Blynken,
            And Nod.

All night long their nets they threw
   To the stars in the twinkling foam—
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
   Bringing the fishermen home;
'T was all so pretty a sail it seemed
   As if it could not be,
And some folks thought 'twas a dream they 'd dreamed
   Of sailing that beautiful sea—
   But I shall name you the fishermen three:
            Wynken,
            Blynken,
            And Nod.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
   And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
   Is a wee one's trundle-bed.
So shut your eyes while mother sings
   Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
   As you rock in the misty sea,
   Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:
            Wynken,
            Blynken,
            And Nod.

I have learn'd too much of woe and wrong

Elizabeth Margaret Chandler had a difficult life from the beginning. Her mother died only two days after her birth and her father, unable to care for the child, sent her off to live with her grandmother. He died only a few years later. Raised in Philadelphia, Chandler was a devout Quaker who became a published writer at age 16.

The grandmother who raised her died in 1827. In 1830, Chandler moved to Tecumseh, Michigan. She died there four years later on November 2, 1834 after long bouts of ill health. She was 26 years old. Throughout her tragic and short life, she insisted that slavery was a moral wrong that had to be abolished quickly. Much of her writing (mostly poems, but also essays) focused on freeing enslaved people. After her death, her works were collected and published, with profits donated to the abolitionist cause. Chandler noted that her own life was fine compared to the plight of slaves, as she says in her poem "Reminiscence":

Away and away to memory's land!
To seize the past with a daring hand,
And bear it back from oblivion's bowers,
To brighten again this dull world of ours.

There's many a walk beneath summer skies,
Starry and blue as some earthly eyes;
There's many an eve by the winter's hearth,
Sparkling all over with friendship and mirth.

There's many a ramble through wood and glen,
Away from the sight and the haunts of men;
There's climbing of rocks, and gathering flowers,
And watching the stream through summer showers

There's many an hour that quickly went,
In the boughs of the old hill grape-vine spent;
There's many a ride, and many a walk,
And many a theme of friendly talk.

How freshly comes to the spirit back,
The merry light of its early track!—
But let it pass, for around my brow
Far deeper thoughts are gathering now.

I have learn'd too much of woe and wrong,
Of hearts all crush'd by oppression strong,
To deem the earth, as in other days,
A fairy theme for a poet's lays.

How may I linger within the bowers,
Bedight with memory's fairy flowers,
While woman's cry, as she drains the cup
Of her bitter lot, to the sky goes up?

How may I joy in my better fate,
While her heart is bleeding and desolate?—
Or give my thoughts to their blissful dreams,
While no bright ray on her darkness gleams?