Death of B. P. Shillaber ("Mrs. Partington")

Benjamin Penhallow (B. P.) Shillaber died in Chelsea, Massachusetts on November 25, 1890, after a half a century in the world of publishing. The New Hampshire-born Shillaber began working at a printing office in his teen years. In 1847, he created what would become his most enduring work: the humorous persona of "Mrs. Partington." The character was inspired by English critic Sydney Smith, who had mentioned a character by that name attempting to mop up the Atlantic Ocean. Shillaber continued with that vein of ridiculous humor by introducing his character this way:

Mrs. Partington says that the price of bread may have advanced, but that she never pays more than fifty cents for half a dollar's worth.

These short, witty "epitaphs," often inspired by current events or concerns, became his hallmark. After several years working with Mrs. Partington at the Boston Post, Shillaber and Charles G. Halpine established their own humorous magazine, Carpet Bag, in 1852. Shillaber himself admitted the magazine "had more character than patronage" and it "died happily" about a year later. He took the opportunity, however, to publish a book, Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington in 1854. By 1866, he was mostly retired and spent the rest of his life just outside Boston. Upon his death in 1890, newspapers reported of his unending cheerfulness, much like his work, and predicted that his Mrs. Partington character "will doubtless ever remain a unique figure in American humour."

Mrs. Partington's/Shillaber's commentaries included references to violinist Ole Bull, the opening of the new Boston Music Hall, the temperance movement, and more. Perhaps the best representation considering the time of year is this short one:

What kin is that which all Yankees love to recognize, and which always has sweet associations connected with it? Why, pump-kin, to be sure.

Death of George Arnold: a wasted life

Though scarcely remembered today, the poet George Arnold was mourned by many when he died on November 3, 1865. A contributor to magazines like Vanity Fair, Arnold often wrote under the pseudonym "McArone," with works that crossed a variety of styles and genres but, mostly, he was a humorist.

When he died at age 31, those who remembered him included the group that frequented Pfaff's, a bar in Manhattan known for its Bohemian clientele of artists and writers. For that group, he allegedly first presented one of his most anthologized poems, an ode to beer. One of those who frequented the establishment was Walt Whitman, who once scuffled with Arnold over the question of the Confederacy. One account says their debate grew so heated, Arnold (who supported the secession of the Southern states) assaulted Whitman by grabbing him by the hair. In Whitman's own account, it was merely a loud argument, which resulted in the elder poet's leaving the building.

Another of those who met him at Pfaff's was artist/poet Elihu Vedder. Many years after Arnold's death, Vedder recalled, "He died young; I do not know of what he died, but he seemed to be worn out even when I first met him... He thought his life a wasted life; it was with him a gorgeous romance of youthful despair; but into that grave went a tender charm, great talent, and great weakness."

Also among the Pfaff's crowd was William Winter, who elsewhere recalled Arnold's time in the established: "[He was] one of the sweetest poets in our country who have sung the beauties of Nature and the tenderness of true love; and he never came without bringing sunshine." Winter collected Arnold's poems and published them with a biography. Editor/critic/author Edmund Clarence Stedman memorialized Arnold in verse not long after his burial at Greenwood Cemetery in Trenton, New Jersey. More appropriate than Stedman's poem, however, is Arnold's own, "The Lees of Life":

   I have had my will,
Tasted every pleasure;
   I have drank my fill
Of the purple measure;
   It has lost its zest,
   Sorrow is my guest,
O, the lees are bitter, — bitter, —
   Give me rest!

   Love once filled the bowl
Running o'er with blisses,
   Made my very soul
Drunk with crimson kisses;
   But I drank it dry,
   Love has passed me by,
O, the lees are bitter, — bitter, —
   Let me die!

*Note: At least one source gives the date of Arnold's death as November 9.

Death of Tucker: not the worst

Nathaniel Beverley Tucker lived a varied life before his death on August 26, 1851, just shy of his 67th birthday. He was born in Chesterfield County, Virginia, where several men in his family rose to prominence in politics, education, and the law. He served during the War of 1812 before moving to the Missouri Territory and earning the rank of judge. He outlived two of his three wives by the time he began working at his alma mater, the College of William and Mary. By the 1830s and 1840s, he was already espousing a form of secession that allowed state sovereignty.

Tucker was also a published author who published three novels and contributed to periodicals, particularly several essays in the pages of the Southern Literary Messenger. One of his works, The Partisan Leader: A Tale of the Future, was set in the "future" of 1849 when it was published in 1836 and, according to some, correctly predicted the birth of the Confederacy. Certainly, Tucker had been advocating for secession for years: "Disunion is not the worst of possible evils," he once claimed, and suggested breaking up the states be an open discussion.

From the dialogue of a character in his novel George Balcombe (1836):

"...It is only by blunders that we learn wisdom. You are too young to have made many as yet. God forbid, that when you shall have made as many as I have, you should have profited as little by them. But it will not be so. You take the right plan to get the full benefit of all you make. I am not sure," continued he, " that we do not purchase all our good qualities by the exercise of their opposites. How else does experience of danger make men brave? If they were not scared at first, then they were brave at first. If they were scared, then the effect of fear upon the mind has been to engender courage. Virtue, indeed, may be formed by habit. But who has a habit of virtue? very few. The rest have to arrive at virtue by the roundabout road of crime and repentance; as if a man should follow the sun around the earth to reach a point but a few degrees east of that from which he started. But it is God's plan of accomplishing his greatest end, and must be the best plan."

Death of Murfree: the sun had gone down

When Mary Noailles Murfree died on July 31, 1922, the author Charles Egbert Craddock died with her. Born and raised in Tennessee, she moved to St. Louis with her family after the Civil War. Some sort of childhood illness (usually reported as "lameness") inspired her interest in reading and literature. Nostalgia for her home state likely inspired her to begin writing "local color" stories about Tennessee. These tales and sketches portrayed a frontier, rural south, a mountainous and wild region made up of tough and rugged characters. Murfree made a good marketing decision, then, to write under the pseudonym Charles Egbert Craddock. She maintained her ruse for several years before surprising, if not shocking, New England's literary elite when her true identity was revealed.

In reality, Murfree/Craddock had little contact with the Appalachian mountain men and women that she featured in her work. She came from a well-known and aristocratic family (her home town of Murfreesboro was name after her ancestor, a veteran of the American Revolution) in central Tennessee. She spent her summers with her family in the mountainous regions in the eastern part of the state, among the Appalachian folks. Her family rank, however, as well as her "lameness" prevented her from much direct interaction with those people. She instead relied on those who made their way to do business to the resort hotel where she stayed.

In other words, though Murfree/Craddock presented herself as someone who knew the ins and outs of this cultural group, she was really an outsider. She certainly was sympathetic to that group of people, though her stories are more sentimental than reality. A sample from her chapter "Drifting Down Lost Creek" from In the Tennessee Mountains shows both her commitment to showing the "color" of Tennessee, her romanticism of the mountains, and her use of local dialect:

The sun had gone down, but the light yet lingered. The evening star trembled above Pine Mountain. Massive and darkling it stood against the red west. How far, ah, how far, stretched that mellow crimson glow, all adown Lost Creek Valley, and over the vast mountain solitudes on either hand! Even the eastern ranges were rich with this legacy of the dead and gone day, and purple and splendid they lay beneath the rising moon. She looked at it with full and shining eyes.
 "I dunno how he kin make out ter furgit the mountings," she said; and then she went on, hearing the crisp leaves rustling beneath her tread, and the sharp bark of a fox in the silence of the night-shadowed valley.

*I am indebted for information in this post to Wingless Flights: Appalachian Women in Fiction (1996) by Danny L. Miller

McCann on Saltus: a genius died

After Francis Saltus Saltus's midnight death, his friend John Ernest McCann was immediately inspired to write a poem to the deceased poet. Simply titled "Francis S. Saltus," the poem's three stanzas pay tribute to a multi-talented genius, and is dated June 25, 1889:

A genius died last night, about whose brow
   Fame never twined the laurel and the rose.
   A master he of music, verse and prose,
Who lived, laughed, loved, and suffered, to endow

The world with buds and blossoms from the bough
   That sways within the garden where Thought grows
   When the gale of Inspiration madly blows
The daisies of sweet Song before God's plow!

Ah! who can wear the laurel, now he's dead?
   Not one among the many whom he knew!
      Pluck not the leaf for any—leave it there;
And Time will weave it for his wondrous head,
   And Fame may bear it up beyond the blue—
      To where he sits and laughs with Baudelaire! 

Saltus and McCann were close enough that they collaborated on at least three poems, which McCann published the next year in his compilation Songs from an Attic. That collection also included his memorial verses to Saltus, though it was altered to combine the first two stanzas into one longer stanza. In his poem, McCann (who was more well known as a playwright than a poem) also acknowledges Saltus's inspiration from French poet Charles Baudelaire, whose lifestyle was equally influential on Saltus; like Baudelaire, he had a strong affinity for alcohol, particularly absinthe.

Death of Saltus: when men perish, I rejoice

Francis Saltus Saltus died in Tarrytown, New York on June 24, 1889, at the age of 39. "His trouble was a gastric one," the New York Times reported, and for several days he was unable to eat. Despite his death at an early age, Saltus was quite accomplished: He could reportedly speak in 10 languages, had written four comic operas, had poetry published (in multiple languages) in periodicals throughout the country and the world, and edited his own humorous magazine. He left several thousand poems unpublished as well. Most of Saltus's poems were comical in nature and, as such, perhaps it is fitting he was buried in the famous Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, also the final resting place of another writer known for his humor, Washington Irving. His poem "The Delights of Doom":

I love to visit unknown graves
     When snow the woodland buries,
And hear the wild wind when it raves
     Over grim cemeteries.

I glory in the sight of tombs,
     O'er slabs I love to ponder;
And I am glad when in the glooms
     Of humid crypts I wander.

I love to hear the dolorous voice
     Of anguish and of mourning,
And when men perish, I rejoice
     At death's untimely warning.

I fain would have the poet's fire,
     To glorify in verses
Death, doom, and all disaster dire,
     Shrouds, monument, and hearses.

I see the morgue with eager eyes,
     The pastime never varies;
And I reap pleasure and surprise
     Reading obituaries.

Death in all forms to me is sweet,
     And I am a believer
In awful plagues and pests effete
     Polluting towns with fever.

War pleases me when thousands lie
     Mangled in woods and closes;
And of all flowers beneath the sky
     I worship tuberoses.

Do not misjudge and say I'm mad,
     And cry against my maker,
But the truth is, my biz is bad,
     And I'm an undertaker.

Death of Rand: never will smile again

The Philadelphia-born poet Marion H. Rand died on Grahamville, South Carolina on June 9, 1849. She was about 25 years old. Rand began publishing her poetry as early as 14 years old, encouraged no doubt by her father, the author of several books of penmanship. By the end of her life, she had contributed to most of the major magazines of the day, including Graham's Magazine and Godey's Magazine in her native Philadelphia. She was collected in several anthologies of women's poetry, including those by Caroline May and Thomas Buchanan Read. Most of what is known about Rand comes from the short listings in these collections (such as the one pictured).

Her poem, "The Early Called," reflects a very real understanding of the reality of death, yet the speaker is reassured by their religious conviction. The poem was first published in Graham's in May 1844:

How lovely she lies in her long, last sleep—
While the eyes that may never more smile or weep
Are veiled in their fringed lids so close
That it seems but a slumber of deep repose.
She hath gone — as the rose-tinted cloud at even
Melts slowly away in the depths of heaven;
As the bud that rises from earth to bless
Our eyes in its innocent loveliness,
But with a worm in its heart unseen,
Droops in its bower of living green,
And ere the destroyer is yet revealed,
Its petals are withered — its doom is sealed.
So the hands that cherished her opening bloom,
Must lay her low in the silent tomb,
And the eyes that were wont in pride to dwell
On the beautiful form they loved so well,
Must sadly and mournfully turn away
From the cold, cold image of senseless clay.
Oh! 'tis a bitter thing to prove.
This hopeless yearning for one we love;
To look on the face, the cheek and brow,
In their marble purity, fairer now,
To wait for one smile, and wait in vain,
From lips that never will smile again.
Oh! what in this fleeting world hath power
To stem the agony of that hour?
Alas! with a shuddering heart and stern,
From all earth's comforts and gifts we turn,
And some might think that all is dark
In the dwelling where death has set his mark;
But praised be He who alone can bless,
For He doth not leave us comfortless.
When grief lies heaviest round our home,
And a blight on our fairest hopes has come,
When we scarce can lift our heavy eyes
To our lost one's dwelling beyond the skies—
He whom we sought when our day was bright
Will tenderly guide through this dark night;
Will lighten our burdens — charm our pain,
Till our hearts are almost glad again —
And the earth-stained love we bore to Him,
'Mid snares and temptations burning dim,
So often wearied — so often cold,
He will repay it a thousand fold.

Death of O'Hara: free from anguish now

Born and raised in Kentucky, Theodore O'Hara had a varied career as a lawyer, journalist, soldier, and poet. The Civil War broke out while he was the editor of a newspaper in Mobile, Alabama, and he immediately enlisted in the Confederate Army. Though his exemplary service was recognized, particularly with his previous stint in the Army in his 20s, he was refused promotions for being too outspoken and, particularly, for his criticism of President Jefferson Davis. After the war, he settled again in Alabama, where he died on June 6, 1867. He was originally buried in that state, before being re-interred in his native Kentucky.

O'Hara's greatest claim to fame is a poem about death, written during the Mexican-American War. "Bivouac of the Dead" has since been quoted in memorial markers and plaques in over a dozen cemeteries, including Arlington National Cemetery. Originally written to honor Kentuckians who died, it has since been read as a general lament for those who are killed in battle. From that poem:

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on life's parade shall meet
The brave and daring few.
On Fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.

No rumour of the foe's advance
Now swells upon the wind;
No troubled thought at midnight haunts
Of loved ones left behind;
No vision of the morrow's strife
The warrior's dream alarms;
No braying horn nor screaming fife
At dawn shall call to arms.

Their shivered swords are red with rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed;
Their haughty banner trailed in dust
Is now their martial shroud,
And plenteous funeral tears have washed
The red stains from each brow,
And their proud forms in battle gashed
Are free from anguish now.

...
Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead!
Dear as the blood you gave,
No impious footsteps here shall tread
The herbage of your grave;
Nor shall your glory be forgot
While Fame her record keeps,
Or Honor points the hallowed spot
Where Valor proudly sleeps.

Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone
In deathless songs shall tell,
When many a vanished age hath flown,
The story how ye fell;
Nor wreck, nor change, or winter's blight
Not Time's remorseless doom,
Shall dim one ray of holy light
That gilds your glorious tomb.

Death of Alfred B. Street: life's last breath

New York poet Alfred B. Street died June 2, 1881 in Albany, New York. He was 69 years old. The Poughkeepsie born poet started his career as a lawyer and served as the state librarian in New York for over 30 years until his death. As many did in the period, he took a literary turn and began submitting to newspapers and magazines before publishing his first collection, The Burning of Schenectady and Other Poems, in 1842. Several works followed, and Street was particularly noted for his forest imagery and ample use of Native American legends and folklore.

Street was buried in the Albany Rural Cemetery, an early example of the American landscape or rural cemetery movement, and today a National Historic Landmark. Street had written a poem about that burial ground decades earlier:

When life's last breath has faintly ebbed away,
And naught is left but cold unconscious clay,
Still doth Affection bend in anguish deep,
O'er the pale brow, to fondly gaze and weep.
What though the soul hath soared in chainless flight;
Round the spurned frame still plays a sacred light,
A hallowed radiance never to depart,
Poured from its solemn source, the stricken heart.
Not to the air should then be given the dead,
Not to the flame, nor yet cold ocean's bed,
But to the earth, — the earth from whence it rose,
There should the frame be left to its repose.
There our great mother guards her holy trust,
Spreads her green mantle o'er the sleeping dust;
There glows the sunshine — there the branches wave,
And birds yield song, flowers fragrance round the grave.

There oft to hold communion do we stray,
There droops our mourning memory when away,
And e'en when years have passed, our homeward feet
Seek first with eager haste that spot to greet;
And the fond hope lives ever in our breast
When death, too, claims us, there our dust shall rest.

Street then describes and praises the interplay of the natural landscape of the cemetery with its solemn duty to house the dead. He imagines a man in mourning who visits a grave and is joined in sympathy with Nature itself. The smile of his dead infant is reflected by the flowers, its laugh echoed by the birds. The poem goes on:

Through these branched paths will Contemplation wind,
And stamp wise Nature's teachings on his mind;
As the white grave-stones glimmer to his eye,
A solemn voice will thrill him, "Thou must die;"
When Autumn's tints are glittering in the air,
That voice will whisper to his soul, "Prepare;"
When Winter's snows are spread o'er knoll and dell,
"Oh this is death," that solemn voice will swell;
But when with Spring, streams leap and blossoms wave,
"Hope, Christian, hope," 'twill say, "there's life beyond the grave."

Death of Augusta Evans Wilson: at best a struggle

Augusta Jane Evans Wilson died of a heart attack in Mobile, Alabama on May 9, 1909. The author of multiple novels, she was best remembered for her book St. Elmo. Published in 1866, the novel was considered the Southern best-seller equal in popularity as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin was in the North. Various towns, hotels, and even steamboats were named in honor of the author or her characters.

Born in Georgia and raised partly in Texas, young Augusta showed an early interest in literature (despite no formal schooling) and began writing her first novel while still a teenager. Ultimately, she published some nine novels over about 50 years. Many of Wilson's books were popular because of perceived simplicity and domestic or sentimental themes. Immediately after her death, even her obituaries claimed her work already seemed like something from an different time — already old-fashioned, in other words. More modern scholars, however, have found that her female characters were a bit more modern and shared equal power, intellect, and agency as the male characters. In the political world, oddly enough, Wilson was a bit conservative and opposed women's suffrage in the growing movement.

An avid secessionist, Wilson (then still Miss Evans) volunteered to nurse Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. She used her experience as an inspiration for her 1864 book Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice. From that book, here is a scene in which a character named Russell witnesses the death of his elder mother:

"If I could look upon your face once more, my son, it would not be hard to die. Let me see you in heaven, my dear, dear boy." These were the last words, and soon after a stupor fell upon her. Hour after hour passed; Mrs. Campbell came and sat beside the bed, and the three remained silent, now and then lifting bowed heads to look at the sleeper. Not a sound broke the stillness save the occasional chirp of a cricket, and a shy mouse crept twice across the floor, wondering at the silence, fixing its twinkling bright eyes on the motionless figures. The autumn day died slowly as the widow, and when the clock dirged out the sunset hour Russell rose, and, putting back the window-curtains, stooped and laid his face close to his mother's. Life is at best a struggle, and such perfect repose as greeted him is found only when the marble hands of Death transfer the soul to its guardian angel. No pulsation stirred the folds over the heart, or the soft bands of hair on the blue-veined temples; the still mouth had breathed its last sigh, and the meek brown eyes had opened in eternity. The long, fierce ordeal had ended, the flames died out, and from smouldering ashes the purified spirit that had toiled and fainted not, that had been faithful to the end, patiently bearing many crosses, heard the voice of the Great Shepherd, and soared joyfully to the pearly gates of the Everlasting Home. The day bore her away on its wings, and as Russell touched the icy cheek a despairing cry rolled through the silent cottage.

Thy faith is changed to sight

When Rev. Francis E. Butler, Chaplain of the New Jersey 25th Regiment, died on May 3, 1863, having been fatally wounded at the siege of Suffolk, Virginia, during the Civil War, his acquaintance Alfred Gibbs Campbell was devastated. Campbell, like Butler, was from New Jersey, as well as a published poet. Though he was himself born free in the North, Campbell frequently used his writing to voice his strong abolitionist stance and became vice-president of the American Anti-Slavery Society. His poem to Butler, simply titled "In Memoriam," emphasized the holy role he played as a man of faith and a religious leader for soldiers:

Soldier of Christ, no more!
    Victor—thy warfare's done.
For thee the battle's roar
    Is hushed. Thy crown is won!

Oh! not for thee our tears!
    Happy in fadeless light,
Beyond the reach of fears,
    Thy faith is changed to sight.

Thine eyes with rapture see
    Thy dear Lord face to face,
Whose life of Love in thee
    His own eye loved to trace!

Kind helper of God's poor!
    Friend of the friendless one!
Thy memory shall endure
    While suns their courses run;

And bright thy crown shall be
    With living jewels set!
Souls won to Christ by thee
    Adorn thy coronet!

And yet our tears will flow,
    As we our loss recall:
How can we let thee go,
    Brother and friend of all?

Caroline Kirkland: I make my humble curtsey

Caroline Mathilda Stansbury Kirkland died on April 6, 1864, with a cause of death reported as apoplexy. She was perfectly healthy only a few days earlier, and her death was a surprise to many.

Born in New York, Kirkland moved west to Michigan with her family in 1837 where they founded a town. The project was financially unsuccessful and they returned to New York by the mid 1840s. The experience, however, inspired her first two books:  A New Home—Who'll Follow? (under the pseudonym Mary Clavers) and Forest Life. Her view of the experience in her books was quite negative, as she depicted Michigan as a blighted Eden. The first book in particular stirred controversy when locals in Michigan recognized themselves lampooned in the book. From her preface:

I claim for these straggling and cloudy crayon sketches of life and manners in the remoter parts of Michigan the merit of general truth of outline. Beyond this I venture not to aspire. I felt somewhat tempted to set forth my little book as being entirely—what it is very nearly—a veritable history; an unimpeachable transcript of reality; a rough picture, in detached parts, but pentagraphed from the life; a sort of 'Emigrant's Guide;'—considering with myself that these my adventurous journeyings and tarryings beyond the confines of civilization might fairly be held to confer the traveller's privilege. But conscience prevailed, and I must honestly confess, that there be glosses, and colorings, and lights, if not shadows, for which the author is alone accountable. Journals, published entire and unaltered, should be Parthian darts, sent abroad only when one's back is turned. To throw them in the teeth of one's everyday associates might diminish one's popularity rather inconveniently. I would desire the courteous reader to bear in mind, however, that whatever is quite unnatural, or absolutely incredible, in the few incidents which diversify the following pages, is to be received as literally true. It is only in the most common-place parts (if there be comparisons) that I have any leasing-making to answer for... And with such brief salvo, I make my humble curtsey. 

Back in New York, Kirkland founded a school for girls and joined the local literary community. Her home often hosted various gatherings of literary figures.

Kirkland was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, alongside her husband, William Kirkland, a former professor at Hamilton College and assistant editor of the New York Evening Mirror. After his death in 1846, her writing became a main source of income.

Death of Darley: dazzling in their splendor

Felix Octavius Carr Darley, often known by his abbreviated name F. O. C. Darley, died in his home in Delaware on March 27, 1888, likely due to heart disease. He was 66 years old. Considered by some to be the father of modern illustration in the United States, Darley provided drawings for the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Dickens, and others. His style ranged from simple outlines, to the elegant and dramatic, and even to caricature. For a time, he also worked for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C.

In addition to working with the literature of others, Darley also wrote (and illustrated) his own book, Sketches Abroad with Pen and Pencil (1868), based on a trip to Europe during the Civil War. Like many other authors, Darley claimed these "sketches" were not intended for publication but for the private circulation of family and friends — until a friend convinced him otherwise. "I was induced to put them into type and use them as a thread whereon to hang the illustrations," many of which he claimed were drawn on trains, steamers, and even on a mule. Darley, in fact, offered that scene both pictorially and in prose. Traveling through Mont Blanc, he had to ride on a mule, "which I found a very hairerecting process." He describes the experience:

I brought up the rear on a critter that looked like an apple on four sticks. The tormenting propensity these creatures have for walking on the outer edge of these mountain passes, is rather alarming to the inexperienced. You sometimes look down, two thousand feet, over your mule's neck, as he turns an angle of the road, into the misty depths below. The view we beheld on reaching the top of La Flegere was glorious! It embraces the entire chain of Mont Blanc, from the Col de Balme to the Glacier des Bossons. Directly opposite were the glittering points of the Aiguilles Vertes, which rose before us like a mighty vision; the clouds floating about their lofty peaks, now shutting them from our sight, and now revealing them, with a strange phosphorescent light playing upon their snow-clad summits, which were dazzling in their splendor.

Though born in Philadelphia, for a time a resident of New York City, and the owner of a home in Delaware, Darley was laid to rest at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the native town of his wife.

Death of Mathews: to a laurelled home

Cornelius Mathews, a one-time lion of New York City publishing, died on March 25, 1889, mostly forgotten, and mostly irrelevant. He was 71 years old (sometimes erroneously reported as age 75). In the 1840s, he had been one of the loudest advocates for a national literature in the United States as part of the Young America movement. He had founded the Arcturus with Evert Augustus Duyckinck in 1840, a journal which published the work of Herman Melville, among others. Mathew's novel The Behemoth may have been one of Melville's inspirations for Moby-Dick.

In 1843, he founded the Copyright Club and demanded international copyright, while declaring that American writers should celebrate America in their writing. His incessant writings and speeches on the subject often made him a target from people who disagreed and he was frequently satirized and caricatured. In his A Fable for Critics (1848), James Russell Lowell referred to Mathews as a "small man in glasses" whose paranoia about his enemies has him muttering about "murderers!" and "asses!" Even those who also advocated for improving American writing found him unbearable, including anthologist/critic Rufus W. Griswold, who said his cause had infected him like a disease.

But Mathews himself complied with his own goals was a published poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Before his death, however, he had not published anything new in some 30 years. One Ohio newspaper referred to him as the "late Cornelius Mathews, of New York" in 1875. Today, he is best remembered for his relationships with other writers and critics rather than as a writer and critic in his own right.

Curiously, Mathews's funeral was held at St. Ann's Church at 5th and 18th in New York City, a congregation that catered to the deaf and mute. One might be curious to know if his disappearance from the public spotlight could have been due to hearing loss, though no source seems to mention it. From his 1843 poem, "The Poet":

The mighty heart that holds the world at full,
Lodging in one embrace the father and the child,
The toiler, reaper, sufferer, rough or mild,
All kin of earth, can rightly ne'er grow dull;
For on it tasks, in this late age, are laid
That stir its pulses at a thousand points;
Its ruddy haunts a thousand hopes invade,
And Fear runs close to smutch what Hope anoints.
On thee, the mount, the valley and the sea,
The forge, the field, the household call on thee...

Gather all kindreds of this boundless realm
To speak a common tongue in thee! Be thou —
Heart, pulse, and voice, whether pent hate o'erwhelm
The stormy speech or young love whisper low.
Cheer them, immitigable battle-drum!
Forth, truth-mailed, to the old unconquered field,
And lure them gently to a laurelled home,
In notes more soft than lutes or viols yield.
Fill all the stops of life with tuneful breath;
Closing their lids, bestow a dirge-like death

Pride stoops, e'en valor yields to death

New Hampshire minister Uriah Wilcox had lived a long, exciting life during the early years of the United States. In 1775-1776, he sided with the "United Colonies" against the "Hostile Proceedings of the British Fleets," and helped organize a local militia company for the cause of independence. He gave input on the writing of the first State Constitution for New Hampshire and served on the town of Newport's general assembly before, towards the end of his life, being elected a member of the state House of Representatives. He was 72 when he died on March 18, 1822.

The death of such an important local hero could not go unnoticed by another person from Newport, New Hampshire: Sarah Josepha Hale. Hale was only then about to embark on a career in journalism and magazine publishing that would make her one of the most influential women of the century. Ten days after Wilcox's death, she wrote her poem "To the Memory of Rev. Uriah Wilcox":

Death reigns o'er all—the ghastly king,
On his pale courser traversing,
Aims well his arrow, and the blow
Is sure to lay his victim low.

Life weeps, hearts bleed; but fruitless all;
Youth, beauty, health and virtue fall
An easy prey his power beneath;
Pride stoops, e'en valor yields to death.

The poem is a far cry from her less negative poem about Mary's lamb. Still, Hale praises Wilcox in his death after having lived a life that earned "worth long known, and long belov'd." A life like that, she argues poetically, can not be all sad. It would be selfish, she says, to want to keep one like that on Earth when their spirit was merely on loan from heaven: "The saint survives in yon bright skies, / From earth's low cares the spirit free." She predicts what will happen at the final day of judgment:

When the last trump shall echo—"live!"
And graves their mouldering tenants give;
To that loud summons, whilst the sun,
In sackcloth, mourns his empire done:

The moon is blood, the globe is fire;
Stars fall, the shrinking heavens retire;
And ruin only reigns, where man
Had boasted o'er his little span:

Then, whilst before the judgment seat
The assembled universe shall meet;
Christians, like thee, will hear the word,
"Come, dwell forever with the Lord."

Death of Sparks: wide and beneficent influence

"The name of Jared Sparks is intimately associated with the historical literature of this country," began the obituary of historian Jared Sparks, who died of pneumonia on March 14, 1866. He was 76 years old. The obituary added, "He has exerted a wide and beneficent influence; he has finished a good work and gained for himself a brilliant renown." He was also, for a time, chaplain for Congress and, later, President of Harvard University.

Perhaps Sparks's most well-known work today is his biographies of George Washington. To complete the work, he sought out original documents, including letters and whatever first-hand testimony he could find. First published as a multi-volume Life and Letters of George Washington beginning in 1834, a simplified and abridged version was published as Life of George Washington in 1842. He also wrote books or articles on a variety of other figures associated with the American Revolution, including Benjamin Franklin, John Andre, Benedict Arnold, Charles Lee, and Anthony Wayne.

Sparks chose to focus on the origins of the country because of what he considered a contentious contemporary period in American politics. Looking to the past, he said, was "the polestar to which all may look for safety." Perhaps so, but Sparks also took liberties in writing about the Revolution and its major figures by creating an illusion of perfect harmony. One contemporary wrote that Sparks was guilty of "flagrant literary misdemeanour" by re-wording much of the correspondence he used as a source for his own writing. After his death, one critic noted that Sparks had "altered" and "embellished" Washington's letters to  ensure that the historical figure matched the presumed dignity and character that fit Sparks's purpose of harmony. Consider this excerpt titled "American History":

Besides a love of adventure, and an enthusiasm that surrounded every difficulty, the character of its founders was marked by a hardy enterprise and sturdiness of purpose, which carried them onward through perils and sufferings, that would have appalled weaker minds and less resolute hearts. This is the first great feature of resemblance in all the early settlers, whether they came to the north or to the south, and it merits notice from the influence it could not fail to exercise on their future acts and character, both domestic and politic.  The timid, the wavering, the feeble-minded, the sons of indolence and ease, were not among those who left the comforts of home, braved the tempests of the ocean, and sought danger on the shores of an unknown and inhospitable world.

Enduring his final illness, Sparks was surrounded by family and friends. His friends insisted his final days were "painless and placid". His children recorded among his last words, "Strive to do good and you will bring it to pass." His substantial collection of manuscripts and books were donated to Harvard.

Harte on King: a star was falling

Thomas Starr King had been preaching in San Francisco, California, only for about four years before he died on March 4, 1864. A dynamic character, he was as influential in the pulpit as he was at more secular podiums. One of the many affected by King's death at age 39 was author Bret Harte who, like King, was born in New York state before making his way to California. Harte dedicated a poem to King as an obituary which he called "Relieving Guard":

Came the relief. "What, sentry, ho!
How passed the night through thy long waking?"
"Cold, cheerless, dark, — as may befit
The hour before the dawn is breaking."

"No sight? no sound?" "No; nothing save
The plover from the marshes calling,
And in yon western sky, about
An hour ago, a star was falling."

"A star? There's nothing strange in that."
"No, nothing; but above the thicket,
Somehow it seemed to me that God
Somewhere had just relieved a picket." 

Harte purposely used military imagery in honoring this minister, in part because King had involved himself heavily in politics, urging Californians to stay with the Union. The title, "Relieving Guard," helps make the connection between the role of a soldier and the role of a minister, as well. Moreover, the poem's simplicity belies the complexity in its imagery. In its three stanzas, we see no direct reference to King, and neither do the two soldiers who are talking. Yet, somehow one of the soldiers knows that the seemingly natural phenomenon he has witness has a greater meaning. We never hear the other soldier's reaction.

Harte had known King personally, considering him a mentor of sorts, and was even aware of his illness — diphtheria — without apparently knowing how serious it was. King had worked nonstop for years and the strain only aggravated his condition. Among his last words were Psalm 23, "Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil." He was buried with a military guard. Harte would write two more poems to King and name a son after him.

Death of Hovey: end his night of woe

Richard Hovey died in a New York hospital on February 24, 1900, at the age of 35. Born in Normal, Illinois in 1864, he grew up mostly in Washington, D.C., then enrolled at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where he graduated in 1885. Hovey was an ambitious student, editing two student publications, giving the commencement oration, being elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and writing a version of the school song.

Even so, Hovey struggled to find a career. He abandoned both acting and the ministry before returning to his earlier hobby of writing. According to some accounts, he looked the part of a writer: flamboyantly dressed with a velvet jacket and flowing silk tie. Some have called him an American attempt at Oscar Wilde. His first books of, as they called it, "vagabond" poetry, were co-written with Canadian poet Bliss Carman. Other books by Hovey included dramatic updates of Arthurian legends.

After his death, his wife Henriette Hovey edited a final book, To the End of the Trail (1908), which included, with one exception, poems which had never been published in Hovey's lifetime, as well as a substantial number of translations from, among others, French poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Perhaps for his death an earlier poem would make for more appropriate reading: his poem "Dead" is dated 1890, for example. But for now, instead, here is "World and Poet" (1892):

"Sing to us, Poet, for our hearts are broken;
Sing us a song of happy, happy love,
Sing of the joy that words leave all unspoken, —
The lilt and laughter of life, oh sing thereof I
Oh, sing of life, for we are sick and dying;
Oh, sing of joy, for all our joy is dead;
Oh, sing of laughter, for we know but sighing;
Oh, sing of kissing, for we kill instead!"
How should he sing of happy love, I pray,
Who drank love's cup of anguish long ago?
How should he sing of life and joy and day,
Who whispers Death to end his night of woe?
    And yet the Poet took his lyre and sang,
    Till all the dales with happy echoes rang.

At the time of his death, Hovey was being treated for testicular cancer. After surgery, he apparently suffered a heart attack. He was buried with his mother's family in North Andover, Massachusetts.

Death of Douglass: We still live

Orator, statesman, reformer, editor, and author Frederick Douglass died unexpectedly on February 20, 1895 at his home in Washington, D.C. called Cedar Hill. He was about 77 or 78 years old. A former slave, he secretly learned how to read, but remained headstrong and independent — qualities which his enslaver attempted to break him of. After one particular whipping, a teenaged Douglass fought back. He was never beaten again.

After escaping from enslavement (with the help of several, including David Ruggles), Douglass made his way north and met with his free black wife. Now on free land, Douglass reflected, "I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life." He became an outspoken advocate for abolition and was recognized as one of the most powerful speakers of the day. He wrote his life story in three autobiographies, the last of which was revised and reissued only three years before his death. In that book, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, reiterated his history of enslavement and his escape to freedom but also explained his more recent life story. For example, years after the Civil War, he was granted a government post, U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia, making him the first African American to receive a federal post that required approval from the Senate.

In those years, however, many black Americans felt a disconnect with Douglass, who had entered a life of privilege that some believed did not reflect the black American experience. Further, he had married a white woman after the death of his first wife, a decision that met with disapproval even from his loving family. He had shifted his interest to women's rights and women's suffrage (the day of his death, he attended a rally for the cause alongside Susan B. Anthony). Douglass did not agree. He knew that more work was necessary, even after Emancipation - and, more than that, it was not white people who would continue the progress of black people, but black people themselves. As he wrote in his final autobiography:

Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the colored people have no reason to despair. We still live, and while there is life there is hope. The fact that we have endured wrongs and hardships which would have destroyed any other race, and have increased in numbers and public consideration, ought to strengthen our faith in ourselves and our future. Let us, then, wherever we are, whether at the North or at the South, resolutely struggle on in the belief that there is a better day coming, and that we, by patience, industry, uprightness, and economy may hasten that better day. I will not listen, myself, and I would not have you listen to the nonsense, that no people can succeed in life among a people by whom they nave been despised and oppressed...
Greatness does not come to any people on flowers beds of ease. We must fight to win the prize. No people to whom liberty is given, can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant. The hardships and the dangers involved in the struggle give strength and toughness to the character, and enable it to stand firm in storm as well as in sunshine.

Richard Henry Dana: Death bring thee rest

Richard Henry Dana, Sr. had lived through most of the early history of the United States. Born only two months after the adoption of the Constitution (his father had signed the Articles of Confederation), he lived through the entire Presidency of George Washington and 17 others before dying during the term of the 19th President Rutherford B. Hayes on February 2, 1879. He was 91 years old.

In his long life, Dana also saw the developing world of American literature as it unfolded. An early American romanticist, he was criticized for his support of the work of Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but lived long enough to see his formerly controversial opinion become conventional. Dana wrote a novel before James Fenimore Cooper and befriended the earliest American poets, including William Cullen Bryant. An ardent patriot, he truly believed in the fervor that created his country and hoped to see its culture and arts flourish with genius. He played his own part in building the arts, not only as an author, poet, and critic, but as a supporter of the arts (he was a friend of painter Washington Allston).

But Dana was frequently ill throughout most of his long life. Unlike his son and namesake, who took to the ocean when faced with health problems, Dana lived an increasingly retired life and embodied the Idle Man, the title of the magazine he founded and edited. When he died, some accounts referred to him as "the oldest of American authors"; several also admitted he had written nothing in his elder years. Among his most famous works was one of his earliest, a poem titled "The Dying Raven." The blank verse poem is over 100 lines long; below is the beginning and ending:

Come to these lonely woods to die alone?
It seems not many days since thou wast heard,
From out the mists of spring, with thy shrill note,
Calling upon thy mates — and their clear answers.
The earth was brown then; and the infant leaves
Had not put forth to warm them in the sun,
Or play in the fresh air of heaven. Thy voice,
Shouting in triumph, told of winter gone,
And prophesying life to the sealed ground,
Did make me glad with thoughts of coming beauties.
And now they're all around us, — offspring bright
Of earth, — a mother, who, with constant care,
Doth feed and clothe them all. — Now o'er her fields,
In blessed bands, or single, they are gone,
Or by her brooks they stand, and sip the stream;
Or peering o'er it, — vanity well feigned —
In quaint approval seem to glow and nod
At their reflected graces. — Morn to meet,
They in fantastic labors pass the night,
Catching its dews, and rounding silvery drops
To deck their bosoms. — There, on high, bald trees,
From varnished cells some peep, and the old boughs
Make to rejoice and dance in warmer winds.
Over my head the winds and they make music;
And grateful, in return for what they take,
Bright hues and odours to the air they give.
Thus mutual love brings mutual delight —
Brings beauty, life; — for love is life — hate, death.
...

I needs must mourn for thee. For I, who have
No fields, nor gather into garners — I
Bear thee both thanks and love, not fear nor hate.
And now, farewell! The falling leaves ere long
Will give thee decent covering. Till then,
Thine own black plumage, which will now no more
Glance to the sun, nor flash upon my eyes,
Like armour of steeled knight of Palestine,
Must be thy pall. Nor will it moult so soon
As sorrowing thoughts on those borne from him, fade
In living man.
                    Who scoffs these sympathies,
Makes mock of the divinity within;
Nor feels he gently breathing through his soul
The universal spirit. — Hear it cry,
"How does thy pride abase thee, man, vain man!
How deaden thee to universal love,
And joy of kindred with all humble things,—
God's creatures all!"
                              And surely it is so.
He who the lily clothes in simple glory,
He who doth hear the ravens cry for food,
Hath on our hearts, with hand invisible,
In signs mysterious, written what alone
Our hearts may read. — Death bring thee rest, poor Bird.