Birth of Taylor: preposterous mementos

"If I were called upon to single out of my thirty years' recollections of Bayard Taylor," wrote Richard Henry Stoddard in his 1893 book Recollections, Personal and Literary, "the one above all others by which I should prefer to remember him, it would be the night on which we celebrated his fortieth birthday (January 11, 1865)."

By the age of 40, Taylor had already published about 10 books, had traveled throughout the United States, Europe, and beyond, outlived his first wife, remarried, built a home in Pennsylvania, and serve his country as a diplomat in Russia. To celebrate his birthday, Stoddard and others looked to the recent celebration of William Cullen Bryant's 70th birthday, the proceedings of which were printed in book form by the Century Club. "I resolved to burlesque that account," Stoddard recalled, and friends sought the "most absurdly appropriate (or inappropriate)" gifts and tokens to present as "preposterous mementos." Stoddard continues his account:

I imagined the decoration of Bayard Taylor's chambers, the gathering of his friends, and wrote letters of regret from those who could not be present, but who somehow happened to be present in spite of their letters. The reading of these missives and sundry copies of verse, and the bestowal of our mementos, provoked more furi than had ever before, or has ever since, distinguished our Taylor nights. It was not so much that they were comical in themselves (though they were) as that we were willing to fool and to be fooled to the top of our bent. The table was in a roar till long after midnight.

On January 11, 1825, 40 years before that party, Bayard Taylor was born in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Though he was his parents' fourth child, he was the first to survive past infancy. Raised as a Quaker, he had been named after a Delaware senator, taking that man's last name as his first. As a boy, he already exhibited the need to explore which defined his adult life (and his writing career). But, as he clarified in his book At Home and Abroad (1859), it wasn't a desire merely to walk that inspired him:

In looking back to my childhood, I can recall no such instinct of perambulation; but on the contrary, the intensest desire to climb upward—so that without shifting the circle of my horizon, I could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. I envied every bird that sat swinging upon the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weather-cock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon, was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy.

Stoddard: even by those who condemn

"I am surprised at the profound impression the book makes," wrote Elizabeth Stoddard to Louise Chandler Moulton on December 16, 1865. "It cannot be resisted even by those who condemn." The book in question was Stoddard's Two Men, compelled one Boston critic to claim the book was "difficult of comprehension from its title to its two hundred and ninety-first page." Henry James privately called the book "nonsense."

In the same letter, Stoddard complains of financial woes and her difficulty in procuring appropriate clothes for a visit to her friend Moulton. She blames it on her high rent in New York, but also notes the lavish taste of her husband for "sherry, champagne, & claret." That husband, Richard Henry Stoddard, however, had published three books that week: King's Bell, Melodies & Madrigals, and Late Poets (all but the first were anthologies of other poets). "His hair is all grey with work," wrote his wife.

In this literary couple (pictured above in their later years), Mr. Stoddard was the more prolific and most lauded in his lifetime; he published several books of poetry and prose, biographies, as well as many collections of other writers (including an update of Rufus W. Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America). As for Mrs. Stoddard, her published work consists of three novels in the 1860s, a children's book, and a few short pieces published in periodicals.

In preparing Two Men, she admitted her writing was "coarse by nature." Friends and critics alike called the book inconsistent and unrealistic, but Stoddard did not agree: "I have an overwhelming perception of the back side of truth," she wrote. She believed her writing was devoid of the sentimentalism and forced virtue often so prevalent in contemporary women's writings. Two Men includes, for example, complex female characters and unhappy marriages. She lamented that she had to cater to the consumer market while also infusing serious originality into her work, likely resulting in the inconsistencies her book. Thomas Wentworth Higginson once compared the work of Emily Dickinson to Mrs. Stoddard, making one consider Dickinson's line "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant."

*My source for much of the information in this post is the newly published edition of The Selected Letters of Elizabeth Stoddard edited by Jennifer Putzi and Elizabeth Stockton.

Boker: O Poet of the present day!

Born to a wealthy Philadelphia family on October 6, 1823, George Henry Boker became a poet, a playwright and, for a time, a diplomat (like his friend Bayard Taylor). Another friend, Charles Godrey Leland, noted that even as a boy, "Boker's knowledge of poetry was remarkable." His family fortune made him comfortable enough that he devoted much of his time to the pursuit of scholarly studies.

Boker, along with his group of literary friends, preferred looking to the Old World for inspiration. As Richard Henry Stoddard wrote to Boker: "Read Chaucer for strength, read Spenser for ease and sweetness, read Milton for sublimity and thought, read Shakespeare for all these things... Get out of your age as far as you can." Boker tended to agree, and often chose not to treat American subjects.

Boker, Taylor, Leland, and Stoddard were never as popular as the earlier generation of American poets (major names like Longfellow, Holmes, Bryant and others). As the second wave of American writers in the 19th century, they often struggled to get respect from critics. That struggle may be what Boker referred to in his poem "Ad Criticum":

...The world grows sage. The harmless tales
That took her in her infant years,
Now stretch her patience till it fails,
And weary her averted ears.

The poem continues by referring to the typical thought of the day that a new American literature must reflect the unique landscape of the country. To Boker, however, "this landscape, bought and sold" make up "the pictured scenes, no more... these are the scenery, not the play." The poem concludes:

O Poet of the present day!
Range back or forth, change time or place,
But mould the sinews of your lay
To struggle in the final race!

Your triumph in the end stands clear;
For when a few short years have run,
The past, the present, there and here,
To future times will be as one.

Payne: Be it ever so humble

Rufus Wilmot Griswold did not include John Howard Payne in any of his editions of The Poets and Poetry of America, the first major anthology of American poetry. Later, his successor Richard Henry Stoddard added him in an 1870s edition. Stoddard predicted that Payne "will be known only by a single song," though he may have been a bit generous. Payne, who was born on June 9, 1792 (sometimes listed as 1791), has hardly survived into collective memory. The "single song," however, is still memorable, at least in part:

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home!
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.
        Home! home, sweet home!
        There's no place like home!

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain,
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again.
The birds singing gayly that come at my call:
Give me those, and the peace of mind, dearer than all.
        Home! sweet, sweet home!
        There's no place like home!

The poem "Home, Sweet Home" was actually a song from Payne's 1823 opera, Clari, Maid of Milan; Payne wrote only the lyrics, not the music.

Payne was born in New York City. Early in his life, he showed an interest in drama and had his acting debut at about 9 or 10 years old. Shortly after, he moved to England and became successful as an actor, playwright, producer, and editor of a journal. His 1823 opera The Maid of Milan was instantly popular. The ballad "Home, Sweet Home" was published separately and sold tens of thousands. Payne himself made little money off it (having sold the rights to the publishers) and eventually returned to the United States, where he took a particular interest in the Cherokee nation.

His fame, however, resulted in an appointment by President John Tyler in 1842 (with help from Secretary of State Daniel Webster). Payne became the American Consul in the African city of Tunis. It was in that city that Payne died in 1852.

Several years later, "Home, Sweet Home" had a major revival when it became widely sung by Civil War soldiers. Legend has it that some commanding officers banned it since it intensified homesickness so much. Supposedly, in December 1862, opposing Confederate and Union troops found themselves amid a "Battle of the Bands," of sorts. On the eve of battle outside Murfreesboro, Tennessee, one officer wrote: "Every soldier on that field knew when the sun went down... on the following day he would be engaged in a struggle unto death, and the air was full of tokens that one of the most desperate of battles was to be fought." Troops were united, albeit temporarily, through Payne's "Home, Sweet Home."

The song's impact during that time period explains Stoddard's choice to include it (and nothing else) to represent Payne in the 1870s anthology. One of Payne's admirers, after all, was none other than Abraham Lincoln himself.

Fact is better in history than fiction

In the 19th century, several people were mythologizing the American Revolution. Many writers, who were children or grandchildren of veterans of that struggle, elevated the Founding Fathers as larger-than-life infallible heroes. These writers included Jared Sparks (at right), who altered George Washington's letters for publication to make him look more dignified. Washington Irving wrote a well-researched biography of America's first president as well but mostly told it through anecdotes, many of which are apocryphal.

But, perhaps, there is no more famous a myth-maker as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who turned Paul Revere into a national hero in the days leading to the Civil War. Despite what his poem claimed, Paul Revere did not wait on the banks of Charlestown to see the signal from the Old North Church ("one if by land, two if by sea"); he actually helped set them up as a back-up signal, in case he didn't reach his destination. He did not row himself to the opposite shore, but was rowed over by friends. He did not go to "every Middlesex village and farm," but only a select few. His main goal was to reach the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington, just off the battle green.

Perhaps most importantly, Paul Revere did not ride alone. He was one of several riders that day, including William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. Longfellow was aware of all the available data on the historic ride and purposely chose to ignore it to create a composite character that would inspire his generation.

The irony comes from a letter written 18 years after the poem. Richard Henry Stoddard (pictured, right, near the end of his life in 1902) was preparing an article on Longfellow and wanted to confirm some biographical details. After reviewing an early draft, Longfellow pointed out a couple inaccuracies and, in a letter dated April 20, 1878, concluded:

This is perhaps of no great importance, but, generally speaking, fact is better in history than fiction.

Longfellow left just enough wiggle room to suggest that, for the sake of a poem, perhaps fiction can be useful in history.

Poetic tributes for the death of Lincoln

April 15, 1865 — the death of Abraham Lincoln, America's first assassinated President — inspired many poetic tributes. Among them are poems by Richard Henry Stoddard, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, and the very famous "O Captain! My Captain!" — perhaps the best-remembered poem by Walt Whitman (with a rhyming meter).

Perhaps one of the more surprising tributes in verse came from Herman Melville, today known as a novelist and, occasionally, a short story writer, rather than as a poet. In fact, in 1866, Melville published an entire volume of poems focused on the Civil War. As with many of Melville's later works, however, it was generally ignored. The poem to Lincoln, titled "Martyr," is introduced as being "indicative of the Passion of the People on the 15th of April, 1865." According the Melville, that passion is one of anger, threatening violence:

Good Friday was the day
  Of the prodigy and crime,
When they killed him in his pity,
  When they killed him in his prime
Of clemency and calm—
  When with yearning he was filled
  To redeem the evil-willed,
And, though conqueror, be kind;
  But they killed him in his kindness,
  In their madness, in their blindness,
And they killed him from behind.

  There is sobbing of the strong,
    And a pall upon the land;
  But the People in their weeping
    Bare the iron hand:
  Beware the People weeping
    When they bare the iron hand.

He lieth in his blood—
  The father in his face;
They have killed him, the Forgiver—
  The Avenger takes his place,
The Avenger wisely stern,
  Who in righteousness shall do
  What the heavens call him to,
And the parricides remand;
  For they killed him in his kindness
  In their madness and their blindness,
And his blood is on their hand.

  There is sobbing of the strong,
    And a pall upon the land;
  But the People in their weeping
    Bare the iron hand:
  Beware the People weeping
    When they bare the iron hand. 

If you'd like, compare the tone of Melville's poem with that of Julia Ward Howe:

Crown his blood-stained pillow
   With a victor's palm;
Life's receding billow
   Leaves eternal calm.

At the feet Almighty
   Lay this gift sincere;
Of a purpose weighty,
   And a record clear.

With deliverance freighted
   Was this passive hand,
And this heart, high-fated,
   Would with love command.

Let him rest serenely
   In a Nation's care,
Where her waters queenly
   Make the West most fair.

In the greenest meadow
   That the prairies show,
Let his marble's shadow
   Give all men to know:

"Our First Hero, living,
   Made his country free;
Heed the Second's giving,
   Death for Liberty."

Other poetic tributes to Lincoln (there are lots) were collected here.