Birth of Nack: dawn of another New-Year

James M. Nack was born into a poor New York City family on January 4, 1809. With little money for education, he was taught at home and was an able reader and writer at age 4 and began writing crude poems by age 8. In that year, however, 1817, he also experienced a major change in his life. He fell down a staircase and hit his head hard, knocking him unconscious for weeks. When he awoke, he was deaf.

It was then that Nack's family enrolled him in school for the first time: the newly-opened New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. His interest in writing grew and he wrote a full-length play by age 12. As a teenager, he found a job with an attorney, and devoured the books in his boss's ample library, further inspiring his writing. He published his first book The Legend of the Rocks and Other Poems in 1827. Critics called him an "intellectual wonder." Some scholars today acknowledge the book as the first one written by an American who was deaf. He was 18.

Nack continued writing, supplementing his income as a legal clerk and translator from at least three languages. Advocates for early special education used Nack as an example of the potential in people who were deaf. After all, he not only lived an ordinary life (marrying, having children, working successfully in a job), but he also lived in an extraordinary life as the author of at least four books and as a linguist. His writings often reflected on life and death, on love and faith, and range from very short lyrics to long epics. From his first book, "Ode to the New Year, 1826":

How many are now in the cold grave reposing
   Who welcom'd the dawn of the year that has fled!
How little, alas! did they think that its closing
   Should find them enshrin'd in the urn of the dead!
How many a bosom, now bounding as lightly,
   Shall yield its last throb, and be motionless laid;
The spark of existence, now beaming so brightly,
   Extinguished forever in sepulchral shade:
How many this year to the grave's dark dominions
   Shall hasten, who welcome its rising career,
Ere time once again on his air-feather'd pinions
   Shall usher the dawn of another New-Year!

And I, who now muse on the thousands departed,
   May follow them ere the return of this day,
Bedew'd with the tears of some friend brokenhearted,
   Who now smiles upon me unthinking and gay;
And better than I should survive to deplore them,
   The few that to share my affections remain,
O better by far I should perish before them,
   Nor hail the return of a New-Year again.
The hearts that now love me, will they not regret me,
   Shall ever my memory cease to be dear?
The friends of my bosom,—O can they forget me,
   If swept from their sight by the close of the year?

If all I have lov'd have repaid my affections
   With ardour unbounded, unfeigned as mine own,
My name, in the hearts of my friends and connexions,
   Shall ever be cherish'd on memory's throne;
But little it then will avail to me, whether
   Remember'd by those I have lov'd, or forgot;
In mansions of bliss when united together,
   On earth if they valued my friendship or not,
Love breathing around in the zephyrs of heaven
   Shall each to the other forever endear,
Whom there our Redeemer a mansion has given
   To live and to love through Eternity's Year.

*For much of the information in this post, I am indebted to A Mighty Change: An Anthology of Deaf American Writing, 1816-1864 (Gallaudet University Press, 2000), edited by Christopher Krentz. The section on Nack includes the image of the poet seen above.

Birth of Gallagher: Land of the West

The death of William Davis Gallagher's Irish father in 1841 prompted the family's move from Philadelphia to Mount Healthy, Ohio. Born in that Pennsylvania city on August 21, 1808, Davis would become forever enmeshed with his adopted state of Ohio. The trip was made across Pennsylvania in horse-drawn carriage before embarking on the Ohio River to the Cincinnati area. Educated in part in a log schoolhouse and working as a farm hand in his youth, he began to recognize the rural west as a place of distinct importance. While serving as a newspaper editor in and around Cincinnati,  he had his first experience with poetry — though it wasn't initially positive. "I wondered," he noted decades later, "why the stupid contributors didn't put what they had to say plainly, instead of cutting it up ridiculously, in short lines, with capitals at one end and rhymes at the other."

But Gallagher had interacted with several Ohio poets, including Otway Curry and the Cary sisters, and began writing his own poetry which celebrated the west "plainly" (some were even set to music). He also traveled through Mississippi and Kentucky, reflecting similarly on their raw, rural nature. Among his longest works is Miami Woods, a seven part work with a "Proem" and "L'Envoi" celebrating southern Ohio. He also collected a significant anthology of Western writers. Here are the first and final parts of his poem "The West":

      Land of the West—green Forest-Land!
        Clime of the fair, and the immense!
      Favorite of Nature's liberal hand,
        And child of her munificence!
      Fill'd with a rapture warm, intense,
        High on a cloud-girt hill I stand,
      And with clear vision gazing thence,
        Thy glories round me far expand:
      Rivers, whose likeness earth has not,
        And lakes, that elsewhere seas would be,—
      Whose shores the countless wild herds dot,
        Fleet as the winds, and all as free;
      Mountains that pierce the bending sky,
        And with the storm-clouds warfare wage,—
      Shooting their glittering peaks on high,
        To mock the fierce red lightning's rage;
      Arcadian vales with vine-hung bow'rs,
        And grassy nooks, 'neath beechen shade,
      Where dance the never resting Hours,
        To music of the bright cascade;
      Skies softly beautiful, and blue
        As Italy's, with stars as bright;
        Flow'rs rich as morning's sun-rise hue,
      And gorgeous as the gemm'd midnight.
        Land of the West—green Forest-Land!
      Thus hath Creation's bounteous hand,
        Upon thine ample bosom flung
Charms such as were her gift when the gray world was young...

        Land of the West!—beneath the Heaven
        There's not a fairer, lovelier clime;
      Nor one to which was ever given
        A destiny more high, sublime.
      From Alleghany's base to where
        Our Western Andes prop the sky—
      The home of Freedom's hearts is there,
        And o'er it Freedom's eagles fly.
      And here,—should e'er Columbia's land
        Be rent with fierce intestine feud,—
      Shall Freedom's latest cohorts stand,
        Till Freedom's eagles sink in blood,
And quench'd are all the stars that now her banners stud.

William Gilmore Simms: no mother's smile

William Gilmore Simms was three months shy of his second birthday when his mother, Harriet Singleton Simms, died in childbirth on January 29, 1808. The young Simms had lost his older brother shortly before. His father (and namesake) was immensely depressed and, it is said, his hair turned completely white within a week. Calling his home "a place of tombs," he moved to Tennessee then Mississippi, leaving his son (the only surviving child) with his maternal grandmother Jane Gates in Charleston, South Carolina. Father was seldom heard from.

As one of his earliest biographers noted, William Gilmore Simms grew up "motherless and almost fatherless," but he doted on his grandmother, who returned his warm affection and was known as a great storyteller. Attempts at a public school education failed; in his adulthood, Simms reflected that he was an example of the "worthlessness" of Charleston schools at the time: "They taught me little or nothing. The teachers were generally worthless in morals, and as ignorant as worthless." Frequent illness kept him from attending class often anyway and, instead, he turned to reading and self-education.

As a teenager, however, he learned of an inheritance from his mother's estate, which he quickly put towards the purchase of a political newspaper. It soon failed. He married young, but his wife died shortly into the marriage. He visited his father in Mississippi, and the elder Simms told the younger he would never be successful in South Carolina.

Throughout it all, William Gilmore Simms was writing as early as 8 years old. At one point, he traveled to Hingham, Massachusetts, where he completed his long, ambitious poem Atalantis; its publication was his first major literary success. He became one of the most prolific writers of the South, publishing poetry, novels, history, and editing anthologies after the Civil War. Looking back on his early years in a letter to Rufus Griswold in 1841, Simms wrote: "Of myself, in this time, the history is no pleasant one to me." His sonnet "Childhood":

That season which all other men regret,
     And strive, with boyish longing, to recall,
Which love permits not memory to forget,
     And fancy still restores in dreams of all
That boyhood worshipp'd, or believed, or knew,—
Brings no sweet images to me—was true,
Only in cold and cloud, in lonely days
     And gloomy fancies—in defrauded claims,
     Defeated hopes, denied, denying aims;—
Cheer'd by no promise—lighted by no rays,
Warm'd by no smile—no mother's smile,—that smile,
Of all, best suited sorrow to beguil,
And strengthen hope, and, by unmark'd degrees,
Encourage to their birth high purposes.

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.

Birth of Dawes: his heart is always young

Born in Boston on January 26, 1803, Rufus Dawes was the youngest of sixteen children. His family for generations had been important politicians, patriots, and judges. A teenaged Rufus, however, was kicked out of Harvard College for what turned out to be a false accusation of impropriety. Nevertheless, the incident pushed him into poetry — his first verses were a satire on the college and faculty that had scorned him.

During his lifetime, Dawes was most recognized for his long poem Geraldine. His poems are generally highly-wrought, often focused on themes of romance, history, nature, or mythology. Among his most tolerable is "The Poet":

The poet's heart is always young,
   And flows with love's unceasing streams;
Oh, many are the lays unsung,
   Yet treasured with his dreams!

The spirits of a thousand flowers,—
   The loved,—the lost, — his heart enshrine;
The memory of blessed hours,
   And impulses divine.

Like water in a crystal urn,
   Sealed up forever, as a gem,
That feels the sunbeams while they burn,
   But never yields to them; —

His heart may fire —his fevered brain
   May kindle with concentrate power,
But kind affections still remain
   To gild his darkest hour.

The world may chide — the heartless sneer, —
   And coldly pass the Poet by,
Who only sheds a sorrowing tear
   O'er man's humanity.

From broken hearts and silent grief,
   From all unutterable scorn,
He draws the balm of sweet relief,
   For sufferers yet unborn.

His lyre is strung with shattered strings, —
   The heart-strings of the silent dead, —
Where memory hovers with her wings,
   Where grief is canopied.

And yet his heart is always young,
   And flows with love's unceasing streams;
Oh, many are the lays unsung,
   And treasured with his dreams!

Birth of Chandler: naught but changeless gloom

Elizabeth Margaret Chandler was born in Centreville, Delaware on December 24, 1807. Her mother died two days later and her father, unable to care for his daughter, left her in the care of her grandmother in Philadelphia. He died when young Margaret was about 8 years old. At 16, she began publishing poems locally. By age 23, she moved to the Michigan Territory but died only four years later in 1834.

By 18, her writing became more serious as she focused on anti-slavery pieces — likely inspired by her Quaker background. One critic concluded Chandler was "the first American female author that ever made the Abolition of Slavery the principal theme of her active exertions."

Often, Chandler's poems directly appeal to womanly sensibilities. In one of her poems, a child asks, "What is a slave, mother?" The child does not believe that people can be bought and sold and children can be torn away from their parents. "Alas, yes, my child," the mother answers. The child concludes it is "a sinful thing" and only a "savage and wicked" land would allow it. According to contemporary sources, Chandler's most famous poem was "The Slave's Appeal":

Christian mother! when thy prayer
Trembles on the twilight air,
And thou askest God to keep,
In their waking and their sleep,
Those whose love is more to thee
Than the wealth of land or sea,
Think of those who wildly mourn
For the loved ones from them torn!

Christian daughter, sister, wife!
Ye who wear a guarded life—
Ye, whose bliss hangs not, like mine,
On a tyrant's word or sign,
Will ye hear, with careless eye,
Of the wild despairing cry,
Rising up from human hearts,
As their latest bliss departs!

Blest ones! whom no hands on earth
Dares to wrench from home and hearth,
Ye whose hearts are shelter'd well,
By affection's holy spell,
Oh, forget not those for whom
Life is naught but changeless gloom,
O'er whose days of cheerless sorrow,
Hope may paint no brighter tomorrow.

Adams: December's face grows mild

By Gilbert Stuart, 1818

The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in December 1620. After more than a century, people in Massachusetts wanted to commemorate the day, choosing December 22 in 1769. Originally called "Old Colony Day," it eventually was renamed as "Forefathers Day" and was typically celebrated in song. In 1803,  a young United States Senator was chosen to write the song for that year. His name was John Quincy Adams, future President of the United States. His song was called "Hymn for the 22d of December":

When o'er the billow-heaving deep,
  The fathers of our race,
The precepts of their God to keep,
  Sought here their resting-place,

That gracious God their path prepared,
  Preserved from every harm,
And still for their protection bared
  His everlasting arm.

His breath, inspiring every gale,
  Impels them o'er the main;
His guardian angels spread the sail,
  And tempests howl in vain.

For them old ocean's rocks are smoothed;
  December's face grows mild;
To vernal airs her blasts are soothed,
  And all their rage beguiled.

When Famine rolls her haggard eyes,
  His ever-bounteous hand
Abundance from the sea supplies,
  And treasures from the sand.

Nor yet his tender mercies cease;
  His over-ruling plan
Inclines to gentleness and peace
  The heart of savage man.

And can our stony bosoms be
  To all these wonders blind?
Nor swell with thankfulness to thee,
  O Parent of mankind?

All-gracious God, inflame our zeal;
  Dispense one blessing more;
Grant us thy boundless love to feel,
  Thy goodness to adore.

Interestingly enough, Adams was not the only President who was also a recognized poet; James Garfield wrote several poems while in college, for example. Certainly, other writers were also politicians as well. There is even at least one White House servant who was an author.

Birth of Davidson: Rouse thee, America!

Lucretia Maria Davidson was born on September 27, 1808 in Plattsburgh, New York. From a young age, she often avoided the more typical pastimes of children and instead spent her days with books. In fact, her mother became suspicious when her personal writing paper kept disappearing. It was quite by accident that she found that young Lucretia had taken to poetry.

Over the years, Lucretia honed her writing skills and, at age eleven, wrote a poem in honor of George Washington. Upon reading it, an aunt declared that the girl had plagiarized the poem from someone else. Hurt by the accusation, Lucretia responded by writing a verse to her aunt assuring her of the poem's original origins. It reads, in part:

The work is mine — why should you doubt?
        It's not so very well:
What all this fuss is made about,
        I'm sure I cannot tell.

A benefactor discovered her abilities and assisted her in being admitted to the Troy Female Seminary. Her family and friends had high hopes for Lucretia, but she was modest: "I hope the expectations of my friends will not be disappointed; but I am afraid you all calculate upon too much... I fear I shall not equal the hopes which you say are raised."

One can only speculate how her talents would have developed. Lucretia Maria Davidson died in 1825 before reaching 17 years old. Her only book of poems was published posthumously with the help of family friend and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse. Included in that collection was an unfinished fragment, "American Poetry," describing the teenager's hopes for the future of American verse (note that the last line remains incomplete):

Must every shore ring boldly to the voice
Of sweet poetic harmony, save this?
Rouse thee, America! for shame! for shame!
   Gather thy infant bands, and rise to join
Thy glimmering taper to the holy flame:—
   Such honour, if no other, may be thine.
Shall Gallia's children sing beneath the yoke?
   Shall Ireland's harpstrings thrill, though all unstrung?
And must America, her bondiige broke,
   Oppression's blood-stains from her garment wrung,
Must she be silent? — who may then rejoice?
   If she be tuneless, Harmony, farewell!
Oh! shame, America! wild Freedom's voice
   Echoes, "shame on thee," from her wild-wood dell.
Shall conquered Greece still sing her glories past?
Shall humbled Italy in ruins smile?
And canst thou then——

McGuffey: John must not tear the book

Near the small town of Washington, Pennsylvania, William Holmes McGuffey was born on September 23, 1800 (Rebecca Harding Davis was born in the same town 31 years later). Despite dropping out for a time due to lack of money, he graduated from Washington College in 1826. He began teaching ancient languages at Miami University in Ohio.

In the "frontier" of Ohio, publishers Truman and Smith recognized that children in the New World were following the same educational practices from the age of Calvinism. The popular New England Primer reinforced a negative view of humanity: "In Adam's fall, we sinned all." Far away from New England, that old book seemed trite. They approached McGuffey and asked him to pursue a completely new primer. For parts of three years, he worked on what he called The Eclectic Reader; by the end of the century, 100 million copies were sold. Today, the book is known as The McGuffey Reader.

The book introduces reading using simple words, often repetitive and instructive, usually with an accompanying illustration. The first of the four-volume first edition begins:

Here is John.
There are Ann and Jane.
Ann has a new book.
It is the first book.
Ann must keep it nice and clean.
John must not tear the book.
He may see how fast he can learn.

Bicentennial of Harriet Beecher Stowe

200 years ago, on June 14, 1811, Harriet Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. Later Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, she would earn fame as the author of the highest-selling novel of the century, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

On her 70th birthday, a celebration was held in her honor in the form of a garden party. She gave a short speech and concluded: "Let us never doubt. Everything that ought to happen is going to happen."

In her centennial year, 1911, her son and grandson published what they termed a memoir; they would not use the term "biography." As they wrote in their preface: " It is rather the story of a real character; telling, not so much what she did as what she was, and how she became what she was." They also claimed the town of her birth inspired her lifelong love of nature. As Stowe wrote:

My earliest recollections of Litchfield are those of its beautiful scenery, which impressed and formed my mind long before I had words to give names to my emotions, or could analyze my mental processes. To the west of us rose a smoothbosomed hill, called Prospect Hill; and many a pensive, wondering hour have I sat at our playroom window, watching the glory of the wonderful sunsets that used to burn themselves out amid voluminous wreathings or castellated turrets of clouds proper to a mountainous region.

On the east of us lay another upland, called Chestnut Hills, whose sides were wooded with a rich growth of forest trees, whose change of tint and verdure, from the first misty tints of spring green through the deepening hues of summer into the rainbow glories of autumn, was a subject of constant remark and of pensive contemplation to us children. We heard them spoken of by older people and pointed out to visitors, and came to take pride in them as a sort of birthright.

She died close to home in Hartford, Connecticut about two weeks after her 85th birthday.

Birth of Isaac McLellan

Isaac McLellan was born in what is now Portland, Maine on May 21, 1806, though his family moved to Boston while he was still a boy. After studying at Phillips Academy at Andover (with fellow Portland-born poet Nathaniel Parker Willis) then Bowdoin College (with fellow Portland-born poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), he attempted a career as a lawyer but was quickly pulled towards literature. He served as an associate editor for a magazine while contributing poems to various others. He spent equal time engaged in "sportsman" activities — bird-hunting, in particular. Eventually, McLellan published three books of poetry and moved to New York.

Most of McLellan's poems are nature-focused, many highlight the unique aspects of American culture: the frontier, Native Americans, and hunting for moose and bison. He set poems in the plains of Illinois, in the Wyoming territory, along the coast of Florida, and in parts of Canada. More exotic poems featured elephant hunts in Africa. Amid all of it, he often had a more philosophical message. From the opening stanzas of "Mount Auburn" (1843):

What is Life? — a bubble dancing
   On the sparkling fountain's brim,
Painted by the sunbeam glancing
   O'er its evanescent rim.
Soon its soft reflected glories,
   Images of colored skies,
Vanish — when the haze of evening
   O'er the panorama dies.
Life, with all its bliss and troubles,
Melts like unsubstantial bubbles!

What is life? — a little journey,
   Ending ere 't is well begun;
'Tis a gay disastrous tourney,
   Where a mingled tilt is ran;
And the head that wears a crown
   'Neath the meanest lance goes down.
Walk, then, on life's pathway, mortal!
   With a pure and steadfast heart;
So that through death's frowning portal,
Peacefully thou may'st depart!

I wander in pale dreams away

Sarah Helen Whitman was born in Providence, Rhode Island on January 19, 1803, six years to the day before her future betrothed Edgar Allan Poe. Whitman and Poe ultimately never married but their short engagement has overshadowed her role as one of the most famous women poets in the middle of the 19th century.

Her poem "The Past" (1846):

Thick darkness broodeth o'er the world:
The raven pinions of the Night,
Close on her silent bosom furled,
Reflect no gleam of orient light.
 E'en the wild Norland fires that mocked
The faint bloom of the eastern sky,
Now leave me, in close darkness locked.
To night's weird realm of phantasy.

Borne from pale shadow-lands remote,
A morphean music, wildly sweet,
Seems, on the starless gloom, to float,
Like the white-pinioned Paraclete.
Softly into my dream it flows,
Then faints into the silence drear;
While from the hollow dark outgrows
The phantom Past, pale gliding near.

The visioned Past; so strangely fair!
So veiled in shadowy, soft regrets,
So steeped in sadness, like the air
That lingers when the day-star sets!
Ah! could I fold it to my heart,
On its cold lip my kisses press,
This waste of aching life impart,
To win it back from nothingness!

I loathe the purple light of day,
And shun the morning's golden star,
Beside that shadowy form to stray,
For ever near, yet oh how far!
Thin as a cloud of summer even,
All beauty from my gaze it bars;
Shuts out the silver cope of heaven,
And glooms athwart the dying stars.

Cold, sad, and spectral, by my side,
It breathes of love's ethereal bloom—
Of bridal memories, long affied
To the dread silence of the tomb:
Sweet, cloistered memories, that the heart
Shuts close within its chalice cold;
Faint perfumes, that no more dispart
From the bruised lily's floral fold.

"My soul is weary of her life;"
My heart sinks with a slow despair;
The solemn, star-lit hours are rife
With phantasy; the noontide glare,
And the cool morning, fancy free,
Are false with shadows; for the day
Brings no blithe sense of verity,
Nor wins from twilight thoughts away.

Oh, bathe me in the Lethean stream,
And feed me on the lotus flowers;
Shut out this false, bewildering dream,
This memory of departed hours!
Sweet haunting dream! so strangely fair—
So veiled in shadowy, soft regrets—
So steeped in sadness, like the air
That lingers when the day-star sets!

The Future can no charm confer,
My heart's deep solitudes to break;
No angel's foot again shall stir
The waters of that silent lake.
I wander in pale dreams away,
And shun the morning's golden star,
To follow still that failing ray,
For ever near, yet oh how far!

John Greenleaf Whittier's 70th birthday

John Greenleaf Whittier was born in the family homestead in Haverhill, Massachusetts on December 17, 1807. As was traditional in the 19th century, his 70th birthday party in 1877 was a major event — in more ways than one.

The party was thrown by the Atlantic Monthly at Boston's Brunswick Hotel. Guests included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Eliot Norton, Richard Henry Stoddard, and about fifty others. Speeches were presented in Whittier's honor, and Oliver Wendell Holmes presented a poem. Perhaps out of place among these New England literary giants was Mark Twain — who ended up stealing the show.

Twain, invited by his friend and Atlantic editor William Dean Howells, presented a speech intended to be humorous. He described a man he met while traveling who had recently hosted Emerson, Holmes, and Longfellow. According to Twain, the man referred to Emerson as "a seedy little bit of a chap," while Holmes was "as fat as a balloon... and had double chins all the way down to his stomach," while Longfellow had "cropped and bristly" hair "as if he had a wig made of hair brushes." The three men start quoting obscure passages of poetry to the man, who clearly does not understand.

The man tells Twain that he now plans to move, saying, "I ain't suited to a littery atmosphere." Twain responds by telling him they must not have been the true "gracious singers" but imposters. When the newspapers reported the speech as an "attack," Twain sent letters of apology to Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow and Whittier. Longfellow responded that the newspapers were responsible for the "mischief" and that everyone else recognized the "bit of humor." Longfellow concluded: "It was a very pleasant dinner, and I think Whittier enjoyed it very much." No response from Whittier regarding Twain's speech is known.

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.

Birth of Thomas Holley Chivers

On a cotton plantation outside of Washington, Georgia, Thomas Holley Chivers was born on October 18, 1809. He witnessed the death of his sister while in his teens (a traumatic experience that should have forewarned a life full of the loss of loved ones). He married his 16-year old cousin Frances Elizabeth Chivers in 1827 but, within a year, she left him along with their infant daughter.

Chivers left Georgia shortly after, enrolling at Transylvania University in Kentucky, where he earned his M.D.  Returning to his home state, Dr. Chivers hoped to reconcile with his wife. He was wrong, but demanded his legal right to a portion of his wife's estate. She tried to divorce him but he would not allow it, resulting in a major scandal. Georgia law eventually dissolved their marriage; Chivers likely never saw his daughter again. The trouble inspired his first book of poems, The Path of Sorrow (1832), which he self-published.

He soon remarried and with his second wife, Harriet Hunt of Springfield, Massachusetts, he had four children. Each of them died young. Dr. Chivers's life was full of enough suffering that his poetry almost exclusively focuses on themes of death, mourning, and loss. Inspired in part by his friend Edgar Allan Poe (who he later suggested plagiarized from him), his poetry also emphasized the quality of sound... to much less success. Evert Augustus Duyckinck called Chivers formulaic — and even broke down the formula, including 20% "mild idiocy," with another 10% of "gibbering idiocy." It is difficult not to agree. From "Threnody, Composed on the Death of My Little Boy":

By the Waters of Salvation,
  Christ's Salvation, full of pain —
Christ's Salvation, in probation,
I sit down in tribulation,
And now write this Lamentation
  For the lost, the early slain!
Waiting, (hoping for salvation,)
  For his coming back again.

But, as awful as some of his poetry is, he writes with enough sincere melancholy that it's hard not to appreciate what he's doing. From "Song to Isa":

Upon thy lips now lies
  The music-dew of love;
And in thy deep blue eyes,
  More mild than heaven above,
  The meekness of the dove.

More sweet than the perfume
  Of snow-white jessamine,
When it is first in bloom,
  Is that sweet breath of thine,
  Which mingles now with mine.

*Recommended reading: Thomas Holley Chivers by Charles M. Leland, if you can find it. Last year, for Chivers's bicentennial, the magazine Georgia Backroads had a great article by Ellen Firsching Brown on the doctor-poet. Another source of information, including a better list of books to look for, is here.

Holmes: Now here I stand at fifty

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 29, 1809, Oliver Wendell Holmes became a medical doctor and reformer, a poet, a novelist, and one of the most defining members of Boston culture. He was a standard speaker for various events, meetings, anniversaries, and parties for visiting dignitaries in Boston — and, perhaps most importantly, he gave the city its self-centered nickname as the "Hub of the Solar System."

Holmes was known for his humor, his conversation, and his self-confidence. Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that he was the main speaker for his own 50th birthday party on August 29, 1859. He presented a poem which well represented his wit, "At a Meeting of Friends." In it, he both reaffirms and denies that he is approaching old age:

I remember — why yes! God bless me! and was it so long ago?
I fear I'm growing forgetful, as old folks do, you know;
It must have been in 'forty — I would say 'thirty-nine—
We talked this matter over, I and a friend of mine.

He and his friend discuss the question of when old age begins. "Up to the age of thirty we spend our years like change" but somewhere after 30 years old, youth suddenly begins to disappear. They agree that the former youth is old the moment he turns 40... until his 40th birthday:

But one fine August morning I found myself awake:
My birthday: — By Jove, I'm forty! Yes, forty, and no mistake!
Why this is the very milestone, I think I used to hold,
That when a fellow had come to, a fellow would then be old!

In his wizened years, of course, he realizes 40 is not so old after all, and pledges old age does not start until 50. But, now on his 50th birthday, Holmes asks his friends if they think he is old:

Now here I stand at fifty, my jury gathered round;
Sprinkled with dust of silver, but not yet silver-crowned,
Ready to meet your verdict, waiting to hear it told;
Guilty of fifty summers; speak! Is the verdict old?

Halleck: Inscribed with all reverence

Fitz-Greene Halleck became a household name as a poet in the nineteenth century. In fact, his reputation was so strong that, immediately after his death, efforts were made to memorialize him in no less a public spot than New York City's Central Park. The statue, still standing, is considered the first public memorial to an American poet. Today, he is mostly forgotten.

But, at the age of 12, young Fitz-Greene (who was partially deaf) knew nothing of that legacy, or forgotten legacy, that was to come. On May 20, 1803, the young boy wrote one of his earliest poems, likely at his family's home in Guilford, Connecticut:

Stern winter is gone: no more it snows,
But lambkins briskly play;
They skip about the verdant fields,
And hail returning May.

The robin sits on yonder bough
And tunes his whistling lay,
While sweetly throbs his little throat
To hail returning May.

The sun, just rising in the east,
New gilds the smiling day;
With noises gay the hills resound,
And hail returning May.

The plains are dotted in verdure green,
The hills and dales look gay;
The shepherd sings along the plain,
And hails returning May.

Maria rose at early dawn,
And took her lonely way
Where bleating herds skip lightly round,
And hail returning May.

Maria, gayest of the plain,
To you I tune my lay;
May you fore'er enjoy the sweets
Of verdant, blooming May.

The poem was addressed to his sister. The original manuscript opens with: "Inscribed with all reverence to Miss Maria Halleck, by her brother, Fitz-Greene Halleck."

Birth and death of Nathaniel Parker Willis

There really is no one like Nathaniel Parker Willis (January 20, 1806 - January 20, 1867), the American poet, editor, publisher, travel essayist and, for a time, the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. He was born in Portland, Maine, and raised in Boston, before making his career as a New York writer and a member of the Knickerbocker group. Though barely remembered today (and, when he is, usually for his associations with other writers), he was a powerhouse of the antebellum period. At one point, for example, he was a regular columnist for three different publications, causing even Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to be jealous of his income.

A quick read through Pencillings by the Way or Out-doors at Idlewild reveals little substance in Willis. However, he was one of the earliest Americans to travel to Europe and write back about his experiences. His prose drew readers in using a style that addressed them directly as close, intimate friends. He made it seem that he was just a rustic American who happened to get lucky and implied that anyone could trade places with him.

As a poet, he often wrote on stereotypically feminine, wishy-washy subjects (case in point: "The Lady in the White Dress, Whom I Helped Onto the Omnibus"). However, much of his poetry stands the test of time and, what's more, he was writing almost entirely in blank verse in the late 1820s (somewhat impressive for that time period). His "Birth-day Verses" was written while he was traveling in Europe, addressed to his mother:

My birth-day!—Oh beloved mother!
My heart is with thee o'er the seas.
I did not think to count another
Before I wept upon thy knees—
Before this scroll of absent years
Was blotted with thy streaming tears.

My own I do not care to check.
I weep—albeit here alone—
As if I hung upon thy neck,
As if thy lips were on my own,
As if this full, sad heart of mine,
Were beating closely upon thine.

Four weary years! How looks she now?
What light is in those tender eyes?
What trace of time has touch'd the brow
Whose look is borrow'd of the skies
That listen to her nightly prayer?
How is she changed since he was there
Who sleeps upon her heart alway—
Whose name upon her lips is worn—
For whom the night seems made to pray—
For whom she wakes to pray at morn——
Whose sight is dim, whose heart-strings stir,—
Who weeps these tears—to think of her!

I know not if my mother's eyes—
Would find me changed in slighter things;
I've wander'd beneath many skies,
And tasted of some bitter springs;
And many leaves, once fair and gay,
From youth's full flower have dropp'd away—
But, as these looser leaves depart,
The lessen'd flower gets near the core,
And, when deserted quite, the heart
Takes closer what was dear of yore—
And yearns to those who loved it first—
The sunshine and the dew by which its bud was nursed.

The poem goes on to ask if, hypothetically, if his mother misses him and loves him the way he misses and loves her. Of course, he knows in his heart that he does, and the poem looks forward to their reunion. He imagines that meeting as one full of happy tears and expects that he will shed his adulthood and return to the boy nature he once shared with her. These sort of open-hearted domestic scenes certainly endeared him to his American audience.

Birth of Edgar Poe

Edgar Poe was born on January 19, 1809. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Poe became an orphan as an infant when his mother died (his father had already abandoned the family). His older brother was taken in by family in Baltimore. Young Edgar and his younger sister were taken in by two unrelated families in Richmond. Poe was raised by John and Frances Allan, though his legal name was never Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe grew up in a fairly high-class lifestyle, even going to school in England for five years as a boy. When he reached young adulthood, however, his foster-father John Allan (who never adopted the boy) spurned him, calling him ungrateful. Determined to make a living as a writer at a time when it was financially impossible to do so, Poe lived a life of poverty. His greatest works brought him, on average, $10 to $15 each.

Poe's connection to Boston is more than the coincidental place of his birth. His parents were actors who traveled with a mobile acting troupe. Their time in Boston, however, lasted about three years. His mother, Eliza Poe, was an English immigrant who first came to the country as a young child, landing at Boston Harbor in 1796. When his mother died, she presented to young Edgar a miniature portrait of Boston Harbor (no longer extant), with her inscription: "For my little son Edgar, who should ever love Boston, the place of his birth, and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends."

When he was cast aside by John Allan, it was to Boston that Poe attempted to make a living on his own. He enlisted in the Army under the false name "Edgar A. Perry" and was first stationed at Fort Independence on Boston's Castle Island. It was in the same city that Poe published his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, with the byline "By A Bostonian."Years later, when Poe had achieved fame as a poet (particularly for "The Raven"), he returned to Boston to lecture at the Boston Lyceum - an event which has gone down in history as disastrous. The stage which he lectured from was, in fact, the same Boston stage where Eliza Poe had her last performance in Boston.

Poe was known for his quarrels with Boston-area writers like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and (sometimes) Nathaniel Hawthorne and James Russell Lowell. He particularly disagreed with the reform mentality of the group of writers he called "Frogpondians" (after the Frog Pond on Boston Common), who often wrote didactic works. Poe's relationship to Boston and Boston-area writers is explored in-depth in "The Raven in the Frog Pond," an exhibit at the Boston Public Library, through March 31, 2010.